Gerald Arthur Winter's narratives thrive at the fringe, where the heart of darkness is offered as a delicacy to pique your appetite for more.

Though you can never be sure of the direction Gerald Arthur Winter's tales will take, all are woven from the same cloth. In skilled hands at every turn, you can be certain to return from your narrated journey somehow changed for the better, and equipped with sharp insight into the fragile human condition.

Winter's collection is a potpourri of mixed genres, each story containing a resolution of resounding change with a twist.

We're caught in Winter's net, from a killer mermaid in "The Catch," through a maze of lost children in "River Rats," to "The Last Gulag," where he opens our eyes to the worst possibilities of American political intrigue.

His sharp narrative can even knock us unconscious through a purple haze of American folklore, as found with unexpected delight, in his mixed genre tale, "Fractured Frontier."

Crafted on a foundation of Alfred Hitchcock-like surprises, Winter spins his tales on the fringe of Rod Serlingesque entrapment with a punch in the gut that will leave readers shaken, not stirred.