* * * *
Voodoo Child by Michael Reaves was predictably set in New Orleans, while John Pritchard’s Dark Ages took place in present-day Oxford but harkened back to earlier horrors. A massacre in the 12th century resulted in a modern-day haunting in Jenny Jones’Where the Children Cry. Mary Murrey’s The Inquisitor concerned a depressed woman who became involved with pagan mythology, while a young widow joined a village coven of white witches in The Witching Time by Jean Stubbs.
John Evans’ Gordius was a sequel to the author’s God’s Gift, Nick DiMartino’s A Seattle Ghost Story was illustrated by Charles Nitti, and Black as Blood by Rob Chilson was a humorous novel about a body that would not stay dead.
Reporter-turned-sleuth Hollis Ball was helped by her husband’s ghost in Ghost of a Chance by Helen Chappell, and David Beaty’s The Ghosts of the Eighth Attack involved a RAF squadron in World War II haunted by phantom flyers from the First World War. A supernatural western set in Mexico, Loren D. Estleman’s Journey of the Dead involved an ancient alchemist and the man who killed Billy the Kid.
A woman accused of murdering her husband claimed she was possessed by his first wife in A Mind to Kill by Andrea Hart, while in Richard La Plante’s Mind Kill, a serial killer stalked his victims in their dreams. A psychic female criminal profiler tracked down a serial killer who took his victim’s eyes in Joseph Glass’ aptly-titledEyes, and a psychic journalist investigated the death of a colleague inSecond Sight by Beth Amos.
The spirit of a dead serial killer returned in Kimberly Rangel’s The Homecoming, a woman’s paintings were connected to a serial killer in Retribution by Elizabeth Forrest (Rhondi Salsitz), and the victim of a recently-released serial killer was apparently reincarnated in a musician in Roxanne Conrad’s Copper Moon.
A serial killer menaced a near-future Glasgow in Paul Johnston’s The Bone Yard, and The Coffin Maker by Jeffery Deaver featured quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhymes matching wits with a killer who planned to eliminate three important witnesses in a grand jury trial. Will Kingdom’s The Cold Calling was a police procedural involving yet another serial killer, as was Shaun Hutson’sPurity.
In The Last Days: The Apocryphon of Joe Panther by Australian writer Andrew Masterton, a priest was suspected of being a brutal serial killer, while an isolated boarding house for children and a religious cult based on sex and the authority of a messianic figure featured in Carmel Bird’s Red Shoes, another down-under novel, this one narrated by a guardian angel.
A woman about to commit suicide found an unconscious angel on the roof of her Manhattan apartment in Nancy A. Collins’ romantic dark fantasy Angels on Fire. The eponymous prince of Hell inhabited a dead body in James Byron Huggins’ Cain, and demon detectives set out to recover stolen crystal orbs in Camille Bacon-Smith’sEyes of the Empress.
Jeff Rovin’s Vespers involved a police detective and a zoologist who discovered that millions of mutant killer bats had migrated to Manhattan. It was reportedly “soon to be a major motion picture”. In Dust by scientist Charles Pellegrino, a maverick palaeobiologist discovered that Mother Nature was attempting to wipe-out mankind through a series of natural plagues and disasters. Red Shadows by Yvonne Navarro was a sequel to the author’s Final Impact and set on a post-apocalyptic Earth that no longer rotated.
Frances Gordon’s Changeling was based on the Rumpelstiltskin fairy story, and The Pit and the Pendulum and Frankenstein were the latest erotic reworkings of horror classics inThe Darker Passions series by Amarantha Knight (Nancy Kilpatrick).
* * * *
Originally called Dracula Cha Cha Cha until the American publisher requested a change of title, Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959 was the third in Kim Newman’s acclaimed vampire series that mixed fact with fiction. Set in Rome on the eve of the wedding of Vlad, Count Dracula, to Moldavian princess Asa Vajda, the vampire elders of the Eternal City were falling victim to a murderer known as the Crimson Executioner.
The undead Saint-Germaine was involved in a plague in 14th century France in Blood Roses by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Sisters of the Night: The Angry Angel by the same author was the first in a packaged trilogy about Dracula’s vampire “brides”, illustrated by Christopher H. Bing. Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark concerned bloodsuckers nesting in a village in North Yorkshire, while a group of people inside a ring of standing stones were hurled back in time to a bloody past in the same author’s The Fall.
Of Masques and Martyrs was the third volume in Christopher Golden’s vampire “Shadow Saga”, a computer programmer involved with role-playing games was apparently killed by one of the undead in Linda Grant’sVampire Bytes, and The Undying by Mudrooroo, a native Australian, was an unusual vampire novel and the second volume in the “Master of the Ghost Dreaming” series.
Blue Moon by Laurell K. Hamilton was the eighth instalment in the author’s horror/crime series featuring vampire-hunter Anita Blake, who had to figure out a way to get her ex-boyfriend, high school teacher and werewolf Richard, out of jail after he was framed for attempted rape in Tennessee. The characters returned in Burnt Offerings, which involved an arsonist destroying businesses owned by the undead and a visit from the vampire’s ruling council.
A Chill in the Blood was the seventh volume in P.N. Elrod’s “The Vampire Files” series about undead private eye Jack Fleming in a post-prohibition Chicago, and The Flesh, the Blood, and the Fire by S.A. Swiniarski (S. Andrew Swann) involved police detective Stefan Ryzard investigating a vampire conspiracy and a series of “torso” murders in Depression-era Cleveland.
A vampire had been hiding for years inside the Titanic in Michael Romkey’s Vampire Hunter, while in Miguel Conner’s The Queen of Darkness vampires ruled a post-holocaust Earth.
One of Britain’s most successful authors, Terry Pratchett was awarded the O.B.E. in the Queen’s Birthday honours list for his services to literature. He also published his twenty-third “Discworld” novel, Carpe Jugulum, which involved the rulers of Uberwald, who just happened to be modern-thinking vampires.
Elvira: The Boy Who Cried Werewolf was the third in the series by the camp TV horror host and John Paragon. Lycanthropic detective Ty Merrick returned in Manjinn Moon, the third volume in Denise Vitola’s mystery series set in the near-future. The Passion was a romantic tale about contemporary werewolves and a family secret by Donna Boyd, while a book of spells created a reluctant werewolf in Sandra Morris’ dark fantasy Green Moon and Wolfsbane.
A female werewolf attempted to control her own destiny in ancient Rome in Alice Borchardt’s historical dark fantasy The Silver Wolf. Borchardt is the sister of Anne Rice, who of course blurbed her sibling’s book.
* * * *
Shadow of the Beast was a first novel by Margaret L. Carter, about a werewolf roaming the dark streets of a town in Maryland, while Julie Anne Parks’ Storytellers involved a bestselling horror author menaced by a legendary Native American evil. Both books were published by Designlmage Group.
Michael Marano’s ambitious debut novel Dawn Song followed the lives of a gay man in 1990s Boston and a body-hopping succubus from Hell intent on stealing twenty male souls. The city was soon caught up in a supernatural struggle between two of Hell’s demonic rulers against the backdrop of the Gulf War.
Respected short story author Caillm R. Kiernan made her novel debut with the paperback original Silk, about an emotionally disturbed woman named Spyder who invited the members of a struggling rock band into her world of blood rituals and vengeful spirits.
Published in the Do-Not Press’ FrontLines series, Head Injuries by Conrad Williams was about a group of old friends reunited at a British seaside town during the off-season who were forced to confront the ghosts of their past.
A man suffering from a strange neurological disease repaired a sinister house and investigated the chain of deaths surrounding the property in Daniel Hecht’s first novel Skull Session. Elizabeth Cody Kimmel’s debut novel In the Stone Circle was a young adult ghost story set in a haunted house in Wales, wh
ile King Rat by China Mieville was described as “urban Gothic” and set in London.
Valley of the Shadow by the brother-and-sister team of Earl Hardy and Naoma Hardy appeared from California’s ReGeJe Press, a modern woman searching for her lost son encountered ancient mythology in Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein, and a woman in a failing marriage was possessed by the soul of an exotic dancer in David L. Robbins’ Souls to Keep.
Christa Faust’s first book,Control Freak, was about a female writer researching a true-crime volume based on a grisly sex murder, who became involved in New York’s sadomasochism club scene and developed into a natural dominant. Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest and was set in a 21st century Toronto where Creole magic worked.
Ulysses G. Dietz made his debut with the gay vampire novel Desmond, and Jay Kasker’s Out of the Light involved more romantic vampires.
* * * *
Movie tie-ins included Blade by Mel Odom, Dark City by Frank Lauria,Fallen by Dewey Gram, Disturbing Behavior by John Whitman,Species II by Yvonne Navarro, and Godzilla by Stephen Molstad.
Scott Ciencin continued his series of Godzilla novels aimed at both the adult and teenage markets withGodzilla vs. the Space Monster, Godzilla at World’s End, and Godzilla vs. the Robot Monster. Gargantua was a novelization of the inferior TV monster movie by Robert K. Andreassi (Keith R.A. DeCandido).
A sequel to the 1941 movie starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Return of the Wolf Man by Jeff Rovin was the first and apparently only volume in a series based on Universal Studios’ classic monster characters.
The X-Files: Fight the Future was the original title of the film by Chris Carter, “adapted” by Elizabeth Hand, and Ellen Steiber continued the series of young adult X-Files novelizations with Hungry Ghosts.
Replacing The X-Files as the hottest TV tie-in property was Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the novels Night of the Living Rerun by Arthur Byron Cover, Return to Chaos by Craig Shaw Gardner, and Blooded and Child of the Hunt, both by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder. Holder was also responsible for the first book in the spin-off series, The Angel Chronicles, a young adult collection of three stories. Richie Tankersley wrote the second volume.
Once again proving that old vampires never die, Forever Knight: These Our Revels by Anne Hathaway-Nayne was based on the cancelled Canadian series, and actress Lara Parker revived her witch character Angelique from the old TV show Dark Shadows for the origin novel Angelique’s Descent, described as “a tale of erotic love and dark obsessions”.
Based on the graphic book and movie series created by James O’Barr, The Crow: Quoth the Crow by David Bischoff was about a dark fantasy writer forced to confront the evils he created to ultimately save his wife. Poppy Z. Brite’s The Lazarus Heart had less to do with the series and was an original novel about a resurrected New Orleans photographer, framed for the murder of his lover, and the bizarre cast of characters he encountered. Clash by Night by Chet Williamson was another Crow novel and involved the destruction of a day-care centre by an extreme militia group and the ghost of a woman seeking revenge.
Ray Garton found himself reduced to writing the Sabrina, the Teenage Witch TV novelization All That Glitters under his own name, and the busy Nancy Holder also added to the series with Spying Eyes.
From California’s Lucard Publishing, Dracul: An Eternal Love Story by Nancy Kilpatrick was a vampire novel based on a stage musical and came with an optional CD cast recording of the original San Diego performance.
Probably the two most unlikely crossovers of the year were Star Trek the Next Generation/X-Men: Planet X by Jan Michael Friedman, and the graphic novel Tarzan versus Predator: At the Earth’s Core by Walter Simonson and Lee Weeks, in which Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ape man and the alien hunter from the movies battled it out in Pellucidar.
White Wolf’s The World of Darkness series, based on the role-playing games, continued with ToSpeak in Lifeless Tongues and To Dream of Dreamers Lost by David Niall Wilson, the second and third volumes respectively in “The Grails Covenant” trilogy, and The War in Heaven by Robert Weinberg, the third and final volume in the “Horizon War” trilogy. The Winnowing and Dark Prophecy by Gherbod Fleming were the final two volumes in the vampiric “Trilogy of the Blood Curse”, Dark Kingdoms by Richard Lee Byers was an omnibus of three novels (two previously unpublished), and The Quintessential World of Darkness edited by Stewart Wieck and Anna Branscome contained three novels (one previously unpublished) by William Bridges, Rick Hautala and Edo van Belkom, along with two original stories by Kevin Andrew Murphy and Jody Lynn Nye.
Ravenloft: Shadowborn by William W. Connors and Carrie A. Bebris, and Ravenloft: I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin by P.N. Elrod were both based on the TSR role-playing vampire game.
Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within by Jane Jensen was the second novel based on the Gothic CD-ROM game, written by the game’s creator.
* * * *
Jonathan Carroll’s Kissing the Beehive involved a bestselling paperback thriller writer who investigated a decades-old murder of a teenage beauty in his home town and encountered his most devoted fan, who called herself Veronica Lake.
Second Coming Attractions, the third novel from David Prill, was a funny and offbeat look at the Christian cinema industry which forced both the characters and reader to question their faith. With a nod to M.R. James and other authors of the supernatural, Andrew Klavan’s The Uncanny involved a Hollywood producer who travelled to Britain to discover a real ghost story.
The Migration of Ghosts contained twelve original stories by Pauline Melville, while A.S. Byatt’s Elements: Stories of Fire and Ice collected six reprints, all touched with magic, with at least two tales that could be considered horror.
The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesqueby Joyce Carol Oates contained twenty-seven stories, most of which were originally published over the past few years. Oates also edited Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers, which included 111 stories, poems and non-fiction pieces designed as a learning tool for writers. Among the authors represented were Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Harlan Ellison, Angela Carter and Oates herself.
* * * *
The 1794 Gothic, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, was reprinted by Oxford University Press in a new edition edited by Bonamy Dobree with an introduction and notes by Terry Castle.
Published as part of Penguin/Viking Children’s Books “The Whole Story” series, Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein reprinted the 1818 novel along with various pieces of art, including new illustrations by Philippe Munch.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula Unearthed was yet another edition published by Desert Island Books, annotated and introduced by editor Clive Leatherdale, which included an introduction by Stoker to the 1901 Icelandic edition. From the same publisher, Dracula: The Shade and the Shadow edited by Elizabeth Miller contained twenty critical essays about Stoker’s novel.
The Dream-Woman and Other Stories by Wilkie Collins collected eleven stories and an introduction by editor Peter Miles, The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century included twenty-four stories translated by editor Terry Hale and Liz Heron, and Dover published The Complete John Silence, containing six supernatural stories about the psychic detective by Algernon Blackwood, edited by S.T. Joshi. Carroll & Graf’s edition of Thirty Strange Stories was a welcome reissue of mostly horror and dark fantasy tales by H.G. Wells, with a new introduction by Stephen Jones.
John Evangelist Walsh’s biographyMidnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe looked into the cause of the author’s death, while Poe’s Selected Tales, published by Oxford University Press, was a new selection, edited and introduced by David Van Leer. The Penguin/Signet Classic edition of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher collected fifteen stories, a new introduction by Stephen Marlowe and an updated bibliography.
Books of Wonder’s “Classic Frights” series of trade paperback reprints for young adults featured The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan
Poe, illustrated by William Sayer; Dracula’s Guest containing two stories by Bram Stoker, illustrated by Eric Shanower; The Haunting of Holmescroft by Rudyard Kipling, illustrated by Barb Armata; Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s The Southwest Chamber, illustrated by Margaret Organ-Kean; Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant, illustrated by Jennifer Dickson, and The Inexperienced Ghost by H.G. Wells, Casting the Runes by M.R. James, Man-Size in Marble by E. Nesbit, The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, all illustrated by Jeff White.
Academy Chicago’s edition ofThe Monkey’s Paw and Other Tales of Mystery and the Macabre collected eighteen stories by Jacobs, edited with an introduction by Gary Hoppenstand, while The Hazelwood Press published The Monkey’s Paw: A Facsimile of the Original Manuscript, limited to just 300 copies.
The Witch’s Tale was American network radio’s first dramatic series devoted to tales of terror, conceived, written and directed by Alonzo Deen Cole. Subtitled Stories of Gothic Horror from The Golden Age of Radio, Dunwich Press collected thirteen of the radio show’s original scripts as a limited edition trade paperback, edited by David S. Siegel. Two of the scripts were also re-created and broadcast live as a special Halloween programme on a west coast radio station on October 30th.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Page 2
