Black Masquerade: The Third Nightmare

There is an end to everything, even to peace and prosperity.  It's 1929 and Barbara's engagement party to Dennis is about to begin, filled with the promise of booze, good food and friends with her one true love. But another guest has arrived: a spectre of future horrors, of suffering and pain too terrible to imagine. As her friends get branded by terrible fates one by one, Barbara takes it upon herself to try to stop the guest.  On the most important night of her life, she is going to find out if the future is truly set in stone or if it can be changed.  Black Masquerade is the third entry in the Eight Nightmares Collection, a horror collection of stories about the dreamlike, the surreal, and encounters with the fantastical. Black Masquerade is rated R for references to The Great Depression, Holocaust, Gulag, London Bliz, the 1881 pogrom and the Desden Firestorm. There is also suicide, alcoholism, racism and homophobia. Reader discretion is advised.  The story is so visually and viscerally striking and took my emotions along for the ride.Black Masquerade is the foreshadowing of the unimaginable terrors of war. The lines between nightmare and reality are so wonderfully blurred and left me properly shaken. Well done. C. Malan: Goodreads