The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books)

by Jones, Stephen

  From Mythos Books, Dreams collected fourteen stories (four original) by Richard A. Lupoff with notes on each by the author.

  Florida’s Distillations Press issued These Strange Worlds: Fourteen Dark Tales by Daniel Powell, seven of which were original to the collection, while Eyeballs Growing All Over Me . . . Again contained twenty-three short short stories by Tony Rauch, available as a trade paperback from Eraserhead Press.

  Weird Horror Tales from Cornerstone Books/Airship 27 Productions was a collection of seventeen Lovecraftian horror stories and three poems by Michael Vance, based around the small town of Lights End, Maine. Earl Geier supplied the illustrations.

  From Miskatonic River Press, Scott David Aniolowski “selected and edited” the Lovecraftian-themed anthology Horror for the Holidays. Featuring twenty-five stories (three reprints) and a poem based around different holidays during the year, contributors included H. P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, Will Marray, Donald R. Burleson, Robert M. Price, W. H. Pugmire, Don Webb, William Meikle and Cody Goodfellow.

  Edited by S. T. Joshi for the same PoD imprint, Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos contained twenty-one articles by such well-known Lovecraftians as Richard L. Tierney, Dirk W. Mosig, David E. Schultz, Simon MacCulloch, Robert M. Price, Will Murray and Stefan Dziemianowicz, amongst others.

  The Undying Thing and Others from Hippocampus Press collected twenty-six stories by Barry Pain, with an Introduction by Joshi.

  The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales from Chômu Press reprinted Mark Samuels’ 2009 collection with four additional stories (one original). From the same publisher, Daniel Mills’ Revenants was a historical novel about a cursed New England village, while the undead hero of Michael Cisco’s The Great Lover resisted the white-noise forces of Vampirism.

  Originally published as an e-book, Spore by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow was yet another zombie novel, available as a print-on-demand title from Dorchester.

  A girl was mysteriously drawn to her grandmother’s unusual house in Tanith Lee’s Greyglass, from Immanion Press, and an ancient evil returned to a Massachusetts town in Brendan P. Myers’ Applewood, available from By Light Unseen Media.

  From LCR Books, The Fourth Fog: A Horror Novel for the Ages by Chris Daniels was about the breakdown of society and killer flies.

  Frankenstein in London was the third in Brian Stableford’s “The Empire of the Necromancers” series from PoD publisher Black Coat Press.

  For the same imprint, Stableford also translated and supplied the Introductions for The Vampire Lord Ruthwen (Lord Ruthwen, ou les Vampires), an 1820 sequel to Polidori’s The Vampyre by French writer Cyprien Bénard, and the 1824 novel The Virgin Vampire (La Vampire, ou la vierge de Hongrie) by Etienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langdon.

  Christopher Fulbright’s novella The Bone Tree was set in a Civil War graveyard and was available from PoD imprint Bad Moon Books. From the same publisher, Bill Gauthier’s Alice on the Shelf was a twisted novella inspired by the classic children’s book, while The Templar contained three horror novels by Joseph Nassise, two original.

  Terror Tales of the Lake District from Gray Friar Press was an original anthology of thirteen stories (two reprints and another revised) inspired by the old Fontana Books series of the 1970s. The solid line-up of contributors included Adam L. G. Nevill, Simon Clark, Simon Bestwick, Peter Crowther, Ramsey Campbell, Gary McMahon, Reggie Oliver and editor Paul Finch, who also interlaced the fiction with accounts of myths and legends of the area.

  As usual selected by Charles Black for Mortbury Press, The Eighth Black Book of Horror featured a strong line-up of names, with thirteen original stories by Reggie Oliver, David A. Riley, Gary Fry, Mark Samuels, Paul Finch, John Llewellyn Probert and Thana Niveau, amongst others.

  Edited by website founder Jeani Rector for Imajiin Books, What Fears Become: An Anthology from the Horror Zine contained thirty-three stories (including two by the editor, plus nine reprints), along with poetry and artwork. Contributors included Bentley Little, Graham Masterton, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Elizabeth Massie, Melanie Tem, Scott Nicholson, Piers Anthony, Richard Hill and Conrad Williams. Simon Clark supplied the Foreword.

  Published by Rainstorm Press, Mutation Nation: Tales of Genetic Mishaps, Monsters and Madness was edited by Kelly Dunn and included eleven original stories by Roberta Lannes, Maria Alexander, Barbie Wilde, Stephen Woodworth, Wendy Rathbone and others.

  Editor Peter Mark May dedicated Alt-Dead: The Alternative Dead Anthology to “the independent writers and authors in the horror genre that don’t always get the breaks and the big deals”. Available on-demand from Hersham Horror Books, it contained sixteen original stories by Stephen Bacon, Stuart Young, Gary McMahon, Jan Edwards, Stuart Hughes, Johnny Mains and others, including a collaboration between Steven Savile and Steve Lockley.

  Karen A. Romanko edited and introduced Jack-o’-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy for PoD imprint Raven Electrick Ink. The trade paperback featured twenty-six stories and poems by Bruce Boston, Geoffrey A. Landis, James S. Dorr, Marge Simon and others, including the editor.

  James Ward Kirk edited Indiana Horror Anthology 2011, which included poetry, flash fiction and short stories by Matt Cowan, James S. Dorr, Lee Forsythe and other writers living in the south-western state.

  Published by Stumar Press, Derby Scribes 2011 was an anthology of eleven stories (one reprint), written by members of the eponymous writing group and edited by Stuart Hughes. Contributors included Simon Clark, Alison J. Hill, Conrad Williams and the editor himself, while group founder Alex Davis supplied the Introduction.

  Edited by Asa Merritt for Phoenix Pick/Arc Manor Publishers, more than half of the print-on-demand First Blood: Birth of the Vampire was taken up with a moderately annotated reprinting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The rest of the book included five obscure precedents to Stoker’s novel, plus “The Vampyre: A Tale” by John William Polidori and “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, along with selected chapters from John William Rymer’s Varney the Vampire: Or, the Feast of Blood.

  Edited by publisher Russell B. Farr for Ticonderoga Publications, Dead Red Heart: Australian Vampire Stories was a bumper anthology of thirty-three stories about different kinds of vampires. From the same imprint, editor Liz Grzyb’s More Scary Kisses contained seventeen paranormal romance stories.

  Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L. Hannett was a debut collection of twelve dark fantasy stories (one reprint), with an Introduction by Ann VanderMeer and an Afterword by the author.

  Also published by Ticonderoga, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 edited by Grzyb and Talie Helene contained thirty-two stories and a poem.

  Dead But Dreaming 2 was an on-demand Cthulhu anthology from Miskatonic River Press. Edited with a Foreword by Kevin Ross, it featured twenty-two original stories by William Meikle, Don Webb, Darrell Schweitzer, W. H. Pugmire, Rick Hautala, Donald R. Burleson, Cody Goodfellow and Will Murray, amongst others.

  After a hiatus of fifteen years, editor Doug Ellis finally published the fourteenth issue of Pulp Vault through Tattered Pages Press/Black Dog Books as a substantial softcover volume. Boasting a previously unpublished cover painting by Virgil Finlay, it featured many fascinating articles and classic pulp fiction by, amongst others, Bob Weinberg, Will Murray, D. H. Olsen, Donald Wandrei, Hugh B. Cave, Otto Binder, Doug Klauba, Tom Roberts and Mike Ashley.

  Only nine months after the launch of the Kindle, Amazon.co.uk announced that e-books were now outstripping the sale of hardcover books by two-to-one on its site in the UK. However, the online retailer also added that hardback sales were continuing to grow. In America, e-books reportedly sold more than all the paperback and hardcover copies put together.

  Figures released by the Association of American Publishers in June confirmed that revenues for print books had decreased dramatically, while the income from e-books jumped 161 per cent from $30 million to $181.3 million in just one year.

  In the UK, e-b
ooks accounted for up to 10 per cent of total book sales after a rise of 600 per cent in the first half of the year, resulting in a total revenue of £25 million.

  As a result of these dramatic increases, it was also revealed that e-book piracy had become a huge problem, with many hundreds of recorded books being offered illegally for free downloads.

  Penguin announced in November that it would withhold editions of its e-books from British and American libraries amid “concerns about security”. The publisher said that it was also considering withdrawing its electronic books from Amazon’s lending service for the Kindle e-reader. Penguin joined Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group, who already had a similar ban in place, while HarperCollins restricted the number of times a library book could be loaned out digitally.

  Amazon.com announced that Charlaine Harris became the first genre author to sell more than a million books for the Kindle e-reader, putting her alongside other “Kindle Million Club” members Stieg Larsson, James Patterson and Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb. She was soon followed by Michael Connelly, Suzanne Collins, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin.

  BlackBerry launched its compact PlayBook in June as a direct rival to Apple’s hugely successful iPad, despite complaints about a lack of available software.

  Brian Keene was one of a number of disgruntled authors, including Tim Waggoner, Craig Spector and Mary SanGiovanni, who called for a boycott of the troubled Dorchester Publishing for reportedly selling e-books of various titles after the rights had been reverted.

  In September, Gollancz launched its SF Gateway digital library with plans to have around 5,000 back-list titles available as e-books in three years’ time.

  Stephen King’s original story Mile 81, about a mysterious mud-splattered station wagon that lured its victims to their doom, was available as an e-book in September. It also included a teaser excerpt from the author’s novel 11/22/63.

  The Ghost Story Megapack from Wildside Press was a cheap e-book compilation of twenty-five out-of-copyright stories by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, E. F. Benson, Wilkie Collins and others. The publisher also offered various other electronic “Megapacks”, including The Horror Megapack.

  Available exclusively on Kindle, The Odd Ghosts was a collection of eight original stories by Maynard Sims (L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims).

  Edited by Jeani Rector, The Horror Zine was published online every month, and produced a special Joe R. Lansdale issue in October.

  Trevor Denyer’s Midnight Street was available as a PDF download for a suggested donation, while editor Joe Vaz’s Something Wicked magazine became a digital-only publication starting with issue #11.

  After interviewing a psychic on his show, a radio presenter was menaced as he attempted to solve the mystery of a missing girl in Ramsey Campbell’s paranoid chiller Ghosts Know, available from PS Publishing.

  For fans of the author’s earlier work, PS also reprinted Campbell’s first book as the properly titled The Inhabitant of the Lake & Other Unwelcome Tenants. First published in 1964 by Arkham House, each of the ten Lovecraftian stories was beautifully illustrated by Randy Broecker, and the collection also contained the original versions of seven stories, notes on the first drafts, reproduced correspondence between the author and August Derleth, and an extensive and entertaining Afterword explaining how the book came about.

  Ian R. MacLeod’s Wake Up and Dream was set in an alternate Hollywood of 1940 and involved one-time actor and unlicensed private eye Clark Gable and the mystery of a device that changed the world of entertainment forever.

  Edited by Conrad Williams, Gutshot: Weird West Stories was an anthology of twenty original tales by Michael Moorcock, Thomas Tessier, Joe R. Lansdale, Christopher Fowler, Peter Atkins, Adam Nevill, Joel Lane and other dangerous desperados.

  PS published two short story collections by Christopher Fowler back-to-back in a single volume in the style of an old Ace Double. Red Gloves: Devilry contained fourteen stories (three original) comprising “The London Horrors”, while Red Gloves: Infernal featured thirteen tales (two original) of “The World Horrors”.

  Carol Emshwiller’s In the Time of War and Other Stories of Conflict/Master of the Road to Nowhere and Other Tales of the Fantastic followed the same double format, with covers by Ed Emshwiller and Introductions by Ursula K. Le Guin and Phyllis Eisenstein, respectively.

  Edited with an Introduction by Stephen Jones, Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant collected thirty-two stories by the late writer of “quiet horror”, along with a Foreword by Stephen King, commentary by Peter Straub, Kim Newman, Thomas F. Monteleone and Nancy Holder, an interview with the author by Nancy Kilpatrick, and interior illustrations by Andrew Smith. Former Weird Tales artist Jon Arfstrom painted the stunning cover art.

  After being widowed at no less than three previous publishers, Mark Morris’ collection Long Shadows, Nightmare Light finally saw publication from PS with an Introduction by Christopher Golden. It contained fifteen stories (two original).

  James Lovegrove’s second collection, Diversifications, contained sixteen reprint stories and an Afterword by the author, while The Butterfly Man and Other Stories was a retrospective collection of eighteen horror stories (five original) by Paul Kane with another Introduction by Christopher Golden. The author’s first accepted story from 1998 was included as a special bonus.

  As part of its ongoing “PS Showcase” series, The Emperor’s Toy Chest collected fifteen stories (four original) by Tobias Seamon, and Dark Dreams, Pale Horses contained six stories (three original) by Rio Youers with an Introduction by Brian Keene.

  PS also published new novels by Chaz Brenchley (Rotten Row) and Lavie Tidhar (Osama: A Novel), along with James Cooper’s horror novella Terra Damnata.

  Most PS books were available as 100 signed copies and also in a non-jacketed trade edition.

  Graced with an attractive dust-wrapper painting by the legendary Ed Emshwiller, The New and Perfect Man was volume 24/25 of PostScripts edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers. The always-eclectic hardcover anthology contained twenty-eight stories by Carol Emshwiller, Michael Kelly, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tessier, T. M. Wright, Christopher Fowler, Rio Youers, Jay Lake and many others.

  The titular rock band was menaced by a deranged Afghanistan war veteran and other forces of darkness in Robert McCammon’s The Five, while The Hunter from the Woods was a collection of six linked stories featuring the secret agent protagonist of the author’s 1989 wartime werewolf novel The Wolf’s Hour. Both books were available in signed and also traycased ($250.00) editions from Subterranean Press.

  Baal was a reprint of McCammon’s first novel, originally published in 1978, with a 1988 Afterword by the author. It was available in a 1,000-copy signed edition and a traycased, leather-bound deluxe edition of fifty-two copies ($250.00).

  Set 150 years after the world ended, a clan of subterranean survivors had to evade the eponymous vampire-creatures while crossing a radioactive wasteland in The Fly-by-Nights by Brian Lumley. The novel was available from Subterranean Press in both a trade edition and a 250-copy deluxe edition with a different dust-jacket, illustrated by Bob Eggleton.

  Limited to 750 copies from Subterranean, Mortality Bridge was a deal-with-the-Devil novel by Steven R. Boyett.

  Edited by publisher William Schafer, Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2 contained eleven original stories by Joe Hill, Kelley Armstrong, Norman Partridge, Caítlin R. Kiernan and others. A signed and slipcased edition ($150.00) came with extra illustrations and a chapbook by Joe R. Lansdale.

  Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín Kiernan (Volume One) collected twenty-six stories (one a collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite), dating from 1993–2004, most of which had been significantly revised. It was also available in a 600-copy signed edition with sixteen pages of illustrations by various artists and an extra chapbook.

  Forever Azathoth collected sixteen Lovecraftian stories (one original) by Peter Cannon and was published in a signed e
dition of 350 copies, while Amberjack contained twelve stories and thirteen poems by Terry Dowling, with an Introduction by Jack Vance. It was published in a signed edition limited to 750 copies.

  Grimscribe: His Lives and Work was a revised and “definitive” edition of Thomas Ligotti’s 1991 collection of fourteen stories, which was also available in a signed leatherbound edition.

  Subterranean also reissued The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Greg Staples, as both a limited slipcased edition ($150.00) and a fifty-copy leatherbound deluxe edition ($400.00).

  With an Introduction by Norman Partridge, Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper contained Robert Bloch’s classic story along with the novel The Night of the Ripper, the Star Trek teleplay Wolf in the Fold, and Bloch’s Foreword to the anthology Ripper!.

  The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories contained four loosely connected stories by Peter Straub, plus an interview with the author by Bill Sheehan. It was available in a regular hardcover edition and as a 250-copy leatherbound, signed edition.

  The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine was a surreal novella from the same author, published in a deluxe hardcover edition by Subterranean Press at the very end of the year.

  Cemetery Dance Publications re-issued Stephen King’s collection Full Dark, No Stars in a two-colour edition illustrated by Jill Bauman, Glenn Chadbourne, Vincent Chong and Alan M. Clark. It was published in a slipcased edition ($75.00), a leather-bound traycased edition signed by the author ($360.00) and a fifty-two copy traycased lettered edition signed by King and the artists ($1,500.00).

  King and CD also teamed up for a special 25th anniversary edition of the author’s novel It. The exclusive oversized deluxe edition include the complete text, a new Afterword by the author, nearly thirty interior illustrations by Alan M. Clark and Erin Wells, and a wrap-around dust-jacket painting by Glem Orbik.

  The author and publisher also issued The Secretary of Dreams (Volume Two) as an exclusive slipcased edition in a very limited print-run. Not available in stores, the hardcover collected more of King’s classic tales, illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne.