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

Richard Matheson’s Camp Pleasant was possibly an early novel, about a murder at a children’s summer camp, while a limited edition of 1,500 copies of Jack Ketchum’s The Lost was published by Cemetery Dance simultaneously with the Leisure paperback.

Edited by Richard Chizmar, Trick or Treat was the first in a new hardcover anthology series celebrating Halloween. It collected five original novellas by Gary A. Braunbeck, Nancy A. Collins, Rick Hautala, Al Sarrantonio and Thomas Tessier. It was also available in a signed edition, limited to 400 slipcased copies.

F. Paul Wilson’s Sims Book Two: The Portero Method was the second in a new series of hardcover novellas published exclusively by Cemetery Dance in a limited edition of 750 signed copies. Wilson’s latest ‘Repairman Jack’ novel, Hosts, appeared from Gauntlet Press in a signed, limited edition of 475 copies, with cover art by Harry O. Morris. It introduced the enigmatic Jack’s sister, Kate Iverson, and featured an insidious virus that threatened to deprive humanity of its individuality.

Originally published in 1991 as a paperback original, Nancy A. Collins’s second novel, Tempter, appeared from Gauntlet Press in a completely rewritten version that the author considered the preferred text. It was available as both a signed and numbered hardcover and in a lettered, leather-bound and tray-cased edition priced at $150.

Edited by Donn Albright, Ray Bradbury’s classic collection Dark Carnival was limited to only 700 numbered and slipcased copies signed by Bradbury and Clive Barker (who contributed the afterword). This edition added five stories not contained in the 1947 Arkham House edition, along with several black and white pulp-cover reproductions and an archival section featuring photos of manuscript pages, letters, and some other rare items. Bradbury produced the dust-jacket art and interior illustrations himself. A lettered, leather-bound, tray-cased edition of fifty-two copies, containing an extra twenty-five pages, sold for $1,000 apiece.

For those who purchased the book directly from the publisher, there was also a chapbook of Bradbury’s story ‘Time Intervening’, limited to 752 copies.

The deluxe reissue of Richard Matheson’s classic The Shrinking Man contained a new afterword by David Morrell, photos from the movie and several pages of facsimile script. It was limited to 500 numbered copies signed by Matheson and Morrell.

Gauntlet’s new Edge imprint concentrated on publishing mass-market trade paperbacks and hardcovers. Released as an Edge title, Barry Hoffman’s serial-killer novel Judas Eyes was the third in the series about bounty hunter Shara Farris, with an afterword by Jack Ketchum.

The Gauntlet Press Sampler was a chapbook featuring new stories by Richard Christian Matheson, Barry Hoffman, Rain Graves and Richard Matheson, along with a poem by Clive Barker, illustrated by Harry O. Morris and David Armstrong.

Launched in November 2000 by Craig Spector and a venture capital company to sell books directly through the Internet, Stealth Press consolidated its publishing schedule in 2001 with a raft of nicely produced hardcover volumes that were not initially available in bookstores.

Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Dennis Etchison’s first professional short-story sale, Talking in the Dark: Selected Stories was a handsome collection of twenty-four tales (one original), the earliest dating back to 1972. Unfortunately, despite being a commemorative volume, the book contained neither an introduction nor any story notes by the author.

Darkness Divided collected twenty-two stories (four original) by John Shirley, presented in two sections — one featuring stories set in the past and the present, and the other set in myriad futures. The book included collaborations with Walter Gibson and Bruce Sterling, plus a short introduction by Poppy Z. Brite.

Dark Universe contained forty-one stories that author William F. Nolan considered to be amongst his best work from the past fifty years, with an introduction by Christopher Conlon. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Tempting Fate, her third Saint-Germain vampire book from Stealth Press, weighed in at more than 600 pages.

In December, Stealth published a 800-page-plus edition of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. The massive collection was available as a trade hardcover, a 500-copy signed edition and as a lettered edition of fifty-two copies that sold out pre-publication. Featuring a cover photograph by the author and a new preface by Peter Atkins, it was the first and only edition containing all six books in one volume (including the final story, ‘On Jerusalem’s Street’, previously unavailable in any North American printing).

However, having gone through a reported $1.3 million in venture capital, Stealth suspended all publication at the end of the year and let its consulting staff go. Amongst those who found that they were out of a job were Craig Spector, Pat LoBrutto, Peter Schneider, Paula Guran, Douglas Clegg and Peter Atkins, while imminent editions of Ray Bradbury’s poetry collection They Have Not Seen the Stars and Tabitha King’s Small World were left in limbo.

Sporting a jokey dust jacket by Gahan Wilson, Acolytes of Cthulhu was the third Lovecraftian anthology edited and introduced by Robert M. Price and published in hardcover by Fedogan & Bremer. It contained twenty-eight stories (two original) by Joséph Payne Brennan, C. M. Eddy, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Hasse, Edmond Hamilton, David H. Keller M. D., Jorge Luis Borges, Randall Garrett, S. T. Joshi, Dirk W. Mosig, Don Burleson, Peter Cannon, Gustav Meyrinck, Neil Gaiman and others.

Fedogan also reissued H. P. Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth as an audio CD containing thirty-five sonnets and with an accompanying booklet.

Inspired by Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, Strange Aeons from Wiltshire’s Rainfall Records was an atmospheric two-disk CD collection of words and music produced and directed by artist Steve Lines. Contributors to the audio anthology included Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Simon Clark, John B. Ford, Joel Lane, Robert M. Price and Tim Lebbon.

Robert T. Garcia’s American Fantasy imprint published a 600-copy signed and slipcased edition of Michael Moorcock’s The Dreamthief’s Daughter: A Tale of the Albino, in which Elric of Melnibone, Count Ulzic von Bek and other characters battled the evils of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The beautifully designed volume, illustrated by Randy Broecker, Donato Giancola, Gary Gianni, Robert Gould, Michael Kaluta, Todd Lockwood, Don Maitz and Michael Whelan, was also issued in a twenty-six-copy lettered and tray-cased edition.

Ranging from Lovecraftian horrors to hard SF, Claremont Tales was a collection of twelve recent stories (one original) by Richard A. Lupoff, illustrated by Nicholas Jainschigg and published by Golden Gryphon Press.

Peter Crowther’s PS Publishing released Tracy Knight’s impressive and offbeat debut novel The Astonished Eye (originally scheduled to appear from the now defunct Pumpkin Books) with an introduction by Philip José Farmer and dust-jacket illustration by Alan Clark. The hardcover was limited to 500 signed and numbered copies and twenty-six deluxe lettered editions.

Introduced by Paul Di Filippo, Eric Brown’s novella A Writer’s Life concerned an apparently immortal author whose previous incarnations included Ambrose Bierce. Conrad Williams’s Nearly People included an introduction by Michael Marshall Smith and concerned a woman’s quest through a decaying and dangerous landscape. Both were published by PS in limited signed and numbered editions of 500 paperback copies and 300 hardcovers.