Search Results for: Stories That Work

Goth Chick News: ‘Tis the Season for Scary Stories

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The Scary Book of Christmas Lore: 50 Terrifying Yuletide Tales from Around the World by Tim Rayborn (Cider Mill Press, November 14, 2023) Anyone who has ever read, or watched a screen-version of, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) knows that the tradition of telling ghost stories during the holidays goes back to the early Victorian era. In the 19th century, the celebration of Christmas underwent a transformation, influenced in part by the works of writers such as Charles Dickens…

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The Art and Act of Story-telling: Evenmere Tales and Other Stories by James Stoddard

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Evenmere Tales and Other Stories (Ransom House, October 23, 2023) James Stoddard, author of six novels including the delightful Evenmere trilogy (The High House, The False House, and Evenmere), has finally released a complete collection of his short stories. These stories at their best are first rate American fantasy. Even when they are not at their best, they are worth reading. Stoddard’s ambitions are extraordinary, and achieved often enough that he should be read, and read again. Stoddard’s complete collection…

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New Treasures: The Black Spaniel and Other Strange Stories by Robert Hichens

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The Black Spaniel and Other Strange Stories (Stark House, November 1, 2023) Stark House has performed an extraordinary service for lovers of classic weird fiction with their excellent line of Stark House Supernatural Classics, which has returned forgotten tales by Algernon Blackwood, Robert W. Chambers, and many others into print in handsome and inexpensive paperback editions. They’ve produced more than a dozen titles over the last seventeen years, with no sign of slowing. Stark House doesn’t specialize in supernatural fiction….

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Feminine Horror Works Better: A Darker Shade of Noir edited by Joyce Carol Oates

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A Darker Shade of Noir (Akashic Books, August 22, 2023) Among the plethora of new anthologies of horror stories continuously produced by little-known editors, minor authors and obscure publishers, where very few tales are worth reading, here’s finally an above average anthology. Devoted to so called “body horror” and including only women authors, the volume is edited by Joyce Carol Oates, a well respected, famous writer herself, who certainly demonstrates her good taste in her selection of the stories. Her…

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Nerve Gas, Neighborhood Witches, and Forbidden Forests:The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series XI, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series XI (DAW, November 1983). Cover by Michael Whelan The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XI was the fourth volume in this series edited by horror author and editor Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994). It was copyrighted and printed in 1983 and was the eleventh volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories. (We’re half way through the 22-year series!) Michael Whelan’s (1950–) artwork appears for a ninth time in a row. Whelan’s horror art is always…

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Monsters, Mech Warriors, and More: Startling Stories Magazine, 2022 Issue

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The first two issues of Startling Stories in 65 years, courtesy of Wildside Press and Douglas Draa. Covers: uncredited, and GrandeDuc. One of the big news stories of last year was the return of Startling Stories, the legendary science fiction pulp mag of the 40s and 50s, which published classic SF by Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Vance, Leigh Brackett, Fletcher Pratt, Henry Kuttner, A.E. van Vogt, Manly Wade Wellman, Edmond Hamilton, Stanley G, Weinbaum, and numerous others. The new venture…

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Some Tales from Night’s Plutonian Shore: My Favorite Edgar Allan Poe Stories

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I do not have a precise memory of when I first read one of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales. Perhaps it was a bowdlerized version of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” perhaps “Some Words With a Mummy” in one of my grandmother’s Reader’s Digest omnibuses. It might have been the Classic Comics version of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” I definitely saw most of the Roger Corman movie adaptations with Vincent Price on the 4:30 Movie on ABC. I…

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Haunted Trains and the Rock-and-Roll Afterlife: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X (DAW, August 1982). Cover by Michael Whelan The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X was the tenth volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, copyrighted and printed in 1982. A whole decade for this anthology thus far! This was the third volume edited by horror author and editor Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994). Michael Whelan’s (1950–) artwork appears for an eighth time in a row on the cover. This is one of his eeriest…

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Cemetery Cats and Sinister Catacombs: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IX, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IX edited by Karl Edward Wagner (DAW 1981). Cover by Michael Whelan The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IX was the ninth volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, copyrighted and printed in 1981. This was the second volume edited by horror author and editor Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994). Michael Whelan’s (1950–) artwork appears for a seventh time in a row on the cover. I continue to be very impressed with Whelan’s artistic diversity…

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Westside Stories: The Gilda Carr Tiny Mystery Fantasies by W.M. Akers

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Westside, Westside Saints, and Westside Lights (Harper Voyager, 2019, 2020, and 2022). Cover designs by Owen Corrigan. First I heard of W.M. Akers’ Westside books was when Jeff Somers blurbed the first volume for the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of May 2019 at The Barnes & Noble Sci-fi & Fantasy Blog. Here’s what he said. In an alternate 1920s Manhattan in which a heavily fortified wall running along Broadway divides the island into Eastside, where the normal laws of…

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