The Immortals: A Collection of Horror

Perhaps one story just isn’t enough for Halloween, but how about a collection of scary stories ranging from alien abductions to haunted house horrors? Longtime writer Susan R. Murphy releases her first book, The Immortals, for the season. She sat down to write about experiences from her childhood as well as creepy mysteries that caught  her attention. The purpose of the collection is “to reach out to those who are interested in not quite normal everyday routine things. To scare the daylights out of the reader and probably give you all nightmares, or to just get you thinking that there may be something else out there not quite human.”

Murphy obviously has a keen fascination with horror. “The first movie I saw was called Straight-Jacket, memorable for scenes of heads rolling down the staircase. From then on, I was hooked on anything horror.” she says. Her stories derive from Greek mythology, campfire tales, and old Gothic horror.

Six stories make up The Immortals. “The Dark Observer” is about a mother who refuses to let extraterrestrial visitors take her children. There’s “Gargoyle, Thief of Souls”, which is a story of the hunt to expose the truth of the mythical Gargoyle. There’s murder, rage and gore to be found in “The Butcher of Moore Mansion”. “The Haunted Railroad Tracks” allow us to relive our fears of the tales we heard from older brothers and sisters. Then there’s “The Lost Princess of Atlantis”, which Murphy takes in a very different direction involving legendary creatures and whimsical missing cities. “The House on Fairwood Avenue” lets the reader peak in on a different perspective. We see how the immortal survive. Finally there’s “Euryale, the Gorgon”, a story taken from mythology and weaved by Murphy to her liking.

The back cover reads, “The characters who feature in these tales are beings cursed by fate. Life and death holds no distinction for them. Escape, or eternal rest eludes them. They wander the world, crossing continents and even galaxies, in search of sport, prey and sometimes sanctuary. For the immortals, there can be no respite and no final resting place: they are prisoners of this world, a world that they cannot leave. Some become hunters, others find themselves among the hunted. They alone have the strength to witness, to endure and to casually inflict tragic and inhuman suffering.” Clearly, Murphy has a way with creepy.

You can get a snippet of the book here, buy it as an ebook here, and check out the publisher’s website right here.

If you enjoyed Carly’s review, you can find the rest of her work right HERE on Sci-Fi Bloggers. You can also follow her on Twitter @MrsCarlyRodgers.

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