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Post by dem bones on Feb 4, 2016 5:29:05 GMT
Nancy A. Collins, Edward E. Kramer & Martin H. Greenberg (eds.) - Dark Love: 22 All-Original Tales of Lust & Obsession (NEL, 1995) Steve Crisp T. E. D. Klein - Introduction
Stephen King - Lunch at the Gotham Café Michael O'Donoghue - The Psycho Kathe Koja - Pas de Deux Basil Copper - Bright Blades Gleaming John Lutz - Hanson's Radio David J. Schow - Refrigerator Heaven Robert Weinberg - Ro Erg Ramsey Campbell - Going Under Stuart Kaminsky - Hidden Wendy Webb - Prism Richard Laymon - The Maiden Bob Burden - You've Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine . . . George C. Chesbro - Waco John Peyton Cooke - The Penitent Kathryn Ptacek - Driven John Shirley - Barbara Michael Blumlein - Hymenoptera Ed Gorman - The End of It All Lucy Taylor - Heat Nancy A. Collins - Thin Walls Karl Edward Wagner - Locked Away Douglas E. Winter - Loop Blurb Put yourself into the hands of twenty-two great modern masters of macabre imagination as they give new definition to being madly in love.
Here is Stephen King at his chilling best with a never-before-published story as he invites you to lunch on a feast ofpassion turned painful – in a restaurant that serves it's specials of the day bloody rare. Go skinny-dipping with Richard Laymon in a lake of lethal fun. Join Kathe Koja in a dance of damnation.
This is just a tantalising hint of the imaginative chills and mindboggling twists of the perverse, bizarre, and creepy pleasures in this collection of stories that show there are no limits to dark love.*** The best of the stories provide chills and cheap thrills in equal measure, or so it seems to me. A great Valentine's gift, especially for people you don't like. Karl E. Wagner - Locked Away: The late Tilda Beale, who died a maiden spinster, is revered as a matriarch of her church who never had an impure thought in her 103 years. The old lady's locket is bought at auction by Pandora Smythe, a successful young antique trader of Pine Hill, South Carolina. Pandora's subsequent dreams are anything but virginal. It's taken since before Vault started for me to identify this story, and it never entered my head that it could be one of KEW's. Locked Away is even kinkier than the same author's Bettie Page enhanced The Kind Men Like. Robert Weinberg - Ro Erg: A misspelt circular from the bank opens up an exciting new world for mild-mannered straight Mr. Ronald Rosenburg, whose marriage to Madge is no great shakes in or out of the bedroom. Soon his raunchy alter-ego is up to his neck in sleaze and murder, fun while it lasts, but there's a hefty price tag. Richard Laymon - The Maiden: He's on a promise from the hottest babe in college, but first Elmo Baine must brave the waves and a dick-eating mer-girl with a grudge versus horny men. Reprinted in Dreadful TalesMichael O'Donoghue - The Psycho: A mad sniper fires indiscriminately into the crowd, arrows his weapons of choice. I'm sure you have figured the punchline. Stephen King - Lunch at the Gotham Café : King's take on the 'murder on the menu' theme ( The Speciality Of The House & Co). Resurfaced in Everything's Eventual
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Post by dem bones on Feb 4, 2016 18:25:49 GMT
Ramsey Campbell - Going Under: Steve Blythe, acrimoniously divorced from a wife threatening legal action over a late maintenance payment, ill-advisedly participates in a fund-raising walk through the Mersey Tunnel. A hostile crowd, lack of phone signal, and close proximity to a wobbling arse drive his stress levels through the roof. Later revived in the superb Ghosts And Grisly Things. Stuart Kaminsky - Hidden: Huddled away in an attic room disguised by a false ceiling, Paul Wainwright, fifteen, relates how he meticulously planned the mutilation murder of his parents and little sister for no other reason than that he could. Lucky for him, Sergeant James Roark is one diligent, smart cop.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 5, 2016 22:25:18 GMT
Nancy A. Collins - Thin Walls: .... surely qualifies as a Kitchen Sink Gothic. The Del-Ray Gardens complex is no palace but it backs onto the campus, and our narrator, a young student, is desperate for cheap accommodation. Unfortunately, her immediate neighbours are Dez and Alvin, ageing, alcoholic homosexuals in denial, and the paper-thin walls mean she is party to their every foul-mouthed argument. Dez, the older of the two, is prone to physical violence. When Alvin invites a creepy young chancer to stay on a booze for blow-jobs basis, it doesn't sit well with him at all .... Lucy Taylor - Heat: Promiscuous arson girl has difficulty finding the man who can light her fire. Colin was the best, but now he's pretending to be a serious author, a vocation which apparently demands a vow of celibacy. But to those of imagination there is always an improbable sex aid to hand, and, in any case, who wants to live forever? David J. Schow - Refrigerator Heaven: Government Security Forces abduct and torture Garrett, a reporter, for information he clearly doesn't possess. When threats versus his wife, physical brutality, truth drugs and what have you fail to break him, Garrett is crammed inside a device nicknamed "the refrigerator" for several days until the goon squad realise they've nabbed the wrong man. Garrett finds the experience so transcendental that, on being released, he tries to fight his way back into his beloved box of pain. A modern, extreme reworking of The Pit And The Pendulum which is referenced in the text. At this rate think I may have to schedule a rematch with Collins & Kramer's Forbidden Acts.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 17, 2016 9:20:44 GMT
John Lutz - Hanson's Radio: So you're housebound on account of a busted leg, and at the mercy of your noise polluting neighbour across the way who keeps his ghetto-blaster on LOUD all day and night. What do you do? If you're Sam Melish, you load your rifle and blast the fucking thing to smithereens. No more Mr. Cool Rule or the Midnight Raider for him! But, as ever, there's a heavy price to pay. The seriously unbalanced Hanson takes to stalking Ina Melish, or that's how it looks to Sam from his window seat.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 15, 2016 11:49:40 GMT
Basil Copper - Bright Blades Gleaming : Berlin, spring to early summer of .... never mind. A misanthrope with a particular dislike for women of a certain profession takes a room at Frau Mauger's decrepit boarding house. To while the time before he strikes again, the wanderer stalks a pretty young neighbour and dismembers dolls with his newly acquired surgical knives. We learn the date and think we know where this is heading. We are right.
Bob Burden - You've Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine . . .: Abysmally failed by the State Medical System, Carl McFadden is released from "Mental Hospital" into a job he neither wants nor is a suited to, as a door-to-door salesman. Inevitably this leads to a few problems for the immediate community - or is the ensuing manslaughter/ murder spree a figment of his wild imagination? Includes a bow and arrow attack on a cocktail party (Carl adopts Injun disguise for occasion) , and a genuinely disturbing sequence wherein a dead woman is assaulted with the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. I reckon fans of Robert Shearman are likely to enjoy the surreal black comedy aspect of it all.
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Post by ripper on Nov 3, 2016 9:51:30 GMT
My favourite story from this collection is Laymon's 'The Maiden.' It's really well-written imo and Laymon really pulls the rug from under your feet with that ending.
Bob Burden's contribution still has me shaking my head every time I read it. It is black humour of the very darkest kind, and effectively disturbing in its depiction of a man with severe mental problems.
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Post by ripper on Nov 4, 2016 10:41:40 GMT
Thin Walls is another good one from this enjoyable collection. Two people whose love-hate relationship is finally broken by a cuckoo in the nest, with tragic results for all of them. This story grows on me more each time I read it.
The Penitent: Disturbing story of a sadistic girl obsessed with a 40-year old sex murder in an abandoned desert town and the masochistic man who willingly enters into her fantasies. Though not gratuitous, the descriptions of how she recreates what the former inhabitants of the town used to do to their chosen"penitent" make uncomfortable reading.
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Post by bobby on Nov 5, 2016 15:52:46 GMT
Here's the cover of the edition I have, which I bought remaindered from the Edward R. Hamilton "Bargain Books" catalog:
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Post by ripper on Nov 5, 2016 17:27:42 GMT
Here's the cover of the edition I have, which I bought remaindered from the Edward R. Hamilton "Bargain Books" catalog: I just took a peek at the website--interesting to see what was available as an alternative to the usual sources. There used to be at least 3 remainder shops in nearby towns that sold a range of books at dirt-cheap prices, but all now sadly closed. I remember seeing a set of A3-sized paintings from Star Wars selling for a couple of pounds one time, and stupidly I didn't buy them there and then. When I went to get them a couple of weeks later they were gone.
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Post by bobby on Nov 6, 2016 15:28:34 GMT
I've never seen a "brick and mortar" bookstore that sold remaindered books exclusively, at least not a permanent one. Back in 1995, a bookseller of remaindered books set up shop in a former Home Depot (home improvement store) building, but it was only for 2 or 3 weeks, a month at most. The roof leaked and there was no air conditioning (in Florida). The books were stacked on empty cardboard boxes. The only book that was of interest to me was the anthology Weird Vampire Tales, which I had already ordered from the Edward R. Hamilton "Bargain Books" catalog. But I did get Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (a hardcover edition) and some Disney coloring books for one of my sisters, and an audio cassette of organ music for my mom. (And on that same day I bought 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories at a now-defunct chain bookstore, in a now-closed mall.)
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Post by ripper on Nov 7, 2016 9:33:05 GMT
I would say that the last one to close around here would have been no later than 1995. I bought a fair few military non-fiction hardbacks, of which there always seemed to be a plentiful supply. There were also a few titles printed in the USA, the only one of those I remember was a National Lampoon-type large paperback looking back at the 1980s, the book itself having been printed around 1979. There were lots of gardening, arts, crafts and associated books, but little fiction.
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Post by ripper on Nov 7, 2016 9:46:51 GMT
That book may well have been 'The 80s: A Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade 1980-1989' and published in 1979 by Workman Publishing Company.
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