The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  Meanwhile, Dracula found himself in a lesbian Europe in Wendy Swanscombe’s erotic novel Fresh Flesh. Edited by Bianca de Moss, Blood Sisters: Lesbian Vampire Stories contained eighteen original stories.

  Michael Schiefelbein’s Vampire Transgression was the third book in the gay “Victor Decimus” series, while David Thomas Lord’s Bound in Flesh was another erotic gay vampire novel, the sequel to Bound in Blood.

  Dark Side of the Moon was the ninth volume and first hardcover in Sherrilyn Kenyon’s series about vampiric Dark-Hunters and shape-changing Were-Hunters. Seattle reporter Susan Michaels adopted a cat that turned out to be an immortal hybrid, being hunted by both supernatural factions.

  A vampire fell in love with another werecat in Nina Bangs’ A Taste of Darkness. Michele Bardsley’s humorous I’m the Vampire, That’s Why featured a vampiric single mother and a crazed werewolf, and Riley Jenson was a hybrid vampire/werewolf working for a government investigation agency in Keri Arthur’s Full Moon Rising.

  Kresley Cole’s A Hunger Like No Other and No Rest for the Wicked were the first two volumes in the “Immortals After Dark” series about a valkyrie assassin’s romantic trysts with werewolves and vampires.

  Touch of Evil by C. T. Adams and Cathy Clamp was the first volume in a new dark fantasy romance series involving vampires, werewolves and a psychic heroine.

  Jan Underwood’s Day Shift Werewolf won the 28th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest and also featured other image-challenged monsters.

  Lori Handeland’s Crescent Moon, Midnight Moon and Rising Moon were all werewolf or other monster romances in the “Night-creatures” series, set in and around New Orleans.

  Through a letter reputedly written by Jack the Ripper, pregnant werewolf Elena Michaels unwittingly unleashed a Victorian serial killer and a pair of zombie thugs into the modern world in Broken by Kelley Armstrong.

  Late night radio host and celebrity werewolf Kitty Norville took on a Senate committee investigating the paranormal in Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn. The book also included a related story.

  A werewolf and a werefox teamed up in Christine Warren’s Wolf at the Door, first in the “Others” series, while Gina Farago’s Ivy Cole and the Moon, about the eponymous female werewolf vigilante, was also the first in a series.

  A new governess discovered the secret of Wolfram Castle in Donna Lea Simpson’s Awaiting the Moon, and a deadly legend had to be prevented from coming true in the sequel, Awaiting the Night.

  A werewolf helped a woman who was turned into a were-jaguar by a serial killer in Howling Moon by C. T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. A Native American shape-changer was unable to kill his victim in Lindsay McKenna’s Unforgiven, and witchy PI Rachel had to deal with a werewolf problem in A Fistful of Charms, the latest book in the humorous series by Kim Harrison (Dawn Cook).

  A werewolf pretended to be a dog while investigating a murder in Master of Wolves, the third book in the romantic trilogy by Angela Knight.

  Ronda Thompson’s The Untamed One and The Cursed One were the second and third books, respectively, in the “Wild Wulfs of London” Regency romance series.

  Shadow of the Moon was yet another werewolf romance, written by Rebecca York (Ruth Glick), whose earlier novels Witching Moon and Crimson Moon were reprinted in the omnibus Moon Swept.

  Wolf Tales III was the third volume in the erotic werewolf series about the “Chanku” by Kate Douglas, and Dead and Loving It collected four humorous werewolf romances by Mary Jane Davidson, including one related to the author’s “Betsy the Vampire Queen” series. Three of the stories were originally published as e-books.

  Diane Setterfield’s debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale, sparked an international bidding war amongst publishers. Days after the teacher-turned-first-time-novelist submitted the manuscript to an agent, it sold for £800,000 in the UK and a further $1 million in the US. A literary ghost story-within-a-story, the book went straight to #1 in America as the result of a major marketing campaign.

  Following a global disaster, New York City was overrun by cannibal zombies in David Wellington’s debut Monster Island. The first in a trilogy about the walking dead, originally serialised on the author’s web site, it was followed by Monster Nation, which was set in California and looked back to when the dead first began to rise.

  Sarah Langan’s debut novel The Keeper came with glowing quotes from Ramsey Campbell, Douglas E. Winter, Tim Lebbon, Kelly Link and Jack Ketchum. It was about yet another haunted house in Maine.

  The Harrowing by screenwriter Alexandra Sokoloff was set in a college over Thanksgiving break and involved the discovery of an old Ouija board and a tragedy that happened more than eighty-five years earlier.

  Set in an alternate London, Mike Carey’s first novel The Devil You Know introduced hardboiled exorcist Felix Castor. After dying for two minutes, small-time private investigator Harper Blaine returned to life with the power to see beyond the veil in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker.

  Dead City by Joe McKinney was about a virus that reanimated the dead of Texas as cannibal zombies.

  Gordon Dahlquist’s heavily promoted first novel, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, bought by its US publisher for a seven-figure sum, was a Victorian murder mystery set in a world where magic worked. Paul Malmont’s The Chinese Death Cloud Peril was a tribute to the old pulp magazine heroes as authors Walter Gibson, Lester Dent and L. Ron Hubbard investigated the horrifying poisoning of H. P. Lovecraft.

  A boy who thought he had superpowers was actually possessed by a demon in Sam Enthoven’s YA debut, The Black Tattoo.

  Michael Cox’s Victorian murder mystery, The Meaning of Night, was written in just over a year while the author suffered a severe illness and the threat of blindness. The book followed the exploits of murderer Edward Glyver, who set out to convince himself that his acts of vengeance were justified.

  Paul Magrs’ comedic novel Never the Bride was set in a seaside town full of monsters.

  Actor and scriptwriter Mark Gatiss’ The Devil in Amber was a Boy’s Own pastiche novel that involved the search by two-fisted hero Lucifer Box for the final fragment of an ancient papyrus that could raise Beelzebub. Tess Gerritsen’s The Mephisto Club was about a detective investigating a group who were attempting to prove that Satan walked the Earth.

  Matthew Pearl’s The Poe Shadow dealt with the mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s lost final hours before his death in 1849. Meanwhile, Louis Bayard’s thriller The Pale Blue Eye explored Poe’s life as a cadet at West Point in the 1830s.

  A Shot in the Dark, from Hesperus Press’ classy Classics series, collected fifteen stories by “Saki” (H. H. Munro), along with a Foreword by Jeremy Dyson and an historical Introduction by Adam Newell.

  From Strider Nolan Media, the first volume of Horror’s Classic Masters Remastered edited by Kurt S. Michaels featured twenty-one tales by W. W. Jacobs, William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and H. G. Wells, along with a very brief Foreword by Hollywood film producer J. C. Spink.

  Dover Publications reissued Gaslit Nightmares edited by Hugh Lamb, first published in 1988, with sixteen selected stories by Barry Pain, Bernard Capes, Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, Richard Marsh and Jerome K. Jerome, amongst others.

  Tales to Freeze the Blood: More Great Ghost Stories, selected by R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Stephen Jones, contained a further twenty-four stories culled from The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories. Authors included Ambrose Bierce, Sydney J. Bounds, Guy de Maupassant, F. Marion Crawford, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, Tony Richards, Steve Rasnic Tern and Chetwynd-Hayes himself.

  Also edited by Jones, H. P. Lovecraft’s Book of the Supernatural: 20 Classic Tales of the Macabre Chosen by the Master of Horror Himself featured Washington Irving, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, F. Marion Crawford, Rudyard Kipling, Lafcadio Hearn, Bram Stoker,
H. R. Wakefield, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Machen and many others, along with a Foreword on writing weird fiction by Lovecraft and original illustrations by Randy Broecker.

  The Complete Chronicles of Conan: Centenary Edition collected all Robert E. Howard’s stories about the mighty barbarian in a single, leather-bound hardcover. Edited with an extensive Afterword by Stephen Jones, the more than 900-page volume was illustrated throughout by Les Edwards. Continuing the series originally started by Wandering Star, Kull: Exile of Atlantis from Del Rey contained twelve stories and fragments by Howard, all taken from the author’s original manuscripts. The trade paperback was illustrated by Justin Sweet, who also supplied the Foreword.

  September 13th was designated “Roald Dahl Day” for children in the UK. It would have been the author’s 90th birthday.

  Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) finally wrapped up his “Series of Unfortunate Events” after thirteen volumes with the aptly-titled The End, in which the Baudelaire siblings and evil Count Olaf encountered a group of white-robed islanders named after nautical literary figures.

  Christopher Golden and Ford Lytle Gilmore’s The Hollow: Mischief was the third volume about teenagers living in a cursed town. It was followed by The Hollow: Enemies.

  In Scott Westerfield’s Midnighters 3: Blue Moon, the final volume in the trilogy, the five members of the eponymous group had to prevent the secret hour spilling over into the real world.

  Graham Joyce’s Do the Creepy Thing was about a teenage girl’s decision to live with a cursed bracelet. A boy who could talk to ghosts made contact with a missing cheerleader in Dead Connection by Charlie Price, and a group of college students tried to stop a demon that fed on emotions in Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s Spirits That Walk in Shadow.

  Nancy Holder’s Pretty Little Devils was a young adult novel about a clique of girls, while cheerleaders found themselves being stalked at summer camp in Laura Kasischke’s Boy Heaven.

  Dead teenagers were trapped in the eponymous world of Neal Shusterman’s Everlost, a boy kept receiving strange calls on his Hell Phone by William Sleator, and a monstrous dog terrorised a village for centuries in Janet Lee Carey’s The Beast of Noor.

  Slawter and Bec were the third and forth books, respectively, in “The Demonata” series by Darren Shan (Darren O’Shaughnessy). A stand-alone novel, Koyasan, was written by Shan for World Book Day 2006.

  A trio of Victorian teenagers discovered that a factory owner was reanimating the dead in Justin Richards’ The Death Collector, while the same author’s The Invisible Detective: Ghost Soldiers was the third in the series set in the 1930s. A ghost led a teenager back to the 1940 bombing on London in Edward Bloor’s London Calling.

  Three children became lost in an attic of universe proportions in Garry Kilworth’s Attica, a teenager killed in a steamship tragedy returned as a ghost in T. K. Welsh’s The Unresolved, and David Levithan’s novella Marly’s Ghost was a contemporary Valentine’s Day retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

  Mirroring their popularity amongst romance readers, vampire novels also continued to do well with the young adult audience.

  The Last Days was a loose sequel to Scott Westerfield’s Peeps, set in a world ravaged by a vampire-parasite plague, while Vampirates: Tide of Terror was the second book in Justin Somper’s post-apocalyptic series.

  Vampire Plagues: Outbreak and Vampire Plagues: Extermination were the latest titles in the series published under the byline “Sebastian Rook”. Vampire Beach: Bloodlust and Vampire Beach: Initiation were the first two volumes in a new YA series published by the pseudonymous “Alex Duval”.

  A sixteen-year-old college student discovered that she was living with some odd housemates in Glass House, the first volume in “The Morganville Vampires” series by Rachel Caine (Roxanne Longstreet Conrad).

  A popular girl at school was turned into a vampire in Serena Robar’s Braced2Bite and Fangs4Freaks, the first two books in a new series.

  Teenage vampire twins wanted revenge on a girl’s undead boyfriend in Vampireville, the third in the series by Ellen Schreiber. A girl was accidentally bitten by her twin’s vampire boyfriend in Mari Mancusi’s Boys That Bite. The sequel, Stake That!, was about a vampire slayer who would rather be undead herself.

  A teenager discovered vampires living amongst New York high society in Melissa de la Cruz’s Blue Bloods, New Moon was the second book in the trilogy by Stephanie Meyer, and mass-murderer Countess Bathory was the subject of Alisa M. Libby’s The Blood Confession.

  Issued as a handsome-looking hardcover by Californian imprint Medusa Press, with a Foreword by publisher Frank Chigas, Left in the Dark: The Supernatural Tales of John Gordon collected a career-spanning thirty stories (one original) by the acclaimed British author. It was published in a limited edition of 450 copies and a deluxe signed edition of 50 copies.

  All Hallows’ Eve: 13 Stories was an impressive collection of all-new tales by Edgar Award-winning author Vivian Vande Velde, each set on Halloween night and aimed at ages twelve and up.

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders contained twenty-seven previously uncollected stories and poems (one original) by Neil Gaiman. The contents of the US and UK editions differed slightly.

  Collected Stories contained fifty-one previously published tales for adults by Roald Dahl.

  From Serpent’s Tail, Mortality collected twenty short stories (one original and two only previously available electronically) by Nicholas Royle.

  Laurell K. Hamilton’s Strange Candy collected fourteen stories, including a new “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter” tale, while Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories contained eight stories (one original) by Elizabeth Hand, along with an Afterword by the author.

  Twisted Tales presented fourteen original stories by Brandon Massey.

  Alone on the Darkside: Echoes from the Shadows of Horror was the fourth in the series of original paperback anthologies edited by John Pelan. It featured sixteen all-new stories by Brian Hodge, Eddy C. Bertin, Mark Samuels, Glen Hirshberg, David Riley, Gerard Houarner, Lucy Taylor and Paul Finch, amongst others.

  Edited by Iain Sinclair, London: City of Disappearances was a literary anthology that featured contributions from J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Will Self, Marina Warner and Nicholas Royle.

  Ghosts in Baker Street edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower included ten supernatural mystery stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. There was also an Introduction by “Dr Watson” and non-fiction pieces from Barbara Roden, Loren D. Estleman and Caleb Carr.

  Edited by Brandon Massey, Dark Dreams II: Voices from the Other Side was an original anthology of seventeen stories by black authors.

  Despite any publisher and author’s profits being donated to the Save the Children Tsunami Relief Fund, Elemental, edited by Steven Savile and Alethea Kontis, was published almost a year-and-a-half after the tragedy in the Indian Ocean and appeared woefully redundant. Among those authors who donated their work for free were Brian Aldiss, David Drake, Joe Haldeman, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Larry Niven and Michael Marshall Smith.

  Edited by P. N. Elrod, My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding contained nine stories by such writers as Charlene Harris, Jim Butcher, Esther Friesner, Sherrilyn Kenyon and the editor herself.

  Mysteria presented four paranormal romances set in a demon-haunted town in Colorado by Maryjanice Davidson, Susan Grant, P. C. Cast and Gena Showalter. Hell With the Ladies collected three linked stories about the sons of Satan by Julie Kenner, Kathleen O’Reilly and Dee Davis.

  Dates from Hell contained four otherworldly tales of paranormal trysts by Kim Harrison (Dawn Cook), Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong and Lori Handeland featuring werewolves, demon lovers and the romantically challenged undead. Yet another paranormal romance volume, Dark Dreamers featured a reprint “Carpathian” story by Christine Feehan and a new “Dirk & Steele” novella by Marjorie M. Liu.

  Triptych of Terror included three gay horror stories by Michael
Rowe, David Thomas Lord and John Michael Curlovich.

  The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Nineteenth Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant contained thirty-five stories, five poems and various end-of-the-year essays by the two sets of editors, Edward Bryant, Charles Vess, Joan D. Vinge, Charles de Lint and James Frenkel.

  Edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Seventeen contained twenty-two stories and novellas, along with the usual overview of the year, Necrology and list of Useful Addresses.

  The two volumes overlapped with a number of authors but by just three stories, from Glen Hirshberg, Adam L. G. Nevill, and China Miéville, Emma Bircham and Max Schäfer.

  2006 saw an explosion of “Year’s Best” anthologies, with the busy Jason Strahan editing two titles from Night Shade Books and another for The Science Fiction Book Club. There were also at least five different titles from Prime Books/Wildside Press. The latter’s output included Horror: The Best of the Year: 2006 Edition edited by John Gregory Betancourt and Sean Wallace. It contained fifteen stories and a short Introduction by the editors, along with contributions from Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Cady, Michael Marshall Smith, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Joe Hill, Jeff VanderMeer, Laird Barron, Holly Philips, M. Rickert and David Niall Wilson.

  From Wildside’s new romance imprint, Juno Books, Best New Paranormal Romance edited by Paula Guran featured twelve stories by Jane Yolen, Elizabeth Hand, Elizabeth Bear and others.

  Dark Corners was the first collection from scriptwriter Stephen Volk (TV’s Ghostwatch and Afterlife). Available through print-on-demand imprint Gray Friar Press, it contained fifteen stories (three new) and an original screenplay, along with an Introduction by Tim Lebbon and an Afterword by the author.

  From the same publisher, John Llewellyn Probert’s linked collection The Faculty of Terror was a homage to the old Amicus anthology movies with an Introduction by Paul Finch and an interview with the author by Gary McMahon.