Best New Horror 27 Page 3

  Joshi also supplied the Preface for Ann K. Schwader’s poetry collection Dark Energies from Australia’s P’rea Press. Featuring an interview with the poet by editor Charles Lovecraft, along with an Afterword by Robert M. Price, the book also included a mix of new and reprint poems.

  Edited and introduced by Price for Celaeno Press, Beyond the Mountains of Madness was a Lovecraftion anthology inspired by the classic novella. It contained fourteen stories (one reprint) by Joseph S. Pulver Sr., C.J. Henderson, Cody Goodfellow, Stephen Mark Rainey, Will Murray, William Meikle and others.

  A Lonely & Curious Country: Tales from the Lands of Lovecraft edited with an Introduction by Matthew Carpenter for Ulthar Press featured seventeen original stories about eldritch locations from, amongst others, Pete Rawlik, Christine Morgan, Don Webb, Robert M. Price and Aaron J. French.

  Thirteen of the late John S. Glasby’s Lovecraftian stories (six original) were collected together in The Brooding City and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos from Dancing Tuatara Press, along with an historical Introduction by publisher John Pelan.

  Edited with an Introduction by Tony Eccles and published by the Cygnus Alpha creative collective in an oversized softcover format, Secret Invasion: Tales of Eldritch Horror from the West Country was another PoD Lovecraftian anthology with fifteen original stories set around Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. It also included an interview with Ramsey Campbell and full colour illustrations by John Swogger, Mark Toner and Steven Tickey. The aim of the book was to raise money for the UK mental health charity MIND.

  From Great British Horror Books imprint Black Shuck Books, Masks featured thirteen original stories by Adrian Cole, Phil Sloman, James Everington and others. The anthology was dedicated to the memory of American artist James Powell, who did the cover.

  From the same imprint, Wild Things, edited with an Introduction by publisher Steve J. Shaw, included thirteen stories (three reprints) about the beast within by, amongst others, Anna Taborska and Johnny Mains.

  KnightWatch Press was another imprint of Great British Horror and published Season’s Greetings from Theresa Derwin as an attractive little booklet featuring six comedic Christmas stories by the author, with impressive cover art by Stephen Cooney.

  KnightWatch also turned out a slew of PoD anthologies, including Chip Shop Horrors edited by Stewart Hotston, Sunny with a Chance of Zombies edited by Dion Winton-Polak, Nice Day for a Picnic edited by Brian Marshall and Alex Davis, Once Bitten by Steve Lewis, Soul Survivors Volume II edited by Christine Morgan, Play Things & Past Times edited by Steve J. Shaw, and the inevitable volume of Lovecraft pastiches, New Tales of the Old Ones edited by Theresa Derwin and Paul Simpson.

  Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet from Comet Press featured three novellas by Adam Howe, along with a Foreword by Randy Chandler and Story Notes by the author. Writing as “Garrett Adams”, British writer Howe’s short story ‘Jumper’ was selected by Stephen King some years earlier as the winner of his On Writing contest.

  Edited with an Introduction by Donald J. Bingle and published by 54-40’ Orphyte, Inc., Familiar Spirits contained eleven original stories “that go bump in the night” by William Peck, Jean Rabe and Sarah Hans, amongst others.

  Nightmares Unhinged: Twenty Tales of Terror, the first anthology from editor and game designer Joshua Viola’s PoD imprint Hex Publishers, featured original stories by Steve Rasnic Tem, Stephen Graham Jones, Jeanne C. Stein and others, including four contributions from the editor himself. A portion of the proceeds were donated to the charity Rocky Mountain Cancer Assistance in memory of Melanie Tem, to whom the book was dedicated and who was remembered in a moving Afterword by Edward Bryant.

  Edited by Juliana Rew, Ain’t Superstitious was published by the American/Scottish print-on-demand micropublisher Third Flatiron Anthologies. A double edition of a series of quarterly themed anthologies, it featured twenty-six stories of the “weird, wild and magical”.

  From Lethe Press, The Nameless Dark: A Collection brought together fourteen stories (five original) by T.E. Grau with an Introduction by Nathan Ballingrud.

  The same imprint also published Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists! edited by Steve Berman. It contained nineteen stories by Gemma Files, Melissa Scott and others, along with a historical essay by Jess Nevins and an Introduction by Connie Wilkins.

  Edited by Rhonda Parrish, B is for Broken was the second volume in a series of “Alphabet Anthologies” from PoD imprint Poise and Pen Publishing and featured twenty-six stories based on letters of the alphabet, along with a bonus tale from the previous volume.

  The busy Parrish also edited and introduced Corvidae and Scarecrow, the second and third volumes in “Rhonda Parrish’s Magical Menageries” series from Michigan’s World Weaver Press. The anthologies contained a mixture of new and reprint stories and poetry by Jane Yolen, Angela Slatter and others.

  In Frozen Fairy Tales from the same publisher, editor Kate Wolford brought together fifteen original stories based around a chilly theme.

  Published by Parallel Universe Publications, Kitchen Sink Gothic selected by David A. Riley and Linden Riley contained seventeen “unglamorous” stories (three reprints) by Stephen Bacon, Andrew Darlington, Gary Fry, Kate Farrell, David A. Sutton, Adrian Cole and others.

  From Post Mortem Press, Shrieks and Shivers from the Horror Zine edited by Jeani Rector contained thirty-one stories by William F. Nolan, Tom Piccirilli, P.D. Cacek, Tim Waggoner and others.

  Carus & Mitch was a post-apocalyptic novella by Tim Major, published on-demand by Omnium Gatherum.

  Edited and introduced by Ross Warren and Anthony Watson for Dark Minds Press, Darkest Minds: Stories from the Borderlines contained twelve stories (one reprint) themed around crossing borders by Gary Fry, Andrew Hook, Stephen Bacon and others.

  Peripheral Visions: The Collected Ghost Stories (1986 to 2015) was a huge compilation of Robert Hood’s short fiction published by Dark Phases/IFWAG Publishing. The almost 800-page hardcover brought together forty-four stories (three original), along with an Introduction by Danel Olson and a Preface and extensive story notes by the author. Nick Stathopoulos supplied the illustrations.

  Edited with an Introduction by Tehani Wessley for Australian PoD imprint FableCroft Publishing, Insert Title Here contained twenty-one original tales of speculative fiction by, amongst others, Robert Hood, Alan Baxter, Ian Creasey and Kathleen Jennings.

  From the same publisher and co-edited by Wessley and Tansy Rayner Roberts, Cranky Ladies of History featured twenty-two original stories and a reprint poem about women who challenged conventional wisdom about appropriate female behaviour by Garth Nix, Jane Yolen, Lisa L. Hannett, Amanda Pillar and others.

  Amanda Pillar was also the editor of Bloodlines: 16 Journeys on the Dark Streets of Urban Fantasy, published by Ticonderoga Publications. The anthology contained original fiction by Stephanie Gunn, Alan Baxter, Kathleen Jennings and others, along with an Introduction by the editor.

  Australia’s Brimstone Press published The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After, a collection of thirteen “dark fantasy and desolation” stories by Shane Jiraiya Cummings with an Introduction by Stephen M. Irwin.

  Illustrated with classic etchings, Dark Parchments: Midnight Curses & Verses was an attractive trade paperback from MoonDream Press/Copper Dog Publishing that showcased eighty-five poems (seven reprints) by Michael H. Hanson with a Foreword by Janet Morris.

  Finally revived after eighteen years in a slick new PoD format by John Gregory Betancourt’s Wildside Press after some social media controversy, the new incarnation of Weirdbook was edited by Doug Draa, with founder W. Paul Ganley on board as Consulting Editor. Issue #31 featured fiction and poetry from Adrian Cole, Gary A. Braunbeck, Paul Dale Anderson, Darrell Schweitzer, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Kurt Newton, Ann K. Schwader, W. H. Pugmire and Dave Reeder, amongst others.

  The Winter 2015 paperback edition of Blight Digest edited by Bracken MacLeod, Ron Earl Phillips, Frank Larnerd and Jan Kozlowski for One
Eye Press featured thirteen stories by Matt Andrew, Tony Wilson and others, along with a Foreword by co-editor MacLeod.

  Ably edited by Tom Roberts, Windy City Pulp Stories #15—published to tie in with the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention in Chicago—was a handsome-looking trade paperback celebrating the 125th Birthday of H.P. Lovecraft and the 75th Anniversary of the Street & Smith Comics. It included fiction by Lovecraft and Robert Weinberg, along with fascinating articles from, amongst others, David H. Keller M.D., F. Paul Wilson, Stephen Jones, Will Murray, S.T. Joshi, August Derleth and Anthony Tollin. Les Edwards did the cover, and Randy Broecker contributed a portfolio of Lovecraftian illustrations.

  Lavie Tidhar’s episodic noir novel A Man Lies Dreaming, conceived in the mind of a prisoner in Auschwitz, was issued by PS Publishing in a signed, slipcased edition of 200 copies, along with the author’s Lust of the Swastika, a spoof pulp novel by “Sebastian Bruce”.

  A family’s holiday in Greece turned decidedly strange in Ramsey Campbell’s Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach, while The Unlicensed Magician was a short novel about magic and a baby rescued from death by Kelly Barnhill.

  The Night Listener and Others was a welcome collection from PS of twenty-two tales (two original) by Chet Williamson with an Introduction by Richard Christian Matheson and story notes by the author.

  Other Stories from the same publisher collected fifteen superior tales (two original) plus Story Notes by Paul Park, along with an Introduction by Michael Swanwick.

  Thirteen of James Cooper’s excellent stories were collected in Human Pieces, including tributes to Stephen King and Peter Cushing, while Frost on Glass was another fine collection of fiction (two previously unpublished) by Ian R. MacLeod, with new Afterwords to each of the tales.

  Second Shift: More Tales from the Word Mines was a thin hardcover containing three stories by the late Graham Joyce. It was a companion to the previous year’s retrospective volume, and was available in a 100-copy signed edition.

  Visions from Brichester was a collection of fourteen Lovecraftian stories by Ramsey Campbell, who received an honorary fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University in July for his “outstanding contribution to literature”. The book also included such bonus material as first drafts, fragments, nonfiction and early poems, along with numerous black and white illustrations by Randy Broecker.

  Journalist David Hambling’s The Dulwich Horror & Others from PS collected seven Lovecraftian pastiches with a distinctly British bent, along with a Foreword by S.T. Joshi and an Introduction by the author.

  Probably the last thing anybody needed was yet another anthology of Lovecraftian-inspired fiction, but editor Lois H. Gresh gave us one anyway. Innsmouth Nightmares contained a mixed bag of twenty-one stories (one reprint) based around HPL’s ichthyic Deep Ones by Lavie Tidhar, Paul Kane, Tim Lebbon, Nancy Kilpatrick, Richard Gavin, Steve Rasnic Tem, John Langan, William F. Nolan, Lisa Morton, James Moore, Nancy Holder, S.T. Joshi and others.

  Also from PS, That is Not Dead: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Through the Centuries was an anthology of historical Lovecraftian fiction edited with an Introduction by Darrell Schweitzer and featuring fourteen original stories by John Langan, Jay Lake, Don Webb (two), Lois H. Gresh, Will Murray, S.T. Joshi, Richard A. Lupoff, Harry Turtledove and others, including the editor himself.

  Edited with an Introduction by S.T. Joshi, Black Wings IV: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror featured seventeen stories and a poem from, amongst others, Fred Chappell, W.H. Pugmire, Richard Gavin, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Darrell Schweitzer, Melanie Tem, Lois H. Gresh, Will Murray and Simon Strantzas.

  PS continued its attractive “Lovecraft Illustrated” series of reprints under The Pulps Library imprint with The Shadow Over Time, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness, all with introductions by S.T. Joshi, full colour illustrations by Pete Von Sholly, and plenty of bonus material from the likes of W.H. Pugmire, Brian Yuzna, Robert M. Price and others.

  From the same publisher, Weird Poems: The Complete Poems from Weird Tales by H.P. Lovecraft was a reprint of a 2010 collection compiled by Stephen Jones, with new artwork by Sholly.

  Edited as usual by Nick Gevers, Breakout was volume 34/35 of PS’ “Postscripts Anthology” series. It featured twenty-seven diverse stories by Garry Kilworth, Lisa L. Hannett, Simon Strantzas, Kit Reed, Darrell Schweitzer, Anna Tambour and others.

  The deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition of Stephen King’s second collection, Skeleton Crew, was available from PS Publishing in a printing of 974 slipcased copies signed by artist Pete Von Sholley and Stephen Jones, who contributed the Introduction. It came in two alternative dustjacket designs.

  PS also produced a 10th Anniversary Edition of Joe Hill’s debut collection 20th Century Ghosts in various editions, with an Introduction by Ramsey Campbell.

  Published as a collaboration between Edgeworks Abbey and PS Publishing, the 52nd Anniversary 9th edition of Ellison Wonderland contained almost all the Harlan EllisonÆ stories from the earlier 1974 and 1984 editions, along with the original Introduction and a new (128 page!) one by the author, an Appreciation of Ellison by J. Michael Straczynski, and an Afterword by screenwriter Josh Olson. The 200-copy signed and slipcased edition came with a slim bonus volume, Pebbles from the Mountain, which collected eleven obscure and mostly pseudonymous stories by Ellison, originally published in magazines in the 1950s.

  A group of acid-folk musicians returned with a documentary filmmaker to the eponymous haunted country house where their lead singer disappeared many years before in Elizabeth Hand’s terrific novella Wylding Hall.

  Equally notable from PS was In the Lovecraft Museum, a surreal horror novella by Steve Rasnic Tem in which an American still grieving over his missing son was invited by a mysterious British pen-pal to visit a bizarre museum devoted to author H.P. Lovecraft and his work.

  Marc Laidlaw’s White Spawn was another Lovecraft-inspired novella, about a young girl’s momentous discovery in a backwoods community.

  All PS Publishing’s novellas were available in 100-copy signed editions, as well as unsigned editions.

  Best New Horror #3 edited by Stephen Jones was reprinted in a revised and updated trade paperback edition with French flaps by the PS imprint Drugstore Indian Press.

  Originally published in 2001 in serial form as part of the packaging for a series of collectible action figures, Clive Barker’s novelette Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium was issued by Subterranean Press in various hardcover states, including a twenty-six copy lettered traycased edition ($275.00), illustrated by Bob Eggleton.

  Subterranean also published Tonight, Again, a collection of thirty-one mostly erotic stories and vignettes by Barker, who also illustrated the volume. It was also available in a slipcased edition of 224 copies ($125.00) and twenty-six leather-bound, traycased copies ($350.00).

  Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan Volume 2 collected twenty-seven stories, a short novel and a poem, with an Introduction by S.T. Joshi. A signed leather-bound edition was limited to 600 copies and came with a hardcover of previously unpublished material.

  Perdido: A Fragment from a Work in Progress by Peter Straub was about a legendary mountain resort in Norway. Stephen King and Gahan Wilson briefly turned up as characters. A signed edition limited to 400 copies was also available.

  Bob Eggleton contributed foldout interior artwork to Tales of the Primal Land, an omnibus of Brian Lumley’s Lovecraftian novel Sorcery in Shad along with the collections The House of Cthulhu and Tarra Khash: Hrossak! The book was also available from Subterranean in a signed, limited edition of 250 copies.

  Joe Hill contributed a new Introduction to a reprint of Alan Moore’s 1996 novel Voice of the Fire, which was available in a signed slipcased edition and a deluxe twenty-six copy version limited to 750 copies ($350.00).

  Subterranean reissued Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs in a deluxe slipcased edition, illustrated by Marshall Arisman. Limited to 200 copie
s signed by the artist ($150.00), there was also a fifty-two copy lettered edition additionally signed by the author for $1,500.

  A ship hired by a reality TV crew to search for mermaids discovered something terrible beneath the waves in the novella Rolling in the Deep by “Mira Grant” (Seanan McGuire), available from Subterranean in a 1,000-copy signed edition.

  Co-published by Borderlands Press and Gauntlet Press, Family Secrets was the second book in the young adult “Nocturnia Chronicles” series by Tom Monteleone and F. Paul Wilson. It was also available in a signed edition of 300 copies, and a traycased and lettered edition.

  Monteleone’s Submerged from Cemetery Dance Publications involved a sunken secret Nazi submarine and the secrets it concealed. It was published in a signed edition of 750 copies.

  From the same imprint, Bentley Little’s satirical novel The Consultant was set in a big corporation filled with fear.

  Limited to 500 signed copies, the tenth volume in Earthling’s annual “Halloween” series was Simon Clark’s pseudo-werewolf novel Rage Master.

  Awaiting Strange Gods: Weird and Lovecraftian Fictions from Fedogan & Bremer collected twenty-two stories by Darrell Schweitzer (including two collaborations with Jason Van Hollander), introduced by the ubiquitous S.T. Joshi.

  Limited to 125 signed and numbered hardcovers and an unlimited number of paperbacks, but barely given any distribution when publisher Spectral Press found itself in financial problems, Stephen Volk’s novella Leytonstone was a homage to Alfred Hitchcock, just as his previous book for the publisher, Whitstable, had been a celebration of Peter Cushing. It came with an Afterword by Stephen Gallagher.

  Similar distribution problems also afflicted two anthologies from the same publisher: Darker Terrors edited by Stephen Jones and David A. Sutton was a “sampler” anthology from the six-volume series that ran from 1995-2002. It contained seventeen stories by Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Karl Edward Wagner, Neil Gaiman, Brian Lumley, Poppy Z. Brite, Michael Marshall Smith, Gwyneth Jones and others, along with a new Introduction and Afterword by the Editors. The book was available in a trade paperback edition and a 100-copy hardcover edition signed by both Jones and Sutton.