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Post by dem bones on Jan 21, 2022 10:40:49 GMT
Maureen O'Hara - On the Eve of the Wedding: Bride to be Anthea overhears best friend Josephine telling untruths about her to Benjamin. Feigning ignorance, Anthea takes a large knife from the drawer and invites her treacherous pal for a walk along the hilltop, and ... no more tittle-tattling for Jo. Would you believe that, before Anthea punished her, she even had the effrontery to make up a nasty story about Benjamin? Events dated 2nd September 1972, but stilted dialogue and observation of strict social etiquette gives story a rather charming cod-Victorian feel.
Norman Kauffman - An Experiment with H20: Ripley takes a hammer to the skull of old Stoddard, the tyrannical old chemistry master he blames for setting him on the path to ruin. Alas for the killer, Mrs. Stoddard and her daughters share husband's passion for filming their most horrible laboratory doings. Seven pages of gloating sadism. This and On the Eve of the Wedding have been personal pick so far.
Elleston Trevor - The Chicken Switch: (Kyril Bonfiglioli [ed.], Science Fantasy, April 1965). Robert Jasen, journalist, interviews astronaut Major Charles Loomis as he prepares to spend a week in a hermetically sealed capsule prior to a flight to the moon. Loomis explains how he hit upon a 'gimmick' to help him cope with isolation - he'll reveal all when the seven days are up.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 22, 2022 10:02:49 GMT
Lavan E. Coberley - Revolt of the Ant People: Reads like a 'twenties - thirties pulp throwback. A billion-strong army of black ants invade a New Mexican ranch, devouring every living thing in their path. With the farmer and his wife cornered in a bathroom, the military arrive, flame-throwers at the ready, but such is the enemies numerical superiority that even mass incineration make little difference. Can nothing halt the advance of the killer ant "people"? Maureen O'Hara - The Evil Innocent: Jack and heavily pregnant Monica drown when their boat is capsized by a freak wave. The husband dies cursing Kit the skipper, who is too old and frail to save them. Their corpses ever never recovered. Some weeks after the tragedy, a devil child is born of the sea bed. On the Eve of the Wedding is a gem, but this one didn't work for me. Set during the late 'fifties and reads as though it were hanging around some years before publication.
David Lewis - Diary of the Damned: A boatload of skeletons wash ashore at Sumatra in 1920. When a passing English Doctor translates the blood-stained, mirror written journal of the late Angela Norton, he drops dead at his desk in the process. Angela records how Lucian Cairn's, Satanist, took command of the thirst-crazed, starving castaways and demanded they eat her brother or the Bornless One would see they did not survive to reach a shipping lane.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 23, 2022 21:09:46 GMT
Giles Gordon - Morning Echo: Mrs Rutherford reads all about a fire at Wilson's supermarket and the deaths of two elderly shoppers in the Borthwick local paper. Christopher Bray - The Municipal Gardener: A green-fingered dullard keeps his cryptic promise to the sergeant who condemned him to be gut-shot by firing squad. Between them, the gardener's ghost and that of his phantom hound drive the revolutionary despot to insanity and suicide. Alan Lee
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