BOOK REVIEW | TALES NOCTURNAL | TIM FOLEY

BOOK REVIEW | TALES NOCTURNAL | TIM FOLEY

ABOUT THE BOOK

This collection of uncanny tales invites us into a world where a subtle frisson awaits, a world where the sense that something is chillingly wrong lurks just beneath the familiar rituals of everyday life. A classic muscle car hides a dark, secret history. The shade of a lonely bride broods in a hotel room, longing for a friend. A cynical musician confronts a closet door that, without explanation, refuses to stay shut.

For the past dozen years, Tim Foley’s stories have appeared in journals and anthologies, offering modern takes on the supernatural tale, creating a sharp sense of unease in the reader. Gathered here in his first collection, these stories offer gentle mystery and creeping dread. Seventeen Tales Nocturnal, to be read late in the evening, when the spirits are near.

CONTENTS
 Galen’s Closet
 Snowman, Frozen
 On the Pier at Midnight
 Nineteen Sixty-Five Ford Falcon
 The House Opposite
 A Hitch
 Room 413, Silver Spruce Hotel
 Deer
 The Figure on the Sidewalk
 Aneurism
 Flowers Along the Seawall
 The Sound of Children Playing
 An Effect of the Moonlight
 The Ghost of Niles Canyon
 Beetles
 Emir
 House of Spiders, Man of the Woods

Published by PS PUBLISHING

REVIEW

In this collection of short stories by Tim Foley, Tales Nocturnal gives us seventeen stories of the uncanny, weird and the unnerving.

Horror can come in many forms and explore many different things. Sometimes the terror can centre on gore and visceral shocks. Sometimes, it can play with the mind, giving that creeping sense of unease and dread.

The latter is definitely the case in this collection. In Tales Nocturnal, Tim Foley writes tales that stay in the mind, each one hitting home in its own different way. Sometimes the shocks are evident, sometimes they linger until the reason for that feeling of disquiet that was teased hits the reader hard in the backbrain.

Although, all the stories in Tim Foley’s collection are good, there are a number that stand out. For instance, the first story Galen’s Closet, which tells of an up-and-coming goth band and a particularly obsessive fan who discovers that the apartment that he lives in was once the site of a horrific murder and that the feelings of dread that he feels emanate from the closet in the apartment.

Then there’s Snowman, Frozen, which tells the story of a self-obsessed writer who goes to stay at a friends cabin in the mountains to get over his writers block. However, what he doesn’t realise is that the place has a murky past. Waking one morning, he finds a snowman. Believing that this is some form of twisted humour, he doesn’t take it seriously until another one appears. And then they move closer. This one kind of reminded me of the weeping angels in Dr Who.

Nineteen Sixty Five Ford Falcon uses the haunted house trope, but moves it to a haunted vehicle, and whilst this may immediately put you in mind of Christine, Foley does something different with it.

Aneurism is another stand out. Telling the story of a man who has experienced an aneurism, the experience takes him back to his past and we learn of the guilt of trauma and his part in it.

Whilst this is only a brief description of the stories on offer, they show the range that Foley has in his stories.

If you like tales that will creep you out or have a sense of the macabre, this collection will definitely hit the sweet spot.