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Post by dem bones on Feb 4, 2008 9:04:34 GMT
Peter Crowther (ed.) - Narrow Houses: Volume I (Little Brown, 1992) cover: J. K. Potter Peter Crowther - Foreword
Douglas E. Winter - Introduction
Ray Bradbury - Beware Those Beasts (verse) Stephen Gallagher - The Sluice Nancy A. Collins - The Needle-Men Darrell Schweitzer - The Outside Man Robert Holdstock - The Silvering Chet Williamson - The Swing of the Knife Pauline E. Dungate - The Scent of Elder Flowers Rex Miller - A Prick of Thorn Nicholas Royle - Glory Ed Gorman - Long Time Till Morning Comes Ian Watson - The Tale of Peg and the Brain Pat Cadigan - Naming Names Rick Hautala - Bird in the House Stephen Laws - Bleeding Dry Kim Newman - Three on a Match Richard T. Chizmar - Cemetery Dance Ramsey Campbell - The Dead Must Die William F. Nolan - From A Narrow House Brian M. Stableford - Upon the Gallows-Tree Steve Rasnic Tem - Breaking the Rules Nancy Holder - Down to the Sea Peter James - Breaking the Chain Andrew Vachss - Stone Magic Christopher Fowler - Evil Eye Jonathan Carroll - Learning to Leave James Lovegrove - The Landlady’s Dog Ian MacDonald - The Luncheonette of Lost Dreams David B. Silva - From the Night Wind Comes J. N. Williamson - The Girl of My DreamsRemove a coffin's nails - runs an old superstition - and the dead soul of that "narrow house" will behold the answers to all questions on judgment day. In these specially commissioned stories, Chet Williamson, Pat Cadigan, Robert Holdstock, Nancy Holder, William F. Nolan, and others explore worlds of superstition, fear, and imagination ... unleashing from the narrow house of the unknown more than even they bargained for. A complete blur to me - I forgot I even had a copy, and I'm not sure if it belongs here or in the American Gothic section? I know I bought it on the strength of one story, Ramsey Campbell's black comedy The Dead Don't Die, the touching tale of pompous, megalomaniacal vampire hunter George Saint whose stake first, ask questions later policy lands him in bother .... If someone wants to clue me in about the rest, don't hold back.
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Post by dem bones on May 25, 2011 12:19:15 GMT
Stephen Laws - Bleeding Dry: Been enjoying Mr. Laws' 1998 apocalyptic/ borderline joys-of-slime novel Chasm of late, so excuse enough to revisit this glorious macabre novella.
Following the death of their parents, eldest son James Fortnam, thirty, inherits the family fortune and takes over the running of Fortnam House. Unfortunately, James suffers from chronic health problems and bringing up eleven year old Julian, a reclusive horror film buff, and seven-year-old Phillipa only adds to the strain. The formidable housekeeper, Mrs. Doherty, does her best, but she's ancient and a spectacular fall downstairs soon sees her in her grave.
James is being preyed upon by big fat swindler Barry Devenish who, aware that the thoroughly decent young chap donates huge sums to various charities, sets about fleecing him. To this end he sets up a charity gig featuring Scum, a three piece punk metal band who have risen to notoriety on the back of an on-stage electrocution which saw them requiring a new bassist (they commemorate the dead band member in their top smash hit, Burning Up Love). Scum are masterminded by a gent named Spook. Between them, Devenish and Spook persuade the latter's fabulously glamorous girlfriend, Syrene de Mere, to give James a free go on her enormous knockers.
With James successfully seduced and Syrene moved in at Fortnam House, Spook provides the drugs she'll need to speed her innocent fiancé on his way while he takes care of Fat Barry's brakes. Rock music being what it is, however, the singer doesn't live to reap the benefit of his dastardly deeds, unwittingly giving his morbid audience what they want when he, too, fries onstage. Syrene can hardly believe her luck! Now it's simply a case of marrying the dying James, getting her hands on the loot and dumping the nuisance kids in an orphanage!
Alas for Syrene, studying Curse Of The Faceless Thing, Fangs Of Doom, Lizard Man versus Rat Man and all those other horror films has not been lost on Julian who fingers her for a vampire. When lacing her hot drink with garlic fails to get rid of her, he resolves on a more drastic course of action. Matters come to a head at Phillipa's chaotic eighth birthday party ....
Bloody wonderful!
Kim Newman - Three on a Match: France, WWI. Legendary German sniper Old Sharpeye dies in the trenches, decapitated by a flying sheet of corrugated iron. An idealistic young corporal - ADOLF by name - grabs his rifle and dreams dreams of emulating the marksman, becoming a National hero and instigating a peace process in progress that will lead to a fairer, happier world. Meanwhile, in the opposing trench three Tommies are lighting their cigs from a single match. One of them recalls the old superstition, opts not to chance fate and unwittingly dooms humanity to the Third Reich and the horrors of the second world war. Hardly Mr. Newman's fault but this story brought back unwanted memories of Roald Dahl's super-irritating Genesis And Catastrophe and nearly set off one of my turns.
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Post by dem bones on May 28, 2011 12:59:26 GMT
More superstitious twaddle. The Nancy A. Collins is a gem.
Nancy A. Collins - The Needle Men: Urban legend has it that, since the depression, New Orleans has been plagued by a mysterious crew who sneak from the shadows to plunge lethal syringes into the necks of their seemingly random targets. Tourist Pease learns of these 'Needle Men' from an elderly black barfly, Coltrane, who also claims to have survived an encounter with a Medusa-like swamp being. Of course, it's all made up, chuckles Pease as we watches Coltrane limp off into the night ...
Chet Williamson - The Swing of the Knife: Nichols purchases a beautifully crafted blade at a knife fair. On the insistence of the trader, he nicks the top of his finger, letting the steel taste him to create a unique bond between knife and owner. Bored to distraction at a conference, Nichols amuses himself by spinning the knife on the table top, fantasizing that whichever of his five despised colleagues the tip points to will be the first of them to die. He repeats this several times. Shortly afterward, three of the team perish in an air-crash and a fourth suffers a fatal stroke ...
Richard T. Chizmar - Cemetery Dance: On a freezing night with snow imminent, Elliott, pistol at the ready, breaks into the cemetery to speak with Kassie, the woman he loved and murdered when he realised that she would never be his. Somehow Kassie has sent him a letter of forgiveness, delivered to his pillow, and all Elliott has to do is perform one insignificant act of self-sacrifice and they can be together forever!
Peter James - Breaking the Chain: Tom learns the hard way that shouting "bollocks!" at chain letters and tearing them to pieces is not the correct way to go about things. Death is a bit of a scamp in this one.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Aug 6, 2012 19:24:31 GMT
I've recently finished this collection. For some reason I'd let it gather dust on the shelf for ages after buying it & had to push myself to get started on it. In fact, I took it away on holiday with very little other reading matter so that I'd have to force myself to either read it or twiddle my thumbs. I'm really not sure why that happens with some books; I buy them & if I don't start them immediately (usually because I've already got something else on the go) they can stand there for ages. Sometimes it feels as though the longer they've stood on the shelf the harder it is to start reading them, despite the fact that I was really keen at the time of purchase.
But I digress.
The good news is that it turned out to be a great collection of tales & I wish I'd read it sooner (yes, yes, mea culpa). Does anyone know if the follow-up volumes "Touch Wood" & "Blue Motel" are as much fun?
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Post by dem bones on Aug 6, 2012 19:45:36 GMT
Same thing here! Got it when it came out and still haven't finished it, though have read and forgotten five-six more than those noted above. Any particular stand-outs, Mr. Proof, or is it more a case of they all share the same high standard?
Can't help with either of the sequels. Blue Motel was one I ummed and ahhed over in Books Etc (R.I.P.) before opting for something else. I so hope it wasn't something terrible - my spidy sense was well off in those days.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Aug 7, 2012 7:44:35 GMT
Glad it isn't just me...
Maybe I delayed because I've always found Peter Crowther's own stuff to be relentlessly grim.
Well, the overall standard was pretty high, I reckon; there weren't any clunkers, which is great in so varied a collection. I enjoyed "The Sluice" by Stephen Gallagher, if only because it was nice to see a story in a setting that I'd always considered fertile ground for horror - an institution caring for the learning disabled - that wasn't gothic & Gormenghast-like.
Ramsey Campbell's "The Dead Must Die" was great in the way it caught the mindset of a fundamentalist religious obsessive.
Christopher Fowler's "Evil Eye" I enjoyed too, mainly because it veered off in a direction I hadn't foreseen.
All in all I really reckon that I got my money's worth.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 7, 2012 18:49:31 GMT
Ramsey Campbell's "The Dead Must Die" was great in the way it caught the mindset of a fundamentalist religious obsessive. Ain't that the truth. Have bought many a second-hand paperback on the strength of just the one story but it's very rare I'll splash out on a brand new hardback for same, yet such was the case with Narrow Houses. There's what probably qualifies as a non-fiction companion-piece in Shock Xpress 1 (Titan, 1991), later updated for Ramsey's Probably. It's Stephen Gallagher's The Sluice come my next bi-annual dip into Mr. C's opus.
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Post by adrianmarley on Sept 20, 2012 10:10:32 GMT
Completely agree on the Campbell story, which I read for the first time last night. I don't think there's anyone around who can get into the mindset of a paranoid religious obssessive the way he can. It's a great story and I can't think why I haven't read it sooner.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 20, 2012 12:24:26 GMT
Completely agree on the Campbell story, which I read for the first time last night. I don't think there's anyone around who can get into the mindset of a paranoid religious obssessive the way he can. It's a great story and I can't think why I haven't read it sooner. Re-read it quite recently in the Ghosts and Grisly Things collection, and it still does the business. Evangelist-bashing was in vogue at the time, what with Ray Garton, Joe R. Lansdale, John Shirley and the Splatterpunks. I could be very wrong, but from memory their targets were mostly corrupt Cable TV superstars or particularly lunatic fringe churches, seldom the lone obsessives. The vampire hunter in David J. Schow's A Week In The Unlife might be 'George Saint's American cousin, though George likely drew the line at screwing his 'vampires' after he'd impaled them.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 16, 2018 21:07:37 GMT
Christopher Fowler - Evil Eye: Todd Cartland, reeling from his acrimonious break up with Amy, hits the desert highway. It's his bad luck that he stops off at the possibly the world's only diner with a fortune teller in residence. Turns out Madame Sasha is the genuine deal, as, to a lesser extent, is her dangerous son, 'Cowboy,' whose finely-tuned gaydar marks Todd for his next victim. Sasha is not one to betray her own but urges Todd to drive on his way. He complies, only to pull up at the nearest motel, where Cowboy awaits him in the car-park.
J. N. Williamson - Girl of My Dreams: The Carney comes to Midway. Our teen protagonist only has eyes for the Girlie show where he knows for sure he'll find the "physically perfect" girl he's created in the Frankenstein's laboratory of his mind. So it proves. Her name is Ginny and she cavorts seductively with three mechanical snakes which somehow find their way into his trousers. Suspenseful story, not sure I got it. Perhaps the author is asking us to ponder how the fantasy girls men routinely abuse as wank fodder feel about the deal?
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