Christopher Fowler: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

Terminal Fright Press published the aptly-titled Terminal Frights edited by Ken Abner, which featured twenty-two stories originally scheduled for the eponymous magazine or specially commissioned for the anthology from such writers as Peter Crowther, Yvonne Navarro, J. N. Williamson, Tom Piccirilli and other regulars of the small press field. The same publisher also issued David Niall Wilson’s novel This is My Blood, which combined vampires with the Bible’s New Testament as an undead Mary Magdalene tempted Jesus Christ.

From Meisha Merlin Publishing, BloodWalk was an omnibus of Lee Killough’s vampire detective novels, Blood Hunt (1987) and Bloodlinks (1988), with a new foreword by the author.

Limited to 500–600 copies each, the latest releases from Canada’s busy Ash-Tree Press included Binscombe Tales: Sinister Saxon Stories by John Whitbourn, which collected fifteen linked stories (seven original) set in the southern England village where bizarre things always seemed to happen, and The Night Comes On, which included sixteen stories in the tradition of M. R. James by Steve Duffy. The Fellow Travellers & Other Ghost Stories by Sheila Hodgson contained twelve stories, several based on plot ideas by M. R. James and eight originally written as radio plays.

Edited and introduced by Hugh Lamb, Out of the Dark: Volume One: Origins by Robert W. Chambers was the first of two volumes and collected nine stories written prior to 1900, while The Black Reaper by Bernard Capes was a revised and expanded version of Lamb’s 1989 Equation edition, collecting twenty-three stories with a revised introduction by the editor and a foreword by Ian Burns. Nightmare Jack and Other Stories by John Metcalfe collected seventeen stories and an afterword by Alexis Lykiard, and Nights of the Round Table by Margery Lawrence was a reprint collection of twelve stories from the 1920s. Both volumes were edited with an introduction by Richard Dalby.

The Clock Strikes Twelve and Other Stories by H. R. Wakefield contained all eighteen stories from earlier editions plus a further three uncollected tales, along with a new introduction by Barbara Roden. Jessica Amanda Salmonson edited both Twilight and Other Supernatural Romances, the first of two collections by Marjorie Bowen, containing seventeen stories, and Lady Ferry and Other Uncanny People which included eleven stories by Sarah Orne Jewett and a preface by Joanna Russ. The latter volume was the first in Ash-Tree’s “Grim Maids” series, reprinting the supernatural fiction of unjustly neglected women writers.

Collected Spook Stories: The Terror by Night was the first in a series of five volumes collecting all E. F. Benson’s strange and supernatural tales. Edited and introduced by Jack Adrian, it contained fifteen stories. Adrian was also the editor of Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer by Alice and Claude Askew, a collection of eight stories which was the first volume in Ash-Tree Press’ Occult Detectives library, and The Ash-Tree Press Annual Macabre 1998, an anthology of six ghostly stories by authors not usually associated with the genre. These included W. Somerset Maugham, Arthur Ransome, Ford Madox Ford, E. C. Bentley, Hilaire Belloc and John Buchan.

Sarob Press in Wales launched a series of limited, numbered hardcovers with yet another edition of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, limited to 200 copies. It was followed by a 350-copy numbered edition of Vengeful Ghosts collecting eight stories (two original) by C. E. Ward, and Skeletons in the Closet by William I. I. Read collected nine stories (three reprints) involving Dennistoun, the World’s Most Haunted Man.

Tartarus Press published a new edition of the 1907 novel The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen, with a new introduction by Mark Valentine, a 1954 introduction by Lord Dunsany and a previously unpublished introduction by the author. Featuring tipped-in illustrations by Sidney Sime, this was limited to 350 copies. Also from Tartarus, The Collected Strange Papers of Christopher Blayre reprinted author Blayre’s three short story collections in a single volume.

The Child of the Soul and Other Tales contained four unpublished stories plus a letter by Count Stenbock, limited to 500 numbered copies from Durto Press. Atlas Press published Jean Ray’s Malpertius in an English translation by Iain White.

Although he was better known as a writer of whimsical fantasy fiction, The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was a genuinely creepy short novel based on a 600-page draft and a dream-inspired novella by the late Avram Davidson, completed by his ex-wife and editor Grania Davis. It came with brief but fascinating introductions by Peter S. Beagle and Michael Swanwick, and was published by San Francisco’s Tachyon Publications in a softcover edition, a 100-copy signed and numbered hardcover, and a boxed and lettered edition of twenty-six copies.

Charlie’s Bones by L. L. Thrasher was the first novel in a proposed series featuring an amateur detective and her ghostly partner, from Colorado’s Write Way Publishing.

After having his overdraft facility withdrawn by a new bank manager in October, British small press publisher Anthony Barker was forced to discontinue all his future publishing plans under the Tanjen imprint. Existing contracts with authors were cancelled and submissions were no longer invited as the remaining stock was sold off.

However, before the axe fell, Tanjen managed to publish Scaremongers 2: Redbrick Eden edited by Steve Saville. An anthology of twenty new and reprint (despite what it said on the copyright page) stories, it included such well-known names as Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Stephen Laws, Kim Newman, Peter Crowther, Simon Clark, Nicholas Royle, Mark Morris and Joel Lane, amongst others. All royalties were donated to a charity for the homeless. The other final Tanjen title was Mesmer, a first novel by Tim Lebbon, in which a man who saw his murdered ex-girlfriend found himself in a world where the dead could live again.

From Britain’s RazorBlade Press, Tim Lebbon’s Faith in the Flesh: The First Law/From Bad Flesh collected two original novellas along with an introduction by Peter Crowther, while The Dreaming Pool by Gary Greenwood contained an introduction by Simon Clark.

The first three titles from new publisher The Designlmage Group were The Darkest Thirst, a trade paperback vampire anthology containing “Sixteen Provocative Tales of the Undead” by such authors as Robert Devereaux and Edo van Belkom; the vampire novel Night Prayers by P. D. Cacek, and Carmilla The Return, Kyle Marffin’s contemporary retelling of J. Sheridan LeFanu’s classic novella, set in Chicago. These were followed by another vampire anthology, The Kiss of Death, containing sixteen stories (three reprint) by Don D’Ammassa and others.

Silver Salamander Press published a collection of thirteen stories (five original) by Lucy Taylor entitled Painted in Blood. From the same imprint, Falling Idols by Brian Hodge was a trade paperback collection of seven stories (two original), available in a signed edition of 500 copies, along with a 300-copy hardcover edition and a 50-copy leatherbound version.

The first publication from Britain’s The Alchemy Press was The Paladin Mandates by Mike Chinn, which collected six stories (three original) about eponymous occult adventurer Damian Paladin, expertly illustrated by Bob Covington. Published as a slim hardcover by Airgedlamh Publications and The Alchemy Press, Shadows of Light and Dark collected thirty-two poems (twenty-one original) by Jo Fletcher in an edition of 250 numbered copies signed by the writer, artist Les Edwards, photographer Seamus A. Ryan, designer Michael Marshall Smith, and Neil Gaiman, who contributed the introduction.