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Post by nightreader on Dec 28, 2007 9:35:52 GMT
Read by Dawn - Volume 2 Edited by Adele Hartley (Bloody Books 2007)
'Sharp Things' - Joshua Reynolds 'Between The Screams' - Brian G. Ross 'Pebble Toss and Dare' - Bradley Michael Zerbe 'Baby Steps' - Scott Stainton Miller 'The Skin And Bone Music Box' - Andy P. Jones 'Hostage Situation' - Joe L. Murr 'Rite of Passage' - Ken Goldman 'Fat Hansel' - David Turnbull 'Childhood' - Morag Edward 'Like Snow' - Brian Richmond 'Adultery' - F.R. Jameson 'Gristle' - Stephen Roy 'And Then...' - Kim Sabinan 'A Candle for the Birthday Boy' - Christopher Hawkins 'The Door' - Suzanne Elvidge 'Sally' - Patricia Russo 'Fingers' - James Killen 'Trick or Treat?' - Claire Kirwen 'Feeder' - A.C. Wise 'Urbane' - Frazer Lee 'Harvest' - David Dunwoody 'The Proposal' - Charles Colyott 'Guts' - Gavin Inglis 'The Night Animals' - Scott Stainton Miller 'A Storm of Ice' - Joel A. Sutherland 'Falling Stars' - Samuel Minier
I've only just got my hands on this but already it seems better than Vol 1, content wise anyway - the cover is still awful. They appear to have dropped the poems which I don't see as a great loss (sorry to poem writers, just not my thing).
Sharp Things - Joshua Reynolds The collection kicks off at a cracking pace with this gorefest. Set on a New York subway train, hitman Louis Roche reluctantly becomes involved in violence when a vagrant insists on telling his bizarre story. He used to be a sword swallower, but then got addicted to all manner of sharp things... Bloody entertaining.
Baby Steps - Scott Stainton Miller It's Henry's seventeenth birthday. A local girl goes missing and her distraught father puts pictures of her all over the place. Henry finds a girl's dead body in the park, but it's not the missing girl. Henry's parents are a particularly unpleasant pair and there's an awful stink in the kitchen... Talk about disfunctional.
The Skin And Bone Music Box - Andy P. Jones Great title. In a Mediterranean village the peasants are starving and penniless, brutally ruled by Marco's father. Marco himself is a spoilt fat brat of seven years old. He wants a new toy from the market, and finds what he wants - a beautiful glass apple and girl singing: "A waif with an angel in her throat". A fable-like story, quietly disturbing...
And Then... - Kim Sabinan There's only one line to this story - or does that make it a poem? Whatever - the line is clever, ambiguous enough to get the imagination working. I found this very memorable...
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Post by dem bones on Dec 28, 2007 10:36:20 GMT
I see what you mean about the cover, andy and by the looks of it they're keeping them nice and uniform - uniformly dull. Can't even be bothered posting it. Perhaps we should have a 'your hopes for 2008' thread, and somewhere very near the top of mine would be that we see the end of all these 'spent two minutes playing about in photoshop' jobs. Earlier in the year I picked up a modern edition of A Clockwork Orange and you can only wonder what Penguin thought they were playing at, replacing the old, iconic design with the current 'tasteful' bland out.
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Post by nightreader on Dec 29, 2007 15:45:39 GMT
I totally understand they want these to look like a series but these have got to be some of the dreariest covers. Isn't there a bad covers thread somewhere on here? It's a shame because the stories so far are good and deserve better. Back to the stories:
Fat Hansel - David Turnbull Ever wondered what happened to Hansel and Gretel after they escaped the evil witch? Well no, me neither. This is their story as adults. Hansel, a mega grossly fat attention seeker, calls on his sister Gretel when his wife and child leave him. Talk about post traumatic stress, these two have it in spades. As the brother and sister gradually recall their shared ordeal they begin to remember some things that they'd previously blocked out, some details the original story omitted. Like how the children began to wonder why the witch wanted to eat Hansel, what was so great about human flesh? And what happened after they pushed the witch into the oven? And Hansel did say his wife and son had left him, right? This starts as quite an amusing idea but soon twists and becomes much darker and disturbing. David Turnbull also appeared in Vol.1 with 'The Woman Who Coughed Up Flies'.
Like Snow - Brian Richmond In young Danny's town you can see the dead. They appear very gradually and remain spectral, ghostly. Initially Danny, like the rest of the town, are afraid of these silent dead but over time they become accepted. Danny even talks to the apparition in his bedroom, confiding his fears. Danny's parents marriage is falling apart, at the same time as the ghostly figures are starting to fade slowly away...
Fingers - James Killen Poor Keith wakes one morning to find one of his fingers has disappeared - not cut off, just not there, as if it never had been. In a panic he calls his sister Petra who tries to help. Doctors don't believe them, fingers don't just disappear. Then in his sleep Keith loses another digit. It gets worse. Where his fingers had been new ones have grown, longer than normal, gnarled and with a black nail at the end. Keith feels they are somehow hungry. At his insistence Petra cuts the new fingers off and burns them. Of course they grow back, and it gets worse... Enjoyable and disturbing body horror.
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Post by nightreader on Dec 30, 2007 15:57:47 GMT
Gristle - Stephen Roy Two hunters. One a low life child snatcher who auctions off his young victims over the Internet to the highest bidder. The other with the outward appearance of a lonely eleven year old boy. Eddie gets more than he bargained for when he tries to abduct young Petey, the outcast boy with a stutter...
The Door - Suzanne Elvidge A good old fashioned ghost story. A young man is haunted by a drowning that happened years ago - he still hears the wet footsteps of the dead girl as her sprirt relentlessly persues him...
Trick or Treat? - Claire Kirwen Sally and Ben get home in a bit of a state after trick or treating, but they hide it well from their Mum. Sally dreamily recalls to herself the dark man she met in the street. In the shower she feels the two small round wounds in her neck...
Guts - Gavin Inglis Gross out body horror as Sylvester panics when he sees worms in his faeces. He obsesses and looks on the Internet for information, only frightening himself more. He takes drastic action to get rid of the worms in his guts. Not for the squeamish.
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