Otto Penzler – Zombies: A Compendium of the Living Dead

Otto Penzler (ed) – Zombies: A Compendium of the Living Dead   (Corvus, 2011: originally US, Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, Sept. 2011)

Otto Penzler – INTRODUCTION

W. B. Seabrook – Dead Men Working In The Cane Fields  
David A. Riley – After Nightfall
Hugh B. Cave – Mission To Margal
Chet Williamson –  The Cairnwell Horror
Arthur Leo Zagat – Crawling Madness
Lisa Tuttle – Treading The Maze
Karen Haber – Red Angels
Michael Marshall Smith – Later
Vivian Meik – White Zombie  
Guy de Maupassant – Was It A Dream?
Steve Rasnic Tem – Bodies And Heads
Dale Bailey – Death And Sufferage
Henry Kuttner – The Graveyard Rats
Edgar Allan Poe – The Facts In The Case of M. Valdemar
Yvonne Navarro – Feeding The Dead Inside
Charles Birkin – Ballet Negre  
Geoffrey A Landis – Dead Right
Graham Masterton – The Taking of Mr. Bill
Jack D‘Arcy – The Grave Gives Up
H. P. Lovecraft – Herbert West: Reanimator
H. P. Lovecraft –  Pickman’s Model
Robert Bloch – Maternal Instinct
Kevin J. Anderson – Bringing The Family
Richard Laymon – Mess Hall
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Schalken The Painter
Thorpe McClusky – While Zombies Walked  
Mary A. Turzillo – April Flowers, November Harvest
Mort Castle – The Old Man And The Dead  
Henry S. Whitehead – Jumbee  
Peter Tremayne – Marbh Bheo
Thomas Burke – The Hollow Man
Anthony Boucher – They Bite
Gahan Wilson – Come One, Come All
Ramsey Campbell – It Helps If You Sing
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Ghouls
Seabury Quinn – The Corpse-Master
F. Marion Crawford – The Upper Berth
Ralston Shields – Vengeance Of The Living Dead
Harlan Ellison & Robert Silverberg – The Song The Zombie Sang
John H. Knox – Men Without Blood
Uel Key – The Broken Fang
Theodore Sturgeon – It
Day Keene – League Of The Grateful Dead
Garry Kilworth – Love Child
Edith & Ejler Jacobson – Corpses On Parade
Richard Christian Matheson – Where There’s A Will
Michael Swanwick – The Dead
Manly Wade Wellman – The Song of The Slaves
H. P. Lovecraft – The Outsider
Robert R. McCammon – Eat Me
Joe R. Lansdale – Deadman’s Road
Robert E. Howard – Pigeons From Hell
Scott Edelman – Live People Don’t Understand
August Derleth & Mark Schorer – The House In The Magnolias
Stephen King – Home Delivery
Arthur J. Burks –  Dance Of The Damned
Theodore  Roscoe – Z Is For Zombie

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – The Giant Book Of Best New Horror

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – The Giant Book Of Best New Horror (Magpie, 1993, 1994)

Cover: Luis Rey

Introduction – Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell

Robert R. McCammon – Pin
Brian Lumley – No Sharks In The Med
Chet Williamson – … To Feel Another’s Woe
Stephen Gallagher – The Horn
Peter Straub – A Short Guide To The City
Robert Westall – The Last Days Of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux
Ian Watson – The Eye Of The Ayatollah
Cherry Wilder – Alive In Venice
Thomas Tessier – Blanca
Steve Rasnic Tem – Carnal House
Michael Marshall Smith – The Man Who Drew Cats
Thomas Ligotti – The Last Feast Of Harlequin
Donald R. Burleson – Snow Cancellations
J. W. Jeter – True Love
J. L. Comeau – Firebird
Karl E. Wagner – Cedar Lane
D. F. Lewis – Mort Au Monde
Nicholas Royle – Negatives
Richard Laymon – Bad News
Elizabeth Hand – On The Town Route
Alan Brennert – Ma Qui
David J. Schow – Incident On A Rainy Night In Beverly Hills
Kathe Koja – Impermanent Mercies
Ian MacLeod – 1/72nd Scale
Ramsey Campbell – The Same In Any Language
Poppy Z. Brite – His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood
Charles L. Grant – Our Life In An Hourglass
Grant Morrison – The Braille Encyclopedia
David Sutton – Those Of Rhenea
Joel Lane – Power Cut
Harlan Ellison – Jane Doe
F. Paul Wilson – Pelts
Jean-Daniel Breque – On The Wing
Douglas Clegg – Where Flies Are Born
Garry Kilworth – Inside The Walled City
Jonathan Carroll – The Dead Love You
S. P. Somtow – Chui Chai
Dennis Etchison – When They Gave Us Memory
Gene Wolfe – Lord Of The Land
Gahan Wilson – Mister Ice Cold
Kim Newman – The Original Dr. Shade

600+ page compilation derived from the first two Best New Horror collections. The customary lengthy introduction and Necrology are missed, but this all-story Best New Horror is possibly my favourite of the entire series to date.

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – Best New Horror

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell (eds.) – The Best New Horror (Robinson, 1990)

Les Edwards

Introduction: Horror in 1989 – Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell

Robert R. McCammon – Pin
Cherry Wilder – The House On Cemetery Street
Stephen Gallagher – The Horn
Alex Quiroba – Breaking Up
Ramsey Campbell – It Helps If You Sing
Laurence Staig – Closed Circuit
Steve Rasnic Tem – Carnal House
Kim Newman – Twitch Technicolor
Gregory Frost – Lizaveta
Donald R. Burleson – Snow Cancellations
Nicholas Royle – Archway
Thomas Ligotti – The Strange Design Of Master Rignolo
Chet Williamson – …To Feel Another’s Woe
Robert Westall – The Last Day Of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux
Brian Lumley – No Sharks In The Med
D. F. Lewis – Mort au Monde
Thomas Tessier – Blanca
Ian Watson – The Eye Of The Ayatollah
Karl Edward Wagner – At First Just Ghostly
Richard Laymon – Bad News

Necrology: 1989 – Stephen Jones & Kim Newman

includes:

Stephen Gallagher – The Horn: Three strangers, Mick, Dave and the narrator, are marooned inside a hut during a snow blizzard. The cabin is base to the clean-up team who attend the grim business of scraping up accident casualties and one wall is plastered with newspaper accounts of this stretch of motorway’s greatest hits.

“Entire families wiped out. A teenage girl decapitated. Lorry drivers crushed when their cabs folded around them like stepped-upon Coke cans ….. an unwanted mistress dumped, Jimmy Hoffa-style, into the wire skeleton of a bridge piling that had been boxed-up ready to take concrete the next morning. ENTOMBED ALIVE! the headline said, but even that looked kind of pale next to the disaster involving the old folks’ outing and the pet food truck full of offal.

When their gas cylinder – the only source of heat – conks out, the men have an unpleasant decision to make. Stay here and probably freeze to death, or head out into the snowstorm, make for the huge articulated rig about half a mile on and sit it out in the warm cabin. Mick volunteers to go on ahead and give them a blast on the horn once he’s got the heater going.

But a murderous something else has beaten him to it ….

Michael Marshall Smith – The Man Who Drew Cats: One day old Tom just blew into Kingstown, stepped into The Hogshead Bar and the locals – unusually for them – took to the quiet fellow straight away. A quiet and private man, he makes his living from the extraordinary paintings he tosses off for tourists and sometimes when the mood takes him, he chalks his more complex designs on the pavement. But when he befriends little Billy and his mom and learns that her nogoodnik, drunken husband regularly beats the shit out of them both, he draws something really terrifying.

Chet Williamson – …To Feel Another’s Woe: The beautiful Sheila Remarque is a stage actress of exceptional ability but her gift is not for acting: she vamps the emotions of all those who come in close contact with her, draining them until they are little more than zombies.

Robert McCammon – Pin: The psychotic Joey Shatterly stands before the mirror diving the pin through each of his pupils in turn prior to stepping out with his rifle and seven bullets …

Nicholas Royle – Archway: From the day she moves into her North London flat, Bella is haunted by the scornful laughter of an old, grey faced tramp she’s see on the street. She is unfairly dismissed from her job, encounters the red-tape horrors of the DSS and faces eviction. Finally …

***

Several of these stories, along with selections from vols. 2 and 3, were resurrected in The Giant Book Of Best New Horror (Magpie, 1993, 1994)

Continues on the Vault Of Evil Forum: Best New Horror 1