Using the rhythms, tone, and intent of dark fantasy and horror, this collection is a knockout.
The voices in this intense, violent, and brutally descriptive short story anthology centering on combat sports don’t necessarily want to fight—they have to fight. The outsized shadows of greedy managers, heartless crime bosses, and broken homes loom large. In “Saint Bullethead,” Chris Andrew Ciulla employs a journalistic tone to tell the tale of a man who feels no pain. In “Call Me Mina,” Stacy Gonzalez captures the heartbreak of a girl who must battle her father as hard as she fights in the ring, while Linda Jones finds the human frailty of a fighter struggling against the control of AI in the speculative fiction of “Pure Wrath.”
Using the rhythms, tone, and intent of dark fantasy and horror, this collection is a knockout.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2025
Duration: 10 hrs
Publisher: Leonardo Audio
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2026
A series of terrifying accounts of the macabre is brought to life through David Ledoux's splendid reading. Ledoux offers a straightforward approach, making Hill's startling tales as believable as they are frightening. As narrator, Ledoux understands these stories—be it the dazzlingly imaginative "Pop Art" or the tense "Best New Horror," in which the central character is a horror editor who finds himself entrapped in one of his stories. Hill is a master at creating a high-tension atmosphere that never ceases to pay off with a scare. This innate ability is perfectly realized by Ledoux, who knows precisely when to increase his tone and pitch, or let his voice accelerate to increase the stakes. Dark, brooding, and realistic, Ledoux's performance is underplayed where it could go over the top.
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2007
Duration: 12 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9780061554667
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Ottessa Moshfegh, author of several audiobooks, one of which she narrates, steps in to deliver this new production of the late Leonard Cohen's early fiction, written in the 1950s. The 16 short stories and a novella are a snapshot of the period and the artist's development of his voice. Cohen focuses on themes of violence, deeply intimate sex, rejection, the betrayals of old age, and more violence. Moshfegh's voice may be unexpected, given Cohen's many first-person male characters, but, curiously, it works. Moshfegh meets the moments of sexual intimacy, and of shocking violence, straight on, conveying a reverence for these early works.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
Duration: 7 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781696609784
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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