The debut volume from Britain’s Wandering Star imprint was a superbly designed and produced collection, The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard. Profusely illustrated in colour and black and white by Gary Gianni, the slipcased hardcover was published in a signed edition of 1,050 copies, 100 publisher’s copies, and 50 copies bound in goatskin. The book was accompanied by a CD recording of three Solomon Kane poems read by Paul Blake and a portfolio of Gianni’s full-page plates. Bowen Designs Inc. also offered a cold-cast bronze sculpture based on Howard’s sword-wielding puritan, designed by Gianni and sculpted by Randy Bowen.
Gauntlet Press issued a 40th anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury’s classic collection The October Country with the original illustrations and unpublished sketches by Joe Mugnaini, an introduction by Dennis Etchison, an afterword by Robert R. McCammon, and a previously unpublished preface by Bradbury, originally written for the 1955 printing. It was limited to a 500-copy slipcased edition, signed by all the writers.
Also from Gauntlet, Richard Matheson’s 1978 novel What Dreams May Come included a new introduction by the author, an introduction by Matthew R. Bradley, and an afterword by Douglas E. Winter. It was published in a 500-copy signed and slipcased edition, while a deluxe edition contained an additional afterword by Richard Christian Matheson.
The younger Matheson also contributed an afterword to Gauntlet publisher Barry Hoffman’s second novel,Eyes of Prey, a self-published sequel to his dark crime novel Hungry Eyes, in which that book’s female protagonist tracked down a woman with her own murderous agenda.
The cleverly titled Are You Loathsome Tonight? was a new collection of twelve short stories by Poppy Z. Brite, published by Gauntlet. It included an odd introduction by Peter Straub, an afterword by Caitlin R. Kiernan, and several distinctive photo-illustrations by J.K. Potter (including some bizarre portraits of the author). The 2,000-copy limited edition was signed by all the writers.
Cemetery Dance Publications had another busy year with the launch of a new series of hardcover novellas featuring full-colour dustjackets, interior illustrations, full-cloth binding and acid-free paper. Each book was signed by the author in an edition of 450 numbered copies and twenty-six lettered copies (bound in leather and traycased). The first six titles were The Wild by Richard Laymon,Spree by Lucy Taylor, 411 by Ray Garton, Untitled by Jack Ketchum, An Untitled Halloween Classic by William F. Nolan and Lynch by Nancy A. Collins.
Also from CD came Laymon’s The Midnight Tour and a reprint of his 1986 novel, The Beast House, both sequels to The Cellar and the third and second volumes respectively in the “Beast House Chronicles”. Both volumes featured a new introduction and the author’s preferred text, and were available in 400-copy signed and numbered editions and $175 deluxe lettered editions.
The Best of Cemetery Dance edited by Richard Chizmar was a massive retrospective volume, available in both trade and limited hardcover editions, containing sixty stories by such well-known names as Stephen King (with the terrible “Chattery Teeth”), Richard Laymon, Ramsey Campbell, Jack Ketchum, Poppy Z. Brite, Thomas Tessier, Hugh B. Cave, Richard Christian Matheson, Joe R. Lansdale, Nancy Collins, Peter Crowther, Norman Partridge and many others, along with interviews with Dean Koontz and the editor.
With an introduction by Tim Powers, writers such as Poppy Z. Brite, Ramsey Campbell, Douglas Clegg, Peter Crowther, Robert Devereaux, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Nancy Holder, Jack Ketchum, Ed Lee, Elizabeth Massie, Thomas F. Monteleone, Yvonne Navarro, Norman Partridge, Lucy Taylor, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem, and F. Paul Wilson were among those who contributed twenty-eight stories (two reprints) based around the tipped-in artwork of Alan M. Clark for Imagination Fully Dilated, co-edited by Clark and Elizabeth Engstrom. Cemetery Dance published a limited edition hardcover, signed by all the contributors, for $75. A deluxe leatherbound and slipcased edition with extra art was also available for $195.
Clark and Engstrom also teamed up for The Alchemy of Love, a collection of eight stories and pieces of art with an introduction by Jack Ketchum, which was released in a signed 500-copy hardcover edition by Oregon’s Triple Tree Publishing.
Like Cemetery Dance Publications, Subterranean Press also launched its own series of short novels in hardcover format with Norman Partridge’s Wildest Dreams. Plainly labelled “A Horror Novel” on the cover, it was a hard-boiled mystery in which psychic hit-man Clay Saunders was hired by tattooed villainess Circe Whistler to kill her father so she could gain control of his infamous Satanic cult in San Francisco. It was followed by Joe R. Lansdale’s The Boar, which was written fifteen years ago (as Git Back, Satan) and had remained previously unpublished. The young adult adventure involved a fifteen-year-old boy’s hunt for a monstrous boar, called Old Satan, in the Texas of the Great Depression. The books were available in, respectively, 500-copy and 750-copy signed and numbered editions and twenty-six lettered copies.
Originally announced as Look Out, He’s Got a Knife! a few years ago, David J. Schow’s collectionCrypt Orchids finally appeared as a signed and numbered 500-copy hardcover from Subterranean. With an introduction by Robert Bloch (written in 1992), it was only fitting that several of the eleven stories (three original) and one stage play were inspired by the late author of Psycho. It was also available in a lettered edition.
From Dark Highway Press, Robert Devereaux’s sexually explicit Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups came with forewords by editors David Hartwell and Pat LoBrutto and illustrations by the ubiquitous Alan M. Clark.
Published by Mark V. Ziesing,Black Butterflies: A Flock on the Dark Side was a collection of seventeen horror stories (two original) by John Shirley, with a foreword by Paula Guran and illustrations by John Bergin.
Faces Under Water was the first volume in Tanith Lee’s new dark fantasy series “The Secret Book of Venus”, about a league of murderers in an alternate 18th century Venice, from the Overlook Connection Press. The same publisher issued a trade hardcover of Jack Ketchum’s (Dallas Myr) 1986 novel The Girl Next Door, which retained the 1996 limited edition’s introduction by Stephen King.
Obsidian Books published The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard, the first collection from Ketchum, containing twelve stories (six original), along with a memoir about the author’s meeting in the 1980s with Henry Miller and an introduction by Richard Laymon. It was available in a signed and limited edition of 500 copies and 52-copy lettered and leatherbound edition in a matching traycase. Ketchum also contributed the introduction to the novel Shifters by Edward Lee and John Pelan, published by Obsidian in a signed and numbered edition of 375 copies.
Splatter spunk: The Micah Hayes Stories was a collection of five hardcore horror stories by Lee and Pelan, available in a limited trade paperback edition of 550 copies and a lettered hardcover from Sideshow Press.
From Florida’s Necro Publications, Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman by Edward Lee and Elizabeth Steffen concerned an emotionally disturbed advice columnist who attracted the attention of a crazed serial killer. It was available in a signed and limited trade paperback edition of 500 copies, a 150-copy signed hardcover and a deluxe lettered slipcased edition for $150. Also from Necro, Charlee Jacob’s vampire novel This Symbiotic Fascination was available in a 100-copy hardcover edition and a 300-copy trade paperback, both of which were signed and numbered.
Terminal Fright Press published the aptly-titled Terminal Frights edited by Ken Abner, which featured twenty-two stories originally scheduled for the eponymous magazine or specially commissioned for the anthology from such writers as Peter Crowther, Yvonne Navarro, J.N. Williamson, Tom Piccirilli and other regulars of the small press field. The same publisher also issued David Niall Wilson’s novel This is My Blood, which combined vampires with the Bible’s New Testament as an undead Mary Magdalene tempted Jesus Christ.
From Meisha Merlin Publishing,BloodWalk was an omnibus of Lee Killough’s vampire detective novels,Blood Hunt (1987) and Bloodlinks (1988), with a new foreword by the author.
> Limited to 500-600 copies each, the latest releases from Canada’s busy Ash-Tree Press included Binscombe Tales: Sinister Saxon Stories by John Whitbourn, which collected fifteen linked stories (seven original) set in the southern England village where bizarre things always seemed to happen, and The Night Comes On, which included sixteen stories in the tradition of M.R. James by Steve Duffy. The Fellow Travellers & Other Ghost Stories by Sheila Hodgson contained twelve stories, several based on plot ideas by M.R. James and eight originally written as radio plays.
Edited and introduced by Hugh Lamb, Out of the Dark: Volume One: Origins by Robert W. Chambers was the first of two volumes and collected nine stories written prior to 1900, whileThe Black Reaper by Bernard Capes was a revised and expanded version of Lamb’s 1989 Equation edition, collecting twenty-three stories with a revised introduction by the editor and a foreword by Ian Burns. Nightmare Jack and Other Stories by John Metcalfe collected seventeen stories and an afterword by Alexis Lykiard, and Nights of the Round Table by Margery Lawrence was a reprint collection of twelve stories from the 1920s. Both volumes were edited with an introduction by Richard Dalby.
The Clock Strikes Twelve and Other Stories by H.R. Wakefield contained all eighteen stories from earlier editions plus a further three uncollected tales, along with a new introduction by Barbara Roden. Jessica Amanda Salmonson edited both Twilight and Other Supernatural Romances, the first of two collections by Marjorie Bowen, containing seventeen stories, and Lady Ferry and Other Uncanny People which included eleven stories by Sarah Orne Jewett and a preface by Joanna Russ. The latter volume was the first in Ash-Tree’s “Grim Maids” series, reprinting the supernatural fiction of unjustly neglected women writers.
Collected Spook Stories: The Terror by Nightwas the first in a series of five volumes collecting all E.F. Benson’s strange and supernatural tales. Edited and introduced by Jack Adrian, it contained fifteen stories. Adrian was also the editor of Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer by Alice and Claude Askew, a collection of eight stories which was the first volume in Ash-Tree Press’ Occult Detectives library, and The Ash-Tree Press Annual Macabre 1998, an anthology of six ghostly stories by authors not usually associated with the genre. These included W. Somerset Maugham, Arthur Ransome, Ford Madox Ford, E.C. Bentley, Hilaire Belloc and John Buchan.
Sarob Press in Wales launched a series of limited, numbered hardcovers with yet another edition of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, limited to 200 copies. It was followed by a 350-copy numbered edition of Vengeful Ghosts collecting eight stories (two original) by C.E. Ward, and Skeletons in the Closet by William I.I. Read collected nine stories (three reprints) involving Dennistoun, the World’s Most Haunted Man.
Tartarus Press published a new edition of the 1907 novel The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen, with a new introduction by Mark Valentine, a 1954 introduction by Lord Dunsany and a previously unpublished introduction by the author. Featuring tipped-in illustrations by Sidney Sime, this was limited to 350 copies. Also from Tartarus, The Collected Strange Papers of Christopher Blayre reprinted author Blayre’s three short story collections in a single volume.
The Child of the Soul and Other Tales contained four unpublished stories plus a letter by Count Stenbock, limited to 500 numbered copies from Durto Press. Atlas Press published Jean Ray’sMalpertius in an English translation by Iain White.
Although he was better known as a writer of whimsical fantasy fiction, The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was a genuinely creepy short novel based on a 600-page draft and a dream-inspired novella by the late Avram Davidson, completed by his ex-wife and editor Grania Davis. It came with brief but fascinating introductions by Peter S. Beagle and Michael Swanwick, and was published by San Francisco’s Tachyon Publications in a softcover edition, a 100-copy signed and numbered hardcover, and a boxed and lettered edition of twenty-six copies.
Charlie’s Bones by L.L. Thrasher was the first novel in a proposed series featuring an amateur detective and her ghostly partner, from Colorado’s Write Way Publishing.
After having his overdraft facility withdrawn by a new bank manager in October, British small press publisher Anthony Barker was forced to discontinue all his future publishing plans under the Tanjen imprint. Existing contracts with authors were cancelled and submissions were no longer invited as the remaining stock was sold off.
However, before the axe fell, Tanjen managed to publish Scaremongers 2: Redbrick Eden edited by Steve Saville. An anthology of twenty new and reprint (despite what it said on the copyright page) stories, it included such well-known names as Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Stephen Laws, Kim Newman, Peter Crowther, Simon Clark, Nicholas Royle, Mark Morris and Joel Lane, amongst others. All royalties were donated to a charity for the homeless. The other final Tanjen title was Mesmer, a first novel by Tim Lebbon, in which a man who saw his murdered ex-girlfriend found himself in a world where the dead could live again.
From Britain’s RazorBlade Press, Tim Lebbon’s Faith in the Flesh: The First Law/From Bad Flesh collected two original novellas along with an introduction by Peter Crowther, while The Dreaming Pool by Gary Greenwood contained an introduction by Simon Clark.
The first three titles from new publisher The Designlmage Group were The Darkest Thirst, a trade paperback vampire anthology containing “Sixteen Provocative Tales of the Undead” by such authors as Robert Devereaux and Edo van Belkom; the vampire novelNight Prayers by P.D. Cacek, and Carmilla The Return, Kyle Marffin’s contemporary retelling of J. Sheridan LeFanu’s classic novella, set in Chicago. These were followed by another vampire anthology, The Kiss of Death, containing sixteen stories (three reprint) by Don D’Ammassa and others.
Silver Salamander Press published a collection of thirteen stories (five original) by Lucy Taylor entitledPainted in Blood. From the same imprint, Falling Idols by Brian Hodge was a trade paperback collection of seven stories (two original), available in a signed edition of 500 copies, along with a 300-copy hardcover edition and a 50-copy leatherbound version.
The first publication from Britain’s The Alchemy Press was The Paladin Mandates by Mike Chinn, which collected six stories (three original) about eponymous occult adventurer Damian Paladin, expertly illustrated by Bob Covington. Published as a slim hardcover by Airgedlamh Publications and The Alchemy Press, Shadows of Light and Dark collected thirty-two poems (twenty-one original) by Jo Fletcher in an edition of 250 numbered copies signed by the writer, artist Les Edwards, photographer Seamus A. Ryan, designer Michael Marshall Smith, and Neil Gaiman, who contributed the introduction.
From Boneyard Press, Noise & Other Night Terrors contained seven short stories (one original) and a novel extract by Newton E. Streeter, along with an introduction by Cindie Geddes. New Welsh imprint Oneiros Books published David Conway’s debut collection Metal Sushi, with an introduction by Grant Morrison.
The first in a new series of books published by Mythos Books and collectively titled “The Fan Mythos”,Correlated Contents included six Cthulhu Mythos tales (two original) by James Ambuehl, introduced by Robert M. Price and illustrated by Jeffrey Thomas. Price also edited The Innsmouth Cycle for Chaosium, which contained thirteen stories and three poems.
Published by Armitage House,Delta Green: Alien Intelligence edited by Bob Kruger and John Tynes was an anthology of eight Lovecraftian stories based on the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.
Leviathan 2: The Legacy of Boccaccio,published by The Ministry of Whimsy Press and edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Rose Secrest, contained four novellas by Richard Calder, Rhys Hughes, L. Timmel Duchamp and Stepan Chapman, interviews with the authors, and an essay about novella writing by David Pringle.
A follow-up to the 1997 anthology, More Monsters from Memphis was published in trade paperback by California’s Zapizdat Publications, once again edited by Beecher Smith. It contained thirty-one stories set in the American south by Brent Monahan, Steve Rasnic Tem, Janet Berliner, Tim Waggoner, Tom Piccirilli, Tina Jens and others, including two by the editor.<
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Published by Space & Time,Going Postal edited by Gerard Daniel Houarner was an original paperback anthology of eighteen stories and one poem about people going crazy by such authors as Bentley Little, Gordon Linzner, Carlee Jacob, Tom Piccarilli, Melanie Tem, Don Webb and James Dorr. Harvest Tales & Midnight Revels edited by Michael Mayhew contained nineteen horror stories to be read aloud on Halloween night and was published by California’s Bald Mountain Books.
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Subterranean Press continued its series of signed and numbered chapbooks with Red Right Hand by Norman Partridge, about a bank heist during the 1930s, and Fugue on a G-String by Peter Crowther (introduction by Ed Gorman), continuing the exploits of hardboiled private eye Kokorian Tate. Two more titles in the series released in time for Halloween were The Night in Fog by David B. Silva and The Keys to D’Espérance by Chaz Brenchley (introduced by Peter Crowther). These were each available in an edition of 250 copies and also twenty-six lettered hardcovers.
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