Women's Noir Horror Stories

Bruce Von Stiers

Akashic Books has been published noir short story collections for quite some time. For the most part, the collections were selected due to a geographic location. But there is a new noir collection from them that is quite a bit different. This new collection features stories of body horror. And all of the stories were from women writers.

The new book is titled A Darker Shade of Noir. It features stories from noted authors such as Megan Abbott, Elizabeth Hand and Margaret Atwood. The collection was edited by Joyce Carol Oates, who also provided a story for it.

The book begins with a nine paged introduction by Joyce Carol Oates. Then there are stories that are divided into three different parts. These parts are You've Created A Monster, Morbid Anatomy and Out of Body, Out of Time.

The first story is Frank Jones. What started out as a skin tag on a woman's body turns into something else entirely. Something that is frightening and deadly. It is a strange and bizarre story. A great way to start out a collection of body horror stories. It is from Aimee Bender, the author of the bestselling novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.

Tamara Due teaches a class on Black Horror at UCLA. Her story for this collection is Dancing. Monique began dancing and at some point, she just couldn't stop. Her dancing ends in tragedy. It is an very interesting story.

Best selling author Megan Abbott provides the story titled Scarlet Ribbons. A young girl visits a supposed haunted house. A horrible set of murders had occurred there. But Penny dared to go inside the house. And the result is a twist that makes this story a tantalizing mix of ghosts and horror.

Malena is a story that deals with Lara and a twin sister she never knew about. But the twin is not what you might expect. The story is macabre and intriguing at the same time. It is from Joanna Margaret, the author of The Bequest.

The collection features a story with illustrations. This story is Dancing With Mirrors. It is from comic storyteller Lisa Lim. A young woman is obsessed with mirrors and veins that become vines that in turned killed someone. It was a very weird and interesting tale.

You might know Margaret Atwood as the author of The Handmaid's Tale. Her story for this collection is Metempsychosis, Or The Journey of the Soul. It is a bizarre tale of the soul of a snail transmitted to a human's body. But is that what really happened? This is the first story in the second part of the book, Morbid Anatomy.

The stories in the collection are indeed a bit weird. One of the weirdest is Concealed Carry. Kelly is transferred to a job in Texas from New York. But Texas is all about guns and such. A chance encounter with a gun leaves Kelly with some very weird and horrific circumstances. This tale is from “weird short story” author Lisa Tuttle.

A writing instructor at Rutgers University, Aimee LaBrie has had her short stories published in several periodicals. Her story for this collection is Gross Anatomy. It is a deliciously bizarre tale that deals with a boring med student, necrophilia, and a deadly pathogen.

An artist with a fan who is more of a deadly critic is the basis for Breathing Exercise. The more Myriam tries to appease this person, the worse things become. And her health suffers, to an extreme. This story is from Raven Leilani, who teaches at NYU and has published her first novel titled Luster.

Muzzle is about a woman's bathroom experience. Well, sort of. A woman goes to the bathroom at a restaurant and somehow transforms. Or so she thinks. This werewolf type of tale is from Cassandra Khaw, a Bram Stoker Award finalist and award-winning game writer.

Yumi Dineen Shiroma provides the story Her Heart May Fail Her. Lucy and Mina must avoid interacting with someone, or something, that could be a vampire.

I mentioned earlier about, besides editing this collection, Joyce Carol Oates wrote a story for it. Her offering is The Chair of Tranquility. While not exactly a horror story, it details a woman's harrowing physical and mental journey. It takes place in 1850's New Jersey and deals with the known practice of reversing women's “hysteria.”

Elizabeth Hand has written more than twenty novels. Her offering for this collection is a delicious tale of retribution titled The Seventh Bride, or Female Curiosity. Livey plays the seventh bride in a production about Bluebeard. A lecherous actor, a smitten co-star and a horrible accident are key elements in this story.

Valerie Martin is the author of the critically acclaimed novel, Mary Reilly. Her story here is titled Nemesis. Maurice brings home a friend from college, Eric Jeffrey. Everyone seems to love Eric, but Maurice's mother just knows that he is trouble. A series of events prove her right but then something happens that makes things turn around. This is an interesting tale of how someone gets what is really coming to them.

The final story in the collection is Sydney. It was written by Sheila Kohler, whose novel Cracks was turned into a film starring Eva Green. This story is a mixture of human drama, horror, and science fiction. A woman is plucked from a South African farm to be the wife of a doctor. But the doctor is not what he seems and there is something not quite right about what goes on behind doors the wife is not allowed past. This story is a great way to end the collection.

A Darker Shade of Noir is certainly different. The stories in this collection are strange, weird, and horrific. But that was the intent. Noir is supposed to be stark and somewhat gritty. The lead characters in most noir stories are broken or are morally compromised in some way. This collection has that and so much more as the characters suffer both physically and metaphysically.

A Darker Shade of Noir is available through Amazon and other book retailers.

To find out more about this collection, or other Noir titles from Akashic Books, visit www.akashicbooks.com

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© 2023 Bruce E Von Stiers