The Best New Horror 6

by Stephen Jones

Genres: Horror; Ghost

Synopsis

The Best New Horror has established itself as the world's premier annual, showcasing the talents of the very best writers working in the horror and dark fantasy field today. In this latest volume, the multi-award winning editor has chosen razor-sharp stories of suspense and disturbing tales of terror by writers on the cutting edge of the genre. Along with a comprehensive review of the year and a fascinating necrology, this is the book no horror fan can afford to miss.

Release date: November 28, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 160

Sample

I would like to thank Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Sara Broecker, Jo Fletcher, Mandy Slater, David Pringle, Gordon Van Gelder, Ellen Datlow, John Maclay, Stefan Dziemianowicz and Stuart Hughes for their continued help and support. Special thanks are also due to Locus, Science Fiction Chronicle, Interzone, Variety, Screen International and all the other sources that were used for reference in the Introduction and the Necrology.

INTRODUCTION: HORROR IN 1994 copyright © 1995 by Stephen Jones.

DEAD BABIES copyright © 1994 by Lawrence Watt Evans. Originally published in South from Midnight. Reprinted by permission of the author.

SENSIBLE CITY by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1994 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. Originally published in Dark Destiny. Reprinted by arrangement with, and permission of, the author and the author’s agent, Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., New York, USA. All rights reserved.

BLADE AND BONE copyright © 1994 by Terry Lamsley. Originally published in Ghosts & Scholars 17. Reprinted by permission of the author.

HARVEST copyright © 1994 by Norman Partridge. Originally published in The Earth Strikes Back. Reprinted by permission of the author.

SOMETIMES, IN THE RAIN copyright © 1994 by Charles Grant. Originally published in Northern Frights 2. Reprinted by permission of the author.

MÉNAGE À TROIS copyright © 1994 by Richard Christian Matheson. Originally published in Little Deaths. Reprinted by permission of the author.

LIKE SHATTERED STONE copyright © 1994 by Joel Lane. Originally published in The Science of Sadness. Reprinted by permission of the author.

BLACK SUN copyright © 1994 by Douglas E. Winter. Originally published in Black Sun. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ISABEL AVENS RETURNS TO STEPNEY IN THE SPRING copyright © 1994 by M. John Harrison. Originally published in Little Deaths. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE DEAD ORCHARDS copyright © 1993 by Terminus Publishing Co., Inc. Originally published in Weird Tales No. 308, Spring 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MOSBY PAULSON HAD HER PAINTING REPRODUCED ON THE COVER OF THE PHONE BOOK copyright © 1994 by Elizabeth Massie. Originally published in Voices From the Night. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE ALTERNATIVE copyright © 1994 by Ramsey Campbell. Originally published in Darklands Two. Reprinted by permission of the author.

IN THE MIDDLE OF A SNOW DREAM copyright © 1994 by Karl Edward Wagner. Originally published in South from Midnight. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

THE TEMPTATION OF DR STEIN copyright © 1994 by Paul J. McAuley. Originally published in The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein. Reprinted by permission of the author.

WAYANG KULIT copyright © 1994 by Garry Kilworth. Originally published in Interzone No. 90, December 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE SCENT OF VINEGAR copyright © 1994 by Robert Bloch. Originally published in Dark Destiny. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and the author’s agent, Ricia Mainhardt, New York, USA.

THE HOMECOMING copyright © 1994 by Nicholas Royle. Originally published in Shadows Over Innsmouth. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE SINGULAR HABITS OF WASPS copyright © 1994 by Geoffrey A. Landis. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author.

TO RECEIVE IS BETTER copyright © 1994 by Michael Marshall Smith. Originally published in The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE ALCHEMY OF THE THROAT copyright © 1994 by Brian Hodge. Originally published in Love in Vein. Reprinted by permission of the author.

OUT OF THE NIGHT, WHEN THE FULL MOON IS BRIGHT . . . copyright © 1994 by Kim Newman. Originally published in The Mammoth Book of Werewolves. Reprinted by permission of the author.

LOVERS copyright © 1994 by Esther M. Friesner. Originally published in South from Midnight. Reprinted by permission of the author.

NECROLOGY: 1994 copyright © 1995 by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.

ALTHOUGH, IN 1994, the number of original science fiction and fantasy novels dropped quite significantly from the previous year, horror remained fairly constant. The number of new anthologies being published even increased very slightly, and the market for role-playing, game- and media-related books also continued to grow significantly. However, it was once again in the young adult horror category that the biggest increase occurred, with the number of books published up more than a third on 1993 (itself a record year), the majority of those being series titles.

There were new titles from all the Big Names of horror in 1994. In October, Stephen King undertook his first nationwide tour in a decade, visiting independent bookstores in ten American cities on his Harley Davidson motorcycle to promote his latest novel, Insomnia. James Herbert’s The Ghosts of Sleath was a sequel to his 1988 novel Haunted, in which psychic investigator David Ash once again encountered the supernatural. Clive Barker returned to the Sea of Quiddity, the world he first explored in The Great and Secret Show five years earlier, with another hefty fantasy opus, Everville: The Second Book of the Art. British book buyers were given the opportunity to find a special edition (one copy supplied with every ten ordered by the bookseller) which included a pre-printed message and signature from Barker.

Winter Moon by Dean Koontz was a completely rewritten version of his 1974 novel Invasion, originally published under the pseudonym “Aaron Wolfe”. Meanwhile, Koontz’s Dark Rivers of the Heart was a totally new high-tec thriller set in an alternative reality. Anne Rice’s Taltos was the third volume in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, following on from The Witching Hour and Lasher. Fires of Eden by Dan Simmons was a dark fantasy about the ancient gods of Hawaii, with a plot that revolved around the long-dead Mark Twain. Brian Lumley continued to please his many fans with Vampire World 3: Bloodwars, the third and final volume in his bestselling follow-up trilogy to the “Necroscope” series.

Another bestseller, the young adult author Christopher Pike, moved over to the adult horror market with two new novels, The Cold One and The Listeners. The Quorum was Kim Newman’s unexpected follow-up to Anno Dracula. It was a highly individual reworking of the Faust legend, set in contemporary London. Meanwhile, under his “Jack Yeovil” pseudonym, Newman offered more pulpy thrills with Orgy of the Blood Parasites, about an escaped virus which resulted in physical mutations.

Night Relics by James P. Blaylock was a fever-dream ghost story set in the Southern Californian wilderness, and although basically a crime thriller, Joe R. Lansdale’s Mucho Mojo had enough Southern weirdness to please those fans of the author’s distinctive horror fiction. Darkness, I by Tanith Lee was the third in her “Blood Opera” series chronicling the bizarre Scarabae family.

The estate of the V.C. Andrews collected a tax refund of $500,000 from the IRS, while the late trademarked author published two new novels, Ruby and Pearl in the Mist, the first and second volumes respectively in the “Landry” series. These were probably still written by Andrew Neiderman, who also published the medical horror thriller Duplicates under his own byline.

Charles Grant’s Jackals featured a less-than-human race preying upon highway travellers, while the author explored Ray Bradbury territory in The Black Carousel, about a dark carnival that arrived in the town of Oxrun Station. Brian Stableford’s The Carnival of Destruction was the third in the trilogy he began with The Werewolves of London and The Angel of Pain.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes took his readers on a descent into a bizarre realm in the aptly titled Hell is What You Make It, while Thomas M. Disch looked into the personal hell of Father Bryce in The Priest. Garry D. Kilworth’s Archangel, a sequel to the author’s Angel, concerned the search for demons in London.

There were plenty of other new novels by experienced hands, including In the Dark by Richard Laymon; Burial (the third in the “Manitou” series) and Flesh and Blood by Graham Masterton; The Homing by John Saul; Spanky by Christopher Fowler; The Plague Chronicles by Guy N. Smith; Evil Intent by Bernard Taylor; Skyscape by Michael Cadnum; The Ascending by T.M. Wright; Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly; Blood Red Moon by Ed Gorman; and White Ghost, a thriller in the “Renegades” series by Shaun Hutson.

The Judas Cross by Charles Sheffield and David Bischoff was a chiller set during the First World War, and Peter Tremayne’s 1984 novel Kiss of the Cobra appeared in a new hardcover edition with a specially commissioned final chapter. The popular superhuman serial killer “Chaingang” Bunkowski was back in two new novels, Butcher and Savant, by Rex Miller, while the combination of Canadian lawyers who comprise author “Michael Slade” came up with Ripper, in which the Vancouver Police Department’s Special X squad investigated a serial killer trying to resurrect Jack the Ripper.

There were also impressive novels from the newer crop of writers, including Stephen Laws (Macabre), Douglas Clegg (Dark of the Eye), Ben Leech (The Bidden), Joe Donnelly (Shrike), Chaz Brenchley (Paradise), Melanie Tem (Revenant), Mark Morris (The Secret of Anatomy), Nancy Holder (Dead in the Water) and Phil Rickman (The Man in the Moss and December).

Downlist, there was the usual mélange of small town serial killers, curses, reincarnation, possession, ghosts, voodoo and zombies with such titles as The Night School by Bentley Little, Prank Night by David Robbins, Night Mask by William W. Johnstone, Let There Be Dark by Allen Lee Harris, Sleep, Pale Sister by Joanne Harris, The Moons of Summer by S.K. Epperson, Lorelei by Mark A. Clements, Fear by Ronald Kelly, Creekers by Edward Lee, Fiend by C. Dean Anderson, Torment by Stephen R. George, The Beast by Marie Ardell White and James Gordon White, The Presence by David B. Silva, The Calling by Kathryn Meyer, Evil Reincarnate by Leigh Clarke, Dead Voices and The Uprising by Abigail McDaniels, Grave Markings by Michael Arnzen, Sacred Ground by Mercedes Lackey, Shadow Dance by Jessica Palmer, Shadows Fall by Simon R. Green, Tower of Evil by Martin James, A Room for the Dead by Noel Hynd, The Asylum by John Edward Ames, The Haunting by Ruby Jean Jensen, Ghost Boy by Jean Simon, Road Kill by Jack Ketchum, The Black Mariah by screenwriter Jay R. Bonansinga, 65mm by Dale Hoover and Red Ball by John Gideon (aka Lonn Hoklin).

For those who preferred a more romantic feel to their chills, there was always Ghostly Enchantment by Angie Ray, Deborah Nicholas’s Silent Sonata, and Midnight is a Lonely Place by Barbara Erskine. The Only Thing to Fear was the fifth volume in the series about occult private investigator Teddy London by Robert Morgan (aka C.J. Henderson). Ron Dee published Succumb and, under his “David Darke” alias, Horrorshow, about a TV horror host who returned from the dead for revenge. In Vincent Courtney’s Goblins, a filmmaker’s wife gave birth to one of the title creatures, while Michael Green’s wonderfully titled The JimJams boasted flesh-eating gremlins.

Bloodsuckers continued to take on a life of their own, with almost a fifth of all new horror fiction published in 1994 featuring vampires.

Fred Saberhagen’s Séance for a Vampire was the eighth in his popular “Dracula” series, which also featured the inimitable Sherlock Holmes. Covenant with the Vampire: The Diaries of the Family Dracul was the first in a proposed trilogy by Jeanne Kalogridis, while Earl Lee’s Drakulya retold Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the form of a lost journal of Mircea Drakulya, Lord of the Dead. Mina by Marie Kiraly was another retelling/sequel of Dracula, this time told from the viewpoint of Mina Harker. Meanwhile, Masquerade Books’ The Darker Passions: Dracula by “Amarantha Knight” (aka Nancy Kilpatrick) was a pornographic retelling of Stoker’s original and the first in a series of sexually explicit reworkings of classic horror tales.

Published under her own byline, Near Death by Nancy Kilpatrick was the first in a new series, as was Night’s Immortal Kiss by Cherlyn Jac, set on a Southern plantation. This was a location shared by This Dark Paradise and These Fallen Angels, both by Wendy Haley. Midnight Kiss and Midnight Temptation were the first and second volumes respectively in a series of vampire Regency romances by Nancy Gideon.

A Dance in Blood Velvet was Freda Warrington’s follow-up to A Taste of Blood Wine, and Michael Romkey’s The Vampire Papers the sequel to I, Vampire. The Vampire Legacy: Bitter Blood by Karen E. Taylor was the second in a series, as was Knights of the Blood: At Sword’s Point, created by Scott Macmillan and his wife Katherine Kurtz, which featured Los Angeles cop John Drummond hunting Nazi vampires in Europe. The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton was the sequel to Guilty Pleasures, and once again featured tough “Executioner” Anita Blake tracking down zombies and vampires in an alternative world. Blood Rites by Elaine Bergstrom was the third in her “Austra Family” series, about a vampire artist stalked by a hired killer.

In Bloodletter by Warren Newton Beath, a Hollywood horror novelist believed that his vampire creation was stalking him, while the title character in Shade by David Darke (aka the prolific Ron Dee) was Shade Scarlett, a bestselling vampire novelist who turned out to be a vampire herself. Love Me to Death (aka Tap, Tap) by David Martin was about a serial killer vampire, Cold Kiss by Roxanne Longstreet featured a vampire surgeon, and there was always Vampire’s Kiss by William Hill. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Sins of the Blood featured rival siblings, one undead, the other a vampire hunter, and a vampire father attempted to track down his children in J.N. Williamson’s Bloodlines. Leslie H. Whitten’s The Fangs of the Morning, a vampire novel set in Washington DC, appeared in an omnibus edition with the author’s 1973 novel The Alchemist, while Nocturnas by Shawn Ryan was about vampires in the Romanian government.

Blood Ritual by Frances Gordon (aka Bridget Wood) was a history of Countess Elizabeth Bathory set against the Bosnian–Serb war. Death of the Devil by Caroline Gray was the third in a trilogy in which a seventeenth-century swordsman battled the vampire queen who destroyed his family. Death and the Maiden by P.N. Elrod was the second volume in the “Jonathan Barrett” series about a Tory vampire during the American Revolution, and For All Eternity by Linda Lael Miller was a vampire romance set during the American Civil War.

Among the Immortals, a first novel by poet Paul Lake, used the premise that Percy Bysshe Shelley survived until the present day as a vampire in Berkeley’s academic community. Another first novel, Of Saints and Shadows by Christopher Golden, featured holy warriors battling a race of vampires, and former bookstore owner Sherry Gottlieb made her publishing debut with Love Bite, about a Los Angeles vampire searching for a mate through the personal columns. The Secret Life of Laszlo, Count Dracula by Roderick Anscombe was another first novel which treated the vampire as a flesh-eating, non-supernatural killer.

Werewolves also remained popular in 1994, at least amongst readers of romantic fiction. Women fell in love with werewolves in both The Volan Curse by Jane Toombes and Prince of Wolves by Susan Krinard, while The Werewolf’s Sin was the third volume in the soap opera series by Cheri Scotch. Moon of Desire by Sophie Danson (aka Erin Caine) was an erotic novel about shapechangers, and All Things Under the Moon by Robert Morgan (aka C.J. Henderson) was the fourth book featuring occult private investigator Teddy London, this time on the trail of a lycanthrope.

A number of novelists made promising débuts in the genre during 1994. Slippin’ Into Darkness was the eagerly awaited first novel from Norman Partridge, published in a handsome signed hardcover by CD Publications. Another writer better known for his short fiction is Robert Devereaux, who made his full-length début with the graphic Deadweight.

Broadcaster Muriel Gray received plenty of media attention for The Trickster, based on native Canadian legends, and other first time horror novelists included Simon Magin (Sheep), Mark Chadbourn (Nocturne), Steve Zell (Wizard), James Buxton (Strange), John Douglas (The Late Show), Vivian Schilling (Sacred Prey), Mark Burnell (Freak), Ralph Vallone, Jr. (Second Vision) and Michael Marshall Smith (Only Forward, which was basically a science fiction novel but still contained many of the bizarre touches found in the author’s distinctive horror stories).

1994 should have been the year of Frankenstein, and although Kenneth Branagh’s new version of the tale proved a disappointment at the box office, it didn’t seem to harm the sales of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Branagh (and others) which took a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film and included the script by Steph Lady and Frank Darabont. It was also novelised by Leonore Fleischer in another book with the same title.

Although Russell Mulcahy’s The Shadow also failed to cloud the minds of large audiences, James Luceno wrote the tie-in novel for the much underrated movie, based on the classic pulp magazine character. In Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Freddy Krueger not only stalked the cast and crew of the new film, but also Alexander Besher, the author of the novelisation. Perhaps even stranger, Freddy Krueger’s Tales of Terror: Blind Date by Bruce Richards was an Elm Street novel aimed at young adults!

Even worse was Eric Morse’s misogynistic young adult series based on the stalk ’n’ slash movies Friday the 13th: Mother’s Day, Jason’s Curse, The Carnival and Road Trip.

King Kong by Anthony Browne and Merian C. Cooper was a children’s picture-book version of the classic story, but this time Fay Wray looked more like Marilyn Monroe.

Randall Boyll continued the adventures of Sam Raimi’s Darkman (based on the 1990 movie) in a series of original novels, The Hangman, The Price of Fear and The Gods of Hell, and Sherlock Holmes teamed up with TV’s time-travelling Doctor Who to battle Lovecraftian monsters in Andy Lane’s original adventure All-Consuming Fire.

Only fans of Oliver Stone’s uneven mini-series could care about Wild Palms: The Teleplay by Bruce Wagner, but The X Files: Goblins by Charles Grant was an instant bestseller, thanks to the popularity of the cult TV series.

Ravenloft: Mordenheim by Chet Williamson, Ravenloft: The Enemy Within by Christie Golden, and Ravenloft: Tower of Doom by Mark Anthony were all based on the Gothic TSR role-playing game, as was the original anthology Ravenloft: Tales of Ravenloft edited by Brian Thomsen. Bloodshadows: Hell’s Feast by Greg Farshtey and Bloodshadows: The Fifth Horseman by Ed Stark were both based on West End Games’ role-playing adventure, and Shadowrun: Nosferatu by Carl Sargent and Marc Gascoigne was another game tie-in.

White Wolf took the plunge into publishing in a big way in 1994 with several anthologies: The Beast Within and When Will You Rage? were both edited by Stewart Wieck and based on the games Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, respectively. Much better were Dark Destiny, featuring twenty-one stories nominally connected by White Wolf’s The World of Darkness scenario, and Elric: Tales of the White Wolf, featuring twenty-four original stories based on Michael Moorcock’s Elric character, both edited by Edward E. Kramer. Death and Damnation edited by Staley Krause and Stewart Wieck was based on the game World of Darkness: Wraith, while Keith Herber’s novel World of Darkness: Vampire: Dark Prince was also adapted from Vampire: The Masquerade.

Perhaps the most unusual tie-in of the year was R.L. Stine’s The Beast, a young adult novel about a haunted roller-coaster which was based on a real roller-coaster at Paramount’s King’s Island theme park.

Once again, R.L. Stine was the king of the young adult market (even outselling Stephen King!), with a new novel, Call Waiting, and a myriad number of new additions to his popular “Fear Street” series: Bad Dreams, The Thrill Club, The Dead Lifeguard, Cheerleaders: The New Evil and The Mind Reader, plus a new spin-off series beginning with 99 Fear Street: The House of Evil: The First Horror, and continuing with The Second Horror and The Third Horror.

For many teenagers, school was not a good place to be, at least according to the latest titles in Nigel Robinson’s “Horror High” series: 9: Symphony of Terror, 10: Demon Breed, 11: Bad Moon Rising, 12: Rave On, 13: Remember Me and 14: Dream Lover. Nicholas Pine’s series “Terror Academy”, about another horror-filled high school, reached volume 13 with Night School, Science Project, The Prom and The Substitute. Also reaching its lucky 13th was the “Nightmare Hall” series by Diane Hoh – Monster was about a supernatural creature terrorizing the campus. M.C. Sumner’s The Principal (aka Nightmares – The Principal), about a high school principal who also happens to be a vampire, spawned two sequels, The Substitute (aka The Hunger) and The Coach, while all three were collected in an omnibus edition in the UK unimaginatively retitled 3 Books of Blood.

L.J. Smith’s Dark Visions 1: The Strange Power featured psychic students, in The Locker by Richie Tankersley Cusick a school locker revealed nightmarish visions of its previous owner, and a lamia haunted another school in Poison by John Peel.

The prolific Peel also published Shockers: Dead End and Shockers: Ghost Lake. A new series about the descendants of Victor Frankenstein was Frankenstein’s Children by Richard Pierce, beginning with The Creation and continuing with The Revenge and The Curse. A boy’s girlfriend was brought back from the dead in Forever Yours by David Pierce. Brad Strickland completed the late John Bellairs’ last “Johnny Dixon” novel, The Drum, the Doll and the Zombie.

Teenagers with psychic or precognitive powers used their gifts in Just Pretend by J.V. Lewton, Overkill by Timothy Findley, The Warnings by Margaret Buffie and Night Terrors by Nicole Davidson. The Talisman by Cameron Dokey was about an ancient pendant with supernatural powers, and Sweet Terror by Mark Crose featured a magic ring. A perfume that caused people to kill turned up in Bloodlust 1: Irresistible by Michael Bates.

Among the places to stay away from were Tower of Evil by Mary Main and The Forbidden Game Volume 1: The Hunter by L.J. Smith, in which a group of teens were transported into a haunted house filled with their worst nightmares. A possessed doll’s house caused problems in Scream 9: The Gift by Michael August, and sinister puppets posed another threat in Painted Devil by Michael Bedard. In Call of the Wendigo by Robin Hardy the title creature stalked a group of teenage tennis players, and other kids were menaced by monstrous beasts in The Dark by M.C. Sumner and The Thing in Bablock Dip by Rachel Dixon, while Loch by Paul Zindel was about the hunt for a flesh-eating prehistoric beast in a Vermont lake.

Evil spirits were abroad in The Band by Carmen Adams, Spring Break by Nick Baron, Whispers in the Graveyard by Theresa Breslin, Nightmare Matinee by G.G. Garth, My Soul to Keep by Jean Favors and The Forbidden Game Volume III: The Kill by L.J. Smith. Both Let Me Tell You How I Died by Sinclair Smith and Remember Me 2: The Return by Christopher Pike were about reincarnation, and Pike’s The Midnight Club involved terminally ill teenagers. 1-900-Killer and Vengeance were psycho thrillers by Joseph Locke (aka Ray Garton).

Under the same pseudonym, Garton also published Blood and Lace Book One: Vampire Heart and Book 2: Deadly Relations, the first two volumes in a new Gothic series about a family haunted by evil. The prolific Christopher Pike kicked off another new series with The Last Vampire and The Last Vampire 2: Black Blood, about a teenage boy hunted by a millennia-old vampire. Janice Harrell published three volumes about teenage twin vampires, Vampire Twins Volume 1: Bloodlines, 2: Bloodlust and 3: Bloodchoice, and Jesse Harris continued her adventures of teenage psychic Mackenzie Gold with volumes 7 and 8 of The Power series, The Vampire’s Kiss and The Obsession. Nicholas Adams also published a book entitled Vampire’s Kiss (not to be confused with those by either William Hill or Jesse Harris), Hunter’s Moon by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald was a sequel to Bad Blood, about a teenage werewolf and vampires, and volume 9 of The Nightmare Club series, Eternally Yours by Cameron Dokey, featured a vampire who was also a rock singer.

The Nightmare Club 10: Die Laughing by Vincent Courtney was about a ghost, and there were plenty of other spirits abroad in The Haunting of Jessica Raven by Ann Halam (aka Gwyneth Jones), The Mirror Image Ghost by Catherine Storr, Sophie’s Ghost by Catherine Johnson, The Ghost Comes Calling by Betty Ren Wright, and Welcome Inn 2: Ghost of a Chance by E.L. Flood. Family ghosts turned up in Who’s There? by Stephanie S. Tolan, Beyond Another Door by Sonya Levitin and Someone’s Watching by Jessica Pierce. A girl encountered a ghostly nurse from the American Civil War in George Ella Lyon’s Here and Then, a young musician encountered a singing ghost in Jean Thesman’s Cattail Moon, and a haunted inn featured in Richie Tankersley Cusick’s The Drifter. Haunted Waters by Mary Pope Osborne was a romantic ghost story loosely based on the fairy tale “Undine”, the ghost of a cat helped a girl in Shadow by Joyce Sweeney, and phantom trains made timely appearances in both Ghost Train by Pat and Paul Erik Graverson and No Time at All by Susan Sallis.

There were more beastly problems in Children of the Night: Dark Music by Ann Hodgman and Wild Magic: Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce, both second volumes in werewolf series, while Clan of the Shape-Changers by Robert Levy was about a group of lycanthropes menaced by those without the power to change.

Shades of Darkness: More of the Ghostly Best of Robert Westall was the second collection of the late author’s best work. Original tales appeared in Scared to Death and Other Ghostly Stories by Josephine Poole, Don’t Open the Door After the Sun Goes Down: Tales of the Real and Unreal by Al Carusone, Shadows & Whispers: Tales from the Other Side by Collin McDonald, Hostilities: Nine Bizarre Stories by Australian Caroline Macdonald, and A Night in Moonbeam County by Alexander Cramer, which featured ten connected ghost stories told around a campfire.

The Puffin Book of Horror Stories edited by Anthony Horowitz included an extract from Bram Stoker’s Dracula along with ten reprints, Fun and Games at the Whacks Museum and Other Horror Stories edited by Cathleen Jordan selected thirteen stories from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and The Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories edited by Dennis Pepper was a bumper volume of forty classic tales. Point Horror: Thirteen More Tales of Horror edited by A. Finnis was another original UK anthology in the bestselling series.

For those with a more literary inclination, Jonathan Carroll’s latest novel, From the Teeth of Angels, combined fantasy and magic realism when a man dying from cancer encountered a personified Death. Ghostly presences also haunted the protagonists of Dagger Lane by Ann Victoria Roberts, A Skyhook in the Midnight Sun by Fiona Cooper and The Matrix by Jonathan Aycliffe (aka Daniel Easterman). Speak Daggers to Her by Rosemary Edghill (aka eluki bes shahar) was an occult thriller which featured a detective who also happened to be a white witch. A demon stalked the street people of Seattle in Jack Cady’s Street, while The Devil’s Own Work by Alan Judd was a Faustian tale of a writer possessed by a manuscript and its female muse.

Radon Daughters by Iain Sinclair was about a manuscript that could have been a sequel to William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland. Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings was described as a “Southern Gothic World War II Baseball Novel”, as well as being a sequel-of-sorts to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the Bride of Frankenstein’s memorable Dr Pretorius turned up in Pasquale’s Angel by Paul J. McAuley, a tale of murder and magic set in an alternate Renaissance Florence.

Sherlock Holmes met the Phantom of the Opera in The Angel of the Opera by Sam Siciliano, and an even stranger combination turned up in Nevermore by William Hjortsberg, in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe and helped by Harry Houdini.

Brian Lumley collected together an impressive number of his stories and novellas set in H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos” for Return of the Deep Ones and Other Mythos Tales and Dagon’s Bell and Other Discords. Graham Masterton’s Fortnight of Fear collected fourteen horror stories, including the stomach-churning “Pig’s Dinner” and “Eric the Pie”. Although published as mainstream fiction, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates was divided into four sections, ranging from the supernatural to the psychological.

The Original Dr Shade and Other Stories by Kim Newman collected together fifteen short stories, including the title novella (published in Best New Horror 2), with an introduction by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman also supplied the afterword to Nameless Sins by Nancy Collins, a collection of twenty