Book of the Day: The Laws of Nature

The Laws of Nature | wearewordnerds.com

I was sent a copy of The Laws of Nature: A Collection of Short Stories of Horror, Anxiety, Tragedy and Loss by Ashley Franz Holzmann

 

Book of the Day!

The Laws of Nature: A Collection of Short Stories of Horror, Anxiety, Tragedy and Loss by Ashley Franz Holzmann | Featured Book of the Day | wearewordnerds.com

The Laws of Nature: A Collection of Short Stories of Horror, Anxiety, Tragedy and Loss

by Ashley Franz Holzmann

Release Date: December 15, 2014

There is a dark side to human nature that neither can be wished away nor completely mitigated. Ashley Holzmann details just several of these “Laws of Nature” before taking his readers on a journey through the bizarre, the terrifying, and, ultimately, the disturbingly real truths that underlie much of modern American life.

Ashley makes his debut into the horror genre with “The Stump,” a story about an afternoon trot through the woods that quickly becomes a blood bath–and, much as it does for that story’s creature, the scent of fear will only lure veteran horror readers further through the forest. A teenager’s vanity will likely cause his town to be consumed by a roaming swarm of insects that burst forth from his acne-riddled skin in “White Heads;” entire populations vanish into the void of the Alaskan tundra in “Glass Houses;” and superiority takes the form of a murdering, sadistic woman in “Lady Macbeth.”

But Ashley’s best retellings focus less on gore and adrenaline and instead take human psychology as their medium, as demonstrated in “Plastic Glasses,” where readers are brought into a world of disturbing personality and mental disorders. Ashley’s work abounds with stories in this vein, stories which grab a hold of a common failing–such as marital friction in “Hush,” or American male frustration in “Orpheus’s Lot”–and take it to an extreme that is nevertheless not inconceivable for most people.

Coming from the mind of a man who has experienced more than his fair share of humanity, “The Laws of Nature” is, at its finest, a description of universal emotions of loss, nostalgia, anxiety, and soul-penetrating terror. Ashley’s stories elicit empathy from his readers and draw them into worlds where they both acknowledge and cuddle with their fears and which leave them, ultimately, more human.

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Have you read this one yet? Comment down below and let me know!

Big Thanks to As For Class for sending me a copy of this book!!

AND as always, big thanks to you for popping by to see what I was rambling on about. LOL

Hope you have a great week.

Just a reminder, I usually post pics of the books I get right as I get them on to my facebook page and my instagram so make sure to click over and LIKE the page and/or follow my gram – then you’ll see what books I get as I get them instead of waiting till I do a “book haul” video. I’ll still do haul videos every couple of weeks, too. So… yeah. All righty then.