The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  Richard Matheson’s Hunted Past Reason was a new novel of psychological terror situated in the backwoods of Northern California, while Dan Simmons’s A Winter Haunting was a follow-up, set forty-one years later, to the author’s 1991 novel Summer of Night.

  Best known for their epic fantasy collaborations, David and Leigh Eddings’s Regina’s Song was a departure for the writing team – a contemporary serial-killer novel set in Seattle.

  After more than a decade away, Robert R. McCammon was back with a new novel (actually written in the mid-1990s). Speaks the Nightbird weighed in at nearly 700 pages and dealt with late-seventeenth century witchcraft in the American South. The book’s serialization in online magazine The Spook was cancelled after regional press River City Publishing expressed concerns about how sales might be affected.

  The Straw Men, a novel about a secret society of serial killers, was Michael Marshall Smith’s most accomplished (and successful) book to date. Unfortunately, in today’s world of bean-counters his publishers on both sides of the Atlantic decided to put it out under the barely credible pseudonym “Michael Marshall” (despite a glowing cover quote from Stephen King). After carefully building his career for almost a decade, Smith’s publishers decided to ignore all his earlier triumphs (including numerous awards and film options) in a short-sighted attempt to “reinvent” an already well-established author.

  Another writer to suffer the same ignominy was Mark Morris, whose psychological thriller Fiddleback appeared under the transparent byline “J.M. Morris” in an attempt by the publisher to ignore a fifteen-year career that encompassed nine previous novels and a short story collection.

  The Facts of Life was a powerful new novel by Graham Joyce that told the story of a remarkable family of eight women living in the city of Coventry during and after World War II.

  Better known for her “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter” series, Laurell K. Hamilton’s A Caress of Twilight featured faerie-princess-turned-private-investigator Merry Gentry on the trail of a supernatural serial killer in Southern California. Meanwhile, Hamilton’s first “Anita Blake” volume, Guilty Pleasures, was reissued in hardcover for the first time, and the author signed a seven-figure deal with Ace Books for a further three novels in the series.

  A crime scene cleaner discovered a link between several murders and a strange exotic species of Aztec insect in Graham Masterton’s Trauma, and a new species of human was revealed in Stranger by Simon Clark.

  Douglas Clegg’s The Hour Before Dark began with the murder of the patriarch of a dysfunctional family haunted by memories of the past, while China Miéville’s third novel, The Scar, involved a prisoner’s journey and the search for the island of a forgotten people.

  John Saul’s Midnight Voices was about the elderly residents of an exclusive Manhattan apartment block who sacrificed their younger neighbours so that they could prolong their own lives.

  In The Cabinet of Curiosities, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child brought back FBI agent Pendergast from Prey and Reliquary to investigate a missing scientist and his experiments in prolonging life a century before. John Connolly’s detective Charlie Parker investigated a cult which disappeared in rural Maine in The Killing Kind.

  Willow, Wicked Forest and Twisted Roots were the first three volumes in the “De Beers” Gothic horror series published under the by-line of the long-dead V.C. Andrews®. Shooting Stars was an omnibus of the four Andrews novels comprising the titular 2001 series: Cinnamon, Ice, Rose and Honey. Andrew Neiderman was probably still responsible for the Andrews books and also published Dead Time and Under Abduction under his own name.

  Eyes of the Virgin featured more Roman Catholic horrors from Thomas F. Monteleone, this time revolving around a piece of prophetic stained glass. The titular Demons turned the Earth into a living Hell in the two-part novel (one half reprint, the other original) by John Shirley.

  Incorporating his 1993 short story “In the House of My Enemy”, Charles de Lint’s The Onion Girl was set in the author’s magical Newford and involved artist Jilly Coppercorn and a dark secret from her past.

  A story about three seventeenth-century sisters and their love for a magical being formed the core of Kim Wilkin’s Fallen Angel, originally published in the author’s adopted home of Australia as Angel of Ruin.

  In Thomas Sullivan’s Born Burning, an antique chair formed part of a dark family tradition, while Rodman Philbrick’s Coffins was set in the nineteenth century when members of the eponymous Maine family were dying mysteriously.

  Owl Goingback’s Breed resurrected the old-cursed-Indian-burial ground plot one more time, as the Florida tourist town of St Augustine discovered that what was buried in its graveyard was more than legend. There were more small-town horrors unearthed in Bentley Little’s The Return, in which an ancient demonic beast was discovered during an archaeological dig, and Edo van Belkom’s Martyrs, where a demon was discovered beneath an old Jesuit mission in Canada.

  The tenant of a new cottage was haunted by Welsh ghosts in Cloven, the second novel from Sally Spedding. A recently widowed woman discovered that she was sharing her home with a bereaved spirit in A Presence in Her Life by Louise Brindley, and Matthew Costello’s Unidentified was set in yet another haunted house.

  A new bride could see ghosts in Where Darkness Lives by Robert Ross. A dead woman appeared in the body of another in Sleep No More by Greg Iles, and Hiding from the Light by Barbara Erskine involved the ghost of “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins haunting a childhood home.

  A man recovered his missing childhood memories in The Forgotten by Tamara Thorne, while a cursed lullaby proved fatal to infants in Chuck Palahniuk’s dark comedy Lullaby.

  Something was taking infants and chickens from a small Texas town in David Searcy’s Last Things, and an ancient entity slept beneath the town of Sauls Run in Dale Bailey’s The Fallen.

  A family of witches living in rural Alaska confronted an evil force in Stephen Gresham’s Dark Magic, and a woman could raise the dead in Haunted Ground, from the same author.

  A coven of murderous mutant witches was killing the female population of a quiet New England town in Ed Gorman’s Rituals, which was dedicated to the memory of Richard Laymon.

  All That Lives by Melissa Snaders-Self was about the Bell Witch, and a successful author’s latest book appeared to write itself in Shaun Hutson’s Hybrid.

  A woman’s nightmares awakened a world of Mayan gods and demons in The Void by Teri A. Jacobs, and a demon caused others to commit mayhem in W.G. Griffiths’s Driven.

  Following a near-death experience, a woman began experiencing visions in Quietus by cult movie actress Vivian Schilling. A family became involved in a secret invisibility experiment in Out of Sight by T.J. MacGregor, and a rapper-DJ used musical mind-control in Dmitry Radyshevsky’s The Mantra, translated by David Gurevich.

  Packaged by Tekno Books, Ed Gorman and Kevin McCarthy, The Family Book 2: Into the Darkness by McCarthy and David Silva was the second volume in the series about mind manipulation.

  Don D’Ammassa’s Servants of Chaos served up some Lovecraftian horrors off the coast of Massachusetts, Enoch’s Portal was the first volume chronicling the cult-busting exploits of A.W. Hill’s psychic detective Stephan Raszer, and in Sèphera Girón’s The Birds and the Bees the balance of nature turned against humanity.

  In Jeffrey Ames’s Venom, Dallas cop Courtney Bedell found herself matching wits with a notorious serial killer, known to the police as “Fiddleback” because of the spiders of that name left on the bodies of his victims. A nearly blind woman was kidnapped by a religious fanatic who wanted to save her from Satan in Melanie Tem’s Slain in the Spirit, while Robert J. Randisi’s Curtains of Blood threw in everything but the kitchen sink as Bram Stoker’s theatrical production of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was disrupted by the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

  Lisa Goldstein’s historical fantasy The Alchemist’s Door featured English magician Dr John Dee, who was exiled to Prague where he encountered Elizab
eth Bathory and Rabbi Judah Loew helped him create a golem.

  Robert Rankin’s The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse featured a psychopathic serial killer murdering the millionaire nursery-rhyme inhabitants of Toy City. Steve Aylett’s The Velocity Gospel and Dummyland were the second and third novels, respectively, set in the author’s equally bizarre alternate world of Accomplice.

  Nancy A. Collins’s Dead Roses for a Blue Lady: The Sonja Blue Short Fiction Collection appeared from Crossroads Press with cover and interior artwork by Stephen R. Bissette. Published in an edition of 400 signed and numbered hardcovers, the book also included an interview with the author by Stanley Wiater, two original short stories and a previously unpublished novelette. A twenty-six-copy slipcased lettered edition for $165.00 was bound in leather with Italian endpapers and included a ribbon bookmark and an additional short-short story.

  Darkest Heart was the fifth “Sonja Blue” novel from Nancy Collins, published by White Wolf. This time the renegade vampire met a kindred spirit in a man who had lost everything to the undead.

  Set in the eighth-century court of Charlemagne the Great, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Night Blooming was the latest volume in the author’s “Chronicles of St Germain” series. This time the vampire protagonist became involved with a woman suffering from stigmata.

  Whitley Streiber’s Lilith’s Dream was the author’s second sequel to The Hunger, while A Coldness in the Blood was the eighth entry in Fred Saberhagen’s long-running “Matthew Maule/Dracula” series, about the quest for a powerful Egyptian relic.

  Underland was the fourth and final book in Mick Farren’s series of “Victor Renquist” counter-cultural vampire thrillers. This time Renquist battled ex-Nazis in a lost world beneath Antarctica.

  Mary Ann Mitchell’s undead Marquis de Sade returned in Cathedral of Vampires, while Trisha Baker’s Crimson Knight was the second volume in a trilogy about vampire psychologist Meghann O’Neill.

  Living Dead in Dallas was the follow-up to Charlaine Harris’s comedy/mystery Dead Until Dark. This time telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse travelled to Dallas in search of a missing vampire.

  In Jim Butcher’s Summer Knight, the fourth volume in “The Dresden Files”, the war with the vampires was postponed as Chicago wizard Harry Dresden helped faerie queen Mab solve a murder amongst the Sidhe.

  Karen E. Taylor’s Resurrection was the sixth in the “Vampire Legacy” series featuring the undead Deirdre and former detective Mitch. A sequel to Red Moon Rising, Billie Sue Mosiman’s Malachi’s Moon was packaged by Tekno Books and featured the titular dhampir – the offspring of a vampire and a human.

  Wounds was Jemiah Jefferson’s second vampire novel and involved an encounter between her undead protagonist Daniel Blum and a stripper. Boston-based Lawson was an undead enforcer who took out renegade vampires with extreme prejudice in Jon F. Merz’s debut novel The Fixer. It was followed by The Invoker, featuring the same character.

  Laws of the Blood: Deceptions was the fourth volume in Susan Sizemore’s series about vampire Enforcers, while Second Sunrise by David Thurlo and Aimée Thurlo was the first in a vampire mystery series featuring Native American detective Lee Nez, a half-human vampire who teamed up with a female FBI agent.

  James M. Thompson’s Dark Blood was a sequel to the author’s Night Blood, a 100-year-old vampire awakened in contemporary San Francisco in Elaine Moore’s Retribution, and a plot to create vampire soldiers in the Balkans was at the heart of Team of Darkness by Tony Ruggiero.

  Night Pleasures by Sherrilyn Kenyon (Kinley MacGregor) was the first volume in the “Dark-Hunters” vampire romance series. A young archaeologist in Paris was protected from a supernatural evil by a mysterious stranger in Shannon Drake’s romantic vampire novel Realm of Shadows, and a legendary vampire hunter awakened after centuries of sleep in Christine Feehan’s romantic Gothic Dark Legend.

  Maggie Shayne’s Twilight Hunger was another bloodsucking romance, and Out of the Shadows was an omnibus of Linda Lael Miller’s vampire romances Forever and the Night (1993) and For All Eternity (1994).

  Garry Kilworth’s animal fantasy Vampire Voles was the fifth volume in the “Welkin Weasels” series, while Sparkle Hayter’s satirical novel Naked Brunch from No Exit Press featured werewolves.

  Published by Carroll & Graf in hardcover, Glen Hirshberg’s first novel, The Snowman’s Children, was set in mid-1970s Detroit as two eleven-year-old boys tried to save their friend’s sanity against a haunting backdrop of murders committed by the serial killer of the title. The book came with cover quotes by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and others.

  Best known for her non-fiction books about Anne Rice, Katherine Ramsland’s debut novel The Heat Seekers was somewhat predictably the first in a new vampire series. Rice’s son Christopher also made his own novel debut with A Destiny of Souls, a Southern Gothic set in New Orleans involving white supremacists and the supernatural.

  Ed O’Connor’s first novel, The Yeare’s Midnight, was a serial killer thriller in which police Inspector John Underwood discovered that the ritualistic murder of an Olympic athlete was connected with the works of classical poet John Donne.

  Published by The Design Image Group, Tina L. Jens’s episodic debut novel The Blues Ain’t Nothin’: Tales of the Lonesome Blues Pub was set in the haunted Chicago establishment and featured its colourful proprietor, Miss Mustang Sally, and her enigmatic clientele. From the same imprint, D.G.K. Goldberg’s . . . Doomed to Repeat It was billed as “a modern Gothic” and involved a romance between a punk-cowgirl and an eighteenth-century Scottish ghost.

  From Big Engine, Dead Ground by Chris Amies was a Lovecraftian first novel based around a 1930s archaeological investigation of a sacred temple on a Pacific Island.

  An attempt to raise the Antichrist and the legend of a thing living in the bell tower haunted The Red Church by Writers of the Future winner Scott Nicholson. A college dropout was haunted by ghosts in C.W. Cannon’s Soul Resin, and a woman was drawn into her own nightmare world in Teri A. Jacobs’s debut novel, The Void.

  M. John Harrison’s audacious novel Light was not only a literary space opera, but also involved a 1990s serial killer who was haunted by a terrifying presence called the “Shrander”.

  In Jonathan Carroll’s White Apples, an advertising copywriter discovered that he had been resurrected from Purgatory by his one true love and their unborn child.

  Tim Pratt’s Last Things was set in the East Texas town of Gilmer, where the inhabitants started seeing creepy scarecrows and believed in the coming Apocalypse.

  The Devil had to live out his life as a human in order to be redeemed in Glen Duncan’s I, Lucifer. A man was haunted by his ghostly girlfriend in I’m a Believer by Jessica Adams, and Jolie Blon’s Bounce pitted James Lee Burke’s Southern sheriff Dave Robicheaux against a Cajun magic man who appeared to be involved in the brutal murders of young girls.

  In Thane Rosenbaum’s The Golems of Gotham, a girl attempted to cure her father’s writing block by calling up the spirits of his dead parents.

  Will Self’s Dorian was a contemporary “re-imagining” of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray set against the AIDS epidemic of the past twenty years. Death’s Enemy: The Pilgrimage of Victor Frankenstein was a historical novel told in the form of a biography of Dr Frankenstein by George Rosie.

  Inspired by Frankenstein, Faust and Freud, Patricia Duncker’s The Deadly Space Between involved lesbianism, incest and the ghost of a mountaineer in the Alps.

  A painter was hired to do a portrait without ever seeing his subject in Jeffrey Ford’s The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque, while sixteen of the author’s shorter pieces were collected by Golden Gryphon in The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories.

  Published by Articulation, a new imprint of Do-Not-Press, Thirteen was an original anthology of stories each based around a nude by British photographer Marc Atkins. The thirteen contributors included Toby Litt, Julian Rathbone, Maxim Jakubowski, Mick Farren, Stella
Duffy and Nicholas Royle.

  Edited with an extensive Afterword by Stephen Jones, The Emperor of Dreams: The Lost Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith was #26 in Gollancz’s Fantasy Masterworks series. The paperback contained forty-three stories, two poems and an essay by the Weird Tales author, covering Smith’s publishing career from 1926 until 1989.

  Also in the Fantasy Masterworks series, Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams (#31) collected fifteen classic stories (mostly from Weird Tales) by C.L. Moore, while William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland and Other Novels (#33) contained the title book plus The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”, The Ghost Pirates and The Night Land, along with a new Introduction by China Miéville.

  HarperCollins’s less imaginative Voyager Classics series offered reprints of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (#29) and Michael Marshall Smith’s Only Forward (#36).

  Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby was reprinted in the “Bloomsbury Film Classic” series, while the author’s The Stepford Wives was reissued by HarperPerennial with a new Introduction by Peter Straub.

  Published by Night Shade Books in hardcover for the first time, Gods in Darkness: The Complete Novels of Kane collected Bloodstone, Dark Crusade and Darkness Weaves by the late Karl Edward Wagner in a single volume. Despite an appropriate cover painting by Ken Kelly, the book suffered from not having an Introduction to put the three novels in historical context or any interior illustrations. However, for anyone who had never read Wagner’s superior heroic fantasy, this omnibus was an excellent place to start. A slip case limited edition contained an extra illustration by Kelly and was also signed by the artist.