Flash Fiction writing legend Tommy Dean called this debut collection “wickedly fun, deeply cutting, and as creepy as a funhouse mirror.” Meet award-winning author M. M. De Voe in a collection of dark, challenging stories that represent some of her best writing in short fiction from 2005 to the present. Part of Borda Books’ series of BOLD VOICES IN FICTION, in this exciting debut anthology, DeVoe juggles literary fiction with fables, science fiction with horror, pagan satire with the fantastical. What shines through in these quirky tales is intelligence and daring. What is real and what is unreal?

Terese Svoboda, author of Dog on Fire, says, “Milda De Voe gives you femme Kafka in A Flash of Darkness — but American style: ‘with nosies and lights that simulate the beautiful side of violence.’ The stories cruise the scene with a chess-playing vicious granny and a Svetlana lounging against a furry elk, ‘calling to mind every vodka ad young American Jim had ever taped to a dorm room ceiling,’ One swain can’t hold his date’s hand ; though she has left it on the table: a treat between beers.’ De Voe’s especially brilliant on family life, and ends the book with a quirky story about a husband and what else? Horror.”

Certain to appeal to fans of Black Mirror, Twilight Zone, and Kelly Link, the stories in A Flash of Darkness “dance across the page” and engage dark humor, satire, and plenty of provocative narratives. The cast of characters is unforgettable.

“M. M. De Voe’s collection, A Flash of Darkness, showcases deviously decadent morsels in the vein of Black Mirror. Despair, longing, and regret linger in these unnerving, provocative stories.” -Amy Grech, horror author

M. M. De Voe’s odd, dark stories represent some of her best stories from 2005 to the present. De Voe juggles literary fiction with fables, science fiction with horror, pagan satire with the fantastical. But what shines through is intelligence and daring. The ability to write from the point of view of a variety of narrators—some worthy, even heroic, others flawed to the extreme. De Voe leaves you wondering, what is real and what is unreal? Who are the reliable narrators and who are inglorious charlatans?

Dive in to the haunted atmosphere of “Shutter,” as we linger on the outskirts of horror past or horror-to-be. “Tastemakers” satirizes a modern obsession with life as performance art. “The Mayor of Flashback” is pure literary fiction that intertwines memories of 9/11 in Manhattan, Russian escapades, and the sometimes elastic bonds of marriage. “Empty” takes us into a corporate Twilight Zone, while “Cake” is a frightening peek into a domestic world, where keeping an eye on the children may not necessarily be for their safety. Toward the end, “A Rose” delivers a knockout punch of shifting fables and narrators that shows in a single story what this author’s imagination can accomplish.

M. M. De Voe is an internationally published fictionista who once danced for the Pope and later ran away with a group of jugglers. Her writing has won over twenty awards. Columbia University Writing Fellow, MFA under Michael Cunningham and Matthew Sharpe. Founder of the literary nonprofit Pen Parentis, a process described in her memoir/productivity guidebook for writers who are parents, Book & Baby. Inaugural member of the Lithuanian Writers of the Diaspora Forum. She lives in Manhattan.