Charles L. Grant - The Orchard

[andydecker]

Charles L. Grant - The Orchard (Tor Books, 1986, 287 pages)

Content:

Prologue
My Mary's Asleep
I See Her Sweet and Fair
The Last and Dreadful Hour
Screaming, in the Dark
Epilogue

This looks like a novel but is a collection of thematically linked novellas in Grant's often used setting Oxrun Station. The Tor edition of Grant's work is among the best realized author editions. It has its own identity like Laymon's Headline edition or Zebra Books horror line.

[dem bones]

TOR adopted a similar approach in a fruitless attempt to break Chetwynd-Hayes in the US with The Grange and The Other Side. David Mann provided cover art for The Grange, probably both. The Other Side's gorgeous depiction of Clavering Grange is uncredited.

[pbsplatter]

I may have to hunt this down; it sounds structurally and thematically similar to “A Garden of Bloodred Roses” in Dark Forces, which both confused and disturbed me when I was young.

Funnily enough it sounds like the vignette driven approach of the types of books Grant was generally looped in opposition to: Smith, Herbert, etc.