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Post by dem bones on Oct 8, 2009 8:02:34 GMT
Charles Black (ed.) - The Fifth Black Book Of Horror (Mortbury Press, Sept. 2009) Paul Mudie Reggie Oliver - Mrs. Midnight Marcus Gold - The Man With A Hole In His Head Ian C. Strachan - Starlight Casts No Shadow Craig Herbertson - Leibniz’s Last Puzzle Paul Finch - Hangman Wanted: Apply In Writing Rosalie Parker - In The Garden David A. Riley - Their Own Mad Demons Raymond Vaughn - Winter Break John Llewellyn Probert - De Vermis Infestis Richard Staines - No Such Thing As A Friendly Anna Taborska - Schrodinger’s Human David Williamson - The Chameleon Man John Llewellyn Probert - Two For Dinner“Are you hungry for some more horror? Do you have an appetite for the abominable?
Then you need The Fifth Black Book of Horror. Thirteen morsels of the macabre for those with a taste for terror.”Charles already asked if we were hungry leading up to publication, but the Black Book's deserve at least a couple threads to themselves! Available NOW from the mighty Mortbury Press! Talking of a mix of literary and horror, where else would you find the urbane and masterly Reggie Oliver rubbing shoulders with a filthy & depraved hack like Richard Staines, except in The Fifth Black Book of Horror? Marvellous stuff. JLP's "Two for Dinner" is a particular delight, especially for Pan BoH fans... Mark S.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 8, 2009 9:59:58 GMT
Just when I'd commented on the other thread. It's another corker, isn't it?
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Post by lordfroggy on Oct 8, 2009 17:24:43 GMT
I ordered this last week... looks great and John's reading at FantasyCon was fantastic. The only downside? I was looking after Sebastian Peake's presentation on the same floor and did not have my camera on me to share this reading with the world. Something I hope to correct in the near future!
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Oct 12, 2009 20:58:26 GMT
This will definitely be getting ordered this week.
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Post by Calenture on Oct 21, 2009 11:04:43 GMT
Looks like Charles has done another great job with this one. Really happy to see some interesting and time proven names along with the new ones. And another brilliant Mudie cover.
Astonishingly, at a time when reading and writing are in danger of becoming forgotten skills, Charles has created a series worthy of standing alongside the older books that we all love.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 28, 2009 17:07:50 GMT
Arrived home earlier to find this treasury of torture and ghastliness lurking in the hall. i've been absolutely dire at commenting on the 'Black Books' to date, so instead of doing my usual flouncing about, don't-want-to-break-the-spine thing, this time it is up and at the bastard! Five in and it is certainly living up to the "most Pan Horror-like to date" whispers. To give you some idea of the content; At last, a credible solution to the Jack the Ripper murders .... a body transplant about to go horribly wrong ..... Christmas Hell with a parsimonious bastard of a father ... a silent insect army, capable of stripping a human body to the skeleton in seconds ... the England 'B' friendly scrubbed from the annals of history and, in the one i'm about to start "Someone had attacked M. R. James in the night" ....
more more more to follow ....
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Post by carolinec on Oct 28, 2009 17:38:24 GMT
Dem - just wait till you get to Lord P's "Two For Dinner"!
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Post by timothymayer on Oct 28, 2009 18:41:59 GMT
Now THAT is a cover!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Oct 28, 2009 18:48:58 GMT
"Two for Dinner" was indeed a beauty
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Post by dem bones on Oct 28, 2009 19:06:03 GMT
Going to save Two For Dinner 'til last. De Vermis Infestis is deliciously vile! And what a sweet surprise that my much-loved downstairs neighbour, here the 'Old Essex Music Hall' but perhaps better known as 'Wiltons', seemingly provides the setting for Reggie Oliver's opener (it certainly fits the bill, although Mr. Oliver gives the address as Alie Street which is about three roads away). He's right about it being a haven for tramps, wino's and drug-addicts in the not so distant, though it's more a luvvie hangout now. They did The Portrait Of Dorian Gray recently. Rather spookily in terms of Mrs. Midnight, a poor fellow froze to death in there a few years before the recent reopening (relax; none of this 'modern renovation' garbage for 'Wiltons': it's still the same decrepit fire-trap it ever was). And yes, Tomothy, that is indeed a cover. You'll find the rest - all by the hand of the extremely gifted Paul Mudie - at Mortbury Press. But before you hit the link, ask yourself one question. Do you have an appetite for the abominable?
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Post by carolinec on Oct 28, 2009 19:22:14 GMT
Going to save Two For Dinner 'til last. Dessert, eh?
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Post by dem bones on Oct 29, 2009 7:14:06 GMT
More a case of, for once in my life, i was gonna attempt to read the stories in the order presented. That didn't last long. Reggie Oliver - Mrs. Midnight: A smart choice as opener which, as i live in breath, reads like something from the M. R. James school, just with lashings of violence and occasional sweary bits. Much against his inclination, Danny Sheen, TV presenter of I Can Make You A Star ignominy, is roped into a project to save Whitechapel's decrepit Old Essex Music Hall (which, contrary to all that rubbish i posted above, most likely isn't based on Wiltons but the long gone Garrick Theatre off Leman Street). The old dump ceased to be an entertainment venue in December 1888 when the crowd rioted during a performance by 'Mrs. Midnight & Her Animal Comedians' on account of 'Mrs. Midnight' being the stage presence of disgraced doctor Simpson Graham, locally suspected of committing the Ripper crimes. During the disturbance, the hall was set ablaze. Graham's face was horribly disfigured in the conflagration and he died in an asylum the following year. Sheen teams up with Daily Magnet crime reported and Ripperologist Bill Beasley to research Graham and learns that he was a pioneer and fanatical advocate of of "zoophagy" ("the eating of still living beings"). For the first time in his life he becomes conscious of just how many bag-ladies there are strewn about the London streets - he even has to dislodge one particularly frightening big-boned hag from his front step - and how come they all wear a rotting shawl as a fashion accessory? It all draws inexorably toward a satisfyingly nasty conclusion at the Old Essex. Marcus Gold - The Man With A Hole In His Head: Ritzy Jacobs rips off Bristol's most fearsome drug dealer, Krobo King. King decides to make an example of him - one that involves a sledgehammer, a nail and Ritzy's head. Incredibly, Ritzy not only survives but - added bonus - the damage to his brain tissue has rendered him obsolete to pain. This serves him well in his criminal career; he establishes a drugs empire which dwarfs that of his nemesis, and by kidnapping King's daughter, Dolores, and doing her some damage, easily lures Krobo to his doom. And now, aged fifty, with cancer eating away his body it all looks up for Jacobs until a disreputable surgeon offers him a full body transplant on account of him being the only person who could endure it. What could possibly go horribly wrong? Ian C. Strachan - Starlight Casts No Shadow: Equador. Death strikes nightly in the grounds of the army base overlooking the nuclear power plant, the victims stripped down to their skeletons by the silent killer. The sentry reports nothing unusual beyond a dark grey shadow moving swiftly across the land in the vicinity of the workers huts. The narrator is among the small party who go to explore. The party is smaller by the time they've discovered what they're up against. On the recent Best Anthology Series thread, Lord JLP mentioned that one reason why the Pan Book Of Horror appealed to him as a youth was because "a lot of the Pan horrors could have been happening across the road from me and that really shook me", and here's a timeless story that could easily have made it into any of the thirty volumes for those same reasons. Rosalie Parker - In The Garden: Quiet and understated, just a middle-aged, childless woman showing her husband Stephan's friend around the garden she takes such pride in cultivating. Her husband's very good female friend. Her husband's younger, more attractive very good female friend ... Appropriately, in view of the subject matter, a bit of cheating as this was written a while back when Stains mania first bruised this board. Richard Staines - No Such Thing As A Friendly: Summer 1970: As Sir Alf Ramsey's England prepare to defend the World Cup in Mexico, the 'B' team are shunted off to play a meaningless friendly versus Goboya, a small island off the coast of South America. The England side, coached by glass eyed xenophobe Mad Mickey Clinch, are captained by Crystal Palace's aging Vince Kemble who gives us a first hand account of the ensuing bloodbath. Goboya are a disorganised rabble of a team who'd probably be no match for England schoolgirls , but they've a secret weapon in their swift and outrageously skillful number 10, Genio, a budding Pele who is soon tying Kemble's blood in knots. Kemble grudgingly concedes that the youngster has far more talent than anyone on the pitch and can't bring himself to follow Mad Cinch's orders to "break his f**k**g legs". So, with England 2-0 down and looking at humiliation, the Coach takes matters into his own fists ..... The second half, as you'd expect, is lively ..... Raymond Vaughn - Winter Break: A short interlude for the author to beef about his father's aggressive tight-fistedness which makes he and his poor mother's lives a misery. Christmas is always especially grim ... until the old boy has a nasty slip on the ice and his son adopts some extreme cost-cutting measures of his own. More to come, in fact, no one story will escape this time!
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Post by dem bones on Oct 29, 2009 19:11:00 GMT
some more ....
John Llewellyn Probert - De Vermis Infestis: First of two from Lord Probert. I note Two For Dinner is attracting attention and it must be bloody good if it tops this.
Holed up in their remote Welsh cottage, Tom Parsons, wife Sally and Boggins the cat would be having an enviable time of it were it not for the unseen menace rapidly gnawing its way through their entire book collection. Could this somehow be connected with the battered wooden box, muslin cloth and mouldering parchment disturbed by Boggins in the field out back of the cottage? Indeed it could reckons Ralph Peterson, seedy antique dealer and enthusiastic patron of The Royal Oak, who relates a local legend concerning a fearsome nineteenth century witch and the lethal 'worms of wisdom' she'd unleash on those who crossed her. Between them, he and Dr. Rawlings reluctantly reveal that the parchment records the gruesome measures required to return the De Vermin Sapientis to their wooden prison in the catastrophic event of their escaping. When Sally, by now heavily pregnant with their first child, takes over from poor Boggins as their host, the frantic Tom is driven to seriously drastic measures to save her ....
He must be getting pissed at the constant Amicus comparisons by now - it is getting a bit lazy! Stephen Jones recently applied it to Coffin Nails which, i felt at least was overall something of a departure - so .... De Vermis Infestis would have made for a gloriously nasty Hammer House Of Horror episode!
Paul Finch - Hangman Wanted: Apply In Writing: East London-based Gargan, unemployed and in big trouble should the police ever catch up with him, answers this curious advertisement and, much to his amazement, receives a reply. Even more astonishing, turns out Mr. "Styles" isn't quite the crank Gargan first took him for. A sixty-something without family ties, he's determined to cheat the cancer that will destroy him within the year. But suicide is a mortal sin in the eyes of the Catholic church and Styles is devout so he's willing to pay £3 million to the man who'll lynch him. He'll even provide the gallows. What could possibly go horribly wrong again?
David Williamson - The Chameleon Man: Bubonic Plague, Leprosy, Smallpox, Swine flu ... you name it, Charlie Benton's body will mimic the ravages of the disease through every stage of its development. This is manna from heaven to Professor Watson who regularly showcases Charlie in puke-provoking demonstrations before a select audience of prominent scientists and brilliant medical students. Comes the night when, not content with having witnessed Charlie debut his show-stopping instant-Quasimodo routine, some damn fool smart-arse student sets him the ultimate challenge. Another that's so mid-to-late Pan you half expect to see a 'c/o London Management' credit against the author's name. And i mean that as a compliment these days.
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Post by carolinec on Oct 29, 2009 20:18:23 GMT
I note Two For Dinner is attracting attention and it must be bloody good if it tops this. I've not read John's rat story yet, Dem - I dip in and out of anthologies in a strange fashion, never read them from the first story to the last! I read "Hangman Wanted .." last night - good one - enjoyed that. ;D I think my favourite of the ones I've read so far is "In the Garden". Like you said "quiet and understated" - which makes it sooooo powerful when the final punch hits you. Brilliant! ;D
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Post by dem bones on Oct 30, 2009 12:04:30 GMT
Same here; it's all i can do to stick with the same collection let alone read it in order, but so far i've kept to my game plan with 5th Black Book Of Horror, setting aside one apiece from David Riley, Craig Herbertson and John Probert for Halloween (if i'd not already had the dubious pleasure of Mr. Stains' story i was going to leave that too) and a block-post of the Vault contributors. They'd better be good! Anna Taborska - Schrodinger’s Human: There's an EC-ish feel to this everyday tale of a brilliant physics professor who gets his kicks from torturing household pets (if you are the least squeamish about extreme total animal abuse then the second page in particular is vileness-a-go-go). The tables are turned when the tutor returns from college one day to find a starved and beat-up cat camped on his doorstep ... Not to give away too much re De Vermis Infestis but that quote on the back cover is ever-so-slightly.... misleading. incidentally, a parlour maid at Probert Towers has leaked details of his Lordship's current work in progress which, judged on it's title alone, will certainly hold appeal he says all mysteriously
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