Stephen Jones - Best New Horror 25

[mattofthespurs]

Just a quick heads up.

I was in Forbidden Planet in London yesterday and picked up 'Best New Horror 25'.

They had 6 or 7 copies left but all of them were signed by 7 or 8 authors and were at cover price.

Just in case you're in the area and fancy a signed copy. They all have FP's 'signed' sticker adorning the cover.

[dem bones]

Thanks for letting us know, matt. I think the third and final Zombie Apocalypse should also be available - will write Robinson later for confirmation. I am looking forward to #25 having heard great things about Stephen Volk's Whitstable and Ramsey's Holes For Faces. Congrats to Thana Niveau on yet another 'Best ..' appearance with the Jap torture-porn shocker Guinea Pig Girl from Black Book vol 10!

Stephen Jones (ed.) - Mammoth Best New Horror 25 (Robinson, October 2014)

Vincent Chong

Stephen Jones - Introduction: Horror In 2013

Kim Newman - Who Dares Wins: Anno Dracula 1980
Neil Gaiman - Click-Clack The Rattlebag
Nicholas Royle - Dead End
Daniel Mills - Isaac's Room
Angela Slatter - The Burning Circus
Ramsey Campbell - Holes For Faces
Joel Lane - By Night He Could Not See
Reggie Oliver - Come Into My Parlour
Michael Chislett - The Middle Park
Simon Kurt Unsworth - Into The Water
Lynda E. Rucker - The Burned House
Lavie Tidhar - What do we Talk About When We Talk About Z—
Halli Villegas - Fishfly Season
Tanith Lee - Doll Re Mi
Clive Barker - A Night's Work
Robert Shearman - The Sixteenth Step
Simon Strantzas - Stemming The Tide
Michael Marshall Smith - The Gist
Thana Niveau - Guinea Pig Girl
Kim Newman - Miss Baltimore Crabs: Anno Dracula 1990
Stephen Volk - Whitstable

Blurb:
The World's Leading Annual Showcase of Horror and Dark Suspense Celebrates 25 Years. For a quarter of a century, this multiple award-winning annual selection has showcased some of the very best, and most disturbing, short stories and novellas of horror and the supernatural. As always, this landmark volume features superior fiction from such masters of the genre and newcomers in contemporary horror. With an in-depth Introduction covering the year in horror, a fascinating Necrology and a unique contact directory, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror remains the world's leading anthology dedicated solely to presenting the very best in modern horror.

[dem bones]

Have been too engrossed in Zombie Apocalypse - Endgame to spare BNH#25 more than a cursory flick-through until last night when I tackled the introduction and three marvellous stories by Robert Shearman, Joel Lane and Neil Gaiman.

The introduction is, of course, an invaluable resource (likewise, however depressing I find it, the Necrology). It might not have seemed so at the time, but the early Black Books of Horror and such Gray Friar anthologies as Poe's Progeny helped usher in what amounts to a mini new wave of British macabre & supernatural authors, and, as Horror in 2013 confirms, several of our old lags are very busy people these days! The introduction is the best place to catch up with their adventures. In recent years, Mr. Jones has often signed off on a controversial note, but #25 finds him in celebratory mood so nobody need take cover as there is absolutely nothing to get upset about! "These days there are far too many 'Year's best' anthologies out there competing with each other (in all genres) ..." Maybe I spoke too soon.

Robert Shearman - The Sixteenth Step: Mrs Nathalie Gallagher's haunted bed & breakfast by the sea comes complete with supernaturally enhanced naughty step for wife-beaters, thieves and other male bad eggs.

Joel Lane - By Night He Could Not See: Birmingham. Several years after they went their separate ways, Mark, Gail, Tony and Jason, the former members of drug-dealing teenage gang the Yardbirds are hunted down by a killer who, by way of calling card, daubs the corpses of his victims in green and blue paint. Jason realises the culprit is Danny "the dong with the luminous nose" Vail, a quiet Jewish lad who was sweet on a girl the Yardbird's murdered for defecting to a rival mob. Armed with a gun, Jason breaks in to Vail's house and awaits him in the study. An antique volume of Edward Lear's collected nonsense poetry catches his eye. The door slowly swings open .....

Fans of pop culture references will be delighted to learn that By Night He Could Not See namechecks none other than Richard Allen.

Neil Gaiman - Click-Clack The Rattlebag: A little boy tells his sister's boyfriend a particularly nasty bedtime story about a man-drinking monster. Boyfriend genuinely shocked. "I can't believe you kids make up stuff like that"!

[dem bones]

Stephen Volk - Whitstable: Best New Horror 25 runs to 592 pages with Mr. Volk's novella accounting for a whopping 112 of them. The story is set in 1971. Shortly after the death of his beloved wife, Helen. Peter Cushing, having lost the will to live, has shut himself away in the Kentish fishing harbour town, unable to face the world. When he finally ventures outside, a strange little boy, Carl Drinkwater, approaches him on the sea front. Carl, a horror fan *, recognises him as Dr. Van Helsing from the Hammer Dracula - just the man he needs. Carl explains that his mum's new boyfriend, Les Gledhill, a thirty-something hippie in loon pants, is a vampire who visits him in bed each night to drink his blood. Cushing, loathe to get involved but fearing the worst, takes it upon himself to ascertain the truth. Enter Peter Cushing - Paedophile hunter (!).

Carl's mother is wilfully blind to her lover's faults, but the odious Gledhill, on learning that the local movie star is nosing into his business, lands a pre-emptive strike, approaching the police with a complaint about an old, childless man getting too friendly with his boy .....

Forty pages to go. Whitstable is shaping up something special indeed.

*. Carl's tasty paperback collection includes the 5th & 7th volumes of The Pan Book Of Horror Stories, Arrow editions of Stoker's Dracula and Lair Of The White Worm and John Burke's The Second Hammer Horror Film Omnibus "with Christopher Lee on its orange cover offering his bare chest to a victim" and, on loan from the library, Denis Gifford's hardcover Movie Monsters.

[dem bones]

"A transistor radio set on an empty oil drum was playing the recent Christmas hit, Grandad by Clive Dunn ...."

Finished Whitstable a few nights back, quite possibly the most feel-good horror story I ever read and a magnificent tribute to Peter Cushing. I didn't even mind that it was so ...

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler alert: read Whitstable first}

... nice! With much help from the ghost of his late wife, the Cush wins through versus the child molester thanks to his love, inherent decency and a firm resolve that, as with the Hammer & Amicus morality stories, good can and ultimately will triumph over evil every time. In less capable hands, this could be too mawkish to bear, but we are talking Stephen Volk at the very top of his game, and the climactic showdown in the Oxford cinema during a screening of The Vampire Lovers is as engrossing as Ingrid Pitt's antics in same.

[erebus]

Saw it in Waterstones for the past couple of months meaning to pick it up. Go today to get it, and would'nt you just know it GONE !
Although in all truth I still need the 24th.