Trisha Telep – Corsets And Clockwork

Trisha Telep  (ed.) – Corsets And Clockwork  (Robinson, May 2011)

Trisha Telep – Introduction

Lesley Livingston – Rude Mechanicals
Frewin Jones – The Cannibal Fiend or Rotherhithe
Ann Aguirre – Wild Magic
Michael Scott – Deadwood
Dru Pagliassoti – Code of Blood
Adrienne Kress – The Clockwork Corset
Jaclyn Dolamore – The Airship Gemini
Maria V. Snyder – Under Amber Skies
Tessa Gratton – King of the Greenlight City
Tiffany Trent – The Emperor’s Man
Dia Reeves – Chickie Hill’s Badass Ride
Caitlin Kittredge – The Vast Machinery
Kiersten White – Tick, Tick Boom

About the book

A stunning anthology of the very best of steampunk that is taking teen fiction by storm.

Bestselling romance editor Trisha Telep brings an exciting new element to the fast-growing sub-genre of steampunk, which bends and blends the old and the new in increasingly popular dark urban fantasies. Young heroes and heroines battle evil, in various forms with the help of super-technological or supernatural powers, while falling in and out of love.

M. J. Trow – A Brief History Of Vampires

M. J. Trow – A Brief History Of Vampires (Robinson, July 2010)

Blurb:
Vampire culture is everywhere: in the bookshops, on TV, in nightclubs, and in the cinemas. With the success of the Twilight saga and True Blood, the lore of the undead is a global phenomenon. But where does the legend of the Vampire come from, and why does it have such a perennial appeal? Historian and vampire aficionado M. J. Trow goes in search of the origins of this blood craze a long way from the shopping malls, to the story of the fifteenth century Hungarian warrior prince, Vlad of Wallachia, who was famed for his brutality in war as well as his passion for excruciating torture. Vlad would later become the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the film Nosferatu.

Trow’s fascinating search uncovers the forgotten story of Vlad and charts his legacy throughout history up to the present day. He shows that the legend and lore of vampirism has evolved over centuries and still has a powerful hold on our imaginations.

Press Release Robinson
From Vlad the Impaler to Edward Cullen, M.J. Trow goes in search of the allure of the vampire.

A Brief History of Vampires

By M.J. Trow
Published by Robinson
July 8th 2010 Paperback, £8.99

A must-have book for all vampire fans, A Brief History of Vampires charts the phenomenal craze of ‘popular vampires’ such as Nosferatu and Count Dracula to screen vampires such as those played by Bela Lugosi and Robert Pattinson. With the current global vampire craze taking the book, film and TV charts by storms with the Twilight saga and True Blood, this book begs the question: why do we love to be frightened?

Within a society which has become increasingly desensitised to horror, M.J. Trow charts the vampire’s global phenomenon and seeks its terrifying origins. A long way from the billboard we learn the story of Vlad ‘The Impaler’ of Wallachia. a ruler infamous for his brutality in war as well as his passion for ‘impaling’ his victims, and who later became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula.

In order to uncover the fascinating, forgotten story of ‘The Impaler’, Trow looks into the history, legend and lore of his legacy. Compellingly and historically, he shows how the legend of the vampire has evolved over centuries and explains how it still has such an intense hold on modern day imagination.

About the Author
M. Trow studied history at university, after which he has spent years teaching. He is also an established crime writer and biographer, with a reputation as a scholar who peels away myths to reveal the true history behind them. Originally from Rhondda, South Wales, he now lives on the Isle of White.

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Peter Haining – The Dracula Scrapbook (Bounty, 1992)

Peter Haining – The Dracula Scrapbook (Bounty, 1992)

Impostor!

Don’t buy this one thinking it’s a reprint of the sumptuous The Dracula Scrapbook paperback published by NEL in 1976, because it ain’t. It’s merely The Dracula Centenary Book (Souvenir, 1987) under false pretences.

Peter Haining – The Dracula Centenary Book

Peter Haining – The Dracula Centenary Book (Souvenir Press, 1987)

Front jacket photograph courtesy UNIVERSAL PICTURES. Back jacket drawing by BRUCE WIGHTMAN jacket design by' BARFIELD ASSOCIATES

Acknowledgements

Dracula Lives!
An Amazing Story of Resurrection
The Birth of the Legend
The Bloodthirsty Parents of Dracula
Dracula by Day—and Other Misconceptions
The Count Who Won’t Lie Down
Playing the Master of the Undead
Tales of the Vampire Hunter
‘The Bloofer Ladies’
The Wurdalak Who Might Have Been Dracula

Appendices

Emily de Laszowska Gerard –  Transylvanian Superstitions
A Checklist of Vampirism
Bela Lugosi –  I Like Playing Dracula
The Dracula Films
Dr David H. Dolphin –  Vampires — The Mystery Diagnosed
Dracula Societies

Blurb

One hundred years ago in the autumn of 1887, the most famous vampire of them all, Count Dracula, stalked from his castle in Transylvania to the streets of London. and started a legend that has endured and grown to epic proportions.

This book is published to celebrate not only that momentous event, but a number of other Dracula-related anniversaries also. It is seventy-five years since the death of Dracula’s brilliant creator, Bram Stoker, and ninety years since the publication of the original novel: 1987 also marks the centenary of the birth of Boris Karloff, the film star whose name is so closely associated with the vampire legend on the screen.

Dracula has become a twentieth century myth, extending his influence into all branches of the media. Stoker’s novel has never been out of print and has only been outsold by the Bible and the collected works of Shakespeare, but the story has also been adapted for the cinema, dramatised for the stage, radio and television. and spawned a whole series of books and films on the Dracula theme — not to mention a worldwide fascination with the subject of vampirism.

Profusely illustrated with photographs and prints, many of which have never before appeared in book form, The Dracula Centenary Book explores this extraordinary success story, drawing on much previously unpublished material. Following the recent discovery of the original manuscript of the novel, packed away and forgotten on a Pennsylvanian farm, and from studying the author’s working papers held in the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, it is now possible to discover exactly how Bram Stoker developed and researched his book. The story of the growth of the screen cult is equally fascinating: the author includes interviews with the stars who have appeared in the major film versions over the past fifty years and a detailed listing of the films themselves.

There is also a chronology of famous real-life cases of vampirism from around the world.

Peter Haining is a recognised authority on supernatural literature and horror films. His enthusiasm and breadth of knowledge combine to make a book that is unputdownable.

PETER HAINING has been an avid student of horror, fantasy and the supernatural since boyhood, and has published many books on the subject, which have not only been widely successful but have made a valuable contribution to the literature on the genre. With his wife and three children, he lives in East Anglia

See also Vault’s Dracula Centenary Book thread

Peter Haining – Witchcraft And Black Magic

Peter Haining – Witchcraft And Black Magic (Hamlyn, 1971)

Illustrations: Jan Parker

Foreword

The History Of Witchcraft to 1736
The Facets Of Witchcraft
Modern Witchcraft & Black Magic
Books To Read
Index

Blurb:

Peter Haining has been writing about witchcraft and Black Magic for ten years now. It all began when he was working in Essex as a journalist and was asked to cover an outbreak of church desecration in the county. He met self-confessed witches and witnessed many ceremonies in the course of writing that article and, as a result of what he had seen, he became very dissatisfied with the mixture of half-truth, rumour and sensationalism surrounding the subject. Since then, in his many broadcasts and newspaper articles and now in this he has argued for a more practical realistic attitude to witchcraft.

Fertility rite or devil worship? The true purpose of witchcraft has always been debated. Peter Haining believes that witchcraft is an ancient fertility religion and has written a refreshinglystraightforward survey of the subject. He tells the story of witchcraft from prehistory to the present day, explains its association with Black Magic, and investigates many of the strange practices and phenomena which have been attributed to the craft. Exciting illustrations contribute to this lively account of one man’s most intriguing, most misrepresented, activities.

Stephen Jones – Mammoth Book of Vampires: New Edition

Stephen Jones (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Vampires:  New Edition (Robinson, 2004)

Introduction: The Children of the Night – Stephen Jones

Clive Barker – Human Remains –
Brian Lumley – Necros
Brian M. Stableford – The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady
Michael Marshall Smith – A Place To Stay
Ramsey Campbell – The Brood
Nancy Kilpatrick – Root Cause
Robert Bloch – Hungarian Rhapsody
Christopher Fowler – The Legend Of Dracula Reconsidered As A Prime-Time TV Special
Richard Christian Matheson – Vampire
Hugh B. Cave – Stragella
David J. Schow – A Week in the Unlife
Frances Garfield – The House at Evening
Simon Clark – Vampyrrhic Outcast
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Labyrinth
Karl Edward Wagner – Beyond Any Measure
Basil Copper – Doctor Porthos
Paul McAuley – Straight To Hell
Dennis Etchison – It Only Comes Out at Night
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro – Investigating Jericho
Peter Tremayne – Dracula’s Chair
Sydney J. Bounds – A Taste For Blood
Melanie Tem – The Better Half
John Burke – The Devil’s Tritone
Manly Wade Wellman – Chastel
Howard Waldrop – Der Untergang des Abendlandesmenschen
Tanith Lee – Red As Blood
Tina Rath – A Trick Of The Dark
Graham Masterton – Laird of Dunain
F. Paul Wilson – Midnight Mass
Nancy Holder – Blood Gothic
Les Daniels – Yellow Fog
Steve Rasnic Tem – Vintage Domestic
Neil Gaiman – Fifteen Cards From A Vampire Tarot
Harlan Ellison – Try A Dull Knife
Kim Newman – Andy Warhol’s Dracula

The replaced stories are:
F. Marion Crawford – For the Blood Is the Life
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
M. R. James – An Episode of Cathedral History
E. F. Benson – The Room in the Tower
Kim Newman – Red Reign
Neil Gaiman – Vampire Sestina [Verse]

See also: Mammoth Book Of Vampires (original edition)

Robinson Mammoths: Coming soon

These most caught my eye amongst the forthcoming batch. Judging from the amount of hits it receives on WordPress, several people found The Mammoth Book of Werewolves difficult to get hold of so full marks to the team for commissioning what looks like a revamped version. Wolf Men is due for publication in November.

Memo to Robinsons: The Mammoth Book Of  Best New Horror has won the BFS award more recently than 2002. How about last year, when it narrowly triumphed over the mighty Black Book Of Horror?!!!

Stephen Jones (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men (Robinsons, November 2009)

Find the beast that lurks within, in these 23 tales of terror and transformation

• Publication to coincide with release of the big-budget film of The Wolf Man (Universal’s classic monster revamped), starring Benito Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins.
• From an award-winning anthologist – Stephen Jones’ The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror won the 2002 British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology He is also a winner of the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award.

This is the ultimate werewolf anthology, with terrifying tales from classic pulp novellas like Manly Wade Wellman’s The Hairy Ones Shall Dance and The Whisperers by Hugh B. Cave, to modern masterpieces such as David Case’s The Cell, Clive Barker’s Twilight At The Towers and the award-winning Boobs by Suzy McKee Charnas. Also collected are memorable stories by contemporary masters Ramsey Campbell, Les Daniels, Stephen Laws, Scott Bradfield, Dennis Echison, Karl E. Wagner and many, many more.

Praise for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, also edited by Stephen Jones
‘The one essential collection people should be forced to read at gun point.’ – Time Out
‘Horror’s last maverick.’ – Christopher Fowler.

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The annual fright-fest. You already guessed the name contributors, but you may not have seen the cover..

Stephen Jones (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 (Robinsons, October 2009)

Special 20th-anniversary edition of the world’s premier annual showcase of horror and dark fantasy fiction

• The series has won the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award and International Horror Guild Award
• From the world’s most acclaimed horror anthologist
• Anticipated annual event for horror fans, young and old – perfect for Halloween.

Here are the year’s darkest tales of terror, showcasing the most outstanding new short stories and novellas by contemporary masters of the macabre including Ramsey Campbell, Michael Bishop, Christopher Fowler, Tim Lebbon, Brian Lumlley, Ian R. MacLeod, Gary McMahon and Sarah Pinborough. Featuring the most comprehensive yearly overview of horror around the world, an impressively researched necrology and a lot of indispensible contact addresses for the dedicated horror fan and aspiring writer alike, this is required reading for every fan of macabre fiction.

Praise for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series:

‘The must-have annual anthology for horror fans.’ – Time Out
‘One of horror’s best.’ – Publisher’s Weekly
‘If you only buy one horror collection, make sure It’s this one” – Morpheus Tales.

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One for all you Paranormal Romance fans .

Trisha Telep (ed.) – Love Bites (Robinsons, August 2009)

From the biggest names in vampire romance, 24 tales of titillating bloodlust

• One of the fastest-growing genres in fiction
• Top names include Jennifer Ashley, Dawn Cook, Caitlin Kittredge, Diane Whiteside and Eileen Wilks.
• Compiled by an expert in the genre, a follow-up to The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance and The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance.

This bloodthirsty new selection of vampire short stories — compellingly original, wholly unexpected, from award-winning New York Times bestselling authors — features the specialist skills of Jennifer Ashley, Dawn Cook, Caitlin Kittredge, Diane Whiteside, Eileen Wilks and many others. Within these pages you’ll encounter vampires who’d feel right at home in a horror story or gothic romance; historical vampires and contemporary, gritty, urban vampires; fang-in-cheek comedy, boy-meets-girl sweetheart stories (if a little bloodier!) and erotic tales of inhuman passions and midnight pleasures. Look out too for short stories based on existing, familiar series; fantasy that develops more fully those characters whom you’ve only met before in walk-on parts.

Stephen Jones – Mammoth Vampire Stories By Women

Stephen Jones (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women (Robinson, 2001)

Ingrid Pitt – Introduction: My life Among The Undead

Anne Rice – The Master Of Rampling Gate
Poppy Z. Brite – Homewrecker
Mary A. Turzillo – When Gretchen Was Human
Tanya Huff – The Vengeful Spirit Of Lake Nepeakea
Nancy Kilpatrick – La Diente
Tina Rath – Miss Massingbird And The Vampire
Freda Warrington – The Raven Bound
Nancy A. Collins – Vampire King And The Goth Chicks
Storm Constantine – Just His Type
Elizabeth Hand – Prince Of Flowers
Louise Cooper – Services Rendered
Janet Berliner – Aftermath
Yvonne Navarro – One Among Millions
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman – Luella Miller
Lisa Tuttle – Sangre
Chelsea Quinn Yarbo – A Question Of Patronage
Ingrid Pitt – Hisako San
Kathryn Ptacek – Butternut And Blood
Wendy Webb – Sleeping Cities
E. Nesbit – The Haunted House
Roberta Lannes – Turkish Delight
Tanith Lee – Venus Rising On Water
Gemma Files – Year Zero
Mary E. Braddon – Good Lady Ducayne
Melanie Tem – Lunch At Charon’s
Elizabeth Massie – Forever, Amen
Ellen Kushner – Night Laughter
Christa Faust – Bootleg
Gala Blau – Outfangtheif
Pat Cadigan – My Brother’s Keeper
Caitlin R. Keirnan – So Runs The World Away
Gwyneth Jones – A North Light
Connie Willis – Jack
Jane Yolen – Vampyr

Blurb

Collected here for the first time are 34 strange and erotic tales of vampires, created by some of supernatural fiction’s greatest mistresses of the macabre. From the classic stories of Edith Nesbit, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, to modern incarnations by such acclaimed writers as Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy Kilpatrick, Tanith Lee, Caitlin R. Kiernan and Pat Cadigan, these blood-drinkers and soul-stealers range from the sexual to the sanguinary, from the tormented good to the unspeakably evil. Among these children of the night you will encounter Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Byronic vampire Saint-Germain, Nancy A. Collins’ undead heroine Sonja Blue, Tanya Huff’s vampiric detective Vicki Nelson and Freda Warrington’s age-old lovers Karl and Charlotte. Featuring the only vampire short story written by Anne Rice, the undisputed queen of vampire literature, and boasting an autobiographical introduction and original tale by Ingrid Pitt, the star of Hammer Films’ The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula, this is one anthology from which every vampire fan will want to drink deeply.

Peter Haining – The Midnight People

Peter Haining (ed) – The Midnight People (Leslie Frewin, 1968; Ensign, 1974: Everest, 1975)

Introduction – Peter Haining

Montague Summers – Fritz Haarmann ‘The Hanover Vampire’ Augustus Hare – The Vampire of Croglin Grange
John Polidori – The Vampyre
Thomas Preskett Prest – The Storm Visitor
Bram Stoker – Three Young Ladies
M. R. James – An Episode of Cathedral History
August Derleth – Bat’s Belfry
E. F. Benson – ‘And No Bird Sings’
Sydney Horler – The Believer –
‘Stephen Grendon’ (August Derleth) – The Drifting Snow –
Manly Wade Wellman – When It Was Moonlight –
P. Schuyler Miller – Over the River
Richard Matheson – Drink My Blood
Ray Bradbury – Pillar of Fire
Basil Copper – Dr Porthos
Robert Bloch – The Living Dead
Fritz Leiber – The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

Postcript – Montague Summers

The two Montague Summers extracts are an account of a notorious murderer and cannibal and Summers’ thoughts on ‘real’ cases of supernatural vampirism which he believed to be “hushed up” by the authorities. Hare’s famous account of the Croglin case also claims to be factual. Read “The Storm Visitor” (wrongly attributed to Prest: it was actually written by James Malcolm Rymer), the opening chapter from “Varney, the Vampyre”, and you’ll notice some alarming similarities between the two. Stoker’s “Three Young Ladies” is another extract, this from “Dracula”, where-in Harker encounters the Vampire brides.

Manly Wade Wellman – “When It Was Moonlight”: An episode in the life of Edgar Allan Poe: Eddie, investigating a reported case of premature burial in Philadelphia, encounters the woman who survived the ordeal, Elva Gauber. His ensuing efforts to get to the truth about the incident almost costs him his life, but it does give him the germ of the idea for “The Black Cat”.

Basil Copper – “Dr Porthos”: Famously bonkers Gothic yarn owing much to Poe and Lovecraft. when Angelina falls ill, her husband suspects that the physician who tends her is in some way to blame. A midnight attack, which leaves the patient bleeding from the neck, hints strongly as to the nature of her assailant. Narrator’s grim determination to keep his journal up to date whatever the circumstances recalls the anti-hero of C. M. Eddy’s “The Loved Dead”, and leads to an (intentionally?) ludicrous climax .

Copper devotes an entire chapter to his story in “The Vampire: In Legend, Fact And Art”, but it’s by no means as convincing as his “The Knocker At The Portico”, with which it shares an almost identical plot.

Richard Matheson – “Drink My Blood”: Jules is obsessed with vampires. He tells of his ambition to become one in a composition which he reads aloud to his teacher and terrified classmates (it reads like the outro to the Mothers of Invention’s “Who needs the Peace Corps?” if Zappa had been targeting phony Goths as opposed to phony Hippies) : “I want to live forever and get even with everybody and make all the girls vampires. I want to smell of death … I want to have a foul breath that stinks of dead earth and crypts and sweet coffins”.
Eventually he kidnaps a bat from the zoo, names it ‘The Count’ and nicks his finger to feed it blood. His devotion is ultimately rewarded.

Fritz Leiber – “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”: “There are vampires and vampires and the ones that suck blood aren’t the worst …”
The lethal beauty at the centre of this acknowledged classic is the Monroe-like projection of man’s desires made flesh. Dave, her photographer, finally learns her secret when he finally ignores her warning never to follow her when she leaves the studio …

Sydney Horler – “The Believer”: Two Roman Catholic priests discuss the case of a man of whom everyone seemed to have an “instinctive horror”. When a terrible murder is committed, leaving the victim minus most of her throat, the shunned individual confesses to Father ——, who, of course, he is powerless to pass on the information to the police.

‘Stephen Grendon’ (August Derleth) – “The Drifting Snow”: Aunt Mary insists the curtains remain drawn after sunset. When Henry decides to open them, he sees two beckoning figures outside. It transpires that a servant girl froze to death on the Western slope after being dismissed from the house during a snowstorm.

Robert Bloch – “The Living Dead”: World War II. Erich Karon, an ex-actor in the Paris Grand Guignol, is a Nazi collaborator. To keep the villagers away from Chateau Barsac, where three radio operators are holed up, he masquerades as the district’s vampire count of legend. With the advance of the allies, he realises the game is up and makes to abscond. But …

Ray Bradbury – “Pillar Of Fire”: In the year 2349, dead people have been abolished. The last cemetery – at Salem – is being excavated, the bodies fed into the incinerator, the pillar of fire, by order of the Government who have outlawed morbidity. Disturbed during the excavation is William Lantry (1898-1933). Reanimated by sheer hatred, he declares war on this dreadful, soulless world in which “the living are deader than dead ever was”. Lantry commits the first murders in 300 years and blows up several of the incinerators then heads for the morgue and attempts to resurrect the dead. In one touching scene, he visits the library and requests something by Poe, only to be told by the assistant: “there is a red mark on the file card. He was one of the great burning of 2265”. As with Poe, so with Lovecraft, Derleth, Bierce, Machen, and co.
Bradbury would return to this theme – society destroying imagination – throughout his career in the novel “Fahrenheit 451” (1953) and such stories as “Usher II” and “The Exiles”. The last word to William Lantry: “That is the worst thing you can say to any man. You cannot tell him what to do. If you say there are no such things as vampires, by God, that man will try to be one just for spite”.

Vampires At Midnight

The Warner edition, retitled Vampires At Midnight (1993) is supplemented by an introduction by C. Lee (the usual ‘did I ever tell you I met M. R. James’ anecdote) but otherwise it’s business as usual.

For the Haining biblio freaks among us, this confirms that there was an earlier US edition. “Published in the United States (as Vampires At Midnight) in 1970 by Grosset & Dunlap”

Thanks to nightreader for this one too!

James Dickie – The Undead

James Dickie (ed.) – The Undead: Vampire Masterpieces (Neville Spearman, 1971: Pan 1973)

Richard Wilbur – The Undead (verse)
Introduction – James Dickie

Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
F. Marion Crawford – For The Blood Is The Life
Clark Ashton Smith – The End Of The Story
Clark Ashton Smith – The Death Of Ilalotha
F. G. Loring – The Tomb Of Sarah
Carl Jacobi – Revelations In Black
E. F. Benson – The Room In The Tower
Ambrose Bierce – The Death Of Halpin Frayser
Eric, Count Stenbock – A True Story Of A Vampire
H. P. Lovecraft – The Hound
Manly Wade Wellman – When It Was Moonlight
Everil Worrell – The Canal
Walter Starkie – The Old Man’s Story

Blurb: (Pan edition)
`Most mysterious and intriguing of all occult phenomena, the vampire becomes in death the expression of sadistic erotomania at its intensest.’

A unique anthology to chill through flesh and blood and bone based on established lore of the vampire tradition in all its hideous detail.
The fascinating foreword by James Dickie introduces thirteen stories by such masters of the macabre as Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
For your peace of mind, now decide where fact and fantasy merge in these tales of vampires and victims who make up the bloody legions of the undead .. .