ISBN 0-88801-228-4
$16.95 Cdn
5-1/2 x 8-1/2, 225 pages

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Eric Henderson and
Madeline Sonik

Canadian Gothic? From the land of the polite and the national obsession with curling? You bet! Although there have been American and British collections in New Gothic writing, this is the first collection with Canadian writers only. The term "New Gothic" refers to tales told in the context of our modern world. These tales will often take characters, complacent in how their world works, and throw them a curve so things are not as they seem.

The stories in this collection are a varied assortment that reflects the best of the New Gothic. In Kenneth J. Harvey's "Into the Places of Those Lost," a man's sexual fantasy becomes a frightening, hallucinatory embrace of what seems to him the ghost of his dead wife. In Rai Berzin's "Cerebus," the narrator, while living an apparently "normal" life, descends to a personal hell cohabited by monsters and outcasts. In "A Thin White Hand," by Kenneth J. Emberly, a man plots revenge against a young girl who holds him captive. Lurking behind the smokescreen of a blackly humorous story of teenage rebellion in Thea Caplan's "Touch" is a tale of abandonment and family dysfunction.

Fresh Blood contains tales that are eerie, jolting, unnerving and, above all, thought-provoking. The bridge is washed away, the phone is out and you are stuck here for the night; you might as well sit back and enjoy these new tales of the macabre.