Things We Say in the Dark – A shocking collection of dark stories

Our summary description

As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.

The stories in this collection move through ordinary lives where something quietly wrong has already taken hold. Women find themselves isolated in houses, followed by presences that refuse to loosen their grip, or drawn toward objects and places that promise understanding but deliver unease instead.

In Things We Say In The Dark, contemporary settings tilt toward the uncanny. A remote home in Iceland becomes oppressive rather than peaceful. A neglected swimming pool offers brief relief from a ghost that clings too closely. Elsewhere, motherhood strains under silence and disconnection, a museum visit turns into fixation, and a cheerful family outing is steadily undermined by what is left unsaid.

The collection is attentive to the body and its boundaries, to domestic spaces that trap as often as they shelter, and to desire threaded with threat. These stories speak to one another without merging, building a shared atmosphere of dread that feels intimate rather than spectacular. Things We Say In The Dark is unsettling precisely because it stays close to recognisable fears, allowing them to surface slowly, and linger.