Best of
Weird-Fiction

2007

The Imago Sequence and Other Stories


Laird Barron - 2007
    P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Proboscis" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.

American Supernatural Tales


S.T. JoshiHenry James - 2007
    American Supernatural Tales celebrates the richness of this tradition with chilling contributions from some of the nation’s brightest literary lights, including Poe himself, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and—of course— Stephen King. By turns phantasmagoric, spectral, and demonic, this is a frighteningly good addition to Penguin Classics.

The Taint and Other Novellas


Brian Lumley - 2007
    P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos by one of horror's biggest legends. This volume contains the very best of Brian Lumley's Mythos novellas.   Table of ContentsIntroductionThe Horror at OakdeeneBorn of the WindsThe Fairground HorrorThe TaintRising with SurtseyLord of the WormsThe House of the Temple

Masques of Satan: Twelve Tales and a Novella


Reggie Oliver - 2007
    Introductory'The Man in the Grey Bedroom''Grab a Granny Night''The Children of Monte Rosa''Mr Poo-Poo''The Silver Cord''The Road from Damascus''Mmm-Delicious''Puss-Cat''The Old Silence''Music by Moonlight''Blind Man's Box''Shades of the Prison House, a novella''The End of History'

The Third Elevator


Aimee Bender - 2007
    Other characters include a miner in search of something beyond the walls of his cave, a logger too gentle to chop trees, a team of kleptomaniacal dove nurses, a king with an appetite for turtles, and his queen, the swan’s first owner.Nothing Moments is a collaborative project in art, literature, and design organized by: Steven Hull and Tami Demaree with Annie Buckley and Jon Sueda.Story by Aimee Bender ; photographs by Marnie Weber ; design by Katie Hanburger.

Omens


Richard Gavin - 2007
    OMENS is a haunting collection of short stories for the discriminating horror fiction enthusiast. The tales are reminiscent of the work of Robert Aickman, relying moreso on atmosphere & imagery to convey the sense of the unknown and unexplained, and also of the works of Thomas Ligotti, conveying an unsettling sense of the unimagineable.

The Shadows, Kith and Kin


Joe R. Lansdale - 2007
    Lansdale whips up yet another batch of stories to amaze, surprise, and entertain you.His new offering covers a lot of territory, producing what may be his best short story collection yet.One tale concerns an East Texas mule race in the early 1900s that proves to be an unexpected turning point and learning experience for the main character, a lifelong loser. It also chronicles the unusual circumstances of the race, which include a friendship between a rare white mule that can run like the wind, and his friend, a loyal, spotted pig.Another tale drops us into the disturbed mind of a mass murderer and his friendship with the shadows.Two others stories reintroduce us to the supernatural adventures of Reverend Rains, the flawed hero from Lansdale's cult favorite novel, Dead in the West. Here ghouls prowl and werewolves howl.There's a poetic collaboration with Melissa Mia Hall about the nature of loneliness and loss that echoes back to science fiction stories of an earlier time, as well as a famous, award winning novella reprinted here for the first time in several years about a clutch of unusual crime solvers.Read about a world where the dead almost rule, and venture into an alternate universe that is the background for perhaps the strangest tale of all, an adventure concerning an earnest and horny steam shovel named Bill, and his challenge to do the right thing at all costs.It's the usual wild and crowd pleasing display of what has become a subgenre of modern literature as only Joe R. Lansdale can present it: Tales Lansdalien.Welcome to his world.

O Fortunate Floridian: H.P. Lovecraft's Letters to R.H. Barlow


H.P. Lovecraft - 2007
    P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is almost as famous for his letters as for his supernatural fiction. Of the estimated one hundred thousand letters that he wrote, one hundred and fifty-nine of them collected for the first time in this volume were written to Robert H. Barlow (1918-1951). . . . Barlow was only a teenager, living with his family in DeLand, Florida, when the famous writer began corresponding with him. He was enthusiastic for all things related to weird fiction, the pulp magazines and the people who wrote for them, and the emerging community of active fans. Like other fans of the period, Barlow published a fanzine, wrote stories and poems, and even tried his hand at printing. All of these endeavors the equally precocious Lovecraft encouraged. . . . The reader will find references to familiar names like Weird Tales, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Harry Houdini. Lovecraft s letters to Barlow record much about that vanished time and prove to be among the liveliest of all his published correspondence. . . . While the letters in this volume touch mainly on literary matters, they also record Lovecraft's love of Florida. He visited the state several times twice as Barlow's guest and was enthralled by the vistas of live oaks and Spanish moss. He occasionally felt homesick for Florida when he was at home in Rhode Island, and he never yearned more to be in the Sunshine State than during cold New England winters. There was no doubt where he wished to be when he addressed a letter to Barlow, during the depths of one winter, as O Floridian More Fortunate than you can Realise. . . . In addition to letters, the reader will find an insightful introduction by the editors providing details and anecdotes about the friendship between Lovecraft and Barlow. The book is further enriched by Barlow's poignant memoir of Lovecraft in Florida, a glossary of notable people mentioned in the letters, autobiographical pieces by Barlow, and an invaluable index.

Dead Air: Early Broadcasts


Matthew M. Bartlett - 2007
    Bartlett put out a book called "Dead Air". That book is now extremely scarce. This volume contains most of the unpublished work from that book, a few dark poems, and stories and fragments that later appeared in "Gateways to Abomination" and "Creeping Waves". It also features magnificently creepy artwork by Yves Tourigny, as well as Tom Breen's original introduction. Witness the early days of dread magus Benjamin Stockton, and of his demonic radio station WXXT, with all its guts, worms, wriggling things, and voices from the dark.

Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: At the Mountains of Madness (Audio Drama)


H.P. Lovecraft - 2007
    There, the expedition meets tragedy and its survivors uncover cosmic horrors beyond all measure.Lovecraft considered At the Mountains of Madness to be his best and most ambitious story. One of his longest tales, this story languished for more than five years before it was first published in Astounding Stories magazine. Our old-time radio adaptation features a cast of professional actors, exciting sound effects and a thrilling original musical score by Troy Sterling Nies (composer for The Call of Cthulhu). Sit down, dim the lights, fire up the wireless and enjoy 77 minutes of exciting Lovecraftian drama, suspense and cosmic horror.

Strangers and Pilgrims


Walter de la Mare - 2007
    500 copies. Contents: Introduction, A:B:O., The Moon's Miracle, The Riddle, The Giant, The Quincunx, The Pear-Tree, The Bird of Travel, Seaton's Aunt, The Vats, Promise at Dusk, The Creatures, Miss Jemima, The Looking-Glass, Out of the Deep, Winter, The Green Room, The Scarecrow, Alice's Godmother, Mr Kempe, A Recluse, All Hallows, The Game At Cards, Crewe, The House, 'What Dreams May Come', Strangers and Pilgrims, A Revenant, The Guardian, An Anniversary, Music, Bad Company, Bibliographical Information.'Walter de la Mare's stories have a claim to be the most subtle and strangely powerful depictions of the supernatural in English fiction of the twentieth century.' So says Mark Valentine in his introduction to these thirty-one uncanny tales. Amongst this selection are some of the best known of de la Mare's stories: 'Seaton's Aunt', 'Out of the Deep', 'All Hallows', and also some of the more obscure: 'Miss Jemima', 'A Game at Cards', Alice's Godmother'. All illustrate the writer's enigmatic relationship with alternative layers of existence and a sense of the unknown, conveyed in beautifully restrained prose. There are few overt exterior forces encountered; de la Mare's characters 'do not have to face monstrosities of any sort: but they are haunted nevertheless; by loneliness, by lovelessness, by loss.' This concentration on 'queerness and quiet tragedy' is tempered by the writer's poetic powers of description, particularly his depiction of the English countryside. Strangers and Pilgrims is the definitive collection of de la Mare's supernatural and psychological stories.

The Book of Fables


W.S. Merwin - 2007
    . . only a poet, and a good one, could have written it.” — The Atlantic MonthlyW.S. Merwin’s acclaimed short prose pieces — many of which first appeared in The New Yorker — blur the distinction between fiction, poetry, essay, and memoir. Reminiscent of Kafka, Borges, and Beckett, they evoke mythical patterns and unlikely adventures and raise questions about art, reality, and meaning. As the, itself fabled, Saturday Review once remarked, the prose pieces have “astonishing range and power.”The Book of Fables comprises all the short prose from two of Merwin's out-of-print collections, The Miner’s Pale Children and Houses and Travellers. The pieces run from a single sentence to a dozen pages and create a poetic landscape both sere and sensuous.

Shades


Geoff Cooper - 2007
    A secret that threatens the lives of Danny, his friends, and the mysterious old Russian known as Gustav...

Midnight in New England: Tales of the Strange and Mysterious


Scott Thomas - 2007
    P. Lovecraft, this collection of original stories is set in 18th and 19th century New England--when restless spirits seemed to roam more freely. Not quite horror, not quite mystery, these dark yet spellbindingly eloquent tales hover on the edge, threatening at every page to plunge the characters into madness.

Over The Darkening Fields


Scott Thomas - 2007
    A Young woman explores the mysteries of death through the paintings of an enigmatic artist. A young couple discovers a restless antique doll in a cemetery. The charred bodies of homeless men appear in the snowy alleys of Boston. A strange mural with an appetite for bones haunts a deserted house. In the past... A woman roams the slums of London hoping to be Jack the Ripper's next victim. Night after night a man dreams of his lonely lover and her trip to a strange museum. Following a tragic accident, a widow orders the construction of a secret chamber with walls thick enough to muffle screams. In a strange city, long ago... Women are blinded at birth; this has been the law for 500 years. Now they can see, and they are coming back from the grave to take their revenge. A cryptographer struggles to solve the mystery that may save the living from the dead. 26 Stories From The author of Westermead and Cobwebs and Whispers.