Horror World Book Reviews
February, 2009

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GUNPOWDER by Joe Hill
Review by Mark Justice

Gunpowder is a new novella from Joe Hill, the author of 20 th Century Ghosts and Heart-Shaped Box, and it’s quite a departure, at least in setting. It’s solidly science-fiction and the storytelling is fairly straight-forward, particularly once the story really gets rolling.

Gunpowder opens with a woman named Elaine watching a boy as he makes grass grow from the sandy soil of a barren planet. It’s quite an accomplishment, despite the fact that the grass is as sharp as deadly razors. Elaine is part of a government program that is developing new terraforming technology. Jake, the grass grower, is one of several genetically engineered boys who can “psyform” – create things with their minds. As the boys grow, Elaine hopes they will be able to transform the planet in to a habitable paradise. Every boy under Elaine’s care has the talent, save for Charley, the smallest and most sensitive of the boys. He’s also the victim of his “brother’s” pranks, and, of all the children, he’s the closest to Elaine. It’s revealed early in the story that Charley can indeed psyform, but his skill is limited to moving stones via telekinesis. He uses his ability to construct The Great Wall of Charley, which stands between their shelter and the dead world (By the way, any fan of Hill’s father can’t help but be amused by the name of the home of Elaine and the children, Castle-on-the-Rock).

Hill uses a skillful economy of words melded with a poet’s vision to develop Elaine and her teen charges. Thankfully, Hill chooses to concentrate on only a few of the boys, allowing a particularly tight focus on Elaine, Jake and Charley. We see Elaine’s love for her boys and her concern – perhaps the concern of mothers of boys everywhere – that, even as they learn to create, they delight in violence and images of destruction.

Ultimately, the life that Elaine finds both demanding and rewarding is threatened when the government she works for shows up on the world Charley has named Gunpowder, intending to relocate Elaine, and channel the talents of her boys to the art of warfare. The reader may feel that Hill delivers a nod toward 21 st century politics and the follies of America’s recently-ended presidential administration, and there certainly seems to be parallels with the gung-ho, bring-it-on attitude of the days and months following 9/11.

Subtext aside, a story has to succeed on its merits, and Gunpowder does. Now that’s he’s successfully ventured into science fiction, this reader now eagerly awaits Hill’s jaunts into the western, mystery romance genres.

PS Publishing

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THE ADVENTURES OF MR. MAXMILLAN BACCHUS AND HIS TRAVELING CIRCUS by Clive Barker
Review by Dave Simms

The Wedding of Indigo Murphy To The Duke Lorenzo De Medici and how Angelo was discovered in an orchard. The Face Of The Flying Lion Fish And Why Doctor Jozabiah Bentham’s Theatre of Tears sailed north. How The Clown Domingo De Ybarrondo Fell Over the edge of the world. How Mr. Maxmillan Bacchus’ Traveling Circus Reached Cathay And Entertained The Court of the Khan Called Kublai in Xanadu, How They Sought The Bearded Bird, and how, at last, Angelo was lost.

No, the lines above aren’t culled from supermarket tabloids and if so, aren’t the entire article. If each wacky, way long line doesn’t spin your head faster than Linda Blair’s, you’ll realize they’re simply the titles of Clive Barker’s stories in his latest, but earliest collection of a complete mind-screw literary fest. Written over forty years ago, these interlocking stories chronicle a circus that trivializes the imagination of P.T. Barnum. Maxmillan Bacchus has assembled a traveling troupe led by a giant bird, populated by such odd characters as a crocodile, orangutan, apple thief, and trapeze girl, they find themselves on a quartet of adventures onto the road to perform for the Kublai Khan. Strange creatures abound, such as the horrific trolls which live on the flip side of the earth (of course it’s flat in Barker’s mind) and those in Bacchus’ rival circus.

Those familiar with the author’s work will notice that even this earliest collection contains visions of a mind most beautifully disturbed, displaying flickers of images that will find their way into Imagica, The Great And Secret Show, and Everville. The illustrations fill the mind’s eye with whatever the imagination doesn’t. Comparisons to other authors would only fall short here, but for those uninitiated, try to picture if Barnum’s show mixed with Roald Dahl with a soundtrack by Pink Floyd but performed by Alice Cooper.

Bad Moon Books

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THE HISS OF ESCAPING AIR by Christopher Golden
Review by Norm Rubenstein

Famed British author/publisher Peter Crowther and his multi-award winning U.K.-based PS Publishing recently published Christopher Golden’s novellete, The Hiss Of Escaping Air, as a Chapbook, in honor of his having been the Guest of honor at FantasyCon 2008.

Christopher Golden is, at heart, a world-class storyteller. An accomplished author who can take a few seemingly disparate strands involving life among the Hollywood Glitterati, the trials of a bad or failed marriage, and a allegedly supernatural object, and from them craft a taut tale of love, hatred, possession, escape, revenge, freedom and life itself.

That Golden is able to create the well-developed and interesting characters and present his entire story is the relatively short amount of space provided, amply demonstrate that he is, indeed, one of our best storytellers. The Hiss Of Escaping Air is a brilliant, eerie, disquieting, and memorable little story, and one well worth your purchasing and reading. Oh, and if one day someone suddenly just walks up to you and offers you a nice red balloon on a string … think twice before accepting, okay?

PS Publishing

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Mean Streets By Jim Butcher, Simon Green, Kat Richardson, & Thomas Sniegoski
Review by Dave Simms

I’ve long been a fan of The Nightside and its best gumshoe, John Taylor, so when I receiver this quartet of stories, his was the one my excitement focused upon. However, I found three other characters who piqued my interest enough to seek out at least a full novel’s worth of their personal adventures. This is not straight up horror, nor is it typical dark fantasy, paranormal noir, or whatever booksellers love to label tales such as these. Screw the descriptions and dive right in; if you’re up for a fun read, and possibly something unexpected, you won’t be disappointed here.

First up is Butcher’s Harry Dresden. Having only seen the shortlived series, I was hoping the books would have the same campy attitude with some scares and magic that Buffy rode to fame. Butcher didn’t disappoint here. Yet to claim the writing is without depth would be a great disservice. This story about a sword traced back to the Crusades touches on religion, karma, and other “nice” elements, along with the wit and interesting character that’s made the Dresden series so popular.

Green is probably the most well known of the four authors here due to his Nightside series starring John Taylor. Within that hidden realm below London, it’s forever 3am. In the bar he spends so much of his time, where denizens from all sorts of worlds hang out, he meets a woman who wants him to find her memory. Is she blonde? Nope, just another enjoyable chapter in John’s life that takes him to places that would cause Dante to wet himself. Humorous and witty with great characters (the ancillary people/things are often more fascinating that the major players), I highly recommend this series to anyone.

Kat Richardson was another author who was new to me, but yet another who I’ll seek out in novel form. In “The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog,” Harper Blaine seeks to unravel a Day of the Dead mystery. She exists as a Greywalker (yes, she sees dead people) but Richardson makes it fresh and interesting.

Finally, the most pleasant surprise came from Thomas Sniedoski with one of the most unique characters in recent memory. Remy Chandler is an angel who chose to live as a human but has just lost his wife. In “Noah’s Orphan’s” (yeah, THAT Noah), he takes up the case given to him by another angel, one who’s intentions are shady. The backstory of the angels’ history along with one on those who didn’t get the invite to the ark is intriguing. I shy away from religious tales but Sniegoski pulled me in and made me a fan.

A great introduction to four very talented writers and their series.

Roc Trade

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THE WELL by Jack Cady
Review by T.T. Zuma

For those of us old enough to remember, there was a time when mass market horror novels delivered the goods by developing characterization, concentrating on atmosphere, and creating intricate plots while eschewing scenes of graphic sex and excessive gore. In those days, you seldom read horror stories involving detailed scenes of extended violence, and for the most part, authors refrained from using language in their narratives that were overly peppered with obscenities or extreme blasphemies. The terror in these books was created through a slow but sustained tension, designed to stimulate the imagination without constantly beating the reader over the head with gruesome rapes or amputations every few pages. These mass market novels were obviously a product of their times.

The Well by Jack Cady is a fine example of that old school horror. It was published originally in 1981 and has been given a superb re-issue treatment this year by Centipede Press in a nice cloth bound edition. Not only is the original novel included in this re-issue, it contains 4 additional short stories including the multiple award winning, The Night We Buried Red Dog.

This edition also includes an excellent introduction by Tom Piccirilli. Cady it turns out was like a father to Tom, and acted as his mentor. Tom’s masterpiece, November Mourns, was almost complete when he received word of Cady’s death. Tom confesses in the intro that November Mourns bears Cady’s stamp in one form or another, as do most of Tom’s novels.

The Well is a Haunted House story. It is also a Ghost story. But at its core, it’s a love story.

Three generations of the Tracker family have built and lived in a house that from all outward appearances was a Rube Goldberg construct, but in actuality, it was as complicated as a Rubik’s Cube. The house was constantly reengineered and augmented to over time by the family with a purpose… to prevent evil from entering it and possessing its inhabitants. The house was built to kill the Devil.

Trip wires, trap doors, springs, electric eyes, and hydraulic switches are installed everywhere, seemingly randomly in the house, and when activated, they release a number of deadly implements. Free falls through the floor, chemical releases that will choke a person to death, swords that swing from pulleys, crushing weights falling from the ceilings, poison in the food, automatic rifle firings, all of these and more result from triggering one of these traps. In addition, mazes are placed in living rooms that seem to have no way out, stairways become tunnels that can go up or down, and doors are always something to be wary of. The house is a certain death trap for those who do not know the “paths” of safety throughout the house.

John Tracker left home at an early age and has never looked back. As a young man away from the influences of the house and his family, he found success as a businessman and a landscaper.. The only thing John did not acquire with his success was love, and now, it seems he has found that too with his secretary, Amy. But John’s life has come full circle. He must return home, if only temporarily, as the State wants to put in a highway that would run through the property and they have asked John to landscape it. The project would be in jeopardy if there were still occupants in the house, so John makes the trip back home with his new love to see if anyone is still living in the house. When they arrive, they find themselves unable to leave and at the mercy of the traps….and the very evil that the house was built to kill.

Cady’s writing is sparse, yet powerful. The majority of the sentences in this story are usually short, forcing the reader to take their time with the prose. When reading, it feels as if there is a depth to each and every word and you soon realize there is not one of them wasted anywhere in this story.

Cady weaves several themes through the story, with regret the constant thread. Amy still can’t get her first love out of her mind as well as at not pursuing a career in acting. John has mixed feelings about his father and leaving home when he did. The house preys on these regrets, causing Amy and John to alternately age and become younger. Since regret cannot exist without guilt, both John and Amy are forced to confront their sins, the ones in the past before meeting each other, and the ones they will commit in the house. Cady puts all this into perspective with a wonderful line, “Those who have the most, owe the most – and it can’t be paid with money”.

If you enjoy ole fashioned ghost stories, like old black and white horror films, or just want to read a really good haunted house tale that you can take your time with, I would highly recommend The Well.

(I should mention that this re-issue is for the collector, and its $ 75.00 price may be too expensive for most readers, but used copies are available from a multitude of sources on the internet for as little as a dollar. Of course these copies do not contain the additional short stories or the introduction by Tom.)

Centipede Press

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GATEKEEPERS (Book Three of the Dream House series) by Robert Liparulo
Review by Dave Simms

Rarely does a young adult series hold a reader’s interest, save for one with an annoying kid and his damn forehead (sorry, I just want 1% of her success) and actually interests a real teen (meaning high schoolers). Robert Lipaulo’s Dream House series has bucked the trend and manages to both excite and scare the readers. I’ve read these books to my class and each story has held these city kids rapt.

The King house is different. It’s not haunted. It holds a secret both supernatural and man-made. Jessie King, uncle to the main characters Xander and David, built the house with chambers that lead to other worlds, other times, other places such as the Civil War, Ancient Rome, jungles, etc. Now that the boys have lost a family member (no spoilers here), they find two others in this book. The old man escapes his nursing home, feeling the call of the house, knowing he must return to save much more than memories.

The villains in Gatekeepers act in both dimensions, crossing over to remove any sense of safety from the boys in their quest. Yet the most exciting character is the one we all know, the queen of Horror World herself, Mrs. Nanci Kalanta. I won’t give away her small role but you may never look at this woman the same way again.

Extremely recommended for readers of YA and adult horror.

Thomas Nelson

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THE OZ SUITE by Gerard Hoaurner
Review by T.T. Zuma

When was the last time you watched the MGM movie, The Wizard of Oz? Looking back at it as an adult, I never believed the movie had an excess of morbidity, but just the right amount of foreboding to fire up a young child’s imagination. There were enough sing-a-longs and delightfully costumed midgets (not to mention the sexually neutral camaraderie between Dorothy and her three stooges) that led us all to the comforting conclusion that there really was “no place like home”. This more than made up for the darker scenes with the Wicked Witch, the Flying Monkey’s, and even the ambiguously principled Wizard hiding behind his curtain. The movie was creepy enough to maybe make a child miss a night or two of sleep, but it’s scenes of terror were not traumatic

Well, at least it wasn’t for me, my kids, or for most of us, but it seems that Gerard Hoaurner can’t get the dead witch’s ruby slippers or those poppy fields of perpetual sleep out of his mind. And you might wonder why Hoaurner choose to write a trio of stories based on the more morose aspects of the classic movie, but don’t ask him, he says in the afterwards that he doesn’t know. Just be glad he did.

The first of the three stories, No We Love No One, is not only the most entertaining of the three; it’s the scariest of the bunch. Imagine a world where one day, hard plastic shells fall from the sky on parachutes and attach themselves to everyone’s home. For each child living in the home, there is a shell, and inside each shell there is a baby.

Those that keep the babies discover that they mature pretty quickly and are somewhat docile, except for their fascination with the movie The Wizard of Oz. After a time, adults start to disappear without a trace, then some of the children. Then unexpectedly, the fully grown shell babies gather and start marching down the streets.

For those who ever wondered what the guards were chanting as they marched into the Wicked Witch’s castle in the movie, this story gives you as good as an answer as you’re ever going to get.

The second story, Bring Me The Head of That Little Girl Dorothy, is an hallucinatory tale of a woman who lives in two worlds. In one, she is the Wicked Witch of The West keeping council with a flying monkey and the heads of her enemies, while in the other she is a working mother with children. Things are not working out too well for her in either world.

The third story, The Wizard Will See You Now, is a brutal tale of madness borne of tragedy. A young boy witnesses his father commit a horrendous crime against his family and seeks out the Wizard of Oz for guidance and closure. And he might just have found the Wizard in some rather strange places such as the end of a smack needle, the handle of a knife, or in the body of his unborn sister.

Houarner’s prose can sometimes be a bit heavy and not all that accessible to some (see his Max The Assassin novels) but his writing in this chapbook is very crisp and vivid. He is also reverent; in The Oz Suite, Houarner doesn’t mess with the classic movie so much as augment it.

These stories will plant a seed of paranoia in your mind and weigh you down with suspicion. The next time you watch The Wizard of Oz after reading The Oz Suite, you will find yourself paying more attention to the gloomier scenes and looking for things that you might have not noticed before. And, after reading these stories, you just might pause and ask yourself while watching the Wizard sail away in his balloon, who really was that man behind the curtain?

Eibonvale Press

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THE GENTLING BOX by Lisa Mannetti
Review by Dave Simms

Historical fiction holds a select audience; add horror to the history and the noose tightens. The allure of horror lies in its immediacy and connection to the audience, universal appeal. When the readers are taken to a strange place and a strange time, the author better be able to create pretty damn convincing “reality” for them.

Only a few books in recent memory have succeeded: The Terror by Dan Simmons, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and the brilliant Black Wind by F. Paul Wilson. Each has been able to encapsulate the reader within his or her world. Now the debut from Lisa Mannetti hits the shelves and strives for those same heights but in its own realm. That realm resides in 19 th century Romany, amidst the Hungarian countryside full of evil, magick, and tradition.

Mannetti scores here in her entry to the land of horror novels. As with other reviews of this book, this reviewer found the description on the back cover misleading and off-putting. Hopefully this can be corrected as there is an interesting tale between the covers even if it never accomplishes what the aforementioned authors have. Thankfully, the fantasy-themed cover art redeems that although it may find itself placed in “fantasy” sections of bookstore if a mass-market edition emerges (which would be a very good thing). Thoroughly researched, the author pulls the reader into her creation like a good historical novel should. The horror stems not from the witch Anyeta who terrorizes the family but from the threat to destroy the family itself. Imre, the main character, seeks to end the terror that she has inflicted upon the family. He is afflicted by a strange disease, his wife, Mimi, in thrall hacks off her own hand to attempt to break the Anyeta’s hold, and his daughter, Lenore, who is the witch’s next target. The horrific concept of the titular object becomes more frightening when Imre realizes that what was meant for horses now needs to be used on his family in order to save them.

The language rings authentic as the characters color a unique gypsy world – when was the last time gypsies were the focal point of a horror novel? Yet their inherent mystery as a people with deep-rooted tradition and history as tenuous as the magick which surrounds them adds a deep layer to the novel.

For anyone who likes their horror mixed with the historical, willing to work for a book’s rewards, this is worth the effort.

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BLACK STATIC #8
Review by Dave Simms

This magazine keeps on getting better and better. It’s become the UK’s version of Cemetery Dance, if not better. I’ve been reviewing it almost every month (it’s more regular than an old bag at bingo slugging Metamucil shots) and the quality never flags. The book reviews are recent and not the run of the mill choices as are the ones for the movies,

This episode spotlights Simon Clark, one of Britian’s best horror authors today. The article gives interesting insight into LUCIFER’S ARK and his views on writing today. Also included is the article on how a genre writer can survive in such times. Along with other upcoming book news and other pertinent horror news, the fiction is damn strong.

Well worth the subscription.

TTA Press

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POE: 19 NEW TALES OF SUSPENSE, DARK FANTASY, AND HORROR INSPIRED BY EDGAR ALLAN POEEdited by Ellen Datlow
By Norm Rubenstein

Ellen Datlow is, and has been for over the past twenty years, consistent. Consistently amazing. It is no wonder then that her latest endeavor, an anthology celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, is a superior collection of outstanding stories.

As a multi-award winning editor, Datlow’s chief talent among many, is her ability to obtain and select consistently unique and outstanding short fiction literature to fill her anthologies. Poe is no exception. There is not a single “bad” story in this massive, over five hundred page collection of nineteen stories. Moreover, virtually all of the stories can legitimately present valid credentials for award consideration for 2009 – they are all, individually that good.. What’s even better, the stories are all unique and different. There is none of the repetition that might be expected of such an undertaking. No reader will become bored nor come away from reading Poe feeling that the stories are all of a “type,” or overly familiar in their frame of reference which is quite exceptional and refreshing when dealing with such a large collection of nineteen different tales.

The Anthology’s title is a most apt description of what is to be found in this collection of “themed” stories. They run the gamut from horror to suspense, and from dark fantasy to magical realism to “Bizarro” fiction. While various tales and poems of Poe’s have inspired all the stories, the authors and editor have all taken obvious pains to either select stories or poems of Edgar Allan’s that are ones with which the casual Poe reader may not be familiar, and/or that present an unexpected or ‘new” twist, or take upon themes Poe dwelt on in his original tales. Editor Datlow also provides an interesting and informative Introduction that discusses Poe, his life, his writing, and his continuing relevance in this bicentennial of his birth.

All of the authors selected for this anthology, whether you happen to be familiar with their names and work or not, are consummate professionals, and almost all are multi-award winners in various genres. This is a particularly difficult anthology to review simply because the quality of the work found within is so uniformly brilliant. Therefore, there just isn’t any one or few stories one can select and point to as being of lesser quality than the rest. It likewise feels somewhat unfair to select any of the nineteen included tales to highlight and praise, as somehow being critical of those left unmentioned via omission – and it is a singular and praiseworthy fact that every single story contained within Poe is of exceptional quality and is well worth your reading.

With these caveats in mind, I’ll briefly try and give you all a brief idea as to the stories, without at least deliberately divulging any material that might tend to lessen or ruin your enjoyment of them. The anthology starts upon an upbeat note with Kim Newman’s Illimitable Domain, a fond and humorous look back on all the 1960’s films made by AIP - American International Pictures (James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff) with great help from the likes of Roger Corman, Richard Matheson, and Vincent Price, among others. This is followed by The Pickers by Melanie Tem - a very chilling and atmospheric story about a young widow and recent mother who is attempting, none to successfully, to cope with the loss of her husband, and who is on the verge of a complete breakdown. She suddenly finds assistance being offered by “The Pickers,” a mysterious people who go through and collect that which everyday people are always throwing out in their trash. Next comes Beyond Porch And Portal by E. Catherine Tobler – This tale posits a niece, Miss Agnes Franks, of Poe, raised by her uncle after her parents supposedly died in hospital. When the author is found near death and transported to hospital, she is sent for via a mysterious disappearing messenger. This is another strange tale about Poe’s death - and an alternate land that finds its way into Poe’s writings . The Final Act by Gregory Frost presents Leonard and his “nemesis” Gary, both lawyers working at the same large firm. Leonard had caught Gary five months ago at the annual firm Christmas Party with Larry’s wife, Laurel, in the coat closet attempting to have sex. They’d had a “history” since high school, where Gary had been a big jock who liked to play pranks on, and get others, chiefly poor Leonard, into both fights and trouble. Now suddenly, Gary appears and begs Leonard for a ride home. What ensues won’t be what you are probably expecting, but it is both fascinating and suitably shuddery. The less I reveal about Laird Barron’s Strappado, the better for you, the reader. Two former lovers have a chance reencounter and are invited to attend a private party, and from there, a “secret” exhibition by internationally infamous performance artist Van Iblis. It is an experience they will not soon forget. This is a very powerful and well written story. The Mountain House by Sharyn McCrumb is a very W. P. (Ray) Kinsella (Shoeless Joe, filmed as Field Of Dreams) type of dark fantasy/magical tale as narrated by the widow of a former NASCAR driver and champion who lives on a mountain in rural Georgia. Yet another exceptional read. In The Brink Of Eternity by Barbara Roden – we are introduced to William Henry Wallace (1799?-1839) Born in Richmond, VA, from a long line of attorneys. He becomes so influenced by the popular writings of John Cleves Symmes, Jr., who postulated a Hollow Earth accessible via the Poles, that he drops his legal studies to become a Polar explorer. An interesting “study” of a fictionalized account of a man who braves the Arctic. The Red Piano by Delia Sherman, is another intriguing tale featuring a female protagonist, Dr. Arantxa Waters – a single woman in her 30’s and a full University Professor of Archeology, who concentrates her interest in the corporeal afterlife beliefs of ancient peoples. When searching for a home to purchase she locates a renovated stable turned townhouse with a somewhat mysterious past, situated between two mansions, and which contains a beautiful but unusual ox-blood red colored piano with ebony keys. She soon finds that the nearer of the mansions with which she shares a common wall, is owned by a mysterious and captivating bachelor, and further has a matching piano to the one in her new residence. Yet, it is what Arantxa doesn’t know that may well kill her. Sleeping With The Angels by M. Rickert involves Laurel, a young girl who is befriended by another lonely and scarred young girl, Annabel, who is a victim of child abuse, and hopes that Laurel might help her. Yet laurel has her own problems and secrets. A potent and absorbing story. Shadow by Steve Rasnic Tem is a truly Poe-like moody and atmospheric tale that will remind you of the master. Truth And Bone by Pat Cadigan is a wonderfully written story narrated by a young teen girl who is born into a strangely gifted extended family, each of whose members have unique powers that they “come into” around their twelfth or thirteenth birthday. The Reunion by Nicholas Royle is a very disturbing and wonderfully macabre tale about a married couple attending the wife’s 25 th anniversary medical school reunion at a decidedly out-of-the-ordinary and outré British hotel. The Tell by Karron Warren “tells” (pardon the bad pun) of the supposedly “true” story surrounding the mysterious death of author Poe, and of the mysterious silver-encased and horsehair covered talisman that allegedly contains Poe’s heart, and of the mysterious powers ownership of this object conveys upon its bearer. The Heaven And Hell Of Robert Flud by David Prill is another atmospheric and very Poe-like tale of a traveling encyclopedia salesman and his fateful visit to a singular decrepit rural Minnesota farm, and his meeting with the proverbial farmer’s daughter. Flitting Away by Kristine Kathyrn Rusch is a very hard-hitting, potent, and compelling look at violence towards women from the victim’s viewpoint, that is instructive and educational for all. Lowland Sea by Suzy McKee Charnas is a stunning tale of the spread of an Ebola type plague out of Africa, and the Hollywood types who try to flee and hide away from its effects near Cannes. The anthology closes out very strongly with Technicolor by John Langan where the author invites you to sit in on a very informative and highly unusual lecture on Poe’s Masque Of The Red Death given to a university English class by a very erudite, fascinating, and wry Professor, who teaches everyone far more than they could imagine about the story.

If you’ve been counting, you’ll realize that there are still two stories left to discuss in Poe. I’ve saved my two personal favorites for last. First there is Kirikh’quru Krokundor by Lucius Shepard. Author Shepard is a brilliant international writing talent and he proves it with his contribution which involves two Archeology Professors, Nubia and Jon, with a very troubled romantic past, who travel, along with a few willing graduate students and a few sullen Peruvian soldiers on an expedition to a mysterious and seemingly abandoned religious complex high in the Peruvian Andes. This is both great horror and great storytelling and will keep readers engrossed. The second of my favorites is The Pikesville Buffalo by Glen Hirshberg. Frankly, Hirshberg is, in my humble opinion, a budding national treasure; an author of comparable worth to someone like Pat Conroy, who writes wonderful literature that moves far beyond any genre boundaries. When one’s writing, the prose itself, becomes lyrical and magical, it is time for everyone to sit up and take proper notice. Hirshberg’s story that centers around a young man whose wife is suffering through breast cancer, and who decides to visit his two rather eccentric old aunts in Pikesville (near Baltimore, MD) is utterly stunning. So far, it is my personal favorite for short fiction for 2009, and it will take an awful lot to knock it off its present perch.

In closing, Poe is an utterly stunning achievement and possibly the finest anthology I’ve ever read. I not only plan upon purchasing a copy of this affordable softcover for my own library, I also plan upon purchasing a few copies as gifts for good friends and family members who enjoy reading. If you could only purchase say five books throughout the entire year of 2009, this book would certainly be in my top three selections. The book does appropriate honor to the memory of one of our greatest writers, Edgar Allan Poe, and should be at the top of every horror literature fan’s reading list.

Solaris Books,

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