alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on May 19, 2008 22:46:11 GMT
I can add my vote for The Unspeakable People - I'm pretty sure I read Kuttner's 'The Graveyard Rats' for the first time in this one, and it's been a favourite ever since.
I'll also mention Beyond the Curtain of Dark, Dead of Night, Late Night Television Omnibus and especially Detours into the Macabre, again because it contains one of my all time favourites - this time Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on May 16, 2008 8:52:22 GMT
No, haven't read Wolf Tracks, or The Third Grave for that matter - but they're both on that never-ending list of books I've been meaning to get around to, but haven't yet.
Case is one of those writers crying out for a Best Of or Collected Stories, not least because The Cell and Fengriffin are a) uncommon and b) pricey if you do come across copies.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on May 15, 2008 21:41:43 GMT
Indeed - all hail the Mammoths!
Favourites? Well, all the Jones, Dalby and Haining volumes I've read have much to recommend them, but there are two in particular I think deserve the top spot, and for the same reason too - David Case.
Jones' The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, which reprints 'The Cell', and Mike Ashley's Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels, featuring 'Fengriffin'. Hadn't read any David Case before picking up these two books, and he's been a favourite ever since.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on May 9, 2008 5:23:51 GMT
Very interesting discussion. For what it’s worth, here’s a forum newbie’s take on things. I buy the Jones Best New Horror every year (plus a whole bunch of other Year’s Bests, for that matter). As someone who loves horror fiction, in fact good short fiction in all its forms, this particular series hardly ever lets me down. Like everyone, I have my own set of standards when it comes to determining what makes a good piece of horror fiction, my own particular likes and dislikes, and Best New Horror invariably scores more hits than misses - at least for me. I’ve always found them to be nicely varied collections, with a fair sampling of tougher, more visceral material alongside the quieter, more psychological (or, y’know, ‘brainier’) tales. There’s usually a good mix of familiar and less familiar names (though I’ve often heard of most, if not all, of the contributors, even if I’ve not read any of their stuff yet) and it doesn’t hurt that a fair few of my favourite writers (Campbell, Newman, Kiernan, Hirshberg, Fowler, Lee…) crop up on a regular basis. But my cup of Tetley’s isn’t necessarily yours. What I wonder, though, is how much of this is generational? I was born in the mid 70s, and didn’t really discover horror until my mid-ish teens, long after the 60-70s Golden Age of the British Horror anthology had passed. So I only really discovered the Fontana Greats and the Pan Books via the writers (and editors) who grew up with and, I suppose, were inspired by them; from the start, horror, for me, was what that discovery, that inspiration, led to. As a result, my standards for what makes a good horror story developed from reading - amongst many others - Charles L Grant’s Shadows anthologies (plus his various non-Shadows titles), from Monteleone’s Borderlands series, from Ellen Datlow anthologies, and from Stephen Jones anthologies, Best New Horror included. And in a very real sense, it’s to Stephen Jones that I owe my discovery of all the great anthologies this site is dedicated to. I read David Case‘s ‘The Cell‘ in one of Jones‘ Mammoth volumes, which led me to the Pan Books of Horror and writers like Charles Birkin and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, John Burke and Rosemary Timperley and Dorothy K Haynes, and they in turn led me to the Fontana books, the Tandems, the Mayflowers…and, well, here I am.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on May 7, 2008 16:40:28 GMT
Were I to post a list of every last book I'd love to have a copy of, I'd probably crash the server, so I'll be good and limit myself to these:
Cold Fear: New Tales of Terror, Ed. Hugh Lamb The Man-Wolf & Other Horrors, Ed. Hugh Lamb
and
Ghosts & Scholars, Ed. Richard Dalby & Rosemary Pardoe
I'm first and foremost a reader, so I'm not too fussed regards condition, should anybody have copies they'd care to part with.
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