Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

Letting Out the Demons and Other Poems by Terrie Leigh Relf (Elektrik Milk Bath Press) has forty poems, most brief, some published for the first time.

Death Poems by Thomas Ligotti (Bad Moon Books) is the first collection of poetry by the author of much strange, dark prose. Nine of the almost fifty poems have never before been published.

The First Bite of the Apple by Jennifer Crow (Elektrik Milk Bath Press) is an excellent collection of dark fantasy/ horror poetry. Many of the poems use fairy-tale motifs. Among the more than fifty poems are several new ones.

Scenes Along the Zombie Highway by G. O. Clark (Dark Regions Press) is an entertaining collection of more than forty pieces of zombie poetry, most appearing for the first time.

Dark Roads: Selected Long Poems 1971–2012 by Bruce Boston (Dark Renaissance Books) is a substantial overview of this popular dark poet’s work. It features illustrations by M. Wayne Miller.

Four Elements by Charlee Jacob, Marge Simon, Rain Graves, and Linda Addison is an entertaining volume of all new poetry and prose with each writer taking a season and running with it.

Demonstra by Bryan Thao Worra (Innsmouth Free Press) collects about seventy poems written over twenty years by this award-winning Laotian-American poet. Most are new.

The 2013 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Poetry of 2012 , selected by the Science Fiction Poetry Association and edited by John C. Mannone (Science Fiction Poetry Association/Hadrosaur Productions), is used by members to vote for the best short poem and the best long poem of the year.

Its sister publication Dwarf Stars 2013 , edited by Stephen M. Wilson and Linda D. Addison (Science Fiction Poetry Association), features the best very short speculative poems published in 2012 and is used by members to vote for the best poem of the year ten lines or fewer.

Star Kites: Poems & Versions by Mark Valentine (Tartarus Press) is the author’s first book of poems, many drawing on the same inspirations of his short stories.

Dangerous Dreams by Marge Simon and Sandy DeLuca (Elektrik Milk Bath Press) is a collaboration of erotic dark poetry and art created by both women.

Telling Tales of Terror: Essays on Writing Horror and Dark Fiction , edited by Kim Richards (Damnation Books), presents advice by Lisa Morton, Sephera Giron, and other practitioners of the craft.

Devil’s Advocates is a series of single-film books published by Auteur Press (an imprint of Columbia University Press) and edited by John Atkinson. Begun in 2011, the 2013 titles are: Witchfinder General by Ian Cooper, The Descent by James Marriott, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by James Rose, and The Silence of the Lambs by Barry Forshaw.

New Critical Essays on H. P. Lovecraft edited by David Simmons (Palgrave Macmillan) contains twelve entries about Lovecraft and his work.

The Women of Hammer Horror by Robert Michael “Bobb” Cotter (McFarland) is a reference book featuring every known actress who worked with the studio.

Nolan on Bradbury , edited by S. T. Joshi (Hippocampus Press), provides an entertaining personal perspective on the late Ray Bradbury by his friend of sixty years, William F. Nolan. Included are twenty articles published between 1952 and 2013, eight stories by Nolan that were influenced by Bradbury, and several tributes to Bradbury.

H. P. Lovecraft in the Merrimack Valley by David Goudsward (Hippocampus Press) traces Lovecraft’s visits to coastal Massachusetts and New Hampshire from the 1920s on, analyzing the impact of those visits on his fiction. H. P. Lovecraft: Art, Artifact, and Reality by Steve J. Mariconda (Hippocampus Press) collects almost thirty years of articles and criticism about Lovecraft’s prose style, the literary sources of some of his work and how the Cthulhu Mythos developed as Lovecraft responded to the reactions of his readers and other writers to the tales as they were published.

Fear and Learning: Essays on the Pedagogy of Horror , edited by Aalya Ahmad and Sean Moreland (McFarland), collects new essays about the teaching of horror. These can be read and enjoyed by non-academics.

The Modern Literary Werewolf: A Critical Study of the Mutable Motif by Brent A. Stypczynski (McFarland) considers the treatment of werewolves in fiction by Jack Williamson, J. K. Rowling, Charlaine Harris, Charles deLint, and other writers.

Fractured Spirits: Hauntings at the Peoria State Hospital by Sylvia Shults (Dark Continents Publishing) is a historical overview of one of the premiere mental health facilities of the first half of the twentieth century. It was considered a model for the care of the mentally ill. This is an entertaining combination of nonfiction and fiction-history and ghostly reports.

Who Was Dracula?: Bram Stoker’s Trail of Blood by Jim Steinmeyer (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin) explores Bram Stoker’s life for clues to the inspiration for one of the greatest fictional characters, going beyond the usual.

The Horror Show Guide: The Ultimate Frightfest of Movies by Mike Mayo (Visible Ink) features mini-reviews of over one thousand horror movies. There’s also an appendix of credits for each movie.

There are now three UK publishers regularly bringing out single author chapbook. This Is Horror published an excellent novelette by Pat Cadigan titled Chalk about the relationship between two girls who chafe against the restrictions of their parents. Also, Joseph D’Lacey’s Roadkill is a sf/ horror story taking place over a period of one hundred seconds as a man races a machine that’s fused with his body.

Nicholas Royle’s Nightjar Press continues its run of high quality horror with Elizabeth Stott’s creepy tale of a man, a woman, and a manikin in Touch Me with Your Cold, Hard Fingers; a weird, mysterious story called Getting Out There by M. John Harrison; and The Jungle , a weird tale by Conrad Williams.

Spectral Press’s Simon Marshall-Jones presented four chapbooks in 2013: Terry Grimwood’s Soul Masque , an effective dark fantasy about the war between Heaven and Hell and the humans caught up in the battle; Whitstable , a marvelous novella by Stephen Volk using the late Peter Cushing who, while in mourning for his beloved wife, attempts to help a young boy in need of a hero. A moving and apt homage to a movie legend, Creakers by Paul Kane is a haunting tale about a man who returns to his childhood home upon his mother’s death in order to prepare it for sale; Still Life by Tim Lebbon is a chilling sf/horror story about mysterious alien invaders who keep villages under their sway by giving a few turncoats special powers.

Milton’s Children by Jason V. Brock (Bad Moon Books) is an homage to King Kong and other lost world fictions, in which a crew of explorer-scientists end up on a mysterious island on which everything living is out to kill them.

Waiting for Mister Cool by Gerard Houarner (Crossroads Press) features the author’s ongoing character, Max, an assassin with an internal demon that when let loose destroys anyone around in graphically violent ways. In this novella, Max is sent by the US government to break up a cult.

The Rolling Darkness Revue 2013: The Imposter’s Monocle by Peter Atkins and Glen Hirshberg (Earthling Publications) is the chapbook created for the two authors’ annual autumn reading series. This year there is a playlet and three excellent stories by the authors. The wonderful cover art and design is by Deena Warner.