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Post by dem bones on Aug 22, 2012 18:54:38 GMT
Found another local second-hand bookshop pretty much on my doorstep this afternoon ("how long have you been here?" "about four years"). As yet, LXV Books, 65 Roman Road, Bethnal Green London E2 0QN, doesn't really do horror, but in the childrens' section found copies of Mary Danby's 5th Armada Ghost Book, Charles Molin's Ghosts, Spooks & Spectres and Peter Haining's Scary! (get that creepy-looking kid on the cover) so came away all smiles. Now he knows somebody's up for beautiful trash macabre, proprietor says he'll set any likely stuff aside, so who knows? Peter Haining (ed.) – Scary! Stories That Will Make You Scream! (Souvenir, 1998)  Darren Lock
R. L. Stine – The Spell
Jerome Bixby – It’s a Good Life
Richard Matheson – Drink My Red Blood
William F. Nolan – Something Nasty
Leon Garfield – The Restless Ghost
Isaac Asimov – The Thirteenth Day of Christmas
Zenna Henderson – Hush!
Roald Dahl – Spotty Powder
Ambrose Bierce – A Baby Tramp
Ray Bradbury – The Man Upstairs
Joan Aiken – Dead Language Master
Stephen King – Here There Be Tygers
Ramsey Campbell – Trick or Treat
Robert Bloch – A Toy for JulietteBlurb: Get ready to scream with this scary collection of real frighteners
William was Jennifer's boyfriend and he was coming to see her. So why should she be so scared?
Anthony had been born with strange powers. If he liked you he would use his powers to help you, and that was bad enough. But if he didn't...
Jules was a spooky little boy who hated sunlight. The first word he ever spoke was 'death', and his face made people shiver. Then he went to see the film Dracula, and after that he knew what he was meant to be...
June was baby-sitting Dubby Warren, a sickly little boy with horribly wise eyes. She wouldn't have told him to amuse himself for a while if she'd known that he would land her in the most scary nightmare for real that anyone could possibly imagine...
Charlie hated having to go to the school toilet during class. It wasn't just because Miss Bird embarrassed him in front of the other kids, or because of that bully, Kenny. No, it was because there was something there, down in the basement ... waiting.
Give yourself the shivers with these and nine more stories by the master scaremongers - R.L. Stine, Roald Dahl, Joan Aiken, Jerome Bixby, Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan, Leon Garfield, Zenna Henderson, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch. Go on, enjoy being scared... |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 24, 2012 17:24:22 GMT
As with Ramsey Campbell's The Gruesome Book, material is largely culled from adult collections and periodicals, exceptions being the R. L. Stine, Leon Garfield and Roald Dahl contributions, the latter a short chapter excised from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory when the author decided he was risking bad kid overload. Peter Haining supplies brief introductions and afterwords ("Ramsey Campbell, Britain's leading writer of weird stories, wrote his first tale, Black Fingers From Space, in a red school exercise book when he was only eight years old ..."). Robert Bloch's futuristic sequel to Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper is a surprise inclusion. William F. Nolan - Something Nasty: (Charles L. Grant [ed.] - The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror, (1983). Julie doesn't like how her mother dolls herself up whenever sickening Uncle Gus pays a visit, invariable to wheedle another fat hand-out from Dad. Julie detests Uncle Gus. He comes on all saintly in front of Ma, but when he's left alone with Julie - that's when he starts with the nasty stuff. Like telling her about voodoo and how it works. Like telling her there's a rat-like creature living in her stomach, fixing to feast on her guts. Not so much "scary" as downright creepy until the final pages when Nolan pulls his punch and tacks on an E.C. ending. Stephen King - Here There Be Tygers: ( Ubris, Spring 1968). Charlie's weak bladder is a source of endless amusement to his form teacher, Miss Bird, who never passes an opportunity to humiliate him before the class when he inevitably needs to visit the bathroom. To crown it all, now he can't even go, as there's a bloody great tiger hanging around the cubicles. Miss Bird sends Kenny Griffen, the official school bully, to go find out what's taking him so long .... King's early toilet of terror offering (he's written at least two more to my knowledge) reads like a toned-down version of David H. Keller's The Thing In The Cellar. Zenna Henderson - Hush!: Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Nov 1953). June is babysitting little Dubby Warren, a sickly, bronchitic child who is - rightly, as it turns out - not expected to see puberty. June needs to get her algebra homework finished, so she encourages Dubby too use his imagination, make believe something into existence, but do it quietly. So Dubby dreams up the noise-eater, part sledge, part his mum's vacuum cleaner with a huge, cobra-like nozzle. It embarks on a killing spree. |
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Post by dem bones on Sept 4, 2012 6:25:52 GMT
Ramsey Campbell - The Trick: The community despise Mrs. Trodden almost as much as they do the teenagers causing trouble in the street, and the feeling is mutual. The old girl's grimy house and overgrown garden are a blight on the community, and rumour has it she's a witch. So why would she suddenly take an interest in the welfare of school pals Debbie and Sandra, warning them away when she catches them playing near the tunnel at the railway cutting where that little boy disappeared a few years back? The truth is, luckily for us, that she wouldn't, not after Sandra's playful pooch Mop has given her a fright. Come Halloween night, Mrs. Trodden is ready for them with a particularly nasty trick disguised as a treat. Peter Haining cops a lot of flak for his fluid way with author attributions, and those rare 'finds' which, it has been claimed, may even originate from his own pen - "Elizabeth Grey"'s wonderful The Skeleton Count, as reprinted in The Vampire Omnibus, is yet another to arouse suspicion - but he sure knew how to compile a decent anthology. Of all Ramsey's stories, it's hard to think of a more suitable choice for this particular collection. Lord Probert has already commented - brilliantly, I thought - on The Trick in his guided tour of Years Best Horror 10. Have reproduced same below for convenience sake but be sure to read the full review.
‘The Trick’ - Ramsey Campbell. It's Halloween and the nasty old lady who lives down the street has a very nasty surprise in store for two little girls. I've always thought of Ramsey Campbell as the Hitchcock equivalent of horror writers because he displays his style so openly, and there are plenty of typically Campbellian descriptions here. We open with 'a face like a wrinkled monkey's, whose jaw drooped as if melting' that comes back to haunt the protagonists at the climax, but not before they've got to explore the Tunnel of Scary Ghastliness of this particular story (tunnels are a bit of a recurrent theme in his stories. In fact there could probably be a collection of tunnel-themed Campbell material) where once again everyday objects are rendered exceedingly unpleasant.Joan Aiken - Dead Language Master: (Anthony Rampton (ed.), ( First Panther Book Of Horror, 1965) When form teacher Mr. Fletcher's beloved old dog, Heinkel, dies, the disruptive, deeply unpleasant Pridd decides it would be a wizard prang to stuff the corpse in the cupboard for it to fall out on it's owner when next he takes class. Mr. Fletcher is as yet unaware of Heinkel's death - he's just returned from hospital where the specialist confirmed his worst fears. Rather than teach the class Latin, he takes the opportunity to tell them how miserable they've made his last year and he's quitting his post with immediate effect. Even Pridd realises his hilarious prank may be inappropriate to the occasion, but how can he transfer Heinkel's body back inside Fletcher's car without him knowing? Another dark one and includes what may be first instance of a schoolkid referring to an adult as a "tw*t" in horror fiction. Things have come a long way since the early volumes of the Armada Ghost Stories series, that's for sure.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Sept 11, 2012 11:22:39 GMT
Peter Haining cops a lot of flak for his fluid way with author attributions, and those rare 'finds' which, it has been claimed, may even originate from his own pen - "Elizabeth Grey"'s wonderful The Skeleton Count, as reprinted in The Vampire Omnibus, is yet another to arouse suspicion - but he sure knew how to compile a decent anthology. I just found out that Haining also edited a sequel to this anthology that includes a story by none other than Alison Prince. |
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Post by dem bones on Sept 13, 2012 12:03:43 GMT
I don't have a copy of either book, but the Alison Prince story is The Black Dress from her third collection, A Haunting Refrain (Methuen, 1988). Scary! 2: More Stories to Make You Scream! (Souvenir, 2002), also includes Philip Pullman's lovely Video Nasty which Haining would later resurrect for The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories . |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 20, 2013 18:13:34 GMT
Leon Garfield – The Restless Ghost; Dick Bostock, twelve, and slightly older pal, R. Harris, resolve to play a prank on the cantankerous, "villainous old crow" of a sexton of Hove churchyard. One Saturday night. Harris coats Dick in phosphorescent paint in mimicry of a phantom drummer boy who, two decades earlier, was a fixture in the graveyard, until a smuggling ring admitted to staging the haunting with the unwitting help of a local orphan. Sure enough, the ghost vanished when the cutthroat crew were strung up on a gallows.
Things do not go to plan. The sexton is nowhere to be seen, and as Dick flits from tomb to tomb, disconsolately banging away at his drum, the real spectre materialises. The boy bolts for home only to find the ghost has beaten him to it, condemning Dick to take his place in the churchyard.
If only Mr. Garfield had summoned his inner Charles Birkin, The Restless Ghost might have terrified an entire generation out of its tiny wits, but he cruelly opts for the happy ending. No worries on that score with our next author ....,
Ambrose Bierce - A Baby Tramp: Inexplicable events - a shower of frogs, a crimson rain, etc. - herald a plague which decimates the population of Blackville. Among the few survivors, a toddler named Joey, who is first adopted by an injun tribe, sold on to a widow, runs away, and passes from family to family until he's good as crossed America. But still the desire to return 'home' to mother Hetty lures him on. Eventually, one freezing night, half dead through exposure and exhaustion, he blunders into Oak Hill cemetery ....
Isaac Asimov – The Thirteenth Day of Christmas: Boy detective Larry foils a terrorist plot to bomb the Russian offices of the UN building. Don't know why Haining saw fit to include this Christmas story as there's nowt 'scary'' about it, or if there is, it completely washed over me.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 16, 2021 11:32:58 GMT
Peter Haining - Scary!2: More Stories to Make You Scream (Souvenir, 2002)  Darren Lock
Philip Pullman - Video Nasty
R. L Stine - The House of No Return
M. R. James - Lost Hearts
Anne McCaffrey - Finders Keepers
Alison Prince - The Black Dress
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sussex Vampire
Robert Swindells - Cloud Cover
Russell Hoban - The Ghost Horse of Genghis Khan
Bram Stoker - How 7 Went Mad
Dean Koontz - Kittens
Pete Johnson - Horror Snap
Neil Gaiman - When We Went To See the End of the World
AcknowledgementsBlurb: Get ready to scream again with this second Scary collection of even more frightening stories
If you were brave enough for the first collection of Scary! stories, here are twelve more chillers by the master scaremongers - Philip Pullman, RL Stine, M.R. James, Anne McCaffrey, Alison Prince, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Swindells, Russell Hoban, Bram Stoker, Dean Koontz, Pete Johnson and Neil Gaiman.
Martin, Kevin and David are watching a really gruesome video. A strange boy turns up from nowhere and asks to watch it with them. How does he know so much about the story... ?
To join the Danger Club they must spend time in a haunted house. But when Robbie, Lorrie and Nathan decide to trick shy Chris on Hallowe'en, events take a turn from plain scary to scared to death ...
Laura loves the picture of cloudy sky that hangs in an art gallery window. It would be just the thing to cheer up her mum as a Christmas present — but as she passes each day something very weird is happening: the scene is changing...
Jack is worried about his new baby step-brother. Strange things are happening at night - one morning there is blood on the baby's neck and then... Jack’s mother is seen leaning over the cot with blood on her lips. Has he got a vampire for a new mum... ?
Prepare to enjoy more scares ...Philip Pullman - Video Nasty: (Jean Richardson [ed.], Cold Feet, 1985). Three ne'er-do-wells skip school to go on the rob in Woolworths and collect a dodgy video at the newsagent. Snuff Park, as title suggests, is purportedly 112 minutes of authentic murder porn featuring the slaying of a young mother and infant son on film. The trio head around to Martin's place to watch it. A strange fourth kid, who doesn't smell so good, insists on tagging along for the screening. Pete Johnson - Horror Snap: A Polaroid camera whose instant snapshots prophesy nasty events yet to come. OK, if a little too "for children." An adult version has potential. R. L Stine - The House of No Return: Robbie, Lorrie and Nathan attempt to press-gang the new kid into their 'Danger Club.' On Halloween night, they lure Chris to the local Haunted House and shut him inside. If their timid new friend can take it for an hour, he's passed the initiation.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2021 7:22:53 GMT
 Billy Graham: ( The Haunt of Horror #2, Aug. 1973). Peter has a unique gift for locating lost items be they golf balls, children or a stash of extensive furs concealed in a cave. Ken Fargo, slimy insurance investigator, wants a cut of the action. Dean Koontz - Kittens: That Walter Caulfield is a stickler for performing "the will of God" invariably means the worst for Pinkie the cat's latest litter. So appalled is little Marnie Caulfield by this "God" character's lust for cruelty that she swears to get even. Revised 1995 version of Koontz's first professional sale. A proper horror story with proper horror story ending. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Apr 17, 2021 11:45:57 GMT
Philip Pullman - Video Nasty R. L Stine - The House of No Return M. R. James - Lost Hearts Anne McCaffrey - Finders Keepers Alison Prince - The Black Dress Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sussex Vampire Robert Swindells - Cloud Cover Russell Hoban - The Ghost Horse of Genghis Khan Bram Stoker - How 7 Went Mad Dean Koontz - Kittens Pete Johnson - Horror Snap Neil Gaiman - When We Went To See the End of the World This one has a fascinating mix of contributors, from Stine to Stoker. I wouldn't have expected to see McCaffrey here (I read a couple of her dragon-rider novels a few years back, at a friend's suggestion, but I didn't finish the series). I also just belatedly realized that the author of "Video Nasty" (which I've read elsewhere) is the same person who wrote the Dark Materials children's series (which I haven't read). And then there's a story by the great Alison Prince, too. |
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Post by dem bones on Apr 18, 2021 12:37:10 GMT
This one has a fascinating mix of contributors, from Stine to Stoker. I wouldn't have expected to see McCaffrey here (I read a couple of her dragon-rider novels a few years back, at a friend's suggestion, but I didn't finish the series). I also just belatedly realized that the author of "Video Nasty" (which I've read elsewhere) is the same person who wrote the Dark Materials children's series (which I haven't read). And then there's a story by the great Alison Prince, too. : ( A Haunting Refrain, 1988). Selina's jumble sale find transports her back to the 1920's for a truly enchanted evening at the ballroom. Her gentlemanly partner for the evening, Bertie Pomfret, sports a facial scar inflicted of a German bayonet. Meanwhile, on a public bench outside the derelict dance hall, an old man breathes his last. Right up my street. A fashion victim classic with haunted bench episode. Have definitely read it before, but can't think where (certainly not A Haunted Refrain, as don't have a copy)? |
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