DarkWinter Press New Release: Audrey Droop: Stories by Cindy Matthews!

DarkWinter Press is thrilled to announce our latest release, the fascinating linked story collection by Cindy Matthews, Audrey Droop: Stories, available now in paperback and e-version for Kindle. You can buy it here!

About Audrey Droop: Stories:

In Audrey Droop: Stories, Cindy Matthews brings together a cast of unforgettable characters whose lives are changed in an instant and shaped by the consequences for years afterward.

A boy carries the burden of a tobogganing accident that alters a friend's future. A new mother discovers that surviving childbirth can be as transformative as becoming a parent. A grieving brother watches a final video of his sister. A student’s obsession with a celebrated athlete collides with reality. Throughout the collection, people grapple with betrayal, grief, illness, longing, family conflict, and the small acts of courage that make survival possible.

Threaded throughout the collection is Audrey Droop, a woman whose sharp observations, stubborn convictions, and occasional acts of grace connect many of the stories. Whether as participant, observer, confidante, or catalyst, Audrey leaves an imprint on the lives around her.

Rich with humour, heartbreak, and humanity, these stories explore how ordinary people navigate extraordinary circumstances. Set in a fictional Canadian small town, Audrey Droop: Stories is a compelling, poignant collection about resilience, connection, and the enduring marks left by the choices we make and the chances we take.

Advance Praise for Audrey Droop: Stories:

"Grief, power, unresolved guilt. In Audrey Droop: Stories, Matthews explores the emotions we all experience in our everyday lives with events as simple as a toboggan ride and as serious as sisters sharing a traumatic past. In “Witness,” she presents us with the emotion of grief as a result of a split second accident. In “Objects of Her Desire,” we are reminded how memories linger not just in emotions, “the disease doesn’t just take me,” but in the objects of our pasts, the glittering jade baubles. The author’s use of powerful imagery deepens our understanding of the characters’ feelings. These stories remind us that we are not alone. We are all one."

–DorothyJane Kavanaugh, author of Little River Bridge

About Cindy Matthews:

Cindy Matthews is the author of the collection Took You So Long (Porcupine's Quill, 2022), winner of a Gold IPPY Award and a Silver eLit Award, and The Roach Family and Other Stories (DarkWinter Press, 2024). She is a Bruce County, Ontario visual artist and writer whose fiction explores the complexities, contradictions, and resilience of people living ordinary lives. Audrey Droop, Stories is her third collection of short fiction.