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New Treasures: In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Leslie S. Klinger

New Treasures: In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Leslie S. Klinger

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In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe-smallWhen I do my Vintage Treasures posts, I usually end up lamenting the fact that the book I’m profiling is out of print. You think I’d be used to it by now. Many of the titles that were New Treasures at the beginning of the year are out of print already. Even the most popular fantasy writers in our field — Bradbury, Simak, Kuttner, Asimov, Poul Anderson, and countless others — have fewer titles in print every year. So imagine what it means for a fantasy writer to be consistently in print for the past 165 years. It means a kind of genius that transcends generations. In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Horror, 1816-1914 is a new anthology that collects a century of horror from authors whose contributions have been lost in the shadow of one of the finest fantasy writers who ever lived: Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. There were American, English, and Continental writers who preceded Poe and influenced his work. Similarly, there were many who were in turn influenced by Poe’s genius and produced their own popular tales of supernatural literature. This collection features masterful tales of terror by authors who, by and large, are little-remembered for their writing in this genre. Even Bram Stoker, whose Dracula may be said to be the most popular horror novel of all time, is not known as a writer of short fiction.

Distinguished editor Leslie S. Klinger is a world-renowned authority on those twin icons of the Victorian age, Sherlock Holmes, and Dracula. His studies into the forefathers of those giants led him to a broader fascination with writers of supernatural literature of the nineteenth century. The stories in this collection have been selected by him for their impact. Each is preceded by a brief biography of the author and an overview of his or her literary career and is annotated to explain obscure references.

Read on, now, perhaps with a flickering candle or flashlight at hand…

In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Horror, 1816-1914 contains stories by Ambrose Bierce, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Theodor Gautier, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lafcadio Hearn, M. R. James, Bram Stoker, and many others. It was edited by Leslie S. Klinger and published by Pegasus on October 15, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $24.95 in hardcover, and $20.98 for the digital edition. The cover is by Faceout Studio/Charles Brock.

Future Treasures: Weighing Shadows by Lisa Goldstein

Future Treasures: Weighing Shadows by Lisa Goldstein

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Weighing Shadows-smallLisa Goldstein has had a stellar career. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, and her first novel, The Red Magician (1982), won the National Book Award. Under her own name she has produced over a dozen books, including The Dream Years (1985), Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (1993), and Summer King, Winter Fool (1994), and under the name Isabel Glass she’s written two high fantasy novels, Daughter of Exile (2004) and The Divided Crown (2005). Her latest novel, Weighing Shadows, is a time-traveling fantasy that arrives in early November.

Ann Decker fixes computers for a living, and in the evenings she passes the time sharpening her hacking skills. It’s not a very interesting life, but she gets by — until one day she’s contacted with a job offer for a company called Transformations Incorporated. None of her coworkers have ever heard of it before, and when Ann is finally told what the company does, she can hardly believe it: TI has invented technology to travel in time.

Soon Ann is visiting a matriarchy in ancient Crete, and then a woman mathematician at the Library of Alexandria. But Transformations Incorporated remains shrouded in mystery, and when Ann finally catches her breath, there are too many troubling questions still unanswered. Who are Transformations Incorporated, and what will they use this technology to gain? What ill effects might going back in time have on the present day? Is it really as harmless as TI says?

When a coworker turns up dead, Ann’s superiors warn her about a covert group called Core out to sabotage the company. Something just isn’t right, but before she has time to investigate, Ann is sent to a castle in the south of France, nearly a thousand years in the past. As the armies of the Crusade arrive to lay siege, and intrigue grows among the viscount’s family, Ann will discover the startling truth — not just about the company that sent her there, but also about her own past.

Weighing Shadows will be published by Night Shade Books on November 3, 2015. It is 318 pages, priced at $15.99 in both trade paperback and digital formats. The cover is by Cortney Skinner.

October 2015 Nightmare Special Issue: Queers Destroy Horror! Now on Sale

October 2015 Nightmare Special Issue: Queers Destroy Horror! Now on Sale

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Nightmare Magazine Queers Destroy Horror-smallThe October issue of online magazine Nightmare, issue 37, is now available.

This month is a massive special issue, Queers Destroy Horror!, containing far more content than regular issues, but the digital edition is still available for the same low price ($2.99). The issue was funded as a stretch goal of the incredibly successful Queers Destroy Science Fiction! Kickstarter campaign for Lightspeed magazine, which was released in June.

Nightmare 37 an all-horror extravaganza entirely written and edited by queer creators. Guest editor Wendy N. Wagner has assembled new horror from Chuck Palahniuk, Matthew Bright, Sunny Moraine, Alyssa Wong, and Lee Thomas, and reprints by Kelley Eskridge, Caitlin R. Kiernan, and Poppy Z. Brite. There’s also a generous assortment of nonfiction articles edited by Megan Arkenberg, and written by Lucy A. Snyder, Sigrid Ellis, Catherine Lundoff, Michael Matheson, Evan J. Peterson, and Cory Skerry, that take a hard look at queer achievements and challenges in the horror genre. Plus there’s a selection of queer poetry selected by Robyn A. Lupo, and an original cover by AJ Jones.

Like the supermassive Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue of Lightspeed,, the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Nightmare is also available in print — as a 198-page trade paperback for $12.99.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents, including the free content on the website, as well as the exclusive paid content available online in the print and ebook editions.

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New Treasures: Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

New Treasures: Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

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Silver on the Road-smallLaura Anne Gilman’s 2009 novel Flesh and Fire, the opening book in The Vineart War, was nominated for a Nebula Award. Her latest novel is an immensely appealing Weird Western featuring Isobel, who on her sixteenth birthday makes the choice to work for the devil in his territory west of the Mississippi. But this is not the devil you know. This is a being who deals fairly with immense — but not unlimited — power, and who offers opportunities to people who want to make a deal… and they always get what they deserve.

East of the Mississippi, in the civilized world, dime store novels and gossips claim that the territory to the west is home to monsters and magic, wild Indians and disreputable whites. They claim that in order to survive, any who live there must make a deal with the Devil.

Some of this is true.

Isobel is a child of the Territory. She grew up in a saloon, trained to serve drinks and fold laundry, to observe the players at the card tables and report back to her boss on what she saw. But when she comes of age, she is given a choice….

Isobel chooses power. Chooses risk. Chooses to throw her cards in with the Devil, Master of the Territory.

But the costs of that power are greater than she ever imagined; the things she must do, the person she must become… And she needs to learn her new role quickly: pressures from both outside the Territory and within are growing, and the Devil’s Hand has work to do…

Silver on the Road it the opening novel in a new series titled The Devil’s West. It was published by Saga Press on October 6. It is 382 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by John Jude Palencar. Read an excerpt at Laura Anne Gilman’s website.

James Bond in Outer Space: The Croyd Spacetime Maneuvres Novels of Ian Wallace

James Bond in Outer Space: The Croyd Spacetime Maneuvres Novels of Ian Wallace

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Croyd-small Dr. Orpheus-small Pan Sagittarius-small

As I’ve mentioned a few times, one of the great things about collecting vintage SF and fantasy paperback is the constant new discoveries. A recent discovery of mine is Ian Wallace, who published 14 novels between 1952 and 1989, all but two part of a series that began with Croyd in 1967.

“Ian Wallace” was the pen name of John Wallace Pritchard, a local Chicago science fiction writer. He was a practicing clinical psychologist, and spent much of his career working for the Detroit public schools system. His first novel, Every Crazy Wind, was published in 1952 under his real name; his second, Croyd, was published as “Ian Wallace,” and began a lengthy series following the adventures of an organization of time-traveling superhumans. In the opening volume, Croyd is assigned to protect Earth from an alien invasion, but finds his mind transferred into the “inferior body” of a human woman — and his own body in the employ of an alien agent.

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Future Treasures: The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, edited by Otto Penzler

Future Treasures: The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, edited by Otto Penzler

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The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories-smallOtto Penzler’s giant anthologies, including the 1,056-page The Vampire Archives, The Big Book of Adventure Stories, and The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, occupy a place of honor in my collection. So I was very excited to see he’s releasing another one next week: The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, one of the biggest collection of Sherlock Holmes stories ever assembled.

Arguably no other character in history has been so enduringly popular as Sherlock Holmes. Ever since his first appearance, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 novella A Study in Scarlet, readers have loved reading about him almost as much as writers have loved writing about him.

Here, Otto Penzler collects eighty-three wonderful stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, published over a span of more than a hundred years. Featuring pitch-perfect cases by acclaimed modern-day Sherlockians Leslie S. Klinger, Laurie R. King, Lyndsay Faye and Daniel Stashower; pastiches by literary luminaries both classic (P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy B. Hughes, Kingsley Amis) and current (Anne Perry, Stephen King, Colin Dexter); and parodies by Conan Doyle’s contemporaries A. A. Milne, James M. Barrie, and O. Henry, not to mention genre-bending cases by science-fiction greats Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock.

No matter if your favorite Holmes is Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey, Jr., or Benedict Cumberbatch, whether you are a lifelong fan or only recently acquainted with the Great Detective, readers of all ages are sure to enjoy The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

The massive volume contains stories by Laurie R. King, Colin Dexter, Anthony Burgess, Anne Perry, Stephen King, P.G. Wodehouse, Kingsley Amis, and many, many more — over a century’s worth of cases, from Conan Doyle’s 1890s parodies of his own creation to Neil Gaiman’s “The Case of Death and Honey” (published in 2011). There’s also appearances by other great fictional detectives, including Hercule Poirot and C. Auguste Dupin. The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories will be published by Vintage on October 27, 2015. It is 816 pages, priced at $40 in hardcover, $25 in trade paperback, and $15.99 for the digital edition.

My Bookish Ways Interviews Howard Andrew Jones

My Bookish Ways Interviews Howard Andrew Jones

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Beyond the Pool of Stars-smallKristin Centorcelli, Editor in Chief at book blog My Bookish Ways, interviewed our Managing Editor this week about the release of his new Pathfinder Tales novel, Beyond the Pool of Stars. Here’s a snippet in which Howard talks about the Pathfinder setting.

Golarion is a rich and vibrant world, and part of why I was a fan of Paizo products long before I started working for them. It generally has a high medieval technological level, with magic intercalated into many aspects of various of the world’s cultures.

One of the reasons I set this book (and its sequel – more on that in a moment) down in tropical Sargava is that I wanted to take my readers to somewhere new. There are a lot of fantasy stories with elves and dwarves set in and around feudal societies with stone castles and mighty forests.

Mirian’s world is one of beaches and ships and the lap of waves, and the cool darkness of mysterious ocean depths. She doesn’t wear armor or carry a long sword, although she might carry a cutlass. She doesn’t contend with goblins or the fey, but with monsters of the deep and lizard folk, and even the prejudice of the colonial culture ruling her homeland. She’s of mixed race, but owing to her coloration the colonials see her as native.

Read the complete interview here, and see our previous coverage of Beyond the Pool of Stars here.

Pathfinder Tales: Beyond the Pool of Stars was published by Tor Books on October 6, 2015. It is 347 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tyler Jacobson (see the complete wraparound art here). Read more at Howard’s website.

New Treasures: Ill-considered Expeditions, edited by Neil Baker

New Treasures: Ill-considered Expeditions, edited by Neil Baker

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Ill-considered Expeditions-smallNeil Baker’s Short Sharp Shocks anthologies have proven to be a great deal of fun. Neil has a flair for an inventive premise — and, as it turns out, a real eye for writing talent. The first, Amok!, focused on the modern boogeyman, and Stomping Grounds! featured monsters causing large-scale mayhem and misery. But I think Ill-considered Expeditions is his best idea yet. Here’s Neil, from his introduction:

The faithful reader (and I know there’s at least one of you) will be well aware that my anthology themes are a frightening echo of my childhood influences, and Ill-considered Expeditions is no exception. As a child of the 60s and 70s, my visual diet included Johnny Weissmuller’s brutal Tarzan films and Ron Ely’s slightly more child-friendly TV series. I delighted in the exploits of hapless colonials hacking their way through unforgiving jungles, catching spears in the gut and falling into all manner of native traps that invariably involved impalement, boiling or splitting in half. I must admit that my most favorite moments were when the team of intelligent mountain gorillas that usually showed up along the trial hurled rocks down onto the porters, forcing the intrepid explorers to not only reconsider their decision to forge on, but to carry their own luggage.

With modern day discoveries such as the giant crystal caverns of Chihuahua, or the primeval, subterranean caves found in Vietnam, our collective imaginations are running rampant; who knows what manner of beast or secret society lurks in the uncharted shadows? What treasures await the bold? More to the point, what horrible booby-traps and grisly fates await them?

Ill-considered Expeditions (Short Sharp Shocks, Volume 3) contains 16 all-new stories from Josh Reynolds, James Dorr, Steve Foreman, Ahmed A. Khan, and others. It was published by April Moon Books on August 28, 2015. It is 228 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paper and $3.49 for the digital version. The cover is by Neil Baker. Order directly from April Moon Books.

Announcing the Winners of Carter & Lovecraft

Announcing the Winners of Carter & Lovecraft

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Carter & Lovecraft-smallEarlier this month we invited Black Gate readers to enter to win one of two pre-release copies of Jonathan L. Howard’s new novel of Lovecraftian mystery, Carter & Lovecraft, on sale this month from Thomas Dunne Books. To enter, all you had to do was submit a one-sentence suggestion for the ideal Lovecraft team-up — and what dark horrors your dream team should investigate.

We don’t have room to present all the entries here, but we can offer up some of the better ones. The very first one we received was from Jeff Lowrey, with this remarkably concise suggestion:

Gilligan and Agent 99

The mind boggles. Next up is John T. Curtis, who reaches deep into pulp history for his suggestion:

Seabury Quinn’s character Jules de Grandin and Sax Rohmer’s character Moris Klaw should team up to investigate the disappearance of Harley Warren, as related in Lovecraft’s tale “The Statement of Randolph Carter.”

Sounds like an epic TV mini-series to me. John Burt suggests something a little more modern:

A Constantine – Lovecraft teamup, where they determine whether nicotine or depression is worse.

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The Blood of Martyrs: Gaunt’s Ghosts: Sabbat Martyr

The Blood of Martyrs: Gaunt’s Ghosts: Sabbat Martyr

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Sabbat Martyr-smallI mentioned last time that, out of the Gaunt’s Ghosts series thus far, I found Straight Silver the closest thing to a weak link. I have to give credit where credit is due, though: any novel that sets up a book like Sabbat Martyr is a novel I’m glad to have found.

The Ghosts novels seem to be roughly divisible into broad arcs. The first three books, retrospectively collected as The Founding, where an introduction to the broad cast of characters and a training ground for Abnett to find his groove as an author of military science fiction. The second arc, The Saint, began with Honor Guard, and finds its completion and climax in Sabbat Martyr. Sabbat Martyr picks up on the spiritual themes of Honor Guard, as well as key subplots from Guns of Tanith and Straight Silver, and loops them all together into a book that is easily the best Ghosts novel so far, and stands among the best books of its type I’ve read.

There’s a brief page at the beginning of each book, excerpted from a later Imperial history of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, that briefly gives us a big picture of how the overall war is going. Usually, these don’t have much direct relevance to the plot, and are mostly there for flavor. The one for Sabbat Martyr, though, informs us that the Crusade is overstretched, bogged down in an assault on the key fortress world Morlond, and vulnerable to counter-attacks along its flanks. Urlock Gaur, Chaos Archon, is engaged at the front, but his lieutenants are circling like sharks to exploit weakness in the Imperial position.

In short, the Crusade needs a miracle.

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