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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 14, 2009 0:20:25 GMT
Girls' Night Out - edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg and Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble 1997)
"Twenty-nine female vampire stories."
Introduction - Stefan Dziemianowicz The Insufficient Answer - Robert Aickman Mrs. Amsworth - E. F. Benson The Scent of Vinegar - Robert Bloch Good Lady Ducayne - Mary Elizabeth Braddon Sometimes Salvation - Pat Cadigan The Brotherhood of Blood - Hugh B. Cave A Mystery of the Campagna - Anne Crawford For the Blood is the Life - F. Marion Crawford I Vant to be Alone - Barb D'Amato Nellie Foster - August Derleth Madeleine - Barbara Hambly Ken's Mystery - Julian Hawthorne Revelations in Black - Carl Jacobi The First Time - K. W. Jeter Girl's Night Out - Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg Night Laughter - Ellen Kushner La Dame - Tanith Lee The Girl with the Hungry Eyes - Fritz Leiber Dress of White Silk - Richard Matheson Shambleau - C. L. Moore My Dear Emily - Joanna Russ American Gothic - Ray Russell The Pearls of the Vampire Queen - Micheal Shea The End of the Story - Clark Ashton Smith The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady - Brian Stableford The Last Grave of Lill Warran - Manly Wade Wellman Luella Miller - Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman ...To Feel Another's Woe - Chet Williamson The Canal - Everil Worrell
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 12, 2009 21:07:32 GMT
Sleep No More - LTC Rolt (Constable & Co. Ltd. 1948)
"Railway, canal, and other stories of the supernatural."
The Mine The Cat Returns Bosworth Summit Pound New Corner Cwm Garon A Visitor at Ashcombe The Garside Fell Disaster World's End Hear Not My Steps Agony of Flame Hawley Bank Foundry Music Hath Charms
A justly famous collection of ghost stories in, for the most part, an industrial setting, this has been reprinted at least once (in 1974, by Branch Line, a publishing firm specialising in railway books), and, if certain polls are anything to go by, there may very well be a Wordsworth paperback at some point in the next five years. As far as I know, Rolt only published two more ghost stories, which were included in an Ash-Tree Press edition of this book.
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 8, 2009 0:01:19 GMT
Painted Devils - Robert Aickman (Scribner's 1979)
Ravissante The Houses of the Russians The View Ringing the Changes The School Friend The Waiting Room Marriage Larger than Oneself My Poor Friend
An American "best of", with lovely jacket art by Edward Gorey.
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 7, 2009 23:54:30 GMT
Cold Hand in Mine - Robert Aickman (1975)
The Swords The Real Road to the Church Niemandswasser Pages from a Young Girl's Journal The Hospice The Same Dog Meeting Mr. Millar The Clock Watcher
"In the end it is the mystery that lasts and not the explanation." - Sacheverell Sitwell
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 6, 2009 1:13:31 GMT
A great collection, although Campbell's own story seems a bit out of place, and Haynes's didn't really go anywhere particularly interesting. Never mind, the Ross, Normanby and Wandrei stories went straight to the top of my favourites list.
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 6, 2009 0:20:44 GMT
The Smoking Leg - John Metcalfe (1926)
The Smoking Leg Picnic Nightmare Jack Paper Windmills Crowcastle Convalescent The Tunnel The Double Admiral The Grey House Tide-borne Hairsbreadth The Sister Speaks The Bad Lands Proxy The Glamour Hunter Lure The Flying Tower The Backslider
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 5, 2009 1:35:53 GMT
A Choice of Weapons - A masterpiece, and sadly a little-known one, even among Aickman fans. You should seek it out. You'll like it.
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 4, 2009 16:54:23 GMT
Tales of Love and Death - Robert Aickman (Gollancz 1977) Growing Boys Marriage Le MirroirCompulsory Games Raising the Wind Residents Only Wood Growing Boys - By Aickman's standards, a relatively straight-forward (and very funny) black comedy. Includes a bit where a failed Liberal Party candidate is eaten by his own sons. As should all fiction. Residents Only - A rather disjointed, and slightly disappointing tale about an old cemetery, which never seems quite sure what it wants to focus on. The final paragraph is a killer, and there's lots of good details along the way, but it never quite coheres as it should Raising the Wind - Along with " Le Mirroir", one of the two shorter tales in this book. A nice little vignette. Le Mirroir - A reworking of the Dorian Gray theme (I think, it's a bit hard to tell) which has a slight feel of filler, but I may need to re-read it. Wood - Man marries undertaker's daughter, turns into weather-clock. You don't get this sort of thing with Robert Bloch, do you? Marriage - One of Aickman's favourite themes, young men having horrific sexual experiences, complete with Freudian twist at the end, and the use of a large sack to induce creepiness. (See also the Japanese film Audition and Luis Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire.) Compulsory Games - The fact that the guy who was getting paid to write the sleeve-notes to the book didn't even attempt to do a synopsis for this story doesn't fill me with confidence... Suffice it to say that it's excellent, and if anyone knows what happens at the end, I'd be grateful if you could tell me.
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Post by jonathan122 on Mar 4, 2009 12:45:13 GMT
The Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels - Ed. Mike Ashley (Carroll & Graf 1988) Introduction The Monkey - Stephen King The Parasite - Arthur Conan Doyle There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding - Russell Kirk The Damned - Algernon Blackwood Fengriffen - David Case The Uttermost Farthing - A. C. Benson The Rope in the Rafters - Oliver Onions Nadelman's God - T. E. D. Klein The Feasting Dead - John Metcalfe How the Wind Spoke at Madaket - Lucius Shepard Ashley's definition of what a "short novel" seems slightly loose ("Long, Long Trail..." is only 29 pages long) but this is a nice and eclectic selection containing a lot of stuff which is still hard to find to this day, and would probably have been even more so in 1988. There's a Long, Long Trail... - A bit too sentimental for me I'm afraid, but a lot of people swear by this as Kirk's masterpiece, so who am I to judge? The Uttermost Farthing - Now cheaply available in the Wordsworth collection of A. C. and R. H. Benson's stories, where it receives a lot of praise in the introduction. Personally I found it to be a fairly unmemorable ghost story. The Feasting Dead - I'd only read Metcalfe's early work prior to reading this, and I was surprised at how accessible it was in comparison. (Perhaps Metcalfe was consciously directing his efforts at the Arkham House anthology market by this point.) Anyway, it's a creepy tale of vampirism and child abuse, although the details of the plot fall apart pretty quickly if examined in any detail. Nadelman's God - One of four excellent "novellas" (again, "medium-length short story" is more accurate, but doesn't sound like such good value for money) published by Klein under the title Dark Gods in the eighties, after which he appears to have virtually abandoned horror fiction (and, indeed, fiction of any sort), a sad loss. Everyone has their own favourite from Dark Gods, but this may well be mine. A heavy metal band bases the lyrics of one of their songs on a poem that Nadelman wrote whilst at college, and one of their fans starts to take it a bit too literally...
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 28, 2009 1:38:02 GMT
The Giant Book of Great Detective Stories - (Robinson 1985)
An omnibus edition of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Bedside Books of Great Detective Stories, edited by van Thal and published in, respectively, 1976, 1977 and 1978. There's little that could make it's way into the Pan Books of Horror, but, taken on its own terms, this really is a fantastic collection.
Book 1 The Inoffensive Captain - E. C. Bentley The Scapegoat - Christiana Brand The Mystery of the Child's Toy - Leslie Charteris The Rubber Trumpet - Roy Vickers The Moabite Cipher - R. Austin Freeman The Little Old Man of Batignolles - Emile Gaboriau The Scarlet Butterfly - Dulcie Gray Out of Paradise - E. W. Hornung The Cave of Ali Baba - Dorothy L. Sayers
Book 2 Superintendent Wilson's Holiday - Margaret Cole The Treasure Hunt - Edgar Wallace Sing a Song of Sixpence - Agatha Christie Inspector Ghote and the Miracle Baby - H. R. F. Keating The Biter Bit - William Wilkie Collins We Know You're Busy Writing... - Edmund Crispin Murder! - Arnold Bennett The Eye of Apollo - G. K. Chesterton A Matter of Goblins - Michael Innes The Woman in the Big Hat - Baroness Orczy
Book 3 Goldfish - Raymond Chandler The Girl with the Red-Gold Hair - June Thomson Mr Bovey's Unexpected Will - L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace The Mystery of the Sleeping-Car Express - Freeman Wills Croft The Alibi - J. C. Squire The Evidence of the Altar-Boy - Georges Simenon The Judge Corroborates - J. S. Fletcher
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 28, 2009 0:58:17 GMT
Murder on the Menu - Volume 1 - (Souvenir Press 1991)
The title and the large print advertising RUTH RENDELL AGATHA CHRISTIE suggest this is mainly crime, but there's actually quite a few horror stories in this one, most notably the stories by Hartley and Besant & Rice, and Ellin's masterpiece, which, alas, is now so famous and over-anthologised that it can't ever again hope to have the same effect on a reader that it once did.
The Speciality of the House - Stanley Ellin Bribery and Corruption - Ruth Rendell Chef d'Oeuvre - Paul Gallico La Specialite de M. Duclos - Oliver La Farge Three, or Four, for Dinner - L. P. Hartley Guests from Gibbet Island - Washington Irving The Compleat Housewife - Richard Dehan The Case of Mr Lucraft - Walter Besant and James Rice The Man Who Couldn't Taste Pepper - G. B. Stern Final Dining - Roger Zelazny Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds - Agatha Christie The Long Dinner - H. C. Bailey The Assassin's Club - Nicholas Blake Dinner for Two - Roy Vickers
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 28, 2009 0:36:48 GMT
Of the ones I've read, the standouts were Aickman's "Wood" and Leiber's "Dark Wings". I thought I'd read "The Pattern", but flicking through it I don't remember it at all, so a re-read is in order.
The Case of James Elmo Freebish - Taken on its own terms, very, very bad, but I think a case could be made for it providing some light relief in the anthology as a whole.
Fog In My Throat - Couldn't get on with this one either, I'm afraid - this seems like Lafferty on auto-pilot. All the right ideas are there, but Mr. Story hasn't come out to play.
The Viaduct - Nasty. I'm automatically predisposed towards hating any story with a "village idiot" in it, and this is no exception, but it certainly does its purpose.
Wood - Even by Aickman's standards this is... odd. For a start it's a first-person narrative, which automatically sets you off wondering whether you're supposed to agree with some of the opinions on offer (or whether Aickman did). Added to that there is the story itself, which tells of a man who marries an undertaker's daughter and... turns into a weather-clock. It's one of those types of stories, and in anyone else's hands it would be laughable. In Aickman's, it's really quite creepy.
Dark Wings - Campbell has stated elsewhere how much Leiber's horror fiction has influenced him, and certainly this piece showcases the affinities between the two. Vi and Rose are identical twins, separated at birth. Reunited years later they recount their stories...
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 27, 2009 1:44:01 GMT
The 6th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (Fontana 1970) Clarimonde - Theophile Gautier The Grey Ones - J. B. Priestley The Door in the Wall - H. G. Wells Priscilla and Emily Lofft - George Moore Sorworth Place - Russell Kirk Where Their Fire is Not Quenched - May Sinclair Oke of Okehurst - Vernon Lee The Lips - Henry S. WhiteheadA slightly underwhelming anthology. The absence of either a story or introduction by Aickman is sorely felt, and, with only eight stories, a lot rests on your reaction to "Oke of Okehurst", and personally I just didn't think the actual story was interesting enough to sustain 50 pages, although, as usual with Lee, the actual prose is exemplary. The stand-out of the rest in terms of quality is probably Sinclair's piece, one of a handful of excellent ghost stories from this fine writer, although if we're talking sheer outright weirdness, then the prize has to go to Whitehead's exuberantly gruesome "The Lips". God knows what it's actually doing in this series, but it definitely wakes you up.
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 21, 2009 17:55:06 GMT
The 8th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories - (Fontana 1972) Introduction - Robert Aickman The Haunted Haven - A. E. Ellis The Red Lodge - H. R. Wakefield Midnight Express - Alfred Noyes Meeting Mr Millar - Robert Aickman The Gorgon's Head - Gertrude Bacon The Tree - Joyce Marsh The Haunted and the Haunters - Lord Lytton Bezhin Lea - Ivan Turgenev (trans. Richard Freeborn) The Last Seance - Agatha Christie Aickman's last as editor.
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 21, 2009 17:39:34 GMT
Powers of Darkness - Robert Aickman (First published 1966; Fontana edition 1968) Fontana edition, 1968 Your Tiny Hand is Frozen My Poor Friend The Visiting Star Larger Than Oneself A Roman Question The Wine-Dark Sea "I am still of the opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mind - sex and the dead." - W.B. Yeats And yet if you combine the two it's frowned upon. Go figure. Anyway, there isn't a single story in here which is less than excellent, in my opinion. Some highlights... A Roman Question - Plutarch's Question No. 5: "Why are they who have been falsely reported dead in a strange country, although they return home alive, not received nor suffered to enter directly at the doors, but forced to climb up to the tiles of the house, and so to get down into the house from the roof?" Why indeed? Reluctantly attending a conference in Birmingham, the Wakefields find themselves billeted for the weekend in the house of Major and Mrs Peevers, along with a young, near-silent girl called Deirdre. The Peevers's son Harry went missing during the War, but Deirdre thinks she knows how to bring him back home. All she needs is a horse's eye and some sugar...
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