Psycho-Mania! also edited by Jones contained thirty-four horror/crime tales (nineteen original), along with an original linking sequence by John Llewellyn Probert and a previously unpublished Introduction by Robert Bloch. Contributors included Joe R. Lansdale, Reggie Oliver, Basil Copper, Robert Silverberg, Lisa Morton, Lawrence Block, Robert Shearman, Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Michael Marshall Smith and Kim Newman.
Paula Guran edited The Mammoth Book of Angels and Demons, featuring twenty-seven stories by Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Joyce Carol Oates and others. From veteran editor Mike Ashley came a reissue of the 2004 anthology The Mammoth Book of Sorcerer’s Tales retitled The Mammoth Book of Dark Magic in Britain and The Mammoth Book of Black Magic in America. It collected twenty-three tales of wizardry and witchcraft from, amongst others, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Peter Crowther, Tim Lebbon and Steve Rasnic Tem.
Editor John Joseph Adams’ The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius was a hardcover anthology of twenty-two stories with a Foreword by Chris Claremont. Contributors included Harry Turtledove, L. A. Banks, Alan Dean Foster, Carrie Vaughn, Laird Barron, L. E. Modesitt Jr and Jeffrey Ford, amongst others.
Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond edited and introduced by Adams and Douglas Cohen featured fifteen stories inspired by L. Frank Baum’s children’s classic by, amongst others, Tad Williams, Simon R. Green, Jane Yolen, Dale Bailey, Orson Scott Card and Jeffrey Ford, with a Foreword by Gregory Maguire.
Beyond Rue Morgue: Further Tales of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1st Detective edited with an Introduction by Paul Kane and Charles Prepolec contained ten stories (two reprints) featuring French investigator Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin by Poe, Mike Carey, Joe R. Lansdale, Lisa Tuttle, Stephen Volk, Clive Barker and others.
Edited by the late Martin H. Greenberg, Ghouls, Ghosts, and Ninja Rats brought together eighteen paranormal crime stories by such authors as Norman Partridge, Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Mike Resnick.
Stories of Terror and the Supernatural edited by Herman Graf featured twenty-two classic tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Henry James and others.
Edited by Hank Davis, In Space No One Can Hear You Scream contained thirteen scary SF stories by authors including Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Sheckley, Theodore Sturgeon, Clark Ashton Smith and George R. R. Martin.
The fifth volume of editor Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year series from Skyhorse’s Night Shade Books imprint contained twenty-six stories and two poems, along with the editor’s summation of the year and a list of “Honorable Mentions”.
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2013, edited by Paula Guran for Prime Books, showcased thirty-five authors, while The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 24 edited by Stephen Jones featured twenty-one stories and a poem.
Once again, no one story appeared in all three “Year’s Best” horror compilations. Datlow and Jones used the same Ramsey Campbell story, Datlow and Guran used the same Jeffrey Ford story, and Guran and Jones used the same Terry Dowling and Alison Littlewood tales.
Laird Barron, Terry Dowling and Priya Sharma all turned up in the Datlow and Guran anthologies with different stories; Gemma Files and Claire Massey were both featured with different works in the Datlow and Jones books, and Guran and Jones shared contributors Neil Gaiman, Joe R. Lansdale, Helen Marshall and Robert Shearman.
Macmillan was the last publisher to settle with the US Department of Justice over allegations of conspiring to fix ebook pricing. Only Apple continued to contest the charges, and in July they were found guilty in a federal court of playing “a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy”. The company subsequently filed an appeal against the judge’s decision.
Founded in 2007 and with around 16 million active members, “social cataloguing” online site Goodreads was purchased for an undisclosed sum by Amazon.com. Amazon also has its own cataloguing site Shelfari and a minority ownership in Library Thing.
Meanwhile, the company announced the creation of a new platform, Kindle Worlds, to publish fan fiction. With licensing deals done with a number of book, TV, movie and game properties, writers’ works were sold as ebooks after being vetted, with royalties being split between the fanfic author and the rights holder.
In August, Amazon announced that it would allow sellers to set their own prices on the Marketplace platform after an anti-competition investigation by the Office of Fair Trading. The company originally insisted on a “price parity” policy that prevented traders from selling their products for less than the website price. The change only applied in the European Union.
Controversy surrounded the announcement that DC Comics had hired anti-gay marriage campaigner Orson Scott Card for the digital comic Adventures of Superman. While the company sought to distance itself from Card’s views, there were online calls for a boycott by various fans and organizations.
Print-on-demand titles and ebook originals continued to flourish as the mainstream publishers consolidated imprints and mostly continued to ignore the horror genre:
Ramsey Campbell’s Holes for Faces from Dark Regions Press collected fourteen stories (including the original title story) from the first decade of this century. It was available as a PoD trade paperback, a premium leatherette-bound signed edition limited to 300 copies, and a deluxe leatherbound slipcased edition of fifty-two copies ($199.00) signed by both the author and artist Santiago Caruso.
Editor Paula Guran continued to put out value-for-money reprint anthologies for Prime Books with Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations, containing twenty-three tales by Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris and Simon R. Green, amongst others. Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales contained eighteen stories by Jane Yolen, Tanith Lee, Caitlín R. Kiernan and Angela Slatter, amongst others, and After the End: Recent Apocalypses featured twenty non-zombie stories by authors including Cory Doctorow and Paolo Bacigalupi.
From the same editor and publisher, Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre collected eighteen tales celebrating October 31 by, amongst others, Norman Partridge, Carrie Vaughn, Laird Barron, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Brian Hodge and Nancy Kilpatrick.
In Bad Seeds: Evil Progeny for Prime Books, editor Steve Berman brought together twenty-seven stories (five original) about bad children by, amongst others, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Joe R. Lansdale, Gemma Files, Michael Kelly and Lisa Tuttle. Berman also edited Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages for the same imprint, containing thirty-three stories (eight reprints), and Shadows of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War, collecting twenty-two stories (eight reprints).
For Lethe Press, the busy Mr Berman put together the PoD anthology Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar Allan Poe, an original anthology of twenty-one stories and five poems that put a gay twist on the life and works of the author. Contributors included Nick Mamatas and Christopher Barzak.
Also from Lethe, Before and Afterlives was a retrospective collection of supernatural stories by Barzak.
Animate Objects from Immanion Press collected eight stories (four previously unpublished) and an original poem by Tanith Lee. A special signed edition, with an illustration by the author, was limited to just thirty numbered hardcover copies.
From PoD imprint Altus Press, Will Murray’s Doc Savage: Skull Island was a mash-up between the pulp hero and King Kong.
The Whispering Horror from Shadow Publishing collected fourteen stories (one original) by German-born author Eddy C. Bertin with an Introduction by David A. Sutton and story notes by the author.
The Lurkers in the Abyss and Other Tales of Terror was an impressive, career-spanning collection of seventeen stories (one original) by David A. Riley. It featured another Introduction by Sutton, who performed the same function for Worse Things Than Spiders, which contained twelve stories (one previously unpublished) and a poem by Samantha Lee.
Twenty-three stories from the two volumes of D
avid A. Sutton’s own superior 1970s anthologies New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural were reissued by Shadow Publishing in an omnibus edition entitled Horror! Under the Tombstone: Stories from the Deathly Realm, with a new Foreword by the editor.
Available from Hippocampus Press, The Wide Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies collected ten stories (two original) by John Langan, with an Introduction by Jeffrey Ford and an Afterword by Laird Barron.
Lovecraft’s Pillow and Other Strange Stories contained thirteen stories by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, while SimulAcrum and Other Possible Realities brought together twenty-nine stories and poems (twelve original) by Jason V. Brock, along with a Foreword by William F. Nolan and an Introduction by James Robert Smith.
The Condemned, the sixth volume in Gray Friar Press’ “Gray Matter” showcase series, collected six novellas by Simon Bestwick.
From the same imprint, Terror Tales of London was the fourth volume in editor Paul Finch’s excellent series of PoD anthologies. It contained thirteen stories (three reprints) by, amongst others, Nina Allan, Roger Johnson, Nicholas Royle, Adam Nevill, Mark Morris, Christopher Fowler and Marie O’Regan, along with historical vignettes about the city.
Simon Strantzas edited Shadows Edge, an original anthology based around where worlds meet. It contained fifteen stories by Joel Lane, Richard Gavin, Gary McMahon, Lisa L. Hannett, R. B. Russell, Michael Kelly, Steve Rasnic Tem and John Langan, with a Prologue story and Afterword by the editor.
A man’s memories were subtly altered by his past in John Llewellyn Probert’s novella Differently There, also from Gray Friar Press.
Selected as usual by publisher Charles Black for his Mortbury Press imprint, The Tenth Black Book of Horror featured fifteen often gruesome tales in the Pan Book of Horror Stories tradition by David A. Sutton, Paul Finch, Ian Hunter, John Llewellyn Probert, Mike Chinn, Thana Niveau and others. From the same imprint, For Those Who Dream Monsters collected seventeen stories (two original) by Anna Taborska, along with an Introduction and impressive interior illustrations by Reggie Oliver.
Editor Mark West’s Anatomy of Death (in Five Sleazy Pieces) was the third volume in Hersham Horror Books’ “PentAnth” series of 1970s-style PoD anthologies, featuring five original stories by Stephen Bacon, Johnny Mains, John Llewellyn Probert, Stephen Volk and the editor. It was followed by Demons & Devilry, which collected material by Probert, Peter Mark May, Thana Niveau, David Williamson and editor Stuart Young.
Rachel Aukes’ 100 Days in Deadland reimagined Dante’s “Inferno” as a print-on-demand novel of the zombie apocalypse.
From Ramble House/Dancing Tuatara Press, The Devil of Pei-Ling was a reprint of Herbert Asbury’s 1927 novel, while When the Bat Man Thirsts and Other Stories collected eight tales from the 1930s by Frederick C. Davis.
The Finger of Destiny and Other Stories contained thirteen stories by Edmund Snell, and Mark of the Laughing Death and Other Stories brought together eight stories by Francis James (James A. Goldthwaite) published in the pulps during the 1930s and ’40s.
All four books included introductions from publisher/editor John Pelan, who also edited Tales of Terror & Torment Vol.1, which contained eleven pulp stories from the 1930s by Hugh B. Cave, Norvell Page, Arthur Leo Zagat and others.
Edited by webmaster Jeani Rector, Shadow Masters: An Anthology from the Horror Zine was published under the Imajin Books imprint and included thirty-seven stories by Bentley Little, Yvonne Navarro, Scott Nicholson, Melanie Tem, Elizabeth Massie, Simon Clark, Lisa Morton and others, including two written by the editor. Joe R. Lansdale supplied a Foreword.
Published by the HorrorSociety website, Horror Society Stories Volume 1, edited by Michael DeFellipo and Mitchell D. Wells featured eleven new stories.
Florida’s Miskatonic River Press published two tribute anthologies: Deepest, Darkest Eden: New Tales of Hyperborea edited and introduced by Cody Goodfellow included eighteen stories (two reprints) and two poems set in Clark Ashton Smith’s prehistoric land by Darrell Schweitzer, Lisa Morton, Brian Stableford, Don Webb, Marc Laidlaw, Robert M. Price, John Shirley and the editor. Edited and Introduced by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., The Grimscribe’s Puppets was a tribute to the work of Thomas Ligotti with twenty-two stories (one reprint) by, amongst others, Michael Cisco, Joel Lane, Darrell Schweitzer, Michael Kelly, Robert M. Price, Richard Gavin, Simon Strantzas, John Langan, Gemma Files and Cody Goodfellow.
Published by Joe Morey’s Dark Renaissance Books imprint, Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy and Other Stories collected eleven fantastical stories (four reprints) about Holmes and Watson by William Meikle. Jeffrey Thomas’ Worship the Night from the same imprint featured eight stories (two original), while The Universal and Other Terrors brought together twelve stories (three original) by Tony Richards.
All Dark Renaissance titles were available in deluxe hardcover, signed and numbered hardcover, trade paperback and ebook editions.
Mike Robinson’s The Prince of Earth from Curiosity Quills Press was about an American woman whose life was threatened by an inexplicable event that happened to her in Scotland twenty years earlier.
From Karōshi Books, The Moon Will Look Strange was a welcome debut collection from Lynda E. Rucker containing eleven tales (three previously unpublished), along with an Introduction by Steve Rasnic Tem and story notes by the author.
Edited by S. P. Miskowski and Kate Jonez for Omnium Gatherum, Little Visible Delight contained eleven original stories about writerly obsessions by Lynda E. Rucker, Michael Kelley, Steve Duffy and others, including the editors. From the same publisher, Miskowski’s novella Astoria was about a woman who discovered she could not outrun her demons.
Edited and introduced by Jan Edwards and Jenny Barber, The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic contained fourteen stories (two reprints) by Mike Resnick, Christopher Golden, Jonathan Oliver, Alison Littlewood and others. Allen Ashley edited and introduced Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac, which featured fourteen (oddly not twelve) stories by Stuart Young, Joel Lane, Storm Constantine, Megan Kerr and others.
Published only as ebooks by Alchemy Press were Chico Kidd’s The Komarovs, a new “Captain da Silva” novella involving vampires, zombies, ghosts and doppelgängers, and Cate Gardner’s In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair.
Edited with an Introduction by Alex Davis for KnightWatch Press, X7: A Seven Deadly Sins Anthology collected seven original stories by Nicholas Royle, Simon Clark, Simon Bestwick and others.
Published under the Megazanthus Press imprint, Horror Without Victims: A Story Anthology Edited by D. F. Lewis (that’s what the title page says) included twenty-five stories by John Howard, Gary McMahon, Mark Valentine and others.
Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson edited Dark Visions: Volume One for PoD imprint Grey Matter Press. It contained thirteen stories (one original) by Ray Garton, Jay Caselberg and others.
Crystal Lake Publishing produced a revised edition of Gary McMahon’s 2012 collection Where You Live, containing nineteen stories (five original) and a new Introduction by the author. From the same imprint, Paul Kane’s Sleeper(s) was a John Wyndham-style novel in which a sleepy English village became the centre of a mysterious outbreak. David Moody contributed the Introduction.
From PoD imprint Dark Moon Books, The Spaces Between collected eight longer stories and novelettes (three original) by Kane with an Introduction by Kelley Armstrong. The cover was by The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard.
After Death … edited with an Introduction by Eric J. Guignard and illustrated by Audra Phillips was a trade paperback anthology from Dark Moon featuring thirty-four stories that examined what may occur after death. The list of contributors included Steve Rasnic Tem, Lisa Morton, James S. Dorr, Ray Cluley, Bentley Little, William Meikle, Simon Clark, Kelly Dunn, Joe McKinney and John Langan.
Tony Richards’ supernatural novel Tropic of Darkness was published only as an ebook by Pocket Star.
Available from Wildside Press imprint The Borgo Press, The Chaos of C
hung-Fu: Weird Mystery Tales and The Ash Murders: Supernatural Mystery Stories each featured five stories by Edmund Glasby, the son of weird fiction writer John S. Glasby.
Indiana Horror Review 2013 was a self-published PoD volume from editor James Ward Kirk that featured twenty short stories and ten poems while, from the same eponymous imprint and editor, Cellar Door II contained twenty-two stories, two pieces of flash fiction, and ten poems. The two titles shared a number of the same contributors.
Canada’s Dale L. Sproule self-published his collection Psychedelia Gothique under the Arctic Mage Press imprint. It contained sixteen stories (five original), along with a Foreword by David Nickle and an Introduction by the author.
From Australia’s Ticonderoga Publications, The Bride Price was the debut collection from Cat Sparks, containing thirteen stories (one original), along with an Introduction by Sean Wallace and an Afterword by the author, while Kim Wilkins’ The Year of Ancient Ghosts collected five novellas (two original) along with an Introduction by Kate Forsyth and an Afterword by the author.
Robert Hood introduced Everything is a Graveyard, Jason Fischer’s collection of fourteen offbeat stories (three original), and the author supplied the Afterword. Juliet Marillier’s Prickle Moon contained sixteen pieces of fiction (five original), along with an Introduction by Sophie Masson and Author’s Notes.
Edited by Liz Grzyb for Ticonderoga, Dreaming of Djinn contained eighteen new Arabian Nights stories, and Grzyb and Talie Helene compiled The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2012. This third annual volume collected thirty-four stories and poems by Cat Sparks, Angela Slatter, Margo Lanagan, Anna Tambour, Stephen Dedman, Jay Caselberg, Kyla Ward, Terry Dowling and others.
Australia’s FableCroft Publishing issued The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton, containing thirteen stories (two original) with an Introduction by Kaaron Warren, along with One Small Step: An Anthology of Discoveries, the first all-female Australian speculative fiction anthology since the mid-1990s, edited by Tehani Wessely.
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