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

The Undying Thing and Others from Hippocampus Press collected twenty-six stories by Barry Pain, with an Introduction by Joshi.

The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales from Chômu Press reprinted Mark Samuels’ 2009 collection with four additional stories (one original). From the same publisher, Daniel Mills’ Revenants was a historical novel about a cursed New England village, while the undead hero of Michael Cisco’s The Great Lover resisted the white-noise forces of Vampirism.

Originally published as an e-book, Spore by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow was yet another zombie novel, available as a print-on-demand title from Dorchester.

A girl was mysteriously drawn to her grandmother’s unusual house in Tanith Lee’s Greyglass , from Immanion Press, and an ancient evil returned to a Massachusetts town in Brendan P. Myers’ Applewood , available from By Light Unseen Media.

From LCR Books, The Fourth Fog: A Horror Novel for the Ages by Chris Daniels was about the breakdown of society and killer flies.

Frankenstein in London was the third in Brian Stableford’s “The Empire of the Necromancers” series from PoD publisher Black Coat Press.

For the same imprint, Stableford also translated and supplied the Introductions for The Vampire Lord Ruthwen ( Lord Ruthwen, ou les Vampires ), an 1820 sequel to Polidori’s The Vampyre by French writer Cyprien Bénard, and the 1824 novel The Virgin Vampire ( La Vampire, ou la vierge de Hongrie ) by Etienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langdon.

Christopher Fulbright’s novella The Bone Tree was set in a Civil War graveyard and was available from PoD imprint Bad Moon Books. From the same publisher, Bill Gauthier’s Alice on the Shelf was a twisted novella inspired by the classic children’s book, while The Templar contained three horror novels by Joseph Nassise, two original.

Terror Tales of the Lake District from Gray Friar Press was an original anthology of thirteen stories (two reprints and another revised) inspired by the old Fontana Books series of the 1970s. The solid line-up of contributors included Adam L. G. Nevill, Simon Clark, Simon Bestwick, Peter Crowther, Ramsey Campbell, Gary McMahon, Reggie Oliver and editor Paul Finch, who also interlaced the fiction with accounts of myths and legends of the area.

As usual selected by Charles Black for Mortbury Press, The Eighth Black Book of Horror featured a strong line-up of names, with thirteen original stories by Reggie Oliver, David A. Riley, Gary Fry, Mark Samuels, Paul Finch, John Llewellyn Probert and Thana Niveau, amongst others.

Edited by website founder Jeani Rector for Imajiin Books, What Fears Become: An Anthology from the Horror Zine contained thirty-three stories (including two by the editor, plus nine reprints), along with poetry and artwork. Contributors included Bentley Little, Graham Masterton, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Elizabeth Massie, Melanie Tem, Scott Nicholson, Piers Anthony, Richard Hill and Conrad Williams. Simon Clark supplied the Foreword.

Published by Rainstorm Press, Mutation Nation: Tales of Genetic Mishaps, Monsters and Madness was edited by Kelly Dunn and included eleven original stories by Roberta Lannes, Maria Alexander, Barbie Wilde, Stephen Woodworth, Wendy Rathbone and others.

Editor Peter Mark May dedicated Alt-Dead: The Alternative Dead Anthology to “the independent writers and authors in the horror genre that don’t always get the breaks and the big deals”. Available on-demand from Hersham Horror Books, it contained sixteen original stories by Stephen Bacon, Stuart Young, Gary McMahon, Jan Edwards, Stuart Hughes, Johnny Mains and others, including a collaboration between Steven Savile and Steve Lockley.

Karen A. Romanko edited and introduced Jack-o’-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy for PoD imprint Raven Electrick Ink. The trade paperback featured twenty-six stories and poems by Bruce Boston, Geoffrey A. Landis, James S. Dorr, Marge Simon and others, including the editor.

James Ward Kirk edited Indiana Horror Anthology 2011 , which included poetry, flash fiction and short stories by Matt Cowan, James S. Dorr, Lee Forsythe and other writers living in the south-western state.

Published by Stumar Press, Derby Scribes 2011 was an anthology of eleven stories (one reprint), written by members of the eponymous writing group and edited by Stuart Hughes. Contributors included Simon Clark, Alison J. Hill, Conrad Williams and the editor himself, while group founder Alex Davis supplied the Introduction.

Edited by Asa Merritt for Phoenix Pick/Arc Manor Publishers, more than half of the print-on-demand First Blood: Birth of the Vampire was taken up with a moderately annotated reprinting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula . The rest of the book included five obscure precedents to Stoker’s novel, plus “The Vampyre: A Tale” by John William Polidori and “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, along with selected chapters from John William Rymer’s Varney the Vampire: Or, the Feast of Blood .

Edited by publisher Russell B. Farr for Ticonderoga Publications, Dead Red Heart: Australian Vampire Stories was a bumper anthology of thirty-three stories about different kinds of vampires. From the same imprint, editor Liz Grzyb’s More Scary Kisses contained seventeen paranormal romance stories.

Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L. Hannett was a debut collection of twelve dark fantasy stories (one reprint), with an Introduction by Ann VanderMeer and an Afterword by the author.

Also published by Ticonderoga, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 edited by Grzyb and Talie Helene contained thirty-two stories and a poem.

Dead But Dreaming 2 was an on-demand Cthulhu anthology from Miskatonic River Press. Edited with a Foreword by Kevin Ross, it featured twenty-two original stories by William Meikle, Don Webb, Darrell Schweitzer, W. H. Pugmire, Rick Hautala, Donald R. Burleson, Cody Goodfellow and Will Murray, amongst others.

After a hiatus of fifteen years, editor Doug Ellis finally published the fourteenth issue of Pulp Vault through Tattered Pages Press/Black Dog Books as a substantial softcover volume. Boasting a previously unpublished cover painting by Virgil Finlay, it featured many fascinating articles and classic pulp fiction by, amongst others, Bob Weinberg, Will Murray, D. H. Olsen, Donald Wandrei, Hugh B. Cave, Otto Binder, Doug Klauba, Tom Roberts and Mike Ashley.

Only nine months after the launch of the Kindle, Amazon.co.uk announced that e-books were now outstripping the sale of hardcover books by two-to-one on its site in the UK. However, the online retailer also added that hardback sales were continuing to grow. In America, e-books reportedly sold more than all the paperback and hardcover copies put together.

Figures released by the Association of American Publishers in June confirmed that revenues for print books had decreased dramatically, while the income from e-books jumped 161 per cent from $30 million to $181.3 million in just one year.

In the UK, e-books accounted for up to 10 per cent of total book sales after a rise of 600 per cent in the first half of the year, resulting in a total revenue of £25 million.

As a result of these dramatic increases, it was also revealed that e-book piracy had become a huge problem, with many hundreds of recorded books being offered illegally for free downloads.

Penguin announced in November that it would withhold editions of its e-books from British and American libraries amid “concerns about security”. The publisher said that it was also considering withdrawing its electronic books from Amazon’s lending service for the Kindle e-reader. Penguin joined Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group, who already had a similar ban in place, while HarperCollins restricted the number of times a library book could be loaned out digitally.