DC Mallery offers readers twelve spine-chilling stories that will make readers hesitate to turn off the light at night or walk that dark alley. From the depths of a tortuous imagination, otherworldly creatures and demons lurk to devour souls. Some innocent, and some not so much. It takes special people to vanquish evil … or become part of it. In ‘The Trauma Eater’, Adams lives every day with a different wife and different children, but he never had a wife or children, and the memories are destroying him. To save himself, he must eat someone else’s memories. With ‘Tessa Thrope and the Unholy Venom’, Andrew intends to marry Tessa, but first, he must expel the demon who possessed her. Tessa has a plan of her own about how to deal with the demon and things don’t work out as intended for Andrew. It is 1956, ‘The Night of Blood Perfume’, and Cindy is watching an old Clark Gable movie. Tired, she goes out to the front porch and watches the red mist fall. It tastes of blood and she feels an odd hunger stir inside her. Things get grim for ordinary mortals. The short novella ‘Sara Sarque and the Demon Executioner’ opens a doorway to creatures that feed on human energy. Sara, a junkie, and Cole Cameron, a man already possessed, must find a way to close that doorway even if it means the price is their soul.

For lovers of the macabre, ghoulish, and plain scary, Sara Sarque & the Demon Executioner and Other Stories of Mystery, Terror, Heartbreak, Hope and Humor has it all. DC Mallery must have dug deep into the basement corridors of his morbid mind to conjure this collection. Nicely written in an easy-to-read style, this book is a polished journey into strange realms many readers might find uncomfortable, or taken only in small doses. Even though these are short stories, DC Mallery manages to describe his characters with a masterful skill that allows readers to sympathize with them or loathe them. He takes the essence of his previous stories and distills them into the novella, ‘Sara Sarque & the Demon Executioner’, which takes time to more fully explore what may lurk in the shadows, waiting to pounce. An unusual story that matures slowly, but is well worth persisting with. This is a must-read addition to any collection that deals with the creepy.

D C Mallery’s anthology Sara Sarque & The Demon Executioner and Other Stories of Mystery, Terror, Heartbreak, Hope, and Humor contains twelve terrifying stories that would chill your bones. In the first story, The Trauma Eater, a man haunted by recurring tragic memories of multiple families he never had, seeks help as he must choose which tragedy to be stuck with for the rest of his life. In Tessa Thorpe and The Unholy Venom, a priest attempts to rescue a possessed woman by injecting drops of her blood into him in a battle for Satan’s crown. In the title story, Sara Sarque &The Demon Executioner, Sara and an exorcist join forces together as they battle both against demons and confront their own demons.

My favorite story is The Woman and The Maze. In this unsettling tale, a woman who enjoys mazes gets lost and transforms into one, and as children come to play in the tunnels of her hedges, she becomes terrified of what it means when the needs of a plant and the wishes of a lonely woman blends. I enjoyed this story because it felt like reading an urban legend from a fresh perspective. These stories were both eerie and unique as D C Mallery takes readers through different landscapes and folklore. From the caves of Iran to the Night Circus of Paris, get ready for exorcisms and demons, rituals, curses, and supernatural phenomena too baffling for the human mind. Grab a copy for a glimpse into the unnatural and supernatural in Sara Sarque & The Demon Executioner and Other Stories of Mystery, Terror, Heartbreak, Hope, and Humor.

Sara Sarque and the Demon Executioner and Other Stories of Mystery, Terror, Heartbreak, Hope, and Humor is an anthology of supernatural tales by D.C. Mallery. A man has memories of families he never had and meets a man who can rid him of the memories for a price in “The Trauma Thief.” In “Tessa Thrope and the Unholy Venom,” a priest injects blood into his veins from a possessed woman. In “Acts of Absolution in the Circus of the Night,” a boy’s siblings return with a Night Circus after fleeing the city years ago. In “The Night of Blood Perfume,” people in the San Joaquin Valley fight for survival as fog descends on their town. In “Sara Sarque and the Demon Executioner,” a drug addict joins forces with a young man to kill demons. These are only five of the twelve stories, and I would recommend reading all of them.

The themes in Sara Sarque and the Demon Executioner and Other Stories of Mystery, Terror, Heartbreak, Hope, and Humor by D.C. Mallery include fear, horror, and suspense, with some light relief. The stories are brilliantly written with diverse content. They were filled with intrigue and had plenty of thrills. The book explores the mysterious and the paranormal, and it stayed with me long after I read each story. It was fast-paced and had just the right amount of action. I could not put the book down and just kept turning the pages. The plots were well-planned and executed, and I was engrossed from the start. Each character experienced some kind of trauma. I was kept on the edge of my seat by this captivating collection of stories.