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Synopsis
The year''s best, and darkest, tales of terror, showcasing the most outstanding new short stories and novellas by both contemporary masters of the macabre and exciting newcomers. As ever, this acclaimed anthology also offers the most comprehensive annual overview of horror around the world in all its incarnations; a comprehensive necrology of famous names; and a list of indispensable contact addresses for the dedicated horror fan and writer alike. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror remains the world''s leading annual anthology dedicated solely to presenting the best in contemporary horror fiction. Praise for Stephen Jones: ''The best horror anthologist in the business is, of course, Stephen Jones, whose Mammoth Book of Best New Horror is one of the major bargains of this as of any other year.'' Roz Kavaney ''An essential volume for horror readers.'' Locus ''Stephen Jones . . . has a better sense of the genre than almost anyone in this country.'' Lisa Tuttle, The Times Books
Release date: October 28, 2010
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 160
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The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21
Stephen Jones
STEPHEN JONES lives in London, England. He is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards, four Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards and
three International Horror Guild Awards as well as being a twenty-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television producer/director and genre movie
publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second, Mind Ripper, Last Gasp etc.), he is the co-editor of
Horror: 100 Best Books, Horror: Another 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick, H.P. Lovecraft’s Book
of Horror, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Secret City: Strange Tales of London, Great Ghost Stories, Tales to Freeze the Blood: More Great Ghost
Stories and the Dark Terrors, Dark Voices and Fantasy Tales series. He has written Coraline: A Visual Companion, Stardust: The Visual Companion,
Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, The Essential Monster Movie Guide, The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide, The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide,
The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide and The Illustrated Werewolf Movie Guide, and compiled The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series, The Mammoth Book of Terror,
The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, The Mammoth Book of Dracula, The
Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women, The Mammoth Book of New Terror, The Mammoth Book of Monsters, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth, Dark
Detectives, Dancing with the Dark, Dark of the Night, White of the Moon, Keep Out the Night, By Moonlight Only, Don’t Turn Out the Light, H.P.
Lovecraft’s Book of the Supernatural, Travellers in Darkness, Summer Chills, Brighton Shock!, Exorcisms and Ecstasies by Karl Edward Wagner, The Vampire
Stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Phantoms and Fiends and Frights and Fancies by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, Basil Copper: A Life in Books,
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Chronicles of Conan and Conan’s Brethren by Robert E. Howard, The Emperor of Dreams: The Lost Worlds
of Clark Ashton Smith, Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories by Leigh Brackett, The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales by Rudyard Kipling, Darkness Mist &
Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper, Pelican Cay & Other Disquieting Tales by David Case, Clive Barker’s A–Z of Horror, Clive Barker’s
Shadows in Eden, Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles, The Hellraiser Chronicles and volumes of poetry by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. A
Guest of Honour at the 2002 World Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the 2004 World Horror Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, he has been a guest lecturer at UCLA in California and
London’s Kingston University and St Mary’s University College. You can visit his website at www.stephenjoneseditor.com
Also available in the Mammoth series
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men
The Mammoth Book of Merlin
The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga 4
The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance
The Mammoth Book of Filthy Limericks
The Mammoth Book of Chess
The Mammoth Book of Irish Romance
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 9
The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories
The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes
The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7
The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll
The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places
The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF
The Mammoth Book of Casino Games
The Mammoth Book of Sudoku
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy
The Mammoth Book of Zombie Comics
The Mammoth Book of Men O’War
The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF
The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures
The Mammoth Book of The Beatles
The Mammoth Book of the Best Short SF Novels
The Mammoth Book of New IQ Puzzles
The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories
The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance
The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2
The Mammoth Book of the World’s Greatest Chess Games
The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Jokes
The Mammoth Book of New Erotic Photography
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 23
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2010
Collection and editiorial material copyright © Stephen Jones 2010 (unless otherwise indicated)
The right of Stephen Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN 978-1-84901-372-7
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First published in the United States in 2010 by Running Press Book Publishers
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and
International Copyright Conventions
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing
US Library of Congress number: 2009943390
US ISBN 978-0-76243-997-3
Running Press Book Publishers
2300 Chestnut Street
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Printed and bound in the EU
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Horror in 2009
The Woods
MICHAEL KELLY
Throttle
JOE HILL and STEPHEN KING
Out and Back
BARBARA RODEN
Respects
RAMSEY CAMPBELL
Cold to the Touch
SIMON STRANTZAS
The Game of Bear
M.R. JAMES and REGGIE OLIVER
Shem-el-Nessim
An Inspiration in Perfume
CHRIS BELL
What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH
The Reunion
NICHOLAS ROYLE
Mami Wata
SIMON KURT UNSWORTH
Venturi
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON
Party Talk
JOHN GASKIN
Two Steps Along the Road
TERRY DOWLING
The Axholme Toll
MARK VALENTINE
Granny’s Grinning
ROBERT SHEARMAN
In the Garden
ROSALIE PARKER
After the Ape
STEPHEN VOLK
The Nonesuch
BRIAN LUMLEY
Princess of the Night
MICHAEL KELLY
Necrology: 2009
STEPHEN JONES and KIM NEWMAN
Useful Addresses
I would like to thank David Barraclough, Kim Newman, Mandy Slater, Amanda Foubister, Sara and Randy Broecker, Andrew I. Porter, Rodger Turner and Wayne MacLaurin
(www.sfsite.com), Peter Crowther, Gordon Van Gelder, Ray Russell, Bill Schafer, Andy Cox, Johnny Mains, Steve Holland and, especially, Duncan Proudfoot and Dorothy Lumley for all
their help and support. Special thanks are also due to Locus, Variety, Ansible and all the other sources that were used for reference in the Introduction and the Necrology.
INTRODUCTION: HORROR IN 2009 copyright © Stephen Jones 2010.
THE WOODS copyright © Michael Kelly 2009. Originally published in Tesseracts Thirteen: Chilling Tales from the Great White North. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
THROTTLE copyright © Joe Hill and Stephen King 2009. Originally published in He is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson. Reprinted by permission of the
authors.
OUT AND BACK copyright © Barbara Roden 2009. Originally published in Northwest Passages. Reprinted by permission of the author.
RESPECTS copyright © Ramsey Campbell 2009. Originally published in British Invasion. Reprinted by permission of the author.
COLD TO THE TOUCH copyright © Simon Strantzas 2009. Originally published in Cold to the Touch. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE GAME OF BEAR copyright © Reggie Oliver 2009. Originally published in Madder Mysteries. Reprinted by permission of the author.
SHEM-EL-NESSIM: AN INSPIRATION IN PERFUME copyright © Chris Bell 2009. Originally published in This is the Summer of Love: A Postscripts New Writers Special.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE NIGHT copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 2009. Originally published in What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night. Reprinted by
permission of the author.
THE REUNION copyright © Nicholas Royle 2009. Originally published in Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Reprinted
by permission of the author.
MAMI WATA copyright © Simon Kurt Unsworth 2009. Originally published in Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations. Reprinted by permission of the author.
VENTURI copyright © Richard Christian Matheson 2009. Originally published in He is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
PARTY TALK copyright © John Gaskin 2009. Originally published in Strange Tales Volume III. Reprinted by permission of the author.
TWO STEPS ALONG THE ROAD copyright © Terry Dowling 2009. Originally published in Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE AXHOLME TOLL copyright © Mark Valentine 2009. Originally published in The Nightfarers. Reprinted by permission of the author.
GRANNY’S GRINNING copyright © Robert Shearman 2009. Originally published in The Dead That Walk: Zombie Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author and the
author’s agent.
IN THE GARDEN copyright © Rosalie Parker 2009. Originally published in The Fifth Black Book of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.
AFTER THE APE copyright © Stephen Volk 2009. Originally published in The British Fantasy Society Yearbook 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE NONESUCH copyright © Brian Lumley 2009. Originally published in The Nonesuch and Others. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.
PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT copyright © Michael Kelly 2009. Originally published in Undertow and Other Laments. Reprinted by permission of the author.
NECROLOGY: 2009 copyright © Stephen Jones and Kim Newman 2010.
USEFUL ADDRESSES copyright © Stephen Jones 2010.
This edition of Best New Horror is dedicated
to the memory of my other “brother” in Chicago
– JAY BROECKER –
(1946–2010)
whose support of my career and many kindnesses
to me over the years will never be forgotten.
Horror in 2009
ALTHOUGH THE HORROR GENRE has been going from strength to strength in recent years, the global recession hit the publishing industry and booksellers very hard in
2009.
In the UK, Penguin laid off around 100 people from its London office, while Games Workshop sold its Solaris Books imprint to fellow game company Rebellion, also the publisher of Abaddon
Books.
In America, Barnes & Noble closed the final fifty of its B. Dalton bookstores, which were primarily located in shopping malls, and Borders Group Inc. announced plans to close 200 Waldenbooks
stores.
After the sale of all its fifty-one UK stores earlier in the year in a management buy-out, the Borders high street bookshop chain, which also included the Books Etc. brand, went into
administration at the end of November. The chain had been on the brink of collapse since a rescue deal to sell some of its forty-five stores to WH Smith fell through, and such major publishers as
Hachette UK and Random House cut off book supplies, leading to the suspension of the Borders website online orders. The collapse of Borders was blamed on declining sales as a result of competition
from online retailers such as Amazon and cut-price offers on best-sellers from supermarkets.
London specialty bookstores Murder One and Fantasy Centre both closed their doors in 2009, and the last branch of Woolworth’s ceased operations in January, 100 years after the retailer
began trading. During the 1930s, Woolworth’s used to sell American pulp magazines which were brought over as ballast on returning ships, and the chain is credited as launching the Penguin
paperback imprint when it purchased 63,000 copies of the first title in 1936.
Reportedly adding to the decline in secondhand booksellers was the rise in the number of Oxfam charity bookstores in the UK, which number around 130, making it the largest used book dealer in
Europe. With Oxfam earning an estimated $32 million from just its book operation, it is perhaps no wonder that Britain’s secondhand booksellers have declined from around 3,000 thirty years
ago to about half that number now.
Still, it wasn’t all doom and gloom: in July HarperCollins launched its new SF and fantasy imprint, Angry Robot, in the UK, and in the rest of the world two months later.
Meanwhile, as a result of ongoing restructuring at the Random House Publishing Group, the Bantam Spectra imprint changed its name to Ballantine Spectra.
On June 10, a Texas-based web-monitoring firm declared the millionth word in the English language to be “Web 2.0”, which stands for the next generation of web products or services.
The word beat out such other terms as “Jai ho”, “slumdog” and “N00b”.
However, many linguists rejected the claim as being unscientific, pointing out that it was impossible to count the number of English words currently in use or even agree on what constitutes a
legitimate English word.
RDR Books finally withdrew its appeal against a New York court’s decision blocking publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon. As a result of the judgment, the book
was re-edited and expanded, and it appeared as The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction in January.
The chair on which J.K. Rowling wrote the first two books in the “Harry Potter’’ series went up on eBay in July and sold for £19,555. Before the sale the author
personalized the chair with a message, and a fifth of the proceeds went to the Books Abroad charity.
In September, former George W. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer claimed in a book that Rowling was denied the Presidential Medal of Freedom because the Bush administration feared that her
“Harry Potter’’ volumes “encouraged witchcraft”. However, the author was made a knight in the French Legion of Honour in February, in a ceremony hosted by President
Nicolas Sarkozy.
Stephenie Meyer’s fourth “Twilight” novel, Breaking Dawn, was reissued in America in a hardcover special edition that included a poster on the reverse of the dustjacket,
a Breaking Dawn concert DVD and a twenty-seven page supplement containing lyrics and an interview.
In a USA Weekend interview, Stephen King claimed that the real difference between the “Harry Potter’’ and “Twilight’’ series was that “Jo Rowling
is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn . . . She’s not very good.”
Despite King’s pertinent observation, a depressing statistic in USA Today claimed that Meyer’s novels accounted for 16 per cent of all book sales in the first quarter
of 2009.
At least one good thing to come out of the “Twilight’’ phenomenon was a massive boost in sales of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, after both classics were repeatedly referenced by the main characters in Meyer’s series.
In August, Meyer was sued for plagiarism by Jordan Scott, who claimed that Breaking Dawn, the fourth in the best-selling author’s “Twilight’’ series, was
influenced by her own 2006 novel The Nocturne. The US District Court judge subsequently dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the two books were “vastly different”.
As he did earlier with The Tommyknockers, Stephen King revisited some old memories (in this case, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos or more likely the film version,
Children of the Damned) for his blockbuster SF novel Under the Dome. When the inhabitants of the small Maine town of Chester’s Mill found themselves imprisoned beneath an
invisible barrier, they fractioned into opposing groups, each attempting to seize control for very different reasons.
Echoing similar themes found in King’s The Stand, the novel originally began life in the 1980s under the title The Cannibals, and film rights were quickly snapped up by
executive producer Steven Spielberg for television.
In a one-man attempt to stem the decline in bookselling, King delayed the release of the e-book version of Under the Dome for more than a month “to give bookstores a chance to make
some money”.
To promote Under the Dome, King and film director David Cronenberg engaged in an on-stage discussion on November 19 at the Canon Theatre in Toronto, Canada.
Meanwhile, Dean Koontz’s latest thriller, Relentless, was apparently a thinly veiled attack on crazed book reviewers, and the author’s Breathless involved the discovery
of two exotic creatures in the Colorado mountains. Dead and Alive was the third volume in Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series. It topped the mass-market book charts and Koontz had
his co-authors’ names taken off reissues of the previous two books in the series.
Known for her international best-seller The Time Traveler’s Wife, former graphic novelist Audrey Niffenegger’s follow-up, Her Fearful Symmetry, was a ghost story set in
and around North London’s Highgate Cemetery (where the author was once a tour guide). It revolved around the ghost of a woman who died of cancer and the two identical “mirror”
twins she bequeathed her flat to. The author reportedly received a $4.8 million advance for the book from her US publisher, Scribner.
Terry Pratchett OBE was made a knight for his services to literature in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list. “I am pleased that this has gone to a fantasy author,” said
Sir Terry, “it’s not a genre that is usually in the frame for these kinds of things.”
Virgin Books’ nascent line of horror trade paperbacks continued with Conrad Williams’ new post-apocalyptic novel One, along with reprints of Thieving Fear by Ramsey
Campbell and Thomas Ligotti’s linked collection My Work is Not Yet Done, before the publisher abruptly announced that it was closing down the list.
When a man received an e-mail from a stranger claiming to know what happened to his missing son, it led to a terrifying sequence of events in the aptly-titled Bad Things, the latest dark
thriller from Michael Marshall (Smith). Brian Lumley’s Necroscope: The Lost Years: Harry and the Pirates collected six stories (three original) featuring Harry Keogh, who had the
ability to converse with the dead. In America, the book was published as Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates and Other Tales from the Lost Years and contained just the three new stories. Both
editions featured (different) covers by artist Bob Eggleton.
A police officer investigated sightings of mysterious lights above a remote Texas town in David Morrell’s The Shimmer, and Charles de Lint’s The Mystery of Grace was a
hot-rod romance set on Halloween night, when the barrier between worlds was thin and the dead could touch the living.
A murder investigation led Aloysius Pendergast to a zombie cult in Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, while the dead were returning to life during a heatwave in
Stockholm in Handling the Undead, a zombie novel from Let the Right One In author John Ajvide Lindqvist.
A teenager became involved in a mystery surrounding an old mansion that was once connected to a prison for the insane in House of Reckoning by John Saul, and Ground Zero was the
twelfth volume in the “Repairman Jack” series by F. Paul Wilson and concerned a secret cosmic war that led to the events of 9/11.
Jaclyn the Ripper, Karl Alexander’s belated sequel to Time After Time, featured H.G. Wells and his time machine pursuing a sex-changed Jack the Ripper to Los Angeles in
2010.
Delia’s Gift and Delia’s Heart were the latest Gothic novels published under the long-dead V.C. Andrews® byline.
Meanwhile, Japanese horror writer Koji Suzuki teamed up with a paper manufacturer to have his latest novella published on . . . toilet paper. Drop was the tale of an evil spirit that
inhabited a toilet bowl.
A psychic found herself being tracked through the wilderness by something inhuman in Alice Henderson’s Voracious, and young boys mysteriously disappeared in contaminated woods in
John Burnside’s The Glister.
The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon was the second volume in the “Hidden Cities” series and a sequel to Mind the Gap.
An archaeologist inadvertently released the spirits of a band of sadistic thugs in Ghost Monster by Simon Clark, and Conrad Williams added the middle initial “A.” to his
byline for Decay Inevitable, which boasted a cover by Dave McKean.
A female writer was haunted by dreams of an ancient oak tree associated with local legends of supernatural magic in The Red Tree, a complex new novel by Caitlín R. Kiernan.
Speak of the Devil was the fourth volume by Jenna Black about exorcist Morgan Kingsley, and freelance exorcist Felix Castor explored his bleak childhood in Thicker Than Water, the
fourth in the series by Mike Carey. It was followed by The Naming of the Beasts.
A year after they went missing on an uninhabited Pacific island, the survivors attempted to get their story straight in Primal by Robin Baker.
Quincey Morris and his white witch partner Libby Chastain attempted to avert a magical apocalypse in Evil Ways, the second book in the “Quincy Morris Supernatural
Investigator” series by Justin Gustainis.
John Shirley’s Bleak History was a Lovecraftian-inspired novel about a former army ranger who had a connection with the “Hidden” world of the supernatural.
Released from a military prison, Jake Hatcher found himself confronting a race of supernatural women and a New York serial killer in Damnable by Hank Schwaeble.
A sequel to The Secret War, The Hoard of Mhorrer by M.F.W. Curren involved a group of nineteenth-century soldier-monks dispatched to Egypt to find and destroy a great evil before
it could fall into the hands of agents of Hell.
The Book of Illumination: A Novel from the Ghost Files by Mary Ann Winkowski and Maureen Foley was the first in a new series about a woman who could see ghosts.
Phantom cop Kevin Fahey had to correct his own mistakes in Desolate Angel, the first in a new mystery series by Chaz McGee.
Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun was the third book in Victoria Laurie’s “Ghost Hunter” mystery series about psychic sleuth M.J. Holiday who, this time, was participating in
a new reality TV show.
The restoration of an old Victorian house led to a century-old mystery involving two ghosts in P.J. Alderman’s Haunting Jordan.
A woman renovating a cursed Florida mansion discovered dozens of walled-up bodies, a ghost and a killer with the ability to transcend time in Unhallowed Ground by the prolific Heather
Graham [Pozzessere]. From the same author, The Death Dealer was a sequel to The Dead Room, about ghosts helping a detective and a social worker track a Poe-inspired serial killer.
When a woman moved into a too-good-to-be-true Manhattan apartment in Sarah Langan’s near-future haunted house novel, Audrey’s Door, she uncovered the horrific history of the
place she now called home.
Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger was a 1940s ghost story with an unreliable narrator set in a crumbling English country pile that echoed with the sound of pattering footsteps. A
psychic psychology professor investigated a haunted house in The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff.
Joe Schreiber’s No Doors, No Windows involved a forgotten manuscript and an old house with a secret history, while in His Father’s Son by Bentley Little a son
investigated his father’s sudden madness.
As if just books themselves were no longer worth the cover price, J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman’s Personal Effects: Dark Arts – a novel about a suspected murderer who
claimed to be possessed by a Russian demon – came with all sorts of paraphernalia, which included notes and business cards containing real phone numbers and Internet addresses.
When a video game producer escaped a werewolf attack, he learned about the eponymous group of supernatural hunters in Skinners Book 1: Blood Blade by Marcus Pelegrimas. It was followed by
Book 2: Howling Legion.
Monster Hunter International was the first in a new series by Larry Correia about an accountant-turned-hunter of supernatural creatures.
James Morrow’s Shambling Towards Hiroshima was set during World War II and involved a plot to scare the Japanese into surrender by putting a “B” movie actor into a
rubber giant monster suit before a breed of real fire-breathing mutant lizards were unleashed as the ultimate weapon.
History seemed to be repeating itself on the site of a historic massacre in Jeff Mariotte’s Black Hearts.
J. Robert King’s Angel of Death was about the hunt for a serial killer in Chicago. The book also included an interview with the author.
Following on from Dark Rain, Tony Richards’ Night of Demons was the second novel set in the magical village of Raine’s Landing, where a psychotic serial killer breached
the magical safeguards and preyed upon the descendants of the Salem witches.
Michael McBride’s Spectral Crossings was about a new housing development being built on land surrounding a cursed marsh.
When her father, who just happened to be Death himself, was kidnapped, Calliope Reaper-Jones had to save the family business in Death’s Daughter by Buffy the Vampire Slayer
actress Amber Benson.
Kate Mosse’s “illustrated novella” The Winter Ghosts was set in a mysterious French village in the late 1920s, and a group of Scottish teenagers undergoing grief
counselling was more than a match for monsters that had escaped from Hell in Christopher Brookmyre’s Pandaemonium.
As usual, the Leisure paperback imprint kept the flag flying for midlist horror: a Scottish manor house was haunted by an ancient evil in Black Cathedral, the latest
volume in the “Department 18” series by L.H. Maynard and M.P.N. Sims, and spiderlike creatures invaded London in Sarah Pinborough’s Feeding Ground, the sequel to
Breeding Ground.
Blind Panic was the conclusion of Graham Masterton’s “Manitou” saga, as people across America were struck suddenly and totally blind.
The cast and crew of a desert island reality TV show were being killed off in Brian Keene’s Castaways, while a group of teenagers took refuge in a house of horrors in Urban
Gothic from the same author.
When a small-town evangelist climbed out of his coffin, he brought a demon horde with him in Jake’s Wake by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow, based on Skipp’s as-yet-unproduced
directorial debut.
A survivor of a mass murder returned to the town of Cedar Hill in Gary A. Braunbeck’s Far Dark Fields, and the inhabitants of an isolated rural town tortured and sacrificed anyone
unlucky enough to stumble into their traps in Depraved by Bryan Smith.
When a family moved to a small town in Quebec, the young daughter soon started having premonitions of blood and death in Nate Kenyon’s The Bone Factory, and a small Tennessee town
was taken over by a soul-sucking Lamia in Bryan Smith’s Soultaker.
While Ray Garton’s werewolf novel Bestial was a sequel to the author’s Ravenous, W.D. Gagliani’s werewolf novel Wolf’s Gambit was a sequel to
Wolf’s Trap.
Edward Lee’s The Golem featured an army of creatures formed from riverbed clay that brought terror to the Maryland coast.
The late Richard Laymon’s 1987 novel Tread Softly was reissued by Leisure under the title Dark Mountain, while Graham Masterton’s The Painted Man was reprinted
as Death Mask and Edward Lee’s Gast appeared as The Black Train.
Other reprints included John Everson’s Sacrifice and The 13th, Cover by Jack Ketchum (Dallas Mayr), Pressure by Jeff Strand, Crimson by Gord Rollo, and
Ghost Monster by Simon Clark.
In conjunction with Canada’s Rue Morgue magazine and the Chiaroscuro website, Leisure Books launched a “Fresh Blood” contest to find a previously unpublished
horror author to add to the list in 2011.
Prodigious paranormal romance publisher Harlequin Books caused controversy in America after it announced that it was creating a new imprint, DellArte Press, that would publish
books rejected from the company’s other imprints in return for a fee.
The vanity press was immediately condemned by writers’ groups, including the Romance Writers of America, the Mystery Writers of America and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America, who responded by banning any of Harlequin’s books from award eligibility and its authors using their credits for the company to qualify for membership.
A man was haunted by the ghost of his first love in Lisa Child’s paranormal romance Immortal Bride, and a woman who could see dead people was a suspect in her ex-husband’s
death in Cara Lockwood’s Every Demon Has His Day.
Satan opened a music store across the street
three International Horror Guild Awards as well as being a twenty-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television producer/director and genre movie
publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second, Mind Ripper, Last Gasp etc.), he is the co-editor of
Horror: 100 Best Books, Horror: Another 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick, H.P. Lovecraft’s Book
of Horror, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Secret City: Strange Tales of London, Great Ghost Stories, Tales to Freeze the Blood: More Great Ghost
Stories and the Dark Terrors, Dark Voices and Fantasy Tales series. He has written Coraline: A Visual Companion, Stardust: The Visual Companion,
Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, The Essential Monster Movie Guide, The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide, The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide,
The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide and The Illustrated Werewolf Movie Guide, and compiled The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series, The Mammoth Book of Terror,
The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, The Mammoth Book of Dracula, The
Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women, The Mammoth Book of New Terror, The Mammoth Book of Monsters, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth, Dark
Detectives, Dancing with the Dark, Dark of the Night, White of the Moon, Keep Out the Night, By Moonlight Only, Don’t Turn Out the Light, H.P.
Lovecraft’s Book of the Supernatural, Travellers in Darkness, Summer Chills, Brighton Shock!, Exorcisms and Ecstasies by Karl Edward Wagner, The Vampire
Stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Phantoms and Fiends and Frights and Fancies by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, Basil Copper: A Life in Books,
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Chronicles of Conan and Conan’s Brethren by Robert E. Howard, The Emperor of Dreams: The Lost Worlds
of Clark Ashton Smith, Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories by Leigh Brackett, The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales by Rudyard Kipling, Darkness Mist &
Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper, Pelican Cay & Other Disquieting Tales by David Case, Clive Barker’s A–Z of Horror, Clive Barker’s
Shadows in Eden, Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles, The Hellraiser Chronicles and volumes of poetry by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. A
Guest of Honour at the 2002 World Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the 2004 World Horror Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, he has been a guest lecturer at UCLA in California and
London’s Kingston University and St Mary’s University College. You can visit his website at www.stephenjoneseditor.com
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Acknowledgments
Introduction: Horror in 2009
The Woods
MICHAEL KELLY
Throttle
JOE HILL and STEPHEN KING
Out and Back
BARBARA RODEN
Respects
RAMSEY CAMPBELL
Cold to the Touch
SIMON STRANTZAS
The Game of Bear
M.R. JAMES and REGGIE OLIVER
Shem-el-Nessim
An Inspiration in Perfume
CHRIS BELL
What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH
The Reunion
NICHOLAS ROYLE
Mami Wata
SIMON KURT UNSWORTH
Venturi
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON
Party Talk
JOHN GASKIN
Two Steps Along the Road
TERRY DOWLING
The Axholme Toll
MARK VALENTINE
Granny’s Grinning
ROBERT SHEARMAN
In the Garden
ROSALIE PARKER
After the Ape
STEPHEN VOLK
The Nonesuch
BRIAN LUMLEY
Princess of the Night
MICHAEL KELLY
Necrology: 2009
STEPHEN JONES and KIM NEWMAN
Useful Addresses
I would like to thank David Barraclough, Kim Newman, Mandy Slater, Amanda Foubister, Sara and Randy Broecker, Andrew I. Porter, Rodger Turner and Wayne MacLaurin
(www.sfsite.com), Peter Crowther, Gordon Van Gelder, Ray Russell, Bill Schafer, Andy Cox, Johnny Mains, Steve Holland and, especially, Duncan Proudfoot and Dorothy Lumley for all
their help and support. Special thanks are also due to Locus, Variety, Ansible and all the other sources that were used for reference in the Introduction and the Necrology.
INTRODUCTION: HORROR IN 2009 copyright © Stephen Jones 2010.
THE WOODS copyright © Michael Kelly 2009. Originally published in Tesseracts Thirteen: Chilling Tales from the Great White North. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
THROTTLE copyright © Joe Hill and Stephen King 2009. Originally published in He is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson. Reprinted by permission of the
authors.
OUT AND BACK copyright © Barbara Roden 2009. Originally published in Northwest Passages. Reprinted by permission of the author.
RESPECTS copyright © Ramsey Campbell 2009. Originally published in British Invasion. Reprinted by permission of the author.
COLD TO THE TOUCH copyright © Simon Strantzas 2009. Originally published in Cold to the Touch. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE GAME OF BEAR copyright © Reggie Oliver 2009. Originally published in Madder Mysteries. Reprinted by permission of the author.
SHEM-EL-NESSIM: AN INSPIRATION IN PERFUME copyright © Chris Bell 2009. Originally published in This is the Summer of Love: A Postscripts New Writers Special.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE NIGHT copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 2009. Originally published in What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night. Reprinted by
permission of the author.
THE REUNION copyright © Nicholas Royle 2009. Originally published in Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Reprinted
by permission of the author.
MAMI WATA copyright © Simon Kurt Unsworth 2009. Originally published in Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations. Reprinted by permission of the author.
VENTURI copyright © Richard Christian Matheson 2009. Originally published in He is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
PARTY TALK copyright © John Gaskin 2009. Originally published in Strange Tales Volume III. Reprinted by permission of the author.
TWO STEPS ALONG THE ROAD copyright © Terry Dowling 2009. Originally published in Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE AXHOLME TOLL copyright © Mark Valentine 2009. Originally published in The Nightfarers. Reprinted by permission of the author.
GRANNY’S GRINNING copyright © Robert Shearman 2009. Originally published in The Dead That Walk: Zombie Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author and the
author’s agent.
IN THE GARDEN copyright © Rosalie Parker 2009. Originally published in The Fifth Black Book of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.
AFTER THE APE copyright © Stephen Volk 2009. Originally published in The British Fantasy Society Yearbook 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE NONESUCH copyright © Brian Lumley 2009. Originally published in The Nonesuch and Others. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.
PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT copyright © Michael Kelly 2009. Originally published in Undertow and Other Laments. Reprinted by permission of the author.
NECROLOGY: 2009 copyright © Stephen Jones and Kim Newman 2010.
USEFUL ADDRESSES copyright © Stephen Jones 2010.
This edition of Best New Horror is dedicated
to the memory of my other “brother” in Chicago
– JAY BROECKER –
(1946–2010)
whose support of my career and many kindnesses
to me over the years will never be forgotten.
Horror in 2009
ALTHOUGH THE HORROR GENRE has been going from strength to strength in recent years, the global recession hit the publishing industry and booksellers very hard in
2009.
In the UK, Penguin laid off around 100 people from its London office, while Games Workshop sold its Solaris Books imprint to fellow game company Rebellion, also the publisher of Abaddon
Books.
In America, Barnes & Noble closed the final fifty of its B. Dalton bookstores, which were primarily located in shopping malls, and Borders Group Inc. announced plans to close 200 Waldenbooks
stores.
After the sale of all its fifty-one UK stores earlier in the year in a management buy-out, the Borders high street bookshop chain, which also included the Books Etc. brand, went into
administration at the end of November. The chain had been on the brink of collapse since a rescue deal to sell some of its forty-five stores to WH Smith fell through, and such major publishers as
Hachette UK and Random House cut off book supplies, leading to the suspension of the Borders website online orders. The collapse of Borders was blamed on declining sales as a result of competition
from online retailers such as Amazon and cut-price offers on best-sellers from supermarkets.
London specialty bookstores Murder One and Fantasy Centre both closed their doors in 2009, and the last branch of Woolworth’s ceased operations in January, 100 years after the retailer
began trading. During the 1930s, Woolworth’s used to sell American pulp magazines which were brought over as ballast on returning ships, and the chain is credited as launching the Penguin
paperback imprint when it purchased 63,000 copies of the first title in 1936.
Reportedly adding to the decline in secondhand booksellers was the rise in the number of Oxfam charity bookstores in the UK, which number around 130, making it the largest used book dealer in
Europe. With Oxfam earning an estimated $32 million from just its book operation, it is perhaps no wonder that Britain’s secondhand booksellers have declined from around 3,000 thirty years
ago to about half that number now.
Still, it wasn’t all doom and gloom: in July HarperCollins launched its new SF and fantasy imprint, Angry Robot, in the UK, and in the rest of the world two months later.
Meanwhile, as a result of ongoing restructuring at the Random House Publishing Group, the Bantam Spectra imprint changed its name to Ballantine Spectra.
On June 10, a Texas-based web-monitoring firm declared the millionth word in the English language to be “Web 2.0”, which stands for the next generation of web products or services.
The word beat out such other terms as “Jai ho”, “slumdog” and “N00b”.
However, many linguists rejected the claim as being unscientific, pointing out that it was impossible to count the number of English words currently in use or even agree on what constitutes a
legitimate English word.
RDR Books finally withdrew its appeal against a New York court’s decision blocking publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon. As a result of the judgment, the book
was re-edited and expanded, and it appeared as The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction in January.
The chair on which J.K. Rowling wrote the first two books in the “Harry Potter’’ series went up on eBay in July and sold for £19,555. Before the sale the author
personalized the chair with a message, and a fifth of the proceeds went to the Books Abroad charity.
In September, former George W. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer claimed in a book that Rowling was denied the Presidential Medal of Freedom because the Bush administration feared that her
“Harry Potter’’ volumes “encouraged witchcraft”. However, the author was made a knight in the French Legion of Honour in February, in a ceremony hosted by President
Nicolas Sarkozy.
Stephenie Meyer’s fourth “Twilight” novel, Breaking Dawn, was reissued in America in a hardcover special edition that included a poster on the reverse of the dustjacket,
a Breaking Dawn concert DVD and a twenty-seven page supplement containing lyrics and an interview.
In a USA Weekend interview, Stephen King claimed that the real difference between the “Harry Potter’’ and “Twilight’’ series was that “Jo Rowling
is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn . . . She’s not very good.”
Despite King’s pertinent observation, a depressing statistic in USA Today claimed that Meyer’s novels accounted for 16 per cent of all book sales in the first quarter
of 2009.
At least one good thing to come out of the “Twilight’’ phenomenon was a massive boost in sales of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, after both classics were repeatedly referenced by the main characters in Meyer’s series.
In August, Meyer was sued for plagiarism by Jordan Scott, who claimed that Breaking Dawn, the fourth in the best-selling author’s “Twilight’’ series, was
influenced by her own 2006 novel The Nocturne. The US District Court judge subsequently dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the two books were “vastly different”.
As he did earlier with The Tommyknockers, Stephen King revisited some old memories (in this case, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos or more likely the film version,
Children of the Damned) for his blockbuster SF novel Under the Dome. When the inhabitants of the small Maine town of Chester’s Mill found themselves imprisoned beneath an
invisible barrier, they fractioned into opposing groups, each attempting to seize control for very different reasons.
Echoing similar themes found in King’s The Stand, the novel originally began life in the 1980s under the title The Cannibals, and film rights were quickly snapped up by
executive producer Steven Spielberg for television.
In a one-man attempt to stem the decline in bookselling, King delayed the release of the e-book version of Under the Dome for more than a month “to give bookstores a chance to make
some money”.
To promote Under the Dome, King and film director David Cronenberg engaged in an on-stage discussion on November 19 at the Canon Theatre in Toronto, Canada.
Meanwhile, Dean Koontz’s latest thriller, Relentless, was apparently a thinly veiled attack on crazed book reviewers, and the author’s Breathless involved the discovery
of two exotic creatures in the Colorado mountains. Dead and Alive was the third volume in Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series. It topped the mass-market book charts and Koontz had
his co-authors’ names taken off reissues of the previous two books in the series.
Known for her international best-seller The Time Traveler’s Wife, former graphic novelist Audrey Niffenegger’s follow-up, Her Fearful Symmetry, was a ghost story set in
and around North London’s Highgate Cemetery (where the author was once a tour guide). It revolved around the ghost of a woman who died of cancer and the two identical “mirror”
twins she bequeathed her flat to. The author reportedly received a $4.8 million advance for the book from her US publisher, Scribner.
Terry Pratchett OBE was made a knight for his services to literature in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list. “I am pleased that this has gone to a fantasy author,” said
Sir Terry, “it’s not a genre that is usually in the frame for these kinds of things.”
Virgin Books’ nascent line of horror trade paperbacks continued with Conrad Williams’ new post-apocalyptic novel One, along with reprints of Thieving Fear by Ramsey
Campbell and Thomas Ligotti’s linked collection My Work is Not Yet Done, before the publisher abruptly announced that it was closing down the list.
When a man received an e-mail from a stranger claiming to know what happened to his missing son, it led to a terrifying sequence of events in the aptly-titled Bad Things, the latest dark
thriller from Michael Marshall (Smith). Brian Lumley’s Necroscope: The Lost Years: Harry and the Pirates collected six stories (three original) featuring Harry Keogh, who had the
ability to converse with the dead. In America, the book was published as Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates and Other Tales from the Lost Years and contained just the three new stories. Both
editions featured (different) covers by artist Bob Eggleton.
A police officer investigated sightings of mysterious lights above a remote Texas town in David Morrell’s The Shimmer, and Charles de Lint’s The Mystery of Grace was a
hot-rod romance set on Halloween night, when the barrier between worlds was thin and the dead could touch the living.
A murder investigation led Aloysius Pendergast to a zombie cult in Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, while the dead were returning to life during a heatwave in
Stockholm in Handling the Undead, a zombie novel from Let the Right One In author John Ajvide Lindqvist.
A teenager became involved in a mystery surrounding an old mansion that was once connected to a prison for the insane in House of Reckoning by John Saul, and Ground Zero was the
twelfth volume in the “Repairman Jack” series by F. Paul Wilson and concerned a secret cosmic war that led to the events of 9/11.
Jaclyn the Ripper, Karl Alexander’s belated sequel to Time After Time, featured H.G. Wells and his time machine pursuing a sex-changed Jack the Ripper to Los Angeles in
2010.
Delia’s Gift and Delia’s Heart were the latest Gothic novels published under the long-dead V.C. Andrews® byline.
Meanwhile, Japanese horror writer Koji Suzuki teamed up with a paper manufacturer to have his latest novella published on . . . toilet paper. Drop was the tale of an evil spirit that
inhabited a toilet bowl.
A psychic found herself being tracked through the wilderness by something inhuman in Alice Henderson’s Voracious, and young boys mysteriously disappeared in contaminated woods in
John Burnside’s The Glister.
The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon was the second volume in the “Hidden Cities” series and a sequel to Mind the Gap.
An archaeologist inadvertently released the spirits of a band of sadistic thugs in Ghost Monster by Simon Clark, and Conrad Williams added the middle initial “A.” to his
byline for Decay Inevitable, which boasted a cover by Dave McKean.
A female writer was haunted by dreams of an ancient oak tree associated with local legends of supernatural magic in The Red Tree, a complex new novel by Caitlín R. Kiernan.
Speak of the Devil was the fourth volume by Jenna Black about exorcist Morgan Kingsley, and freelance exorcist Felix Castor explored his bleak childhood in Thicker Than Water, the
fourth in the series by Mike Carey. It was followed by The Naming of the Beasts.
A year after they went missing on an uninhabited Pacific island, the survivors attempted to get their story straight in Primal by Robin Baker.
Quincey Morris and his white witch partner Libby Chastain attempted to avert a magical apocalypse in Evil Ways, the second book in the “Quincy Morris Supernatural
Investigator” series by Justin Gustainis.
John Shirley’s Bleak History was a Lovecraftian-inspired novel about a former army ranger who had a connection with the “Hidden” world of the supernatural.
Released from a military prison, Jake Hatcher found himself confronting a race of supernatural women and a New York serial killer in Damnable by Hank Schwaeble.
A sequel to The Secret War, The Hoard of Mhorrer by M.F.W. Curren involved a group of nineteenth-century soldier-monks dispatched to Egypt to find and destroy a great evil before
it could fall into the hands of agents of Hell.
The Book of Illumination: A Novel from the Ghost Files by Mary Ann Winkowski and Maureen Foley was the first in a new series about a woman who could see ghosts.
Phantom cop Kevin Fahey had to correct his own mistakes in Desolate Angel, the first in a new mystery series by Chaz McGee.
Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun was the third book in Victoria Laurie’s “Ghost Hunter” mystery series about psychic sleuth M.J. Holiday who, this time, was participating in
a new reality TV show.
The restoration of an old Victorian house led to a century-old mystery involving two ghosts in P.J. Alderman’s Haunting Jordan.
A woman renovating a cursed Florida mansion discovered dozens of walled-up bodies, a ghost and a killer with the ability to transcend time in Unhallowed Ground by the prolific Heather
Graham [Pozzessere]. From the same author, The Death Dealer was a sequel to The Dead Room, about ghosts helping a detective and a social worker track a Poe-inspired serial killer.
When a woman moved into a too-good-to-be-true Manhattan apartment in Sarah Langan’s near-future haunted house novel, Audrey’s Door, she uncovered the horrific history of the
place she now called home.
Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger was a 1940s ghost story with an unreliable narrator set in a crumbling English country pile that echoed with the sound of pattering footsteps. A
psychic psychology professor investigated a haunted house in The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff.
Joe Schreiber’s No Doors, No Windows involved a forgotten manuscript and an old house with a secret history, while in His Father’s Son by Bentley Little a son
investigated his father’s sudden madness.
As if just books themselves were no longer worth the cover price, J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman’s Personal Effects: Dark Arts – a novel about a suspected murderer who
claimed to be possessed by a Russian demon – came with all sorts of paraphernalia, which included notes and business cards containing real phone numbers and Internet addresses.
When a video game producer escaped a werewolf attack, he learned about the eponymous group of supernatural hunters in Skinners Book 1: Blood Blade by Marcus Pelegrimas. It was followed by
Book 2: Howling Legion.
Monster Hunter International was the first in a new series by Larry Correia about an accountant-turned-hunter of supernatural creatures.
James Morrow’s Shambling Towards Hiroshima was set during World War II and involved a plot to scare the Japanese into surrender by putting a “B” movie actor into a
rubber giant monster suit before a breed of real fire-breathing mutant lizards were unleashed as the ultimate weapon.
History seemed to be repeating itself on the site of a historic massacre in Jeff Mariotte’s Black Hearts.
J. Robert King’s Angel of Death was about the hunt for a serial killer in Chicago. The book also included an interview with the author.
Following on from Dark Rain, Tony Richards’ Night of Demons was the second novel set in the magical village of Raine’s Landing, where a psychotic serial killer breached
the magical safeguards and preyed upon the descendants of the Salem witches.
Michael McBride’s Spectral Crossings was about a new housing development being built on land surrounding a cursed marsh.
When her father, who just happened to be Death himself, was kidnapped, Calliope Reaper-Jones had to save the family business in Death’s Daughter by Buffy the Vampire Slayer
actress Amber Benson.
Kate Mosse’s “illustrated novella” The Winter Ghosts was set in a mysterious French village in the late 1920s, and a group of Scottish teenagers undergoing grief
counselling was more than a match for monsters that had escaped from Hell in Christopher Brookmyre’s Pandaemonium.
As usual, the Leisure paperback imprint kept the flag flying for midlist horror: a Scottish manor house was haunted by an ancient evil in Black Cathedral, the latest
volume in the “Department 18” series by L.H. Maynard and M.P.N. Sims, and spiderlike creatures invaded London in Sarah Pinborough’s Feeding Ground, the sequel to
Breeding Ground.
Blind Panic was the conclusion of Graham Masterton’s “Manitou” saga, as people across America were struck suddenly and totally blind.
The cast and crew of a desert island reality TV show were being killed off in Brian Keene’s Castaways, while a group of teenagers took refuge in a house of horrors in Urban
Gothic from the same author.
When a small-town evangelist climbed out of his coffin, he brought a demon horde with him in Jake’s Wake by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow, based on Skipp’s as-yet-unproduced
directorial debut.
A survivor of a mass murder returned to the town of Cedar Hill in Gary A. Braunbeck’s Far Dark Fields, and the inhabitants of an isolated rural town tortured and sacrificed anyone
unlucky enough to stumble into their traps in Depraved by Bryan Smith.
When a family moved to a small town in Quebec, the young daughter soon started having premonitions of blood and death in Nate Kenyon’s The Bone Factory, and a small Tennessee town
was taken over by a soul-sucking Lamia in Bryan Smith’s Soultaker.
While Ray Garton’s werewolf novel Bestial was a sequel to the author’s Ravenous, W.D. Gagliani’s werewolf novel Wolf’s Gambit was a sequel to
Wolf’s Trap.
Edward Lee’s The Golem featured an army of creatures formed from riverbed clay that brought terror to the Maryland coast.
The late Richard Laymon’s 1987 novel Tread Softly was reissued by Leisure under the title Dark Mountain, while Graham Masterton’s The Painted Man was reprinted
as Death Mask and Edward Lee’s Gast appeared as The Black Train.
Other reprints included John Everson’s Sacrifice and The 13th, Cover by Jack Ketchum (Dallas Mayr), Pressure by Jeff Strand, Crimson by Gord Rollo, and
Ghost Monster by Simon Clark.
In conjunction with Canada’s Rue Morgue magazine and the Chiaroscuro website, Leisure Books launched a “Fresh Blood” contest to find a previously unpublished
horror author to add to the list in 2011.
Prodigious paranormal romance publisher Harlequin Books caused controversy in America after it announced that it was creating a new imprint, DellArte Press, that would publish
books rejected from the company’s other imprints in return for a fee.
The vanity press was immediately condemned by writers’ groups, including the Romance Writers of America, the Mystery Writers of America and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America, who responded by banning any of Harlequin’s books from award eligibility and its authors using their credits for the company to qualify for membership.
A man was haunted by the ghost of his first love in Lisa Child’s paranormal romance Immortal Bride, and a woman who could see dead people was a suspect in her ex-husband’s
death in Cara Lockwood’s Every Demon Has His Day.
Satan opened a music store across the street
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