Black Gate

Matthew Hughes’ novels include the To Hell and Back trilogy (Damned Busters, Costume Not Included, and Hell to Pay), Gullible’s Travels, The Other, and his Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira). He also writes crime fiction as Matt Hughes, and media tie-in novels as Hugh Matthews.

I’ve been extremely impressed with his short fiction, which has been collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories (2005), The Meaning of Luff (2013), and Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (2013). His newest self-published collection, Devil or Angel and Other Stories, is subtitled “Old-Style Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales.” It includes 16 stories that originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, and a smattering of anthologies. One story, “Ant Lion,” appears here for the first time. Hughes is one of the best short fiction writers working in fantasy today, especially if you’re a fan of the classic space-opera style of Jack Vance.

Devil or Angel and Other Stories was self-published by Matthew Hughes on July 30, 2015. It is 264 pages, priced at $12.99 in paperback and $3.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Bradley W. Schenck.

Christopher Buehlman’s debut novel Those Across the River (2011) was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and Charlaine Harris called it “one of the best first novels I’ve ever read.” He followed up with Between Two Fires (2012), the tale of a disgraced knight coming face-to-face with apocalyptic horror in 1348, and The Necromancer’s House (2013), the story of a modern sorcerer on the run from a monster straight out of Russian folklore.

His newest novel, The Lesser Dead, was published in hardcover in 2014, and released in trade paperback late last year. It was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award for best novel, and won the American Library Association’s Best Horror Novel of the Year award. It’s the story of a secret colony of vampires in New York City who find themselves being preyed on by something far darker than themselves….

New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live. And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody — he has spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city’s sidewalks.

The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It’s almost too easy.

Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him…or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.

And neither are the rest of us.

The Lesser Dead was published by Berkley on October 6, 2015. It is 368 pages, priced at $16, or $11.99 for the digital edition.

The Library of America has made a fine business of publishing archival quality omnibus editions of the most important novels of the 20th Century. We’ve covered several here recently, including:

A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny, edited by Peter Straub

They’ve also published omnibus editions of Kurt Vonnegut, Dashiell Hammett, Philip K. Dick, Ross Macdonald, David Goodis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. I received several review copies in the mail from Library of America recently, including one of their Elmore Leonard collections. It’s been years since I’ve read anything by Leonard, but then again, it’s been a long time since I’ve held something as enticing as these collections. If you’re looking to put together an impressive genre library, this is the place to start.

Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s was published on August 28, 2014. It contains Fifty-Two Pickup, Swag, Unknown Man, and The Switch; it is 809 pages, priced at $35 in hardcover. Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1980s was published on September 1, 2015. It contains City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, and Freaky Deaky; it is 1024 pages, priced at $37.50 in hardcover. There are no digital editions.

Do you remember when vampires were terrifying creatures of the night? Not moody boyfriends who sparkled in sunlight, or lovers who assisted their tough private investigator girlfriends in a series of encounters with deadly yet also strangely sexy werewolves and other paranormal beasts?

I sure do. And so does Christopher Golden, editor of the new anthology Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, which gathers tales of terror in which vampires are figures of overwhelming terror once more. It includes brand new stories from Charlaine Harris, Scott Smith, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Michael Kortya, Kelley Armstrong, Brian Keene, David Wellington, Seanan McGuire, and Tim Lebbon. This is old-school vampire fiction, for fans who wouldn’t have it any other way.

Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror was published by Gallery Books on October 6, 2015. It is 544 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $13.99 for the digital edition. Click on the images above for larger versions of the front and back covers.

As 2015 went by, I found myself more and more impressed with Michael Kelly and his team at Undertow Publications. They do the kind of work that no one else is doing, exemplary books like Year’s Best Weird Fantasy, Volumes One and Two, the impressive tribute anthology Aickman’s Heirs, and their acclaimed annual journal of the fantastic, Shadows & Tall Trees.

So I was pleased to see that they also publish short story collections — including the debut collection of supernatural and ghost stories from V. H. Leslie, Skein and Bone. Leslie’s stories have appeared in Black Static, Interzone, Shadows & Tall Trees, Weird Fiction Review and other places, and she was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award in 2014, for her novelette “The Quiet Room.” She’s an up-and-coming weird fiction writer whom I’ve heard a lot about, and I’m glad to have a chance to sample some of her latest work, all in one convenient package.

Skein and Bone was published by Undertow Publications on July 17, 2015. It is 290 pages, priced at $18.99 in trade paperback. There is a digital edition available through Smashwords. The gorgeous wraparound cover is by Vince Haig. See all the details at the Undertow website.