Twisting Darkness is a collection of short horror stories written by J.R. Gridley. In Escaping Madness, Drake's reality has suddenly become the stuff of nightmares. He was on his way to the campus library, and now he's alone in a room filled with bloody corpses. His head hurts, and he's irrationally frightened that the bodies will somehow follow him as he opens the door he's found. It's not locked, and, in the gloom, he notices the orange of an exit sign dimly glowing in the distance. As he explores his surroundings, he's approached by a bizarre, diminutive and terrifying goblin. Pastor Jon, in Unending Faith, must reconcile his devotion to God with his guilt over leaving the Catholic Church because of his love for his wife, Lisa. When she becomes possessed by a demon, he's determined to save her. In Black Sunshine, Chelsea's finally healed from her breakdown and, after two years in the asylum, is ready to face the world again, or is she?

J.R. Gridley's short story collection, Twisting Darkness, is dark and disturbing. These tales seem unconnected at first glance, but then as the reader proceeds through the stories, the thread that ties them all together becomes apparent. Gridley's tales are, nonetheless, each complete in and by themselves, and their plots are macabre and pointed. The main characters who inhabit the author's world are fully-fledged and sympathetic people, easy to relate to and have compassion for, and their places in that world are beautifully scripted and described. The author's writing style is taut and focused, and his stories are powerful, yet bizarrely playful. I'd love to see them published in a graphic novel format. Twisting Darkness is highly recommended.

Twisting Darkness by J.R. Gridley is a collection of five short stories, each better than the other. If the reader is going to find goblins in the story Escaping Madness, then priests, Lucifer, demons and God play their part in Unending Faith. And the story Virus narrates a detective and a virus chasing each other. All the stories deal with unique and interesting themes. Black Sunshine takes place in an asylum where Chelsea, a patient on the verge of discharge, is given new pills by a nurse and narrates how that lands her up with her last freedom. The last story of this collection is about experimenting with the mind and its alteration. It is about introducing a new drink, ‘Euphoria,’ with such capabilities.

Twisting Darkness by J.R. Gridley is difficult to review since I can’t decide which one needs improvement; the stories all being equally well written. Most of the stories of this collection are themed around a new drug, Lucid Dreaming Synthetic or LDS for short, which as one of the experimenters says “..was working so perfectly at first. I’m sure you saw how much happier everyone was, saw the drop in crime, wars, and bigotry. Even after all the tests and all the safeguards humanity still found a way to destroy itself.” A cross section of our society finds its place among the other characters of this collection. A good read, enjoyable and stimulating.