Tales from The Dark Snow

REVIEWS

"The first time I read "The Dark Snow," I found it almost unbearingly suspenseful and immediately selected it for "The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year." It stayed with me so powerfully that a few years later I used in "The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century." It is impossible for me to overpraise this utterly brilliant story." --Otto Penzler, The Mysterious Bookshop

"If you judge the best best stories by their impact and by how long they scratch at your memory, the one that's truly worth the price of admission (less than 4 cents a page!) [The Dark Snow] was written by an artist I had not read before: Brendan DuBois. It is the tale of a man who retires to bucolic New Hampshire, where he is harassed by persistent and increasingly malevolent neighbors. We underrate the pleasure and sheer fun some people get by hurting others. DuBois makes it clear, as he makes clear how difficult it is to cope with forms of harassment hard to pin down and scarcely illegal. Isolated, the flawed hero flounders, but he won't run away and learns to cope by toying with illegality as his tormentors do. A common murderer in the end but an uncommon planner, the hero handles his predicament successfully and to this reader's immense satisfaction." --- Eugen Weber, "The Los Angeles Times"

"...Brendan DuBois is one of the two or three finest short story writers of my time." --- mystery editor and author Ed Gorman.

DESCRIPTION

For the first time ever, award-winning mystery author Brendan DuBois has assembled the six prize-winning short stories featuring retired black ops expert Owen Taylor. Four of these stories first appeared in "Playboy" magazine, with the initial story, "The Dark Snow," being nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award, and later appearing in numerous anthologies, including "The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century."

This unique anthology also includes:

-- Author forward and afterward

-- Publication history of each story

-- Author insight on how each story was written and published

-- Plus a never-before-published Owen Taylor story, "The High Ground"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brendan DuBois of New Hampshire is the award-winning author of sixteen novels and more than 120 short stories. His latest novel, "Deadly Cove," was published in July 2011 by St. Martin's Press.

His short fiction has appeared in Playboy, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous other magazines and anthologies including “The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century,” published in 2000 by Houghton-Mifflin. Another one of his short stories appeared in in "The Year's Best Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection" (St. Martin's Griffin, 2005) edited by Gardner Dozois

His short stories have twice won him the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and have also earned him three Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations from the Mystery Writers of America. He is also a one-time "Jeopardy!" game show champion. Visit his website at BrendanDuBois.com.

Cover art by Jeroen ten Berge.