Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

Simon Clark’s The Tower was about five young people house-sitting an empty edifice, and London Under Midnight involved a reporter investigating a vampiric menace that emerged from the River Thames. The author also made a short film, Secret Realms, Haunted Places , about locations around England that had inspired his work.

While the crumbling building was being renovated after standing empty for forty years, the ghosts of Pittsburgh’s George Washington High School refused to stay buried in The Night School , and the refurbishment of an old opera house resulted in the haunting of a theatre company in Stage Fright , both by Michael Paine (John Michael Curlovich).

Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek: An Afterword was once again set in Ambergris and looked at the world of publishing in that legendary city.

A widow and her small child moved into a haunted house in Gayle Wilson’s Bogeyman , and yet another small town was consumed by an ancient evil in Joseph Laudati’s In Darkness It Dwells .

A murder in a remote village was linked to another committed in the summer of 1969 in Piece of My Heart , Peter Robinson’s 16th novel featuring Chief Inspector Banks.

The cast of a reality TV show was deposited on an island with real demons in Surviving Demon Island by Jaci Burton, Mexican vegetation turned lethal in Scott Smith’s The Ruins , and an investigator discovered an underground world in The Water Wolf by Thomas Sullivan.

A woman’s search for her daughter’s killer became a self-destructive obsession in The Mother by Australian musician Brett McBean.

The nightmares of a number of murder victims were linked in In Dreams by Shane Christopher (Matthew J. Costello), and a reporter shared a psychic link with her murdered twin in Kindred Spirit by John Passarella.

T. J. MacGregor’s Cold as Death was the fifth book in the “Tango Key” series, featuring psychic Mira Morales. A diver was warned of evil by the image of a dead woman in Heather Graham’s The Vision , while an investigation into missing tourists led to rumours of vampires in the same author’s paranormal romance Kiss of Darkness .

Near-future necromancer Dante Valentine found she was Working for the Devil in Lilith Saintcrow’s dark fantasy. The character returned in Dead Man Walking .

A man who disappeared during World War II reappeared thirty years later looking exactly the same in Frank Cavallo’s The Lucifer Messiah .

A woman suspected that her boyfriend was evil in The Boyfriend from Hell by Avery Corman, and another woman’s boyfriend wouldn’t stay dead in D. V. Bernard’s humorous How to Kill Your Boyfriend (In Ten Easy Steps) .

A book had the power to release a great evil in Mr Twilight by Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. Robert Masello’s Bestiary was about a cursed manuscript and was a sequel to the author’s The Vigil , while Alhazred: Author of the Necronomicon by Donald Tyson was an “autobiography” of the mad Arab created by H. P. Lovecraft.

A mystical rock caused terrifying visions in Pete Earley’s supernatural thriller The Apocalypse Stone .

MaxBrooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Warwas a post-holocaust novel presented in the form of a non-fiction book.

A hypochondriac San Francisco storeowner discovered that he had been given the job of Death’s assistant in Christopher Moore’s adult comedy A Dirty Job . The same author’s vampire comedy, You Suck: A Love Story , was a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends and included characters from other works.

Dorchester Publishing’s Leisure imprint continued to churn out numerous paperback originals as apocalyptic flood waters awakened a breed of monstrous worms in Brian Keene’s fun disaster novel The Conqueror Worms .

Tim Lebbon’s Berserk was about zombies, and women in a sleepy Buckinghamshire village gave birth to spidery monsters in Sarah Pinborough’s third novel, Breeding Ground .

A woman had the power to make other people’s dreams and fears corporeal in Tim Waggoner’s Pandora Drive , and something nasty arrived in the small town of Ptolemy in the same author’s Darkness Wakes .

Al Sarrantonio’s Horrorween was part of the author’s ongoing “Orangefield” series, the reanimated dead were used as servants in Simon Clark’s Death’s Domain , and the Five Night Warriors entered the nightmares of expectant mothers in Night Wars , the fourth volume in the series by Graham Masterton.

Something hungry and evil waited in a subterranean well beneath the cellar of an old house in Shelter by L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims, and other titles from the imprint included The Loveliest Dead by Ray Garton, Smiling Wolf by Philip Carlo, and Deathbringer by Brian Smith.

Leisure reissued Jack Ketchum’s Off Season in “The Author’s Uncut, Uncensored Version!”, along with “Winter Child”, a cut section from the novel She Wakes . J. F. Gonzalez’s Survivor and The Beloved were other reissues, as were The Immaculate by Mark Morris, Wolf Trap by W. D. Gagliani, Live Girls by Ray Garton and Slither by Edward Lee. Douglas Clegg’s The Attraction was an omnibus of two previously-published novels.

From Harlequin Books/Silhouette’s Nocturne imprint, a woman who could talk to ghosts was stalked by a witch-hunting killer in Lisa Childs’ Haunted , a paranormal romance in the “Witch Hunt” series.

The Daughter of the Flames and The Daughter of the Blood were the first two paranormal romances in “The Gifted” trilogy by Nancy Holder, featuring psychic Isabella “Izzy” DeMarco, while Dangerous Tides was the latest volume in the “Drake Sisters” paranormal romance series by the prolific Christine Feehan.

With reportedly six million copies of her “Anita Blake” books in print, Micah , the 13th volume and first mass-market original in Laurell K. Hamilton’s vampire series since 1998, went straight to #1 in the US with a first printing of more than 400,000 copies. The next volume in the series, Danse Macabre , returned to the hardcover format as Anita thought she might be pregnant. It also went to #1 with a 250,000-copy first printing that quickly sold out.

Set in third century Rome, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s 19th century historical novel about vampire Ragoczy Germain Sanctus-Franciscus was entitled Roman Dusk .

Proven Guilty was the eighth volume in Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” and involved wizard PI Harry Dresden in a war between the Faeries and the vampires of the Red Court.

TV director Tony Foster had to halt a Demonic Convergence with the help of his friend, vampire Henry Fitzroy, in Tanya Huff’s Smoke and Ashes , the third in the humorous dark fantasy series. Meanwhile, Huff’s earlier “Vicki Nelson” books were repackaged by DAW Books as a three-volume series, The Blood Books , each containing two novels apiece.

No Dominion was the second volume in Charlie Huston’s series about hardboiled vampire PI Joe Pitt. A private investigator who was half-human, half-elf had a vampire as her first client in Even Vampires Get the Blues by Katie MacAlister (aka Katie Maxwell), and a series of murders in a small town were blamed on vampires in Pale Immortal by Anne Frasier.

Navajo Nightwalker police officer Lee Nez returned in David Thurlo and Aimee Thurlo’s Surrogate Evil , the fourth volume in the vampire mystery series.