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Post by dem bones on Aug 25, 2012 10:26:53 GMT
Stephen Jones (ed.) - Mammoth Book Of Best New Horror 23 (Robinson, Oct. 2012)  Vincent Chong
Ramsey Campbell - Holding The Light
Christopher Fowler - Lantern Jack
Paul Kane - Rag And Bone
Gemma Files - Some Kind Of Light Shines From Your Face
Joel Lane - Midnight Flight
Tim Lebbon - Trick Of The Light
Gregory Nicoll - But None Shall Sing For Me
Alison Littlewood - About The Dark
Daniel Mills - The Photographer's Tale
Mark Samuels - The Tower
Peter Atkins - Dancing Like We're Dumb
Simon Strantzas - An Indelible Stain Upon The Sky
Joan Aiken - Hair
Steve Rasnic Tem - Miri
Geeta Roopnarine - Corbeaux Bay
Michael Marshall Smith - Sad, Dark Thing
Robert Silverberg - Smithers And The Ghost Of The Thar
Reggie Oliver - Quieta Non Movere
Joe R. Lansdale - The Crawling Sky
Conrad Williams - Wait
Simon Kurt Unsworth - The Ocean Grand, North West Coast
Evangeline Walton - They That Have Wings
Thana Niveau - White Roses, Bloody Silk
John Ajivide Lindqvist - The Music Of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer
Ramsey Campbell - Passing Through Peacehaven
David Buchan - Holiday Home
Stephen Jones & Kim Newman - Necrology: 2011"I'm not sure how worthwhile any award is if you know you've campaigned to win it." - Stephen Jones, Introduction: Horror In 2011 Thanks ever so to Robinsons for sending on yet another title due to receive it's official launch at FantasyCon this time next month. Just time to congratulate all the authors who made the cut - in particular Lady P., Ramsey Campbell, Mark Samuels and Reggie Oliver (his turn to fly the flag for The Black Book Of Horror) - and offer commiserations to all deserving cases who were disappointed on this occasion. Mr. Jones' introduction is, at 87 pages, slightly shorter than in recent volumes, this on the insistence of the publisher who believe "the non-fiction elements are superfluous to the rest of the book." Absolute tommyrot! No matter how excellent the fiction in a Best New Horror, the introductory essays are a huge selling point and usually the best thing about it! * CB, the Evangeline Walton story was written during WWII and remained unpublished until late last year when MTSF ran it in their November-December issue. Shrinkproof - you know a proper horror story (John Ajivide Lindqvist, Michael Marshall Smith) when you read one! And - sorry, Matt - Mr. Jones still doesn't reckon Vault think much of his Best New Horror anthologies. What does he do for eyes? *
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Post by andydecker on Aug 25, 2012 11:21:25 GMT
Mr. Jones still doesn't reckon Vault think much of his Best New Horror anthologies. What does he do for eyes? * Hm, why is that? Sitting safely on the other side of the channel I don´t have a personal stake in this, but I wouldn´t call the threads about BNH negative. It may be that others are more enthusiastic, but things like BLACK BOOK are productionwise in another league then a big publisher like Robinson so I think it is natural that people are talking more about them instead of a yearly antho which surely is seen as an institution. Sorry to hear that about the non-fiction. It was always a good guide and an indicator how healthy the genre is. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 25, 2012 11:53:25 GMT
CB, the Evangeline Walton story was written during WWII and remained unpublished until late last year when MTSF ran it in their November-December issue. I saw her entire Mabinogian series at a used bookstore two days ago and was tempted to buy it. What I really want, however, is the Nodens collection that James posted the other day. |
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Post by David A. Riley on Aug 25, 2012 19:18:11 GMT
"Mr. Jones still doesn't reckon Vault think much of his Best New Horror anthologies. What does he do for eyes? *"
Is that still true? I'm sorry to hear that if it's so. And surprised, as some of the Vault's favourite writers regularly crop up in the series.
Nice to see Ramsey, Reggie, Mark and Thana there this time.
It's an invaluable series, distilling so much that could be easily missed each year unless you have an amazingly extensive book buying ability.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 25, 2012 19:36:19 GMT
I saw her entire Mabinogian series at a used bookstore two days ago and was tempted to buy it. What I really want, however, is the Nodens collection that James posted the other day. Yeah, that really does look the part. They That Have Wings will be among the first i read from #23, though it may have to wait until after Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback which is just too tempting to avoid for much longer. Andy, David, it's a repeat of last year's verdict, maybe even word for word, so might just as well regurgitate my response that there is no Vault party line toward the YBH series or anything else, the few of us who've been critical of specific volumes have been extremely enthusiastic about others (i think the outpouring of love toward #22 was actually very sweet), and i know that at least three stories in 23 - by MMS, Lindqvist and Reggie Oliver - are brilliant because have already said as much elsewhere. It's no big deal. and to be honest, we've been accused of far, far worse than "they apparently don't care much for this series !", sometimes even with justification. At least Mr. Jones doesn't dismiss us as a bunch of f**k**g "satirists", that goes in his favour, and I LOVE that Vault is again the last entry in the entire book. Seems appropriate, somehow. As to the non-fiction content, well, the Necrology is still depressingly huge and while the introduction is down 18 pages on last years, it still runs to close on 90 pages though he sure has plenty to squeeze in. Mr. Jones' sign off is briefer than of recent volumes, subject matter pretty much as predicted, but once he's made his point, he doesn't dwell on it. Also included in the same Robinson funpack, The Mammoth Book Of Slasher Movies and Football Hooligans, so will post details over next few days. Thank you Sam! |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 28, 2012 20:53:54 GMT
Am over the gazing at them in awe stage now and have entered the "they're not going to read themselves" stage, so a tentative dip into Best New Horror 23 before beginning the assault on Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback. John Ajivide Lindqvist's The Music Of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer has been raved about on the Book Of Horror thread, and Michael Marshall Smith's Sad, Dark Thing from the same volume would have been if only i'd typed my notes while i could still find them but not to worry, it will be no chore rereading it. Reggie Oliver's Jamesian Quieta Non Movere opens 8th Black Book Of Horror. Between them, the following trio account for a mere thirteen pages, but they're each incredibly effective and, more to the point, discernibly, properly horrible HORROR STORIES, making it six winners from six to date. Christopher Fowler - Lantern Jack: ( Wildstacks 1, December 2010). The Duke of Wellington on the corner of Southwark Street and Leather Lane has a rich history of tragedy stretching back centuries, and the more gruesome episodes always occur on the night of October 31st. Old timer Lantern Jack relates the highlights to the girl in the sexy witch costume. Mr. Fowler once again truly At Home In The Old Pubs Of London. As i type, you can still find the story at Wild Stacks: The Library Of ImaginationGeeta Roopnarine - Corbeaux Bay: Trinidad. He loathes the turkey buzzards their disgusting appetites, the way they feat on the entrails thrown them by his wife Christine as she works at gutting fish. When she's not looking, he aims a sly kick at one of the ugly bastards. It sidesteps, fixes him with an inscrutable stare. Later that morning he explores a different stretch of beach away from noisy holidaymakers. Scaling a cliff face to retrieve birds eggs for the kids, he slips and does something terrible to his spine. The turkey vultures aren't ones to forgive and forget. I seem to remember some raised eyebrows - on here, at least - at the inclusion of Mark Valentine's A Revelation of Cormorants in Volume 22, but will be surprised if there are any complaints about Ms. Roopnarine's ghastly 'when carrion crows and allies attack' outing. David Buchan - Holiday Home: Short-short everyday tale of a man moving his family into their new cottage and propping them at the table for tea. |
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Post by marksamuels on Aug 29, 2012 23:22:08 GMT
It's a very fine anthology. I received my contributor's copy a couple of days ago. I particularly relish (though possibly not for the right reasons) Mr. Joel Lane's tale featuring an online horror anthology site called "The Vault of Cobwebs" as well as his satire directed towards one of said website's contributors, an insomniac writer named "Niall Verde", whose collection The Veil of Fail was- indeed! - alas, doomed to failure by his bitter nature and disdain for the idea of authorial self-promotion.  Mark S. |
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Post by David A. Riley on Aug 30, 2012 6:23:17 GMT
Sounds worth the cover price alone, Mark! I love a good satire. I was thinking of doing a story about a horror writer whose collection of stories never appears because something always happens to any publisher who takes up the task of publishing it.  |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 30, 2012 7:27:39 GMT
It's a very fine anthology. I received my contributor's copy a couple of days ago. I particularly relish (though possibly not for the right reasons) Mr. Joel Lane's tale featuring an online horror anthology site called "The Vault of Cobwebs" as well as his satire directed towards one of said website's contributors, an insomniac writer named "Niall Verde", whose collection The Veil of Fail was- indeed! - alas, doomed to failure by his bitter nature and disdain for the idea of authorial self-promotion. Mark S. I found Midnight Flight very poignant myself. At the onset of Alzheimer's (?), Paul Cooksen has a compulsion to hunt down a horror anthology fondly remembered from his youth. With much help from divine providence and a little from the Crypt Of Cobwebs forum, Paul learns that the book he's after is Thom Creighton Parr's Midnight Flight (Acheron, 1964, or 1954 if you take the Wikipedia entry at face value), which, according to one reviewer, is "too disturbing to read." Paul tracks the author to a Stoke nursing home just in time to catch his desperately lonely final moments. His own are only around the corner. Crypt of Cobwebs is far too accomplished to be Vault, but i think you may be onto something with regard to the "Niall Verde" cameo (at this rate we may yet amass enough material for that Oh, Bollocks To The Awards theme anthology). The story first appeared in D. F. Lewis's The Horror Anthology Of Horror Anthologies which, I believe, the editor may have mentioned on here once or twice for three pages. What I'm liking about Best New Horror 23 is the light and shade. After Joel Lane's quiet contribution, i jumped to another appears early in the book, and found myself slap-bang in the middle of an epic gore-fest. Tally now stands at eight winners from eight. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 30, 2012 12:01:23 GMT
"Crypt of Cobwebs" is brilliant. I'm surprised that someone isn't already using it.
I wonder what the posters at the Crypt think of the Best New Horror series.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 30, 2012 12:25:58 GMT
"Crypt of Cobwebs" is brilliant. I'm surprised that someone isn't already using it. The very wonderful cobwebbed room comes close. word is "they apparently don't care much for this series"  |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 31, 2012 21:37:54 GMT
Paul Kane - Rag And Bone: "He knows what you've done and he's coming for you." Not content with deliberately triggering her father''s fatal heart attack to hurry along the inheritance, Ted has been cheating on fiancée Audrey on an industrial scale. Audrey is not one to tolerate infidelity: she drugs, binds and imprisons him in the cellar with the butchered corpses of his every one night stand. And then her Dad shows up with his barrow. Dead he may be, Frank, the Rag & Bone man, won't stand for anyone messing his little girl around.
Mark Samuels - The Tower: The bonus story which concludes Chomu Press edition of The Man Who Collected Machen. Kings Cross and Highgate. The regeneration of London continues apace, eradicating every last vestige of weirdness as the dilapidated pre-war buildings are demolished to make way for identikit, soulless glass prisons. One man stands apart from the brainwashed herd. He is a dreamer, a hermit who has extricated himself from his fellow man (in so far as it's possible for a city dweller to do so) because they none of them measure up to his lofty ideals. And to he alone appears the great tower shrouded in mist. Now the challenge is to will himself from the material world and into that monumental wonderland of imagination.
From Paul Kane's technicolour blood and guts extravaganza to an exercise in downbeat monochrome introspection, the author opting to withhold any trad horror content until the final page. Yes, it's a Best New Horror collection for sure.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2012 19:08:12 GMT
Was only intending to sample a couple of these as a warm up for Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback, but am nearing half-way, better than i've managed with a number of previous volumes. So far, so devoid of clever-clever, spot-the-horror masturbatory exercises, so it is to be hoped that phase is very much behind us. Thana Niveau - White Roses, Bloody Silk: Lady Elizabeth Rossiter and her equally vile entourage fancy themselves the last word in decadence. But their guest, Dr. Wilhelm Krauss, recently exiled from the Fatherland for his part in a society scandal, is the real deal - some even believe he's the Devil himself - whose treatment of personal maid Anna, leaves the company in little doubt as to his sadism. It all proves too much for doolally Aunt Florence, who goes berserk with the knitting needles. From John Hirschhorn-Smith (ed) Delicate Toxins: A Collection of Strange Tales inspired by Hans Heinz Ewers ( Side Real Press, 2011). Lady Probert's forthcoming début collection is looking more of a must with each passing hour. Alison Littlewood - About The Dark: Troubled teenagers Adam, Fuzz and Sash bunk off school to go exploring Dark Cave as an alternative to hanging around town until their nabbed by the truancy officer. Adam, mindful of his tough guy reputation, insists on leading his increasingly reluctant friends further into the pitch darkness. Sash, over whom he feels some kind of claim on account of she once showed him her tits, explains the legend connected to the place. "My Nan says they used to think the dark lived in the cave, so they'd send people in, you know - to test them ... Sometimes they came back, and sometimes they didn't. The ones who didn't, who got fed to the dark,had their names written on the walls, see? And then the dark would go away for another year, like they were sacrifices ..." Sash and Fuzz are spooked by an unseen presence and leave Adam cursing their cowardice. Back at school, the couple let him know they've become an item. Adam feels compelled to return to Dark Cave alone, this time with a decent torch (funded by a raid on his alcoholic mother's purse), and selects a sharp rock to add to the inscriptions .... Ramsey Campbell - Passing Through Peacehaven: On the surface, at least, a creepy haunted station tale. Ray Marsden dozes off on the train home to Manchester, to be awakened by a garbled announcement to the effect that the train terminates here. Marsden disembarks to find himself alone on a decrepit platform. Peacehaven. Strange name for a town - he doesn't remember it from the route map - sounds more like ..... Evidently the train's arrival disturbed the local vandals, as there's been an attempt to set the station ablae. Perhaps the culprit is also responsible for the sporadic muffled, and suspiciously mocking announcements. Frightened by a half-glimpsed shadowy presence, Marsden phones his wife, only to be answered by his own, no longer amusing, recorded message. Just as he's giving up hope of seeing his bed tonight, the last train pulls into Peacehaven .... |
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Post by dem bones on Sept 4, 2012 17:05:45 GMT
Another pair of crackers.
Evangeline Walton - They That Have Wings: When the German army invade Crete, three allied soldiers escape into the White Mountains and keep climbing. Their task is made the harder because Ronnie Lingard, a youthful RAF pilot has suffered a serious leg wound, obliging huge Aussie, Bert Madden, and our narrator, John Ogilovv, a former New Guinea schoolmaster, to carry him between them. Fazed by the arrival of a vulture-like bird, Madden fires six shots, somehow misses, and the creature stays with the party until it has guided them to a hut. Kindly Kyra Stamata and Aretoula, her beautiful granddaughter, take them in, treat their injuries, and see to it that they are well fed, Kyra only regrets she has no meat for them.
Aretoula taking a particular interest in Ronnie. As she nurses him back to health, the pair become lovers, and Ogilovv thinks it is maybe time to go. Bert shares his concern that, for all their generosity, there's something not quite right about these women. Living so remote from the nearest village, they are surprisingly well informed on the war effort and how do they provide for themselves? Ogilovv sure didn't like Aretoula's story of how her lunatic great-grandmother was destroyed as a Striga and has suffered a recurring nightmare as a consequence.
They make the mistake of informing Kyra of their intention to leave for the border the following day ...
And that's as far as we can go without ruining it with a spoiler. Let's just add that, according to the author, They That Have Wings was rejected by Dorothy McIlwraith as "too gory" for Weird Tales. I'd rate it as good as, if not better than, the Evangeline Walton story she eventually accepted, At The End Of The Corridor, and i rate At The End Of The Corridor very highly indeed.
Joan Aiken - Hair: "Death always leaps to mind when I think of mother. Due to her I've lived in an atmosphere of continuous death for twenty-one years.".
On coming of age, Sarah packed her things and left London for Egypt, intent on catching up on all she'd missed during a youth stifled by her seriously overbearing Mother who treats everyone as an invalid. After a whirlwind romance with Tom Orford, she agreed to become his wife, and here they are, honeymooning aboard a Mediterranean cruiser. But all the excitement and adventure Sarah has packed into a few short months proves too much of a strain on her heart.
After the funeral, Tom heads back to England to fullfil a promise. Sarah always joked that, if she died first, she wanted him to present her mother with a parcel of her hair which she'd cropped on the outset of her new life. Mother is every bit as overbearing as his young wife described her, and wait until he meets the family ....
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Post by dem bones on Sept 5, 2012 18:44:05 GMT
Gemma Files - Some Kind Of Light Shines From Your Face: Miz Forza and Miz Fairwander's carnival, travelling the Oklahoma dust bowl towns during rhe Great Depression. Star attraction, even above the plethora of freaks, the Gaiety Girls, an eleven strong, ever-changing line-up with the girl in the Medusa mask stage-centre. Of the troupe, she's the only one called upon to perform full striptease. Starving orphan Persia Leitner joins the carnival. She's not yet reached puberty but it's already her ambition to wear that snake-dripping 'mask of fear' and have all men worship her. A lightening storm. A fumble in the hay with roustabout Lewis Boll brings on her first period, and Persia is ready to fulfil her destiny .... Author lets on that the title is a line from Barabara Streisand's Prisoner,the theme song from The Eyes Of Laura Mars. All very well, but if she'd named it The Gorgon Terror or Night of Medusa, i'd have got around to her excellent story that much quicker. Been unable to shake the skewed melody from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds The Carney out of my head since reading it. Michael Marshall Smith - Sad, Dark Thing: A second selection (after John Ajivide Lindqvist's The Music Of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer) from the Jones-edited A Book Of Horrors, though really anything from that one could have made the cut. Miller, estranged from wife Catherine and their seven year old daughter, lives out his days alone high in the Santa Cruz Mountains, an empty husk of the man he was, now entirely devoid of purpose. To relieve the tedium, each weekend he takes an aimless drive in the country, and today's route, along the old highway that is now Branciforte Drives, proves more eventful than most on account of a handwritten cardboard STOP sign by a side road leading to a ramshackle farmhouse. The solitary resident, an unkempt old guy in grimy vest and jeans, takes his dollar and leads him to the local tourist attraction - the sad, dark thing kept behind the padlocked door of a hut ... All good, honest macabre stuff to date, and if personal preference is for SCREAMING OUT LOUD HORROR, the quieter moments - MMS, Mark Samuels. Joel Lane - do plenty more than give the whole a nice sense of balance. This collection may yet win a coveted place on my 'Best things you read in 2012' round-up!
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