Страница 5 из 102
We Fade to Grey edited by Gary McMahon (Pendragon Press) has five non-theme dark novelettes and novellas by British writers. Simon Bestwick's "The Narrows" a very powerful, frightening sf/horror story, is reprinted herein.
Bound for Evil: Curious Tales of Books Gone Bad edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press) is a hefty, entertaining anthology of sixty-five stories about nasty, demented, or overly influential books and the people who love or obsess over them. It's a good-looking limited edition hardcover tome of almost eight hundred pages, with half the stories original to the volume, and of those, at least eleven are notable. Illustrations by Allen Koszowski.
The Second Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories edited by Ian Alexander Martin (Humdrumming) is the follow-up to last year's promising anthology and it doesn't disappoint. All fifteen stories appear for the first time and some are quite good, particularly those by Christopher Fowler, Davin Ireland, Michael Kelly, Sarah Pinborough, Simon Strantzas, John Travis, and Conrad Williams.Unfortunately, the press ceased publishing.
Desolate Souls, the souvenir anthology of the World Horror Convention 2008 held in Salt Lake City, Utah, was edited by Mark Worthen and J. P. Edwards (Bones & Casket Press). Thematically related in its use of the desert and other desolate areas around SLC, the anthology includes reprints and originals. The best originals were by Scott Edelman, Linda Addison, and Cullen Bu
Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder (Dark Scribe Press) contains twenty-three stories featuring gay and lesbian characters, with many of the stories revealing the negative consequences of remaining in the sexual closet. There were very good stories by Lee Thomas, Sarah Langan, C. Michael Cook, and Livia Llewellyn.
The Undead: Headshot Quartet edited by Christina Bivins and Lane Adamson (Permuted Press) has four zombie novellas by John Sunseri, Ryan C. Thomas, David Dunwoody, and D. L. Snell. The most ambitious one is Snell's, about a man who awakes in a zombie-filled alley with no memory but the power to create objects out of nothing.
Hell in the Heartlands edited by Martel Sardina and Roger Dale Trexler (A
Dark Territories edited by Gary Frank and Mary SanGiova
Like a Chinese Tattoo: Twelve Inscrutably Twisted Tales (DarkArts Books) features four writers with three stories each, most originals. Contributors are Cullen Bu
The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams (Night Shade Books) is an almost five-hundred-page anthology of thirty-four zombie stories (one, a brand new novella by John Langan) including stories by Clive Barker, Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Poppy Z. Brite, and others.
Read by Dawn, Volume 3 edited by Adèle Hartley (Bloody Books) has twenty eight new stories, too many of which are thin on character and seem to unfold with no rhyme or reason. However, this volume is a definite improvement over the earlier two volumes in the series, and there are notable stories by Scott Stainton Miller, Samuel Miner, Peter Gutiérrez, Rebecca Lloyd, Joel Sutherland, Ryan Cooper, and Jamie Killen.
Blood Lite edited by Kevin J. Anderson is published under the aegis of the Horror Writers Association and has twenty-one stories of humorous horror. The stories that best accomplish this difficult task are by Janet Berliner, Lucien Soulban, Nancy Kilpatrick, and Jim Butcher.
Sins of the Sirens: Fourteen Tales of Dark Desire edited by John Everson (Dark Arts Books) presents 20,000 words of original and reprinted fiction by four writers: Loren Rhoads, Maria Alexander, Mehitobel Wilson, and Christa Faust. Some good stories here.
Houses on the Borderland edited by David A. Sutton (British Fantasy Society) features six very dark novellas, all inspired by William Hope Hodgson's classic novel, The House on the Borderland.
Horror Library, Volume 3 edited by R. J. Cavender (Cutting Block Press) has thirty original stories, the best of which were by Stephen Couch, Lisa Morton, Kurt Dinan, A. C. Wise, and Michael C. Cook.
Traps edited by Scott T. Goudsward (DarkHart Press) has twenty-eight stories, the best by Del Howison, P. D. Cacek, J. M Heluk, and Nancy Kilpatrick.
Deadlines: An Anthology of Horror and Dark Fantasy edited by Cheryl Mullenax (Comet Press) has twenty stories, two reprints.
Ghost Stories edited by Peter Washington (Knopf) is a new hardcover volume from the Everyman Library series featuring stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Eudora Welty and Vladimir Nabokov, Ray Bradbury, and others.
Erie Tales: Tales of Terror From Michigan presented by the Great Lakes Horror Association and edited by Bob Strauss is the group's first anthology in a pla
And Soon… the Darkness edited by David Byron is a NVF Magazine publication (Turner/Maxwell Books) with seventeen stories.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 edited by Stephen Jones (Robinson): Contained twenty-six stories and novellas, a summary of the year, a necrology, and an index of horror booksellers, organizations, small press publishers, and other useful information. For perhaps the first time in many years the volume covering 2007 did not overlap at all with the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.
Poe's Children: The New Horror, An Anthology edited by Peter Straub (Doubleday) is a strong anthology of dark fiction but has nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe. What it is, is Straub's appreciation of writers not especially known for their horror but who write it brilliantly. Writers such as Elizabeth Hand, Jonathan Carroll, Kelly Link, Dan Chaon, and Brian Evenson. Also, the seasoned writers who have continuously produced excellent dark work for years, those such as Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, David J. Schow, Thomas Ligotti, Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem, and M. John Harrison. The stories by these and the other thirteen authors chosen to represent the field in all its glory may cause disagreements, but the stories are all worth reading and isn't that what any anthology should be about?
Mixed-genre anthologies
Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness edited by Mike Allen (Norilana Books) is the first volume of a projected a