Search Results for: Valancourt

Vintage Treasures: The Perfect Lover by Christopher Priest

Cover by Walter Bachinsky Christopher Priest is one of the most celebrated modern British science fiction authors. He won a World Fantasy Award for his 1995 novel The Prestige (filmed under the same name in 2006 by Christopher Nolan, with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale), the British Science Fiction Award award for Best Novel no less than four times (for Inverted World, The Extremes, The Separation, and The Islanders), and he’s been nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel,…

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New Treasures: Figures Unseen by Steve Rasnic Tem

I’m still sorting through all the books I brought back from the World Fantasy Convention this year (which is kinda par for the course — it usually takes me 4-8 months to unpack from that con). Based on reading time and enjoyment over the past few months, my most productive period of the entire convention was the 10 minutes I spent in the Valancourt Booth. I’ve already talked about several of the books I purchased there, including Michael McDowell’s The Complete Blackwater…

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The Return of a Fantasy Landmark: The Unfortunate Fursey by Mervyn Wall

While I was standing in front of the Valancourt Books booth at the World Fantasy Convention (so I could buy a copy of the classic horror novel The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight, as I reported last week), I took the time to look over all their latest releases. Valancourt is one of the great treasures of the genre — their editorial team has excellent taste, and they scour 20th Century paperback backlists to bring long-neglected classics back into print….

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A Spectacularly Gruesome Nasty: The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight

I first discovered Valancourt Books at their wondrous booth in the Dealer’s Room of the 2014 World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC (I wrote about that revelatory find here.) So as soon as I entered the Dealer’s Room at this year’s WFC in Baltimore I searched them out, and was delighted to find them with a well-stocked booth again this year. I stocked up on several of their recent releases, including a new collection from Steve Rasnic Tem, Michael McDowell’s creepy novel Cold Moon Over Babylon,…

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New Treasures: Blackwater: The Complete Saga by Michael McDowell

Last year author Nathan Ballingrud dashed off a brief Facebook post about Michael McDowell’s 6-volume Blackwater series, originally published in paperback by Avon in 1983. Nathan said, in part: I’m in the midst of reading Blackwater, by Michael McDowell. It is, you might say, as if The Shadow over Innsmouth was written as a generational family saga set in rural Alabama. It is strange, funny, warm, and frightening, and a true pleasure to read. That triggered a lengthy quest for the books,…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. Photo by Liz Duffy Adams June was a big month for interviews at Black Gate. Our top articles were interviews, and our roving reporter Joe Bonadonna placed two in the Top Ten — a lengthy conversation with Author T.C. Rypel (the Gonji series) at #2, and a free-wheeling conversation with two editors of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Adrian Simmons and David Farney, at #8. And the #1 article for the month was Elizabeth Crowens’s enchanting conversation with the…

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New Treasures: The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories by Robert Aickman

Robert Aickman was one of the finest horror writers in our field. He received the World Fantasy Award in 1975, and the British Fantasy Award in 1981, the year he died. Not familiar with Aickman? Great! There’s never been a better time to try him. The marvelous Valancourt Books has returned much of his work to print, including The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories, an omnibus collection of his early work, released in hardcover and an affordable trade paperback format last week….

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The Wonders of Fairwood Press

I first met Patrick Swenson, publisher and editorial mastermind at Fairwood Press, back in the late 90s. I think it might have been James Van Pelt who introduced us, after I wrote a review of Patrick’s magazine, TaleBones. I helped Patrick negotiate with a squatter who was sitting on the address he wanted for his website (unsuccessfully, as I recall.) At the time, Fairwood Press was a small press underdog, with only a handful of titles to its name, but a fast-growing reputation….

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A Southern Tale of Spectral Revenge: Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell

Leave it to Valancourt Books to produce the first reprint of Michael McDowell’s spooky southern gothic Cold Moon Over Babylon. It was originally published in paperback by Avon in February 1980 (above left and middle, cover artist unknown). Stephen King called McDowell “The finest writer of paperback originals in America.” McDowell’s other novels include the Blackwater series, The Amulet (1979), and Toplin (1985). I first discovered him with the Valancourt reprint of The Elementals (1981). I was standing in front of the Valancourt booth…

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Nathan Ballingrud on Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings

A few days ago, I came across this concise review by Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters and The Visible Filth. I just finished reading Burnt Offerings, by Robert Marasco. Forty-three years after its publication, it still packs a wallop. Second only to Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House in my personal pantheon of haunted house novels. Respect to Valancourt Books for bringing it, along with so many other forgotten horror novels, back into print. (Also, check out that…

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