Cold Rifts [Kindle Edition]

Sandra Seamans (Author)

Book Description

Country and rural noir is largely a male dominated type of fiction. With this collection Sandra Seamans' gives us country noir with ovaries with an authentic rural/small town voice.

"Cold enough to blister, but compassionate enough to heal, Seaman’s Cold Rifts is a fierce, sorrowful, and impressive debut collection of short stories." - Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike and Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers

Product Details

• File Size: 370 KB
• Print Length: 157 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Snubnose Press (May 25, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0086EW67C
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #910,487 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent collection of short stories June 10, 2012

By Victor J. Banis VINE™ VOICE

Amazon Verified Purchase

As in any collection, the stories in this one vary in quality - some of them would merit more than the 5 stars Amazon allows and some...well, none of them were badly written, but a couple of them were so riddled with typos and grammatical errors (some of which might well have been typos too) that reading them became a bit of a chore. And I wish I could tell you about the stories one by one, but one of the frustrating features of the Kindle, on which I read this, is that once you've got to the ending, you can't go back to the beginning - in this case, I wanted to see the table of contents - except by scrolling back through the book page by painful page. I'm a senior citizen, I don't think I have that much time left.

That, however, is no fault of the author's, and if you like well written short fiction, a bit on the noir side, you will certainly find a lot of reading pleasure in this book. The characters are well rounded; even the ones who get little more than a line or two come vividly to life, which is a hard feat to pull off. Many of the stories have the kind of surprise twist that leaves you smiling and shaking your head when you've finished them. It is difficult to do a solid plot in a few paragraphs (and none of these stories is more than a few pages long - some little more than a couple of pages) but Ms. Seamans succeeds very nicely at it.

All in all, I can recommend this collection heartily. To paraphrase: damn the typos and full speed ahead.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sense of Place June 10, 2012

By pattinase

Amazon Verified Purchase

is what connects these wonderful stories. And the title one is my favorite among many other fine tales. Another connection is beaten-down women looking for a way out, looking for a way to take care of their kids, to have some semblance of dignity in a harsh world. This has been called country noir and although the stories are dark, I don't see them as noir. I see it as people, mostly women, trying to wrestle some justice from a place where justice comes hard and dirty. They don't always fail--which would make it noir. They take their black eyes stoically for as long as they can and then lash out in some way. There is almost a novel in stories here. But just plain good stories is fine too.

5.0 out of 5 stars Cold, flawed relationships January 12, 2013

By Clair Dickson

Amazon Verified Purchase

Sandra Seamans knows how to pack a punch in a short story. She tells only what needs to be said, keeping each story focused and fast paced. These stories are good examples of noir, as flawed characters come to the end of the road, be it solving an old murder or exacting revenge.

Often in short story collections, I find it hard to shift gears and care about the new characters in the next story, but Seaman does such a great job with the starting lines of her short stories, that I found myself immediately pulled into the next story.