Suspicions

by Elizabeth Engstrom

Overview

Dark, haunting, and unforgettable.

Within these pages lies some of the most amazing, cutting-edge fiction you'll ever read.

In this collection of handpicked stories from Elizabeth Engstrom's archives, you'll take some extraordinary excursions.

She'll take you across the River Styx, welcome you aboard the judgment day train, let you witness the righteous death of a bad, bad man, climb aboard a mothballed Navy destroyer out for revenge, and take you to a tattoo parlor for a transforming experience. You'll find mystery, horror, erotica, science fiction, fantasy and humor, side by side with moving human drama and cautionary, moral tales. In this volume, you'll view the world through her dark and edgy lens, distorting your vision and nicking your heart ever so gently in the process.

These stories are not for the faint of heart, the squeamish, or the prudish. Engstrom reaches deep, and pulls forth some harsh realities. If you want light entertainment, you'll find some of that here. But for the most part, sit back and get ready for a ride that will take you to places within yourself that you never knew existed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798985282726
Publisher:	IFD Publishing
Publication date:	04/01/2022
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Engstrom grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois and Kaysville, Utah. After a successful career as the owner of an advertising agency, she sold her business and used the seed money to finance her first novel, When Darkness Loves Us. She went on to write fifteen additional books and taught fiction in Oregon colleges and at writers' conferences and conventions around the world.

Editorial Reviews

Elizabeth Engstrom (Lizzie Borden, etc.) has selected 25 stories most previously published from her 20-year writing career and gathered them up in Suspicions, a spooky collection of tales inspired by the author's questions and theories about death, sex, government, technology, family and the unknown. The characters, places and even genres vary widely: while "Fates Entwined" leans toward erotica, for example, "Rivering" is a fantastical tale of a woman who fishes for souls, and "Romana" reveals a basic love triangle with a paranormal twist. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Culled from 20 years of writing in a variety of genres including horror, SF, and erotica, the latest collection by Engstrom (Lizard Wine, 1996, etc.) contains 25 stories (all previously published) that, as the author's introduction contends, are linked by the common thread of suspicion. Shorter pieces offer sex in weird permutations, as in "Elixir," where a totally color-blind veterinarian finds a prostitute with a third nipple that oozes color into his world (though he turns out to be the wrong man for such a gift), or in the more mundane circumstances of "In a Darkened Compartment," where an American woman lives out her fantasy by seducing a stranger on a train crossing Italy. Longer pieces include "Gemphalon," about an insectlike being on another planet that gets summoned as the best of his kind for genetic enhancement, but that-or who-gets a little something extra when one of his human handlers decides to throw her own DNA into the mix; and the more pedestrian morality tale, "The Cloak," about what happens when ectoplasm gathered from a medium's seances is woven into an irresistible cloak by the medium's husband: the cloak promptly kills him and brings out the worst in subsequent hapless wearers until it's finally destroyed by a man pure in heart. Wide-ranging stories despite the theme that binds them, but unfortunately also wide-ranging in quality.

Kirkus Reviews