The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16 Read online

  Dan Vining’s first novel The Quick was a supernatural mystery set in Hollywood. An unemployed Californian woman turned out to be the incarnation of the goddess Kali in Sonia Singh’s debut novel Goddess for Hire, while a group of mages in San Francisco used magic to battle sunbathing zombies and other monsters in Stephan Zielinski’s offbeat debut, Bad Magic.

  From Jonathan Cape/Harcourt, The Ghost Writer by John Harwood was another first novel, about a man who grew up in Australia and discovered clues to his English family’s past in a lost manuscript written by his great-grandmother.

  In Jonathan Aycliffe’s The Garden Lost in Time, an old man looked back on his stay at a haunted Cornish manor.

  A young boy was taken to a maze-like library of obscure books hidden away in Barcelona’s Old City, where he had to adopt a title for life, in Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s literary mystery The Shadow of the Wind.

  The ghost of a murdered woman observed her family through the ages in Neil Jordan’s Shade, and a man’s spirit had to discover why he died before it could find rest in Glen Duncan’s Death of an Ordinary Man. Narrated by ghosts, Stewart O’Nan’s The Night Country was a Halloween tale set in a small Connecticut town that owed more than a passing nod to Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  A Kansas farmgirl named Oz was raised by the walking dead in Wylene Dunbar’s My Life With Corpses, expanded from the short story of the same title.

  In James Hynes’ satirical horror novel Kings of Infinite Space, a man was haunted by a ghostly cat, amongst other things, while a decapitated corpse returned to life in Percival Everett’s satirical novel American Desert.

  Wakefield was a modern deal-with-the-Devil story by Andrei Codrescu, and an ancient evil waited beneath a Kentucky college town in Robert Wayne McCoy’s The King of Ice Cream.

  With an Introduction by Wesley Stace, The Haunted House was a classic collaborative ghost story written between Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins and others. Collins’ own Sensation Stories: Tales of Mystery and Suspense was edited with an Introduction by Peter Haining.

  Published as part of the “Norton Critical Editions” series, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe contained thirty-three stories, thirty-one poems and a number of non-fiction pieces by and about Poe.

  From the University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books, The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy collected eight short stories (1917–23) by Francis Stevens, edited and with an Introduction by Gary Hoppenstand and illustrated by Thomas L. Floyd.

  Edited with an Introduction and notes by S.T. Joshi for Penguin Classics, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories collected twenty-one stories by H.P. Lovecraft, two from newly-discovered manuscripts.

  Red Jacket Press launched a series of deluxe facsimile reprints of Gnome Press books with C.L. Moore’s classic collection Judgment Night and Wilmar Shiras’ science fiction novel Children of the Atom. Each volume was a reproduction of the original first edition, including colour dust jacket art, issued in an illustrated slipcase.

  Edited with an Introduction by Vigen Guroian, Ancestral Shadows collected nineteen ghost stories and an essay by Russell Kirk.

  Hugh Lamb’s 1979 anthology Tales from a Gas-Lit Graveyard was reprinted by Dover in an attractive trade paperback edition. It contained seventeen obscure stories by Mrs J.H. Riddell, Ambrose Bierce, Richard Marsh, Guy Boothby, Bernard Capes and others.

  Wildside Press reissued the late Hugh B. Cave’s superb 1977 retrospective collection Murgunstrumm & Others in both hardcover and trade paperback, retaining the original illustrations by Lee Brown Coye.

  Wormwood was the second young adult Gothic adventure by former vicar G.P. Taylor. It involved an eighteenth century scientist and his housemaid attempting to recover an ancient book of magic. Forty-five-year-old Taylor, whose first book Shadowmancer was originally self-published and went on to sell 300,000 copies in the UK alone, reportedly signed a £3.5 million deal for his next six novels with Putnam in America and British imprint Faber & Faber. Unfortunately for the author, he watched the only updated manuscript of his unpublished third novel, Tersias, go up in flames after he accidentally threw it on a bonfire while moving house in October. The manuscripts for Taylor’s first two books were also destroyed by the fire.

  Terry Pratchett’s loveable Granny Weatherwax was forced to intervene in Tiffany Aching’s attempts to become a witch in A Hat Full of Sky, a sequel to The Wee Free Men. Even Death made a cameo appearance.

  A destructive relationship between a teenage girl and a homeless boy was at the heart of Kathe Koja’s novella The Blue Mirror, which featured cover art by the author’s husband, Rick Lieder.

  A girl could see phantoms thanks to a magic feather in Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Unseen, there was something in the water in Joseph Bruchac’s The Dark Pond, and a boy lost his reflection to a ghostly double in James Lincoln Collier’s The Empty Mirror.

  A creepy dollhouse was at the centre of Sweet Miss Honeywell’s Revenge by Kathryn Reiss, three teenagers developed supernatural powers in Melinda Metz’s Raven’s Point, and The Old Willis Place was a ghost story aimed at youngsters by Mary Downing Hahn.

  Teenage outsiders lived through a “missing” 25th hour in the day in Scott Westerfeld’s Midnighters: The Secret Hour, the first volume in a new packaged trilogy. Meanwhile, a man discovered that someone else was living his life in a parallel world in Michael Lawrence’s A Crack in the Line, the first book in the “Aldous Lexicon” trilogy.

  R.L. Stine’s Eye Candy was a new non-supernatural horror novel, while the author’s Dangerous Girls 2: The Taste of Night was the second volume in the vampire series about twin girls. Vampire Plagues: London was the first in a new series by the pseudonymous “Sebastian Rook”.

  Lord of the Shadows and Sons of Destiny were the eleventh and concluding twelfth volumes, respectively, in The Saga of Darren Shan, pseudonymously written by Darren O’Shaughnessy. The Saga of Darren Shan: Vampire Rites Trilogy was an omnibus of volumes four through six.

  In Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty, an English teenager raised in India discovered she had supernatural powers at a London boarding school. James A. Moore’s Newbies revolved around a series of mysterious disappearances at school, while a girl and her younger uncle found themselves in a haunted school in Edward Bloor’s Story Time,

  A boy granted immortality through voodoo magic began killing others in William Sleator’s The Boy Who Couldn’t Die. Children with psychic powers attempted to save humanity from parasitic creatures in Eoin Colfer’s The Supernaturalist, and Charles Butler’s The Fetch of Mardy Watt was another supernatural thriller.

  The Ghost of Cutler Creek was the third in the mystery series by Cynthia DeFelice, about a girl who attracts phantoms, and The Mediator 6: Twilight by Meg Cabot (a.k.a. “Jenny Carroll”) continued the series about a girl who had the ability to talk with the dead.

  A boy’s Christmas break took an unexpected turn in Anna Dale’s Whispering to Witches, while Summer and Fall were the first and second volumes, respectively, in the Witch Season quartet by Jeff Mariotte. The T*witches series by H.B. Gilmour and Randi Reisfeld continued with #10: Destiny’s Twins.

  From Scholastic’s “Point Horror” series, Samantha Lee’s Demon II continued the story of the Dreamcatcher that granted wishes – but at a price. Linda Cargill’s The Dark 2 appeared from the same imprint.

  E. Nesbit’s 1902 novel Five Children and It was repackaged with a charm necklace.

  Double-Dare to Be Scared: Another Thirteen Chilling Tales was published by Cricket books and was a follow-up to author Robert D. San Souci’s acclaimed collection Dare to be Scared. Featuring young adult stories with a decidely nasty twist, the book was again elegantly illustrated by David Ouimet.

  Published by Allen & Unwin Australia, the award-winning Black Juice contained ten original young adult stories by Margo Lanagan and was a companion volume to the author’s earlier collection White Time.

  The Ribbajac
k and Other Curious Yarns collected six young adult horror stories by Brian Jacques.

  Edited by Deborah Noyes, Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales included stories by Neil Gaiman, Joan Aiken and Garth Nix, illustrated by Gary Kelley.

  Nightshape collected eight reprint horror stories by David Morrell with an Introduction by the author.

  Fears Unnamed was a collection of four novellas by Tim Lebbon that comprised the modern classic “White”, “The Unfortunate”, “Naming of Parts” and “Remnants”, a new story involving the search for a subterranean City of the Dead.

  Nightworlds collected twenty-two stories by William F. Nolan with notes by the author. Issued under White Wolf’s Two Wolf Press imprint, Nancy A. Collins’ Dead Man’s Hand: Five Tales of the Weird West included an original vampire novella, “Hell Come Sundown”, and a Foreword by Joe R. Lansdale (his ownself).

  John Connolly’s Nocturnes was a collection of fifteen short stories, framed by the novellas “The Reflecting Eye” (featuring the author’s recurring private detective character Charlie Parker) and “The Cancer Cowboy Rides Again”. Some of the stories were reworked from two series broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and publisher Hodder & Stoughton issued an advance sampler containing three of the stories from the collection.

  Blackbird House collected twelve linked stories about the eponymous haunted edifice by Alice Hoffman.

  A Walk on the Darkside: Visions of Horror was the third volume in editor John Pelan’s series of paperback anthologies from Roc. It contained twenty-one original stories by Don Tumasonis, Mark Samuels, Paul Finch, d.g.k. goldberg, Michael Shea, Jeffrey Thomas, Brian Keene, Tom Piccirilli, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Brian Hodge, Brian A. Hopkins, Steve Rasnic Tem and others, including the editor.

  Strange Bedfellows was the twelfth volume in “The Hot Blood Series” edited by Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett. It contained nineteen explicit erotic horror stories by Greg Kihn, Del Howison, Michael Laimo, Christa Faust, Alan Ormsby, Marv Wofman, Michael Garrett, Graham Masterton and others. Both editors featured their own work.

  Edited by Jeanne Cavelos and obviously intended to cash-in on the hoped-for success of the Universal film release, The Many Faces of Van Helsing collected twenty-one original stories about the legendary vampire-hunter by Thomas Tessier, Kathe Koja, Tanith Lee, Thomas F. Monteleone, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Brian Hodge and others.

  Great Ghost Stories edited by the late R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Stephen Jones showcased twenty-five stories from the classic Fontana paperback series of the 1970s and 1980s. With a Foreword by Jones and an Introduction by Chetwynd-Hayes, the book included stories by Ambrose Bierce, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, F. Marion Crawford, E. Nesbit, Sydney J. Bounds, Stephen King, Steve Rasnic Tem, Ramsey Campbell, Tina Rath, Garry Kilworth, Guy De Maupassant, Brian Lumley, Tony Richards and Chetwynd-Hayes himself and quickly went into a second trade paperback printing from Carroll & Graf. Cemetery Dance also issued a hardcover edition with a Les Edwards cover and illustrated endpapers by Caniglia.

  Also edited by Stephen Jones, and a follow-up-of-sorts to a 1991 volume, The Mammoth Book of New Terror contained twenty-six stories (four original) by Brian Lumley, Charles L. Grant, Christopher Fowler, Dennis Etchison, F. Paul Wilson, Basil Copper, Ramsey Campbell, Terry Lamsley, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Karl Edward Wagner, Neil Gaiman, Michael Marshall Smith, Glen Hirshberg, Kim Newman, David Case and many others. A “revamped” edition of Jones’ 1992 anthology The Mammoth Book of Vampires dropped six stories and a poem and replaced them with thirteen new stories (three original). Both Mammoth books were illustrated by Randy Broecker.

  Meanwhile, the 1993 anthology H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of Horror edited by Jones and Dave Carson was reprinted as The World’s Greatest Horror Stories without the permission or knowledge of the editors.

  Edited by A1 Sarrantonio, Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy featured twenty-nine stories, several of which could be considered horror.

  Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis co-edited Haunted Holidays, containing thirteen non-Halloween holiday stories by Nancy Holder, Peter Crowther, Esther Friesner and others.

  Edited by Brandon Massey, Dark Dreams contained twenty stories of horror, suspense and science fiction by black authors.

  McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, edited by Michael Chabon, included fifteen new stories in various genres by Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Roddy Doyle, China Miéville, Poppy Z. Brite, Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates and others. The cover reprinted a classic pulp painting by Lawrence Sterne Stevens.

  Co-edited by F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan for Tor Books, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic was a literary compilation of twenty-five fantasy and horror stories (eleven reprints) set in the American South. Authors included Richard Butner, James Sallis, Gene Wolfe, Scott Edelman, Jack McDevitt, Kelly Link, Don Webb, Michael Bishop, Michael Swanwick, Fred Chappell, Ian McDowell, John Kessel and others, including both editors.

  Strokes of Midnight contained four supernatural romance novellas by Amanda Ashley, L.A. Banks, Lori Handeland and Sherrilyn Kenyon, while editor Greg Herren’s Shadows of the Night from The Haworth Press was aptly subtitled Queer Tales of the Uncanny and Unusual and included fifteen nominally gay horror stories.

  With The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection, the husband and wife team of Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant took over from Terry Windling to share the editing chores with the irrepressible Ellen Datlow. The book contained thirty-nine stories, five poems, and various surveys by the editors plus packager James Frenkel, Edward Bryant, Charles Vess, Charles de Lint and Joan D. Vinge.

  Edited with an extensive introductory essay by Stephen Jones and a necrology by Jones and Kim Newman, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Fifteen included twenty-five stories and novellas. The two annual “Best of” anthologies overlapped with five stories, by Marc Laidlaw, Dale Bailey, Scott Emerson Bull, Mike O’Driscoll and Glen Hirshberg.

  From Brian A. Hopkins’ Lone Wolf Publications, Carnival was an electronic anthology edited by Jean Rabe that featured original stories by Robert E. Vardeman, Gene DeWeese, James S. Dorr, John Urbancik and others, along with art by M.W. Anderson and music by John Everson.

  Lone Wolf subsequently announced that it was ceasing operations immediately with all future titles cancelled. “I think it’s been obvious for quite some time now that my heart was no longer in it,” Hopkins was quoted as saying. Founded in 1999, sales figures did not justify his continued investment in Lone Wolf. “Clearly, the genre has little interest in electronic formats,” he observed.

  Written five years earlier but unable to find a publisher, Douglas Clegg offered his first vampire novel, Priest of Blood, only to those who ordered it through an online horror bookstore. It came with the somewhat optimistic restriction that single customers could order no more than five copies each of the $45.00 self-produced hardcover.

  Christopher Golden and actress Amber Benson (Buffy) teamed up again for Ghosts of Albion: The Adventures of Tamara Swift for BBC Online in November, featuring the talents of Anthony Daniels and Emma Sams, amongst others.

  Lindisfarne Press released The Mlandoth Myth Cycle and Others: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Walter C. DeBill, Jr. edited by Kevin L. O’Brien as an e-book.

  Editor Ellen Datlow’s online SciFiction site featured new stories by Andy Duncan, Marc Laidlaw, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Susan Pal-wick, Howard Waldrop (“The Wolf-man of Alcatraz”) and Kim Newman, along with welcome reprints from Tom Reamy, Fredric Brown, Manly Wade Wellman, Theodore Sturgeon, Charles L. Grant and Eric Frank Russell.

  The old Terror Tales online site, which was taken over by Hertzan Chimera, was renamed Horror Quarterly.

  Australia’s Shadowed Realms online magazine announced that it had narrowed its focus to “flash” stories only (up to 1,000 words). The first issue featured fiction from Stephen Dedman, Stephanie Gunn, Kurt Newton and others.

  Hellnotes edited by Judi Rohrig, The HWA’s Internet Maile
r edited by Mary SanGiovanni, The British Fantasy Society Newsfeed edited by Gary Couzens, and DarkEcho edited by Paula Guran all regularly kept readers up-to-date electronically with news, reviews and signing information.

  Print-on-demand Prime Books was acquired by Wildside Press as a separate imprint run by Sean Wallace.

  By Reason of Darkness was a collection of twenty-three stories (twelve original) by William P. Simmons from Prime/House of Dominion. It featured an Introduction by Gary Braunbeck and an Afterword by T.M. Wright.

  From Wildside Press, Satan’s Daughter and Other Tales from the Pulps was a collection of thirteen stories by veteran author E. Hoffman Price, while The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories contained seven tales by Clark Ashton Smith. Both PoD books had introductions by Darrell Schweitzer.

  Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark collected letters, essays, stories and a poem illustrating HPL’s influence on Leiber’s writing. Ben J.S. Szumskyj supplied an Introduction and the Afterword was by S.T. Joshi.

  Paul G. Tremblay’s Compositions for the Young and Old collected twenty stories (seven original).

  On a lighter note from Wildside, That Darn Squid God by Nick Pollotta and “James Clay” (Phil Foglio) was a Victorian-set parody of Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and others. Pollotta’s series of Bureau 13 books, based on the roleplaying game, were also reissued by the publisher.

  Richard A. Lupoff’s 1978 Oriental novel of the supernatural, Sword of the Demon, was reissued by Wildside’s Cosmos Books imprint in an attractive print-on-demand edition. Cosmos also continued to put out new issues of Philip Harbottle’s Fantasy Adventures, a tribute to the British pulp magazines of the past, with original stories from such old hands as Sydney J. Bounds, E.C. Tubb, Brian Ball, John Glasby, Philip E. High, John Russell Fearn and others.