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BLACK TEA AND OTHER TALES by HWA Member Samuel Marolla

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Author: Samuel Marolla

Includes three stories: Black Tea, Crocodiles and The Janara. The first two stories were previously published in hard copy (in Italian) in the collection Malarazza (Epix Mondadori, 2009), while the last one, The Janara, was published by the author in 2011 in ebook. This new edition offers a fully revised English version of the stories, edited by the Bram Stoker Awards winner Benjamin Kane Ethridge. The collection also contains an introduction by another Bram Stoker Awards winner, Gene O’Neill, entitled: A box of lovely dark chocolate. Samuel Marolla’s stories, are different as for atmosphere, setting and use of the supernatural, and they offer a complete overview of the author’s writing. The three stories are linked by a thin common thread, which after passing through the palate, runs through all the senses. The Black Tea horror has the flavour of a mysterious tea, of a haunted wine and of an alchemical cocktail of milk and blood. Something undoubtedly unique!

Black Tea has got the unwholesome and decadent atmosphere, which presents an original labyrinthine hell. We are in the Marolla’s spectral Milan, the unfortunates will have to deal with a weird house haunted by a presence that seems to live on the edge of a parallel reality, a supernatural stomach slowly digests everything and everyone. The distortion of sensory per-ception, due to ingestion of a hypnotic and mysterious black tea, opens an invisible door to the unfortunate visitors of the house, that will reveal a new reality from which will be impossible to escape. A tale hard to forget that goes far beyond the usual clichés of haunted houses.

Crocodiles is a wicked and disturbing tale that allows us, between the lines, to explore a new way of Marolla’s deforming Milan: neighborhoods, streets, small bars, prostitutes, swindlers, cowards, a throng of characters of a squalid “behind the scenes” reality. A crime news journalist meets a member of the small Milanese underworld called Ligera, and will be dragged into a whirl of blood. His hands, his thoughts, are now guided by something supernatural, a damned wine that he drinks allows him to “make a piece of a dream.” The crocodiles, in Italian journalistic jargon are the articles written in advance in cases when a public figure could die, will mark the time and the sequences of this dark story that leaves no room for hope.

The Janara talks about one of the Italian popular beliefs and superstitions, the witch called Janara, who populates many stories and legends. But the Marolla’s Janara is different, is not limited to steal donkeys and horses, to enter under the doors and windows as the wind, this one is a modern Lilith, a night demon, a human prey hunter. The main character, a young boy, must defend himself from the continuous Janara’s assaults; and there are some rules one should know, in order to sur-vive. The problem is always the same, every time, every night: stay alive until dawn, or use a milk and blood cocktail and get rid of the demon, and someone else has to take the place of the prey.

Trailer_Link: http://youtu.be/F6nLWoLyVE4

Publisher: Mezzotints Ebook
Release_Date: february 25, 2013
ISBN_10: 9788890814549
ISBN_13: 9788890814549

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