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

Triptych of Terror included three gay horror stories by Michael Rowe, David Thomas Lord and John Michael Curlovich.

The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Nineteenth Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant contained thirty-five stories, five poems and various end-of-the-year essays by the two sets of editors, Edward Bryant, Charles Vess, Joan D. Vinge, Charles de Lint and James Frenkel.

Edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Seventeen contained twenty-two stories and novellas, along with the usual overview of the year, Necrology and list of Useful Addresses.

The two volumes overlapped with a number of authors but by just three stories, from Glen Hirshberg, Adam L. G. Nevill, and China Miéville, Emma Bircham and Max Schäfer.

2006 saw an explosion of “Year’s Best” anthologies, with the busy Jason Strahan editing two titles from Night Shade Books and another for The Science Fiction Book Club. There were also at least five different titles from Prime Books/Wildside Press. The latter’s output included Horror: The Best of the Year: 2006 Edition edited by John Gregory Betancourt and Sean Wallace. It contained fifteen stories and a short Introduction by the editors, along with contributions from Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Cady, Michael Marshall Smith, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Joe Hill, Jeff VanderMeer, Laird Barron, Holly Philips, M. Rickert and David Niall Wilson.

From Wildside’s new romance imprint, Juno Books, Best New Paranormal Romance edited by Paula Guran featured twelve stories by Jane Yolen, Elizabeth Hand, Elizabeth Bear and others.

Dark Corners was the first collection from scriptwriter Stephen Volk (TV’s Ghostwatch and Afterlife ). Available through print-on-demand imprint Gray Friar Press, it contained fifteen stories (three new) and an original screenplay, along with an Introduction by Tim Lebbon and an Afterword by the author.

From the same publisher, John Llewellyn Probert’s linked collection The Faculty of Terror was a homage to the old Amicus anthology movies with an Introduction by Paul Finch and an interview with the author by Gary McMahon.

T. M. Wright’s short novel A Spider on My Tongue , a sequel to A Manhattan Ghost Story , was available as a print-on-demand volume from Nyx Books.

Midnight Library/Eibon Books’ Book of Legion by “Victor Heck” (David Nordhaus) was a print-on-demand novel about the eponymous body-hopping demon’s attempts to create a Hell on Earth.

When Darkness Falls from Midnight Library collected fourteen stories (one original) by J. F. Gonzalez with an Introduction and notes by the author. Ten original linked stories by Angeline Hawkes were collected in The Commandments , an on-demand trade paperback from Nocturne Press.

The Fungal Stain and Other Dreams from Hippocampus Press collected fifteen Lovecraftian stories (eight original) by W. H. Pugmire, while Straight to Darkness: Lairs of the Hidden Gods Volume Three from Kurodahan Press, was a Lovecraftian anthology of seven stories and one article edited by Ken Asamatsu and originally published in Japan in 2002. Robert M. Price supplied a new Introduction.

Time Intertwined released by Kerlak Publishing was an anthology of fourteen stories (one reprint) edited with a Forward [sic] by Mark Fitzgerald. From the same imprint, Dark Chances was the second book in Allan Gilbreath’s vampire “Galen Saga”.

Aegri Somnia was an on-demand anthology of twelve stories dealing with nightmares from Apex Publications. It was edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth and included contributions from Scott Nicholson, Christopher Rowe and Lavie Tidhar, amongst others.

Edited by Kevin L. Donihe, Bare Bone #9 from Raw Dog Screaming Press contained fiction and poetry by Gary Fry, Andrew Humphrey, Paul Finch, Tim Curran, C. J. Henderson, James S. Dorr, Amy Grech and others.

Although its quarterly schedule was reportedly cut in half by Cosmos Books/Wildside Press, the twelfth volume of Philip Harbottle’s Fantasy Adventures did finally appear with cover art by Sydney Jordan and new stories from veterans Sydney J. Bounds, Brian Ball, Eric Brown, John Glasby and Philip E. High. The remainder of the issue was filled out with John Russell Fearn’s “I Spy”, a short SF novel from 1954, and a reprint story by E. C. Tubb.

From Paul Miller’s Earthling Publications, American Morons collected seven superior stories (two original) by Glen Hirshberg. There was also a signed edition of 150 copies and a twenty-six-copy traycased lettered edition.

World of Hurt was a 50,000-word short novel about the battle between Good and Evil by Brian Hodge, handsomely presented in hardcover by Earthling with a Foreword by Stephen Jones and an Introduction by Brian Keene. It was available in a 500-copy signed numbered edition.

Set in the Kansas Dust Bowl during the 1930s Depression, a young girl and an escaped convict battled a plague of vampiric creatures in Bloodstained Oz , a short novel by Christopher Golden and James A. Moore. With an Introduction by Ray Garton and illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne, the book was also available in both numbered and lettered editions.

Conrad Williams’ novel The Unblemished was the second book in Earthling’s Halloween series. With an Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer and an Afterword by the author, it was published in 500 numbered and 15 lettered hardcover copies.

Fine Cuts from Peter Crowther’s prolific PS Publishing imprint collected twelve superior reprint stories by Dennis Etchison set in and around Hollywood, along with a new Preface by the author and an Introduction by Peter Atkins.

Fourteen stories (two original) by Steven Utley, along with an Introduction by Howard Waldrop, were collected in Where or When , and Jack Dann provided the Introduction to Past Magic , which contained eleven stories (including an excised chapter from The House of Storms ) and a new Preface by Ian R. MacLeod.

Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales collected twenty-one reprint stories spanning all genres by Garry Kilworth, with an Introduction by Robert Holdstock. Impossible Stories assembled five of Yugoslavian writer Zoran Živković’s linked narrative cycles, totalling twenty-nine stories in all. Paul Di Filippo provided the Introduction, and there was an Afterword by Tamar Yellin.

A young woman travelled through a dream landscape in Richard Calder’s novel Babylon , introduced by K. J. Bishop.

Each PS hardcover was published in a 500-copy numbered trade edition signed by the author and a 200-copy slipcased edition signed by all contributors.

With an Introduction by Mark Morris, Mark Samuels’ The Face of Twilight from PS Publishing was a bizarre novella set in London that blurred the living with the dead.

Two individuals apparently shared the same apartment with a highly intelligent parrot in T. M. Wright’s I Am the Bird , introduced by Ramsey Campbell, and David Herter’s novella On the Overgrown Path involved real-life opera composer Leoš Janáček investigating a mysterious murder in an obscure mountain village. John Clute supplied the Introduction.

PS novellas were published in 500 numbered paperback editions signed by the author, and 300 numbered hardcover copies signed by all the contributors.

Produced as a “special publication for PostScripts subscribers”, Christmas Inn by Gene Wolfe was an odd holiday fable about a group of enigmatic strangers that involved seances, ghosts and a mysterious child. A signed hardcover was sent by PS to all hardcover subscribers to its magazine, with an additional 200 copies available for sale.