Ashley's Tale

Ashley's Tale
53 / 139 Pages
ISBN 1520188269

Ashley, a young college girl with a horrific past, is immediately thrust into a living hell when she is kidnapped one night.

In the lair of her captor she will be forced to choose between submission and defiance, between folding beneath his punishment or finding the strength to endure and seize an opportunity to kill the man and escape.

But Ashley will also have to face the horrors of her past in this twisted game he has prepared for her. Can she prevail against the demons that have made her frail and weak, as well as the sadist before her?

And if so, what may she become in the process?

“‘Ashley’s Tale’ is a story that will hold you in a cold and unrelenting grip from start to finish. It’s raw with emotion – delivering gut-punch after gut-punch to the reader as it continually raises the stakes. It’s a story that will leave you breathless, yet as the final page is turned, pleading to know more.” – Chris Hall, Reviewer at DLS Reviews

Mike Duke

About Mike Duke (Hampton Roads, Virginia Author)

Mike Duke

Mike was a cop for almost 12 years, but the last 12 years he’s been teaching Military, Law Enforcement and Bodyguards hand to hand Combatives as well as how to drive fast and do bad ass tactical driving maneuvers. He enjoys martial arts and has been a practitioner since 1989 of various styles. Filipino blade arts are his current favorite. Since he was a teenager he’s loved reading, writing, and watching movies...particularly in the horror and sci-fi genre. He’s also been a prolific reader of theology and studied quite extensively for a layman. He has a beautiful wife who is very supportive and a son and daughter who are both graduated. His baby girl now is a German Shepherd named Ziva, and she's a Daddy's girl who loves to play...even when he’s writing. Mike is a lover of music as well and it is an integral part of his writing ritual.

Mike writes an eclectic mix of horror stories. He explores dark supernatural entities, cosmic terrors, and natural monstrosities. However, the wicked deeds the human heart can conceive and inflict on others as well as our capacity to act against such things pervades much of his work. According to Chris Hall, at DLS Reviews, Mike is “a master of utterly uncompromising hardboiled revenge-thrillers.” He has a way of provoking a significant response from his readers – whether shock, terror, dread, an uneasy sense of empathy, Heebie Jeebie crawlies or surprise at unexpected twists. Mike will make you feel while you read his words. Afterwards, the potential horrors of twisted moral visions, the deplorable nature of humanity’s vices and weaknesses, the possibility of unearthly and supernatural threats and the plausibility of the hideous within the normal; all these things will consciously disturb and haunt you, attempting to take root in your mind and make you question what you know and believe. For how long? Take a read and find out.

His latest works are the novel LOW from Stitched Smiles Publications and the novella ‘Warm, Dark Places are Best’, which he self-published. His most well-known work thus far is his first, a novella entitled Ashley’s Tale.