Evil forces menaced a high school dance in Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Prom Dates from Hell, while the similarly titled anthology Prom Nights from Hell collected five paranormal stories by Kim Harrison, Stephanie Meyer, Meg Cabot, Michele Jaffe and Lauren Myracle.
Caroline B. Cooney’s Enter Three Witches was inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Mary Downing Hahn’s Deep Dark and Dangerous was about ghosts, and a group of children accidentally freed spirits trapped in library books in The Phantom Isles by Stephen Alter.
A boy on a camping trip encountered a legendary Native American creature in Joseph Bruchac’s Bearwalker, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport. Meanwhile, another boy allowed one of his demon charges to escape while distracted by a girl in Royce Buckingham’s humorous novel Demonkeeper.
Eclipse, the third in thirty-three-year-old Mormon mother of three Stephanie Meyer’s YA vampire/werewolf “Twilight” series from Little, Brown, which included Twilight and New Moon and already had a combined 1.6 million copies in print, reportedly sold 150,000 copies on its first day. After an announced first printing of one million copies, the publisher quickly went back to press three times. “I’m waay too chicken to read horror,” admitted the author.
Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Tantalize was about a vampire-themed restaurant, while Adele Griffin’s Vampire Island was a humorous novella about three vampire children who turned into fruit bats.
A teenage vampire plotted revenge on undead jocks in Julie Kenner’s The Good Ghoul’s Guide to Getting Even. It was followed by Good Ghouls Do.
A vampire princess found herself trapped in a menacing school in Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, and a vampire slayer tried out for the cheerleading team in Mari Mancusi’s Girls That Growl, the third book in a series.
Tiffany Trent’s Hallowmere: In the Serpent’s Coil was the first in a teenage historical series featuring vampire fairies. Bloodline Book Two: Reckoning was the second volume in Kate Cary’s YA sequel series to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, while Masquerade by Melissa de la Cruz was a sequel to Blue Bloods.
A teenager discovered that she was turning into a vampyre in Marked by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, the first volume in the “House of Night” series. It was followed by Betrayed. Another teen discovered she was half-vampire and went looking for her human mother in The Society of S by Susan Hubbard.
The Dead Girls’ Dance and Midnight Alley were the second and third volumes, respectively, in the “Morganville Vampires” series by “Rachel Caine” (Roxanne Longstreet Conrad).
Serena Robar’s Dating4Demons was the third in another young adult vampire series, while Dance with a Vampire was the fourth volume in Ellen Schreiber’s YA romance series that started with Vampire Kisses.
Vampire Beach: Ritual and Vampire Beach: Legacy were the third and fourth titles in the series by “Alex Duval” (Laura Burns and Melinda Metz).
James McCann’s Pyre, a sequel to Rancour, was about a vampire-hunting werewolf, and an orphaned teenager discovered his lycanthropic heritage in Werewolf Rising by R. L. LaFevers.
Neil Gaiman’s M Is for Magic was a selection of ten previously published stories and a poem aimed at younger readers, illustrated by Teddy Kristiansen. Alongside the HarperCollins trade edition, Subterranean Press issued a 1,000-copy signed edition illustrated by Gahan Wilson and a twenty-six copy lettered edition at $350.00, housed in a custom traycase with an original remarque by the artist.
Robert D. San Souci’s Triple-Dare to Be Scared contained thirteen original stories, illustrated by David Ouimet, and The Curse of the Campfire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales contained thirty-five stories (two reprints) by David Lubar.
Neal Shusterman’s Darkness Creeping: Twenty Twisted Tales collected one poem and nineteen stories (four original), while Hauntings collected fifteen stories by Betsy Hearne.
The Restless Dead edited by Deborah Noyes contained ten original horror stories by Kelly Link, Nancy Etchemendy, Holly Phillips and others, including the editor.
Joyce Carol Oates, Christopher Pike, T. E. D. Klein, Chet Williamson, P. D. Cacek and Bentley Little were among the authors who contributed eighteen stories to the Scholastic anthology 666: The Number of the Beast.
Scary Stories included nineteen stories and a poem, illustrated by Barry Moser, and Fendi Ferragamo & Fangs collected three linked stories by Julie Kenner, Johanna Edwards and Serena Robar in which teenagers entering a modelling contest ended up as vampires.
Joe Hill’s remarkable debut collection, 20th Century Ghosts, was reissued in mass-market hardcover editions by William Morrow in the US and Gollancz in the UK with an added story, “Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead”, not found in the 2005 PS Publishing edition.
Christopher Fowler’s tenth volume of short fiction, Old Devil Moon, collected twenty-two eclectic stories (at least fifteen original), along with a Q&A with the author and a Foreword quoting from recent news stories that was equally as horrifying as any of the tales in the book.
Midnight Bazaar: A Secret Arcade of Strange and Eerie Tales contained eight stories (two original) by Simon Clark, including the previously-published novella “She Loves Monsters”.
From Chaosium, The Spiraling Worm: Man versus The Cthulhu Mythos collected seven linked Lovecraftian stories by David Conyers and John Sunseri, with an Introduction by C. J. Henderson and an Afterword by the authors.
Edited with an Introduction by Peter Haining, The Demanding Dead: More Stories of Terror and the Supernatural collected eight stories by Edith Wharton, along with material from an unfinished novel.
Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural was a non-themed anthology of twenty original stories edited by Ellen Datlow. Although contributors included K. W. Jeter, Stephen Gallagher, Christopher Fowler, Mike O’Driscoll, Mark Samuels, Joyce Carol Oates, Lucius Shepard, Conrad Williams, Pat Cadigan, Glen Hirshberg and Terry Dowling, among others, the stories relied more on their literary value than their ability to disturb the reader.
Edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb, Dark Delicacies II: Fear contained nineteen original stories and a Foreword by Ray Harryhausen. Among the contributors were Barbara Hambly, Joe R. Lansdale, Peter Atkins, Gary Brandner, John Farris, Glenn Hirshberg, Caitlín R. Kiernan and a number of media names.
Summer Chills: Strangers in Strange Lands edited by Stephen Jones contained twenty tales (six original) of holiday horrors by Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Robert Silverberg, Dennis Etchison, Michael Marshall Smith, Christopher Fowler, Karl Edward Wagner, Kim Newman, Glen Hirshberg and Basil Copper, among others. From the same editor and also featuring many of the same contributors, The Mammoth Book of Monsters collected twenty-two stories (five original) by David J. Schow, Scott Edelman, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Thomas Ligotti, Gemma Files, Robert E. Howard, Jay Lake, Tanith Lee, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert Holdstock and others. Randy Broecker supplied the interior illustrations.
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories: Great Supernatural Tales of the Twentieth Century edited by Peter Haining featured forty-four stories by Ray Bradbury, Philip Pullman, M. R. James, Rudyard Kipling, Lord Dunsany and others.
As usual edited by Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett, Hot Blood XIII: Dark Passions contained twenty erotic horror stories from a list of authors that included Thomas Tessier, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and David J. Schow.
Published by Hero Games, Astounding Hero Tales: Thrilling Stories of Pulp Adventure edited by James Lowder included sixteen original tales in the “pulp” tradition by such authors as Lester Dent, Will Murray, Darrell Schweitzer, David Niall Wilson, John Pelan, Robert Weinberg and the late Hugh B. Cave, who also supplied the biographical Foreword.
Edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet reprinted almost fifty pieces from the slipstream fanzine.
Whispers in the Night edited by Brandon Massey was an anthology of nineteen original stories by black authors, including Tananarive Due.
Edited by Darrell Schweitzer, The Secret
History of Vampires included thirteen original stories by Tanith Lee, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Brian Stableford and others.
Many Bloody Returns edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner contained thirteen original tales of birthdays with a bite aimed at middle-aged women who read non-scary vampire stories. Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jim Butcher, P. N. Elrod, Jeanne C. Stein and Tanya Huff were among the authors included, along with the two editors.
Edited by Lindsay Gordon, Love on the Dark Side was an anthology of fifteen original erotic paranormal romance stories by women writers.
In a marketplace swamped with multiple “Best of” anthologies (mostly covering the fantasy and science fiction fields) from various publishers, the 2007 edition of the venerable The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant celebrated its Twentieth Annual Collection. It showcased thirty-four stories, seven poems and multiple annual summaries by various contributing editors, including Edward Bryant, Jeff VanderMeer, Charles de Lint and Jim Frenkel.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Eighteen edited by Stephen Jones collected twenty-four stories and novellas, along with the usual annual round-up, necrology and list of useful contacts.
The only crossovers between the two volumes were stories by Geoff Ryman and GenéWolfe, although authors Glen Hirshberg and Nicholas Royle were also represented with fiction in both books.
In November Amazon launched the Kindle, an electronic reader that was capable of downloading new books, newspapers, magazines and websites to a six-inch display. The company claimed that the screen “looks and reads like real paper”. Weighing the same as an average paperback and selling for around £200 each, Amazon planned to initially offer more than 88,000 titles via a high-speed mobile network rather than wi-fi.
In June, Matt Schwartz announced that his online horror bookstore Shocklines would be closing once it had sold off remaining stock. Unfortunately, the associated message board would continue to operate.
Subterranean began phasing out its magazine version and moved to online publishing. Issue #6 had Edward Miller as the featured illustrator, while the following issue was guest-edited by Ellen Datlow and included fiction by Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford and Lisa Tuttle.
Published electronically by Screaming Dreams, Estronomicon was a nicely produced e-zine edited by Steve Upham. The Halloween Special included fiction from Amy Grech, Garry Charles, Gary McMahon, Peter Tennant and others, along with impressive artwork by Michael Bohbot, Vincent Chong, Les Edwards, Paul Mudie and Upham himself.
The consortium that now owns Hammer Films announced that it was producing a new horror film, Beyond the Rave, that would be available in 2008 in twenty-minute webisodes through the social networking site MySpace. Directed by Matthias Hoene, the contemporary vampire story featured a brief cameo by Sadie Frost.
Stargate’s Amanda Tapping portrayed a doctor hunting down monsters in the Web series Sanctuary, while Sam Raimi developed Devil’s Trade, about a cursed object belonging to a teenage boy. It aired over seven episodes, ranging from three to five minutes each, on Fearnet.com.
Richard A. Lupoff’s mystery novel, Marblebead: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft, which was set in 1927 and featured HPL, Frank Belknap Long and Vincent Starrett as characters, finally appeared after thirty years from print-on-demand (POD) publisher Ramble House after being cut in half, completely re-written, and published by Arkham House in 1985 as Lovecraft’s Book.
An archaeological dig released something evil by the sea in Philip Haldeman’s Shadow Coast, from Hippocampus Press.
Following the suicide of one of their group, three best friends discovered that he may have been a savage ritual serial killer in Greg F. Gifune’s The Bleeding Season, available as an on-demand trade paperback from Shane Ryan Staley’s Delirium Books.
Also from Delirium, Weston Ochse’s Recalled to Life was the first book in the “Cycle of the Aegis” and limited to 250 hardcover copies and a twenty-six copy lettered edition.
A small town was overrun by monsters in Jason Brannon’s The Cage, available as a print-on-demand book or online from KHP Industries/Black Death Books.
Christine Morgan’s novel Tell No Tales from Sabeldrake Enterprise revolved around a historical-themed reality game show, Pirate Adventure, and the ghostly spirits that reached out from the grave to punish those who had invaded their resting-place.
A recovering alcoholic started hearing voices in Karen E. Taylor’s Twelve Steps from Darkness, a dark fantasy romance from Wildside Press/Juno Books.
Dark Moods was a POD vampire novel by Charlee Jacob from Warren Lapine’s Wilder Publications. From the same author and publisher, The Indigo People: A Vampire Collection contained twenty-two reprint stories and twenty-three poems about the undead.
Mortal Touch was the latest title in the “Vampires of New England” series by Inanna Arthen from By Light Unseen Media.
Vampires protected the humans they used as livestock from zombies in D. L. Snell’s Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines, from Permuted Press.
The Vampire Gené– Book 1: Gabriele Caccini from AuthorHouse was the first volume in a proposed supernatural romance trilogy by new British author “Paigan Stone” (Samantha Goldstone). It involved a seventeenth-century vampire who fell in love with one of his victims.
A series of mysterious deaths surrounded an attempt to stage Faust in 1899 Paris in Brian M. Stableford’s The New Faust and the Tragicomique, from Black Coat Press. For the same publisher, Stableford translated and introduced Pierre-Alexis de Ponson du Terrail’s 1852 novel The Vampire and the Devil’s Son (La baronne Trepassee), Marie Nizet’s 1879 novella Captain Vampire (Le Capitaine Vampire), plus Anne of the Isles and Other Legends of Brittany, which collected four Gothic fantasy stories based on Breton folklore by French writer Paul Feval.
From Gary Fry’s Gray Friar’s Press, the “Gray Matter Novella” series kicked off with Conrad Williams’ Rain, about a man who moved his family to France and found his life falling apart. It came with an Introduction by Nicholas Royle. The second volume in the series, Steve Vernon’s Hard Roads, contained two new novellas and an Introduction by Norman Partridge. Both titles were available in 300-copy paperback and 100-copy hardcover PoD editions.
Dirty Prayers from the same publisher collected twenty-nine stories (sixteen original) by Gary McMahon, with an Introduction by Joel Lane and a brief Afterword by the author.
Canadian author Michael Kelly’s first collection, Scratching the Surface, debuted at the 2007 World Horror Convention from Crowswing Books. The PoD trade paperback contained twenty-six psychological ghost stories (nine original) plus an Introduction by John Pelan.
Apple of My Eye from Two Backed Books collected thirteen stories (two original) by Amy Grech.
Issued in paperback by Mythos Books, Dark Wisdom: New Tales of the Old Ones was edited and introduced by Robert M. Price and collected twelve new Cthulhu Mythos stories by Gary Myers, who also supplied the photographic illustrations. From the same PoD publisher, In the Yaddith Time was a Mythos sonnet sequence by Ann K. Schwader, extensively illustrated by Steve Lines with an Introduction by Richard L. Tierney.
Edited by Ken Asamatsu with an Introduction by Robert M. Price, The Dreaming God: Lairs of the Hidden Gods Volume Three was the fourth anthology of Lovecraftian stories and essays from Kurodahan Press, originally published over two volumes in Japan in 2002.
Published by Welsh print-on-demand imprint Mortbury Press, The Black Book of Horror was a tribute to the Pan Book of Horror series of the 1960s and ’70s and featured eighteen stories (two reprints) selected by Charles Black. Authors included Mark Samuels, Gary Fry, D. F. Lewis (twice), David A. Sutton, Paul Finch, John L. Probert, Gary McMahon, David A. Riley and the editor. Paul Mudie supplied the excellent cover art.
Edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth, Gratia Placenti: For the Sake of Pleasing was an original anthology of thirteen stories from Apex Publications. David Niall Wilson, J. A. Konrath and Bev
Vincent were among the authors who contributed stories about individuals going to any lengths to get what they wanted (or, more likely, deserved).
Available in a limited edition of 600 copies from Silverthought Press, A Dark and Deadly Valley edited by Mike Heffernan contained twenty weird World War II stories by David J. Schow, Elizabeth Massie, Scott Nicholson and others, with an Introduction by John Skipp.
From Australian PoD imprint, Equilibrium Books, editor James Doig unearthed twenty-three rare stories for the fascinating compilation Australian Gothic: An Anthology of Australian Supernatural Fiction 1867-1939. The editor also included useful introductory material to the nineteen, mostly obscure, authors represented.
After fifty-two years, pulp magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories was re-launched in July as a print-on-demand trade paperback under new editor/publisher Winston Engle. The first issue contained classic reprints by Jack Williamson, Ray Bradbury, Raymond F. Jones and Isaac Asimov, plus an interview with Forrest J Ackerman.
Although Robert Morgan of Sarob Press initially announced that Monster Behind the Wheel by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin would be the final title to appear from the Welsh small press, the book was subsequently rescheduled to appear from Corrosion Press (an imprint of Delirium Books). Meanwhile, Morgan and his wife Sara took early retirement and relocated to a small farm in northern France.
Available from Earthling Publications, Michael Marshall Smith’s ghostly young adult novel The Servants, about an eleven-year-old boy coming to terms with responsibility in a haunted house by the wintry seaside, was published in both trade and signed, limited hardcover editions.
Glen Hirshberg’s acclaimed debut novel, The Snowman’s Children, was reissued by Earthling in an edition of 250 numbered and fifteen lettered copies. With a new Introduction by Elizabeth Hand and an original Afterword by Gary A. Braunbeck, this attractive leather-bound hardcover was illustrated by Alex McVey.
From the same imprint, The Haunted Forest Tour by James A. Moore and Jeff Strand was the third volume in Earthling’s “Halloween Series”. It was limited to 500 numbered and fifteen lettered copies, signed by the authors.
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