This poignant and quietly revelatory novella explores how we can never fully escape our past, and how fully confronting it may offer the opposite of comfort or deliverance. Still, the main character’s trajectory suggests that such reckonings, harrowing though they may be, might offer striking moments of clarity.

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Darrin Doyle about his spellbinding horror novella, Let Gravity Seize the Dead. When I learned that Doyle’s highly praised story collection, The Dark Will End the Dark, had been released in a revised tenth-anniversary edition, I was eager to read it–and it didn’t disappoint.

With emotional depth and arrestingly beautiful prose, this collection of linked stories examines the ways in which those who’ve been orphaned–literally or metaphorically–are supported or let down as they try to make their way forward. Even if they have family or have come under the care of supposedly supportive people or institutions (for example, doctors, teachers, schools, and other institutions), these orphans may fail to thrive. But every now and then, guardian figures try to make a difference in their lives, or so it seems. Yet those efforts are never uncomplicated. 

This riveting, perceptive, and richly layered novel explores the lasting effects of trauma, and how it can limit our ability to trust or love. It’s also a compelling mystery story, one that considers the possibility that sometimes, the greatest enigmas are posed by those closest to us.

Duet for One is a profound and multilayered meditation on love, loss, and grief, with a passion for music resonating throughout. With empathy and insight, the novel also explores the complicated relationships within one musically talented family.

In these perceptive, richly observed stories, characters arrive at major turning points in their lives through conflicts in relationships or other circumstances, often leading them to a greater understanding of themselves and those close to them. Taken together, the stories offer a layered examination of how people can find ways to live with emotionally complex and difficult situations and, perhaps, imagine new possibilities for themselves.