Peter Haining – Death on Wheels

Peter Haining (ed.) – Death on Wheels (Souvenir 1999)

Introduction – Peter Haining

1. Auto Mania: The Machinery of Death

Trucks – Stephen King
The Dust-Cloud – E. F. Benson
Second Chance – Jack Finney
Used Car – H. Russell Wakefield
Duel – Richard Matheson
Who’s Been Sitting in My Car? – Antonia Fraser
Not from Detroit – Joe R. Lansdale

2. Motorway Madness: Murder in the Fast Lane

Never Stop on the Motorway – Jeffrey Archer
The Death Car – Peter Haining
Night Court – Mary Elizabeth Counselman
Accident Zone – Ramsey Campbell
The Last Run – Alan Dean Foster
The Hitch-Hiker – Roald Dahl
Crash – J. G. Ballard

3. Chrome Killers: The Future Autogeddon

The Racer – Ib Melchior
Along the Scenic Route – Harlan Ellison
Auto-da-Fé – Roger Zelazny
Violation – William F. Nolan
Thy Blood Like Milk – Ian Watson

Thanks to Steve Goodwin for providing the table of contents!

Peter Haining – Poltergeist

Peter Haining (ed.) – Poltergeist: Tales of Deadly Ghosts (Severn House, 1987)

Introduction – Peter Haining

Lord Lytton -The Haunted And The Haunters
Ambrose Bierce – A Fruitless Assignment
Rudyard Kipling – Haunted Subalterns
Edgar Wallace – The Death Room
Robert S. Carr – Phantom Fingers
E. F. Benson – Thursday Evenings
Seabury Quinn – The Poltergeist
Elliott O’Donnell – The Mystery Of Beechcroft Farm
Mary Elizabeth Counselman – Parasite Mansion
Laurence Housman – Maggie’s Bite
William F. Harvey – Miss Cornelius
Peter Dare – The Beam
August Derleth – A Knocking In the Wall
Charles Duff – The Haunted Bungalow
Nigel Kneale – Minuke
Kurt Singer – Poltergeist!

Michel Parry – Roots Of Evil

‘Carlos Cassaba’ (Michel Parry) ed. – Roots Of Evil: Beyond The Secret Life Of Plants (Corgi, 1976).

Introduction by Carlos Cassaba

Clark Ashton Smith – The Seed From The Sepulchre
H. G. Wells – The Flowering Of The Strange Orchid
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Rappaccini’s Daughter
Hester Holland – Dorner Cordaianthus
Manly Wade Wellman – Come Into My Parlour
Mary Elizabeth Counselman – The Tree’s Wife
David H. Keller – The Ivy War
John Collier – Green Thoughts
Fritz Leiber – Dr. Adams’ Garden Of Evil
Frederic Brown – Daisies
Margaret St. Clair – The Gardener
Clifford Simak – Green Thumb

It’s official: Flowers hate us, and you’ll never be able to look at a potted plant the same way again.

Parry’s collection is a lot more enjoyable than you might think, this largely due to the sheer bloodthirstiness of the delinquent Triffids that pop up in just about every other story. My personal pick of the bunch are the Clark Ashton Smith story, which is truly creepy and has a moment of awesome horror when the main protagonist suddenly develops a headache. “Green Thoughts” almost certainly inspired Roger Corman’s “The little Shop Of Horrors” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is both horrific and terribly sad, as we learn the lengths a mad scientist will go to to conduct his experiments.