Twilight Zone: Burned/One Night at Mercy

Before I get into the merits of this fine book, I want to point out that the 2 novels contained in this volume are about as far away from The Twilight Zone as, say, the Saw franchise. But enough about the packaging. Contained in this volume are 2 truly excellent full-length horror novels. The first 30 pages of BURNED will rip your guts out with powerful, fast moving prose about two kids who burn to death in a fire while their mother is forced into violent demeaning prostitution by suffocating economic concerns. When their flat is set ablaze by an arsonist, you will fell precisely what it is like to burn to death. The writing is incredible. As for the rest of the story, Faust peoples it with a host of interesting characters from the arsonist, his boss, and two fire investigators with secrets of their own. Captivating reading from one of the brightest new authors around. All of the above goes for ONE NIGHT AT MERCY. When Death takes a day off (a very Twilight Zone set-up although what follows is pure nightmare) we are presented with a series of quick character sketches as we see how the absence of death can have tragic, horrifying, gut-wrenching and just plain odd consequences. Faust's characterizations are second to known. In a few pages she paints character portraits that leap off the page and the horrors they face in each of the two novels is all the more potent because we instantly have a grasp of the people subjected to them. Christa Faust is going to be a star in the publishing world. And it's going to happen sooner rather than later. When it does, this brilliant work for hire (and her other Black Flame titles) will soar in value and be all but impossible to find. My advice is to get them now. Not only for the fantastic reading experience but to save yourself a lot of money down the road. Brilliant, brilliant work!