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If you're already familiar with Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy (Koko, Mystery and The Throat), this collection of four novellas will fill some gaps, disclose and develop previous unknown events in the personal history of some of the major characters. On the other hand, if you never read even one of the three novels, don't worry, because the novellas collected in The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories work perfectly well even as stand-alone stories. And what great stories, considering the exceptional talent of Straub as a writer and a storyteller.

In "Blue Rose" Koko's character Harry Beevers is portrayed as a ten-year-old kid who becomes responsible for the death of his younger brother and the dissolution of his family. It's a chilling, terrible masterpiece of horror about brutality, cruelty and emotional aridity, where family relationships are dissected as if they're in a cold autopsy room.

The vivid and disturbing "The Juniper Tree" features a writer reminiscing about his first, sordid sexual experiences which occurred in the last row of the movie theatre of his home town.

A similar, but more complex childhood trauma is painstakingly described in "Bunny is Good Bread," in which a future serial killer is presented as an uncared for and abused child. Particularly well crafted is the character of the child's father, a nut who neglects his son and his job to obsessively and unsuccessfully look single-handedly after his sick wife, instead of putting her under medical care.

"The Ghost Village" is perhaps the weakest of the four stories, attempting, not quite effectively, to blend the horrors of the Vietnam war with the private obsessions of an American soldier eager to go back home to take a personal revenge and with the mystery of the ghosts haunting a now deserted Vietnamese village.

Regardless of personal preferences, the stories assembled in The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories are excellent examples of compelling dark fiction created by one of the finest contemporary American writers.

Mario Guslandi lives in Milan, Italy, and is a long-time fan of dark fiction. His book reviews have appeared on a number of genre websites such as The Alien Online, Infinity Plus, Necropsy, The Agony Column and Horrorwold.