To know them will be to know him. And thus we have decided to release a new and expanded third edition of Robert Bloch’s Mysteries of the Worm. This collection contains four more Mythos tales–”The Opener of the Way”, “The Eyes of the Mummy”, “Black Bargain”, and “Philtre Tip”–not included in the first two editions.

    Yet the thing was no less a mystery to me than to others at the time, and until now, it has remained a mystery. Like the rest, I sometimes thought that he and Ebbonly had designed it all between them as a huge, insoluble hoax; that they were still alive, somewhere, and laughing at the world that was so sorely baffled by their disappearance. And, until I at last decided to visit Crater Ridge and find, if I could, the two boulders mentioned in Angarth's narrative, no one had uncovered any trace of the missing men or heard even the faintest rumor concerning them....Contents:· Poet of the Singing Flame· The City of the Singing Flame· The White Sybil· The Tale of Satampra Zeiros· The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles· The Door to Saturn· The Dark Eidolon· The Black Abbot of Puthuum· The Garden of Adompha· The Maze of Maal Dweb· The Flower-Women· The Enchantress of Sylaire· The Beast of Averoigne· The Hunters from Beyond

    The derivative '70s swords and sorcery deserved to be washed away, but some worthwhile works disappeared as well. Two lost series that deserved far better are Karl Edward Wagner's Kane books and Darrell Schweitzer's Sir Julian stories. Both series are well written and intelligent, and they share an even rarer trait: the dark, brooding sensibility that helped make Robert E. Howard's sometimes purple (and always scarlet) Conan stories so popular and memorable. Now the Wildside Press has reprinted We Are All Legends, the long-unavailable collection of 13 linked stories about Sir Julian, the Crusader damned by God after a night spent with a Satanic witch. Julian roams Europe and the East, and strange lands not found on any map, seeking to escape his fate. In "The Lady of the Fountain," Julian's encounter with a lamia may destroy both the knight and his closest companion. In "The Veiled Pool of Mistorak," Faerie lords send Julian on a grim quest to find a city that exists no more and a man doomed ever to live. In "The One Who Spoke with the Owls," the penniless knight accepts a job before learning its terms and wakes to discover he has been hired to slay a pagan witch. "The Castle of Kites and Crows" presents a vision of cosmic reality that will chill the soul of anyone raised in a Christian faith. While the first-person narration occasionally makes Julian sound more self-absorbed than accursed, We Are All Legends is a fine entertainment that merits the attention of fantasy and horror fans. --Cynthia Ward