Johnny Mains – Bite Sized Horror

Johnny Mains (ed.) – Bite Sized Horror   (Obverse Books, June 2011)

Cover artwork: Paul Hanley

Johnny Mains – Introduction

Reggie Oliver – Brighton Redemption  
Paul Kane – The Between
David A. Riley – His Pale Blue Eyes
Marie O’ Regan – The Unquiet Bones
Johnny Mains – The Rookery
Conrad Williams – The Carbon Heart

Blurb
BITE SIZED HORROR … delivers enough unease, terror, horror and revulsion – the full range of unpleasant associations associated with dark fiction – to please most readers. – Brendon Moody, The Stars At Noonday

see also the Bite Sized Horror thread on the Vault forum

Lucy Bergman – Phantom Lovers

Lucy Bergman (ed.) – Phantom Lovers: Tales Of Unearthly Passions And Fiendish Seductions  (Tandem, 1970)

Cover photograph: Michael Stannard
Introduction
Christianna Brand – Akin To Love
W.B. Seabrook – Toussel’s Pale Bride
General Benoit Batraville – Formula For Calling Up The Dead
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia
Extract From The Trial Of The Witches Of Huntingdon
Barry Pain – The Moon Slave
Graham R. Tomson – Ballad Of A Were-wolf
F. Marion Crawford – For The Blood Is The Life
Robert Hitchens – How Love Came To Professor Guildea
 – Madam Lucifer
Thomas Lovell Beddoes – The Phantom-wooer
Joseph Sheridan LeFanu – Schalken The Painter

Blurb
Fiends from Hell and malevolent ghosts, vampires, sorcerers and succubi, even Lucifer himself; at all periods and in many lands they have captivated and seduced their victims. Sometimes these victims, men and women, resisted their unearthly lovers. Sometimes, as other stories in this collection tell, they yielded eagerly to demonic fascination and discovered too late who now possessed them body and soul.

Nervous readers, on finishing this book, may like to consult the Anglo-Saxon Leech Book, which contains the recipe for a salve ‘against elf-kin and night-walking demons and those persons with whom a devil has sexual intercourse’.

Many thanks to thecoffinflies for providing the cover scan, blurb and list of contents.

Anon – Four Gothic Novels

Anon – Four Gothic Novels   (Oxford University Press, 1994)

Horace Walpole – The Castle Of Otranto
William Beckford – Vathek
Matthew Lewis – The Monk
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein

Blurb
Macabre and melodramatic, set in haunted castles or fantastic landscapes, Gothic tales became fashionable in the late eighteenth century with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Crammed with catastrophe, terror, and ghostly interventions, the novel was an immediate success, and influenced numerous followers: These include William Beckford’s Vathek (1786), which alternates grotesque comedy with scenes of exotic magnificence in the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek’s journey to damnation. The Monk (1796), by Matthew Lewis, is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest, set in the sinister Monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid. Frankenstein (1818, 1831) is Mary Shelley’s disturbing and perennially popular tale of a young student who  learns the secret of giving life to a creature made from human relics, with horrific consequences.

This collection illustrates the range and the attraction of the Gothic novel. Extreme and sensational, each of the four printed here is also a powerful psychological story of isolation and monomania.

Gary Fry – Death Rattles

Gary Fry (ed.)- Death Rattles (Gray Friar Press, July 2011)

Stephen Volk – Rattling Cages: an Introduction

*Episode 1*: Scattered Ashes – *John Llewellyn Probert*
*Episode 2*: Seen And Not Heard – *Gary Fry*
*Episode 3*: Antlers – *Thana Niveau*
*Episode 4*: The Children of Moloch – *Simon Bestwick*
*Episode 5*: Cow Castle – *Paul Finch*
*Episode 6*: His Father’s Son – *Gary McMahon*

Blurb
DEATH RATTLES

Do you remember? And were you afraid?

Back in the mid-80s, a UK genre television show was aired on Channel 4 that pushed the boundaries of accepted broadcasting standards. As far as can be established, only six episodes were ever shown, but hardly anybody can remember seeing them.

Official records offer scant information, and no recordings of the episodes seem to exist. Rumours abound about brief clips on Youtube and water-damaged master tapes found in a media vault, but nobody has stepped forward with anything more solid than hearsay.

But six authors do remember watching the series, and their imperfect
recollections form the basis of the stories in this book . . . You’ll almost certainly never get to see the show in its original form, so this may be your only chance to experience . . .

DEATH RATTLES

. . . the notorious lost TV series.

 

see also Death Rattles thread on Vault forum