Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 13

Edo van Belkom’s Teeth from Meisha Merlin was an erotic police procedural about vagina dentata, introduced by Richard Laymon. From the same publisher, Lee Killough’s Blood Games was the third in the series featuring vampire detective Garreth Mikaelian.

David Nordhaus’s online imprint DarkTales launched the collections Dial Your Dreams & Other Nightmares by Robert Weinberg, Cold Comfort by Nancy Kilpatrick and the erotic Six-Inch Spikes by Edo van Belkom at the Seattle World Horror Convention. Later in the year, the publisher released the novels Soul Temple by Steven Lee Climer, A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder by James Viscosi, and the second volume in the Asylum anthology series, The Violent Ward, edited by Victor Heck and featuring stories by D. F. Lewis, James Dorr, Gerard Houarner and others.

Harlan was a new novel by David Whitman, while The Charm was the first book in the reissued ‘Shaman Cycle’ series of Southwestern supernatural thrillers by Adam Niswander. It was followed by The Serpent Slayers and The Hound Hunters, with more volumes in the projected thirteen-volume series due from DarkTales.

Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle teamed up to battle dark magic in Harry R. Squires’s print-on-demand novel What Rough Beast.

Published in a signed and numbered 500-copy hardcover by Oregon’s IFD Publishing, Escaping Purgatory: Fables in Words and Pictures by Gary A. Braunbeck and Alan M. Clark contained seven thematically linked stories (five original) and a foreword by Peter Crowther, illustrated throughout by Clark. From the same imprint, Flaming Arrows was a collection of short-short stories by Bruce Holland Rogers, published in both trade paperback and hardcover, with an introduction by Kate Wilhelm. Set in a ridiculously huge typeface, the twenty-seven tales (many of them reprints) were illustrated by Jill Bauman and publisher Clark.

Edited by Elizabeth Engstrom, Imagination Fully Dilated Volume 2 contained twenty-nine stories by such authors as Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite and Charles de Lint, based around Alan M. Clark’s artwork. With an introduction by Paula Guran, the hardcover was limited to 600 signed copies from IFD.

Independent Texas imprint Clockwork Storybook was founded in 2001 by a writers’ collective and published nine titles in its first year. These included the trade paperback collection Beneath the Skin and Other Stories, containing six original stories and a somewhat pretentious introduction by Matthew Sturges, and Chris Roberson’s Cybermancy Incorporated, a collection of two stories and two linked novellas introducing modern-day pulp hero Jon Bonaventure Carmody and his associates. The Clockwork Reader was a trade paperback sampler containing work by the above-mentioned authors, along with Mark Finn and Bill Willingham. Hundreds of short stories, novels and sample chapters were also available for free download on the publisher’s website.

William E. Rand’s Painted Demons was a collection of nine linked horror stories available from iUniverse/Writers Club Press. Rand’s That Way Madness Lies and Rita Dimitra’s The Blood Waltz were vampire novels from the same imprint.

Gus Smith’s Feather & Bone was a debut novel from British print-on-demand publisher Big Engine and involved an ancient spirit loose in a Northumberland farming community beset by BSE.

Edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, Rainbow Fantasia: 35 Spectrumatic Tales of Wonder from Sense of Wonder Press featured stories with colours in their titles by Ray Cummings, Robert W. Chambers and others.

From Subterranean Press, Douglas Clegg’s Naomi was originally published as an online serial novel. About a man pursuing a ghost into the underground world that exists beneath New York City, it was limited to 1,500 signed copies. Clegg’s other novel from Subterranean, Dark of the Eye, involved a woman whose healing powers made her a target for evil forces.

Joe Lansdale’s Zeppelins West was a wild parody of Westerns, alternate universes and pulp stories, involving a cast of historical characters, the Frankenstein Monster and Captain Nemo and his intellectual seal, Ned. Illustrated by Mark A. Nelson, it was available in a signed hardcover edition limited to 1,500 copies with full-colour endpapers.

Ray Garton’s Sex and Violence in Hollywood lived up to its title, while John Shirley’s novel The View from Hell was published in a signed edition of 1,000 copies and a twenty-six-copy lettered edition.

Published as an attractive hardcover limited to 750 signed and numbered copies, Thomas Tessier’s novella Father Panic’s Opera Macabre concerned a successful historical novelist who stumbled upon a remote Italian farmhouse filled with supernatural secrets. The story was unfortunately marred by some extremely graphic depictions of Nazi tortures.

Delayed from the previous year, David J. Schow’s collection Eye contained thirteen stories (two original) and a witty afterword by the author, limited to 1,000 signed copies. An extra new story was included in the lettered-state edition.

Edward Bryant’s The Baku: Tales of the Nuclear Age contained a new introduction by the author, three short stories and a previously unpublished teleplay, bought by The Twilight Zone but never produced. It was limited to 500 signed copies and a twenty-six copy lettered edition.

Guilty But Insane was a collection of Poppy Z. Brite’s non-fiction, limited to 2,000 signed hardcover copies with a full-colour dust jacket and autograph page art by J. K. Potter. Brite and Caitlin R. Kiernan each had a new story plus a collaboration in Wrong Things, an attractive hardcover illustrated by Richard Kirk and published in a signed edition of 1,500 copies and a lettered edition.

Subterranean also revived the old Dark Harvest Night Visions series with the tenth volume. Edited by Richard Chizinar and illustrated by Alan M. Clark, it contained new novellas by Jack Ketchum and John Shirley, along with five original short stories by David B. Silva. The volume was available as a trade hardcover and a 500-copy limited edition.

Simon Clark’s new novel, Darkness Demands, appeared from Cemetery Dance in a signed edition limited to 1,000 copies. It involved a writer of true-crime stories faced with choosing between the survival of his daughter or the rest of his family. A reissue of Clark’s 1995 end-of-civilization novel, Blood Crazy, was also available from the same publisher in a signed edition of 1,000 copies.

The signed, limited edition of Christopher Golden’s The Ferryman came with a quote from Clive Barker and involved a woman who spurned the eponymous soul-taker during a near-fatal medical ordeal. The book’s prologue was published as a chap-book with illustrations by Eric Powell.

Tim Lebbon’s short novel Until She Sleeps was about a young boy’s battle against a resurrected 300-year-old witch who released her suppressed nightmares on a quiet village. It was available in a deluxe limited edition of 1,000 signed copies. Edward Lee’s City Infernal was a Southern Gothic horror novel set in Hell and also limited to 1,000 copies.

The Cemetery Dance hardcover of Richard Laymon’s Night in Lonesome October was the first US edition of the late author’s Halloween novel. Also from CD, Friday Night at Beast House was a short novel that was nominally a sequel to the author’s previous three books in the series. Laymon’s fable The Halloween Mouse was a thin, oversized hardcover illustrated in full colour by Alan M. Clark and limited to only 300 signed and numbered copies inside a handmade cloth slipcase.