Bloody Gullets by Michael Golvach is a collection of twenty short stories for those who love their books on the dark side. It is not gory, but it is dark where it matters. It is a collection of psychological thrillers that show you inside the dark spaces between the killer and his kills. Everything is not black and white, nor is it grey; sometimes it is red too. What I loved about this book is the fact that every single one of these stories has character. They have their own atmosphere that is thrilling and goose bump inducing.

Golvach did a great job with creating his characters; they weren’t sociopaths, but they weren’t exactly model citizens as well. In short, his characters are humans like you and me, and it just made this book that much likable and somewhat scarier. These stories are about surviving, fighting the inner demons and the dark elements inside each and every one of us. It is dark fiction without being gross and too bloody to stomach.

The story entitled Bloody Gullets was my favorite. From the beginning to the end, you have a complete story that piques your curiosity and makes you shiver. The three Dead Men stories were also really good. Darkness and Cruelty were dark enough to make you wish you were sitting with someone while reading them. This is an intense mix of stories that you will definitely keep with you and maybe give to friends who like to read dark stories too.

In ‘Infamous,’ the first story in Michael Golvach's short story collection, Bloody Gullets, Stanley Mendlesohn, orphaned a year after his birth, is shunted from foster home to foster home. As he grew older, he recognized the evil around him and the temptations laid at his feet. He accepts the voice of God telling him that he must cleanse the world of sin. This leads him to a fatal confrontation with his latest foster parents. ‘Believer’ is an amusing rendition of a smooth talking prisoner who manipulates a hateful guard into believing that he is paroled and the guard releases him, which leaves the guard with an awkward explanation on his hands. With ‘Object Lesson’, Ray, a mob enforcer, is instructing a 20-year-old sidekick how to handle targets. He visits a victim who owes 5K, but the slob says he doesn’t have it and wants more time... In ‘Small Deaths,’ Marcus Freedman wakes up every morning with no recollection of what happened the previous day. A bookmark in a pulp novel tells him his name and the name of his current girlfriend, Beth. He wakes up in a motel room with a girl in his bed. She asks who is Beth? A real death right then would have been good. There is lots more for readers to discover in this collection.

In Bloody Gullets, Michael Golvach explores with effortless skill the macabre, the chilling and horrifying things that lurk within everybody, which sometimes force people into behavior that turns the blood cold. The stories are superbly written, taking readers along dark, twisted corridors of delusional and deranged minds, places where few dare to venture. I relished opening windows to spine chilling experiences waiting for me in Bloody Gullets. To relieve tension from some of the more morbid tales, Michael Golvach treats readers to several satirical, whimsical stories that raise a smile and a chuckle. Understandably, some readers may not be amused. I found this compilation thought provoking, sometimes startling, but always entertaining, leaving me wanting more.

Bloody Gullets by Michael Golvach is a collection of short stories of varying lengths. Some are very short, some not so short, but all have one thing in common: you don't know what you'll get. The stories explore the darker side of the human mind - what goes on in the mind of someone who robs a bank, but apparently did not? What goes on in the mind of a young man just out of foster care who seems to have a foster sister that wants to seduce him, but who might very well just be the devil in disguise? How much control do the voices in your head have over your actions? Who really controls you? Is there a difference between evil and good? The stories raise a lot of questions in the reader's head, and each story has its own strangely alluring atmosphere.

As far as the writing style goes, Bloody Gullets by Michael Golvach is great. For some reason, the writing just draws you in. This book is a good read for breaks in between when you are sick of the everyday short story that is just more of the same. The stories in Michael Golvach's Bloody Gullets are not light reading. They are short stories, yes, but definitely not light short stories. The stories will appeal to readers who like the darker side, who don't always want happy characters and happy endings.