Friday, October 24, 2014

FFB consumer's advisory bonus: two quartets of horrors for the season...

The US reader (of English) is this year offered essentially four Best of the Year volumes collecting horror and related material...I have yet to crack my copies, but I have all four...

The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Six 


The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2014 

Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume 1 

Best New Horror: 25th Anniversary Edition 
  • Editor: Stephen Jones
  • Year: 2014-11-11
  • ISBN: 978-1-62873-818-6 [1-62873-818-9]
  • Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
  • Price: $15.95 
  • Pages: 608 

  • INTRODUCTION: HORROR IN 2013 The Editor 
  • WHO DARES WINS: ANNO DRACULA 1980 Kim Newman 
  • CLICK-CLACK THE RATTLEBAG Neil Gaiman 
  • DEAD END Nicholas Royle 
  • ISAAC'S ROOM Daniel Mills 
  • THE BURNING CIRCUS Angela Slatter 
  • HOLES FOR FACES Ramsey Campbell 
  • BY NIGHT HE COULD NOT SEE Joel Lane 
  • COME INTO MY PARLOUR Reggie Oliver 
  • THE MIDDLE PARK Michael Chislett 
  • INTO THE WATER Simon Kurt Unsworth 
  • THE BURNED HOUSE Lynda E. Rucker 
  • WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT Z— Lavie Tidhar 
  • FISHFLY SEASON Halli Villegas 
  • DOLL RE MI Tanith Lee 
  • A NIGHT'S WORK Clive Barker 
  • THE SIXTEENTH STEP Robert Shearman 
  • STEMMING THE TIDE Simon Strantzas 
  • THE GIST Michael Marshall Smith 
  • GUINEA PIG GIRL Thana Niveau 
  • MISS BALTIMORE CRABS: ANNO DRACULA 1990 Kim Newman 
  • WHITSTABLE Stephen Volk 
  • NECROLOGY: 2013 Stephen Jones & Kim Newman
  • USEFUL ADRESSES 
And...recently, I was seeking a pair of short novels for a new friend, a native speaker of Spanish who loves horror and wanted preferably short novels in English she could practice her Anglophone reading with...since she's a lover of horror film, as well, my favorite duo from 1959 came to mind first, even if one is a suspense novel rather than horror (and the other is arguably so as well, with difficulty):

























...and two more became pretty obvious next choices (in rather battered first editions pictured below):











Further suggestions?

("Impure" horror collections that also came to mind:
All The Stories of Muriel Spark and 
E Pluribus Unicorn by Theodore Sturgeon)

(...and...and...)

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Maybe the Little Professor will see this.

Todd Mason said...

Or Stefan Dziemianowicz's review of the antho quartet in the September LOCUS...LOCUS should put those online after a period, I suggest...(I've been putting off reading the review till I tear into the books some...).

Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...

I do like the books you have suggested for your friend - I would add Finney's THE BODYSNATCHERS, Matheson's I AM LEGEND, Kersh's NIGHT AND THE CITY (more than borderline, but ...), James' TURN OF THE SCREW - how about the King collection, DIFFERENT SEASONS?

Prashant C. Trikannad said...

Todd, you write about sf, horror, and fantasy anthologies faster than I can scroll down! But your virtual catalogue of these books and short stories is always welcome. I read a couple of stories by Shirley Jackson—"Charles" and "The Witch"—earlier this year and I have been meaning to read "THE LOTTERY" and THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE."

Yvette said...

I, too, have been meaning to read THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE - just haven't worked up the courage. I know it is considered a masterwork of scariness. :)

Your friend came to the right source for expert recommendations.

Todd Mason said...

Sergio--I might well've thought of the Finney and the Matheson, though the Kersh might not've occurred to me in this context (NIGHTMARE ALLEY or THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, either). I should give at least "The Body" another chance, I suppose, but I don't like most of the King I've read very much...and the only reason I'd not plump for the James is that I was hoping for fairly colloquial US English...while both those novels are more than a half-century old, now, they've not aged too much in the dialog. Thanks for the suggestions!

Prashant--you will be well-served by reading any of the six writers I push beyond the quartet of annuals, and the annuals are worth seeking out in any e-book you might be able to purchase reasonably, at least...

Yvette, thanks...I suspect you'll enjoy the Jackson, or the other novels, if you try them, if you haven't yet...all but the Butler have been well-filmed (and also poorly filmed!), and the Butler got a decent long-form audio drama adaptation you can hear online.