Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

Lansdale was also co-editor of The Urban Fantasy Anthology with Peter S. Beagle. It contained twenty reprint stories broken down into “Mythic Fiction”, “Paranormal Romance” and “Noir Fantasy” by, amongst others, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Kelley Armstrong, Suzy McKee Charnas, Thomas M. Disch, Holly Black, Tim Powers and the two editors. The book also included new Introductions by Beagle, Lansdale, de Lint and Paula Guran.

Also from Tachyon, Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka edited with an Introduction by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly contained seventeen reprint stories by Kafka, J. G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, Carol Emshwiller, Damon Knight, Rudy Rucker and others, along with a comic strip illustrated by Robert Crumb.

From Centipede Press, Deadfall Hotel was a new novel by Steve Rasnic Tem about a haunted hotel, illustrated by John Kenn Martensen. Limited to 300 signed copies, the book also included an Afterword by the author and a new short story.

Published as part of the imprint’s oversized “Masters of the Weird Tale” series, Old Time Weird Tales & Quality Horror Stories collected thirty-eight stories and novellas by Karl Edward Wagner. Edited with an Introduction by Stephen Jones, the massive tome also included reprint pieces by Peter Straub, David Drake and the late author, along with a new Afterword by Laird Barron. The book was illustrated in colour by J. K. Potter and also featured many rare photographs.

In the same series, Henry Kuttner collected twenty-nine horror and supernatural tales by the pulp author with an Introduction by editors Stefan Dziemianowicz and Robert Morrish. Once again, J. K. Potter supplied the frontispiece and endpapers artwork. Both books were limited to 200 signed copies ($295.00 apiece).

Haffner Press’ Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner Volume One collected author’s first forty stories, most of them taken from the pages of Weird Tales and such “shudder pulps” as Thrilling Mystery and Spicy Mystery . Edited by Stephen Haffner, the hefty hardcover included a Preface by Richard Matheson and an Introduction by Gary G. Roberts Ph.D.

The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares from Mysterious Press contained seven macabre tales by Joyce Carol Oates, mostly reprinted from non-genre sources.

Edited by Bill Breedlove and John Everson, Swallowed by the Cracks from Dark Arts Books featured sixteen original and reprint stories about “the spaces between” by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne and Michael Marshall Smith.

The indefatigable Joe Morey continued to produce a range of attractive trade paperback under his Dark Regions Press imprint. William Ollie’s Fifteen Minutes concerned a centuries-old ring that had the power to transform its wearer, while Pitch from the same author was a Halloween novel set in the 1960s.

Something deadly came out of the ocean near a quaint fishing village in Shaun Jeffrey’s Fangtooth .

Nightingale Songs was a third collection from Canadian writer Simon Strantzas, containing twelve stories (four original) along with an Introduction by John Langan, while The Gaki and Other Hungry Spirits collected seventeen stories (six original) by Stephen Mark Rainey.

A huge seismic disturbance in North Korea had global consequences for a biomedical engineer in Michael McBride’s novella Blindspot , and a woman continued to suffer from a childhood trauma in Paul Melniczek’s novella The Watching .

The Engines of Sacrifice contained four new Lovecraftian novellas by James Chambers, and W. H. Pugmire’s Gathered Dust and Others collected eighteen Lovecraft-inspired stories (four original) and an Introduction by editor Jeffrey Thomas.

Beautiful Hell was another entry in Thomas’ own demonic “Hades” series, reprinted from a 2007 volume. A twenty-six copy leatherbound and slipcased edition quickly sold out.

The Invasion and The Valley formed a “Dark Regions Double” by William Meikle, and the publisher also issued the authorised pastiche Sherlock Holmes: Revenant by the same author in a special signed and numbered trade paperback edition, limited to just 125 copies.

From companion imprint Ghost House, Meikle’s Carnacki: Heaven and Hell was a collection of ten original stories based on the character originally created by an uncredited William Hope Hodgson, nicely illustrated by Wayne Miller.

Most Dark Regions/Ghost House titles were available in various print editions as well as ebook format.

Edited by Jason V. Brock and William F. Nolan, The Devil’s Coattails: More Dispatches from the Dark Frontier was a followup to the co-editors’ previous anthology, The Bleeding Edge , also from Cycatrix Press. The heavily-illustrated volume contained new fiction, poetry and a even a teleplay by Ramsey Campbell, the late Dan O’Bannon, John Shirley, Melanie Tem, the late Norman Corwin, Steve Rasnic Tem, Richard Christian Matheson, Earl Hammer Jr., Nancy Kilpatrick, Marc Scott Zicree, Gary A. Braunbeck and others, including both editors. Limited to 500 trade hardcovers, there was also a fifty-two copy signed and lettered edition for $194.95.

Jeffrey Thomas’ Blood Society from Necro Publications was about an immortal criminal.

For Aeon Press Books, John Kenny edited Box of Delights , and anthology of sixteen original stories that included Steve Rasnic Tem, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Don D’Ammassa.

Edited by Adam Bradley for Morpheus Tales, 13 Tales of Dark Fiction included contributions from, amongst others, Eric S. Brown, Joseph D’Lacey, Gary Fry, Andrew Hook, Shaun Jeffrey and Gary McMahon.

The ubiquitous McMahon also had a new collection of stories out from Gary Fry’s Gray Friar Press, limited to 100 signed hardcover copies. I Know Where You Live: Tales of Modern Unease contained sixteen stories (two reprints) along with a Foreword and story notes by the author.

A group of TV ghost-hunters investigated an abandoned summer house in David L. Golemon’s The Supernaturals from Seven Realms Publishing.

Vampires: The Recent Undead from Prime Books was an anthology edited with an Introduction by Paula Guran. It collected twenty-five stories from the first decade of the twenty-first century by Charlaine Harris, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith and others.

For the same imprint, Guran also edited Halloween , which contained thirty stories and three poems by Peter Straub, Ray Bradbury, Esther M. Friesner and others, and New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird , which featured twenty-seven stories by, amongst others, Neil Gaiman, Michael Marshall Smith and Caitlín R. Kiernan.

Edited by John Langan and Paul Tremblay, Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters contained twenty-six stories by Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale, Kelly Link and others.

The cleverly-titled Bewere the Night , edited by Ekaterina Sedia for Prime, contained twenty-nine stories about shape-shifters (seventeen original).

Limited to just 100 copies from Moshassuck Press, Lovecraft’s Pillow and Other Strange Stories collected seventeen tales (seven original) by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr., most of then taken from amateur press association publications.

From gaming-related imprint Chaosium, Cthulhu’s Dark Cults edited by David Conyers contained ten stories (one reprint) inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos.

Lois Gresh’s collection Eldritch Evolutions from the same publisher contained twenty-six Lovecraftian stories (nine original) with an Introduction by Robert Weinberg.