In this latest edition of THE WORLD S LONGEST-RUNNING ANNUAL SHOWCASE OF HORROR AND DARK FANTASY you will find cutting-edge stories by such authors as Helen Marshall, Conrad Williams, Ramsey Campbell, Angela Slatter, Reggie Oliver and Than Niveau, amongst many others, along with the usual Introduction: Horror in 2017 and Necrology of those who have left us. CONTENTS Introduction: Horror in 2017 THE EDITOR Survival Strategies HELEN MARSHALL Cwtch CONRAD WILLIAMS Lagan GEMMA FILES The Entertainment Arrives ALISON LITTLEWOOD His Heart Shall Speak No More JOHN LINWOOD GRANT Banishments RICHARD GAVIN The Flower Unfolds SIMON STRANTZAS The Voice of the People ALISON MOORE Carnivorous WILLIAM F. NOLAN A Song of Dust ANGELA SLATTER Border Country DANNY RHODES In Stone TIM LEBBON Speaking Still RAMSEY CAMPBELL Underwater Ferris Wheel MICHAEL BAILEY In the Complex MARK SAMUELS After Sunset, in the Second Drawing Room Garden FELICE PICANO Dispossession NICHOLAS ROYLE The Endless Corridor REGGIE OLIVER Whatever You Want STEVE RASNIC TEM The Seventeen-Year Itch GARTH NIX To Drown the World THANA NIVEAU Necrology: 2017 STEPHEN JONES &amp; KIM NEWMAN

Best New Horror #29 [Trade Paperback]

Literature & Fiction

Stephen Jones

Steve Rasnic Tem

William F. Nolan

Tim Lebbon

Alison Littlewood

Angela Slatter

Helen Marshall

Simon Strantzas

Reggie Oliver

Garth, Nix

Ramsey, Campbell

Genre Fiction

Drugstore Indian Press

ABOUT THIS BOOK The six volumes in the Black Wings series, from which these Best of tales are selected, stand as a monument to H. P. Lovecraft s incalculable and unassailable influence on contemporary weird fiction, and so the time seemed right for a retrospective volume that exhibits the choicest items from the series. The task of selection was not a simple or straightforward one, for every tale in the series had some claim to be chosen; let it then be said that this volume does not contain necessarily the best stories, but rather the most representative stories in the series. If this selection leads readers back to the many other tales featured in those volumes, then its purpose will have been adequately served. S. T. Joshi Contents Lesser Demons Norman Partridge Howling in the Dark Darrell Schweitzer Passing Spirits Sam Gafford When Death Wakes Me to Myself John Shirley The Abject Richard Gavin Dahlias Melanie Tem Bloom John Langan Thistle s Find Simon Strantzas Houdini Fish Jonathan Thomas Artifact Fred Chappell Cult of the Dead Lois H. Gresh The Dark Sea Within Jason V Brock Night of the Piper Ann K. Schwader The Woman in the Attic Robert H. Waugh The Walker in the Night Jason C. Eckhardt The Organ of Chaos Donald Tyson Voodoo Stephen Woodworth The Shard Don Webb To Move Beneath Autumnal Oaks W. H. Pugmire Lore Wade Germa

Best of Black Wings

JOHN LANGAN

Lois H. Gresh

John Shirley

Norman Partridge

Darrell Schweitzer

Melanie Tem

Jason V Brock

S.T. Joshi

Ann K. Schwader

Sam Gafford

PS Publishing

SYNOPSISH. P. Lovecraft (1890 1937), the pioneering writer of weird fiction, has himself become an icon in popular culture. Stories, novels, and other works featuring the gaunt, lantern-jawed gentleman from Providence, Rhode Island, have proliferated. These works have been triggered by the incredible amount of knowledge we have on the writer his family, his friends, his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities as found in his thousands of surviving letters. This anthology takes the figure of Lovecraft and enmeshes him in a series of bizarre and supernatural adventures. Darrell Schweitzer focuses on Lovecraft s childhood, when he was plagued with dreams of night-gaunts and was left bereft by the early death of his father. John Shirley depicts Lovecraft as a gawky teenager evolving his notions of cosmicism, while Scott Wiley emphasises Lovecraft s devotion to cats. Stephen Woodworth and Donald R. Burleson ring changes on the Lovecraftian theme of personality exchange. Lovecraft famously collaborated with Harry Houdini on a story. Donald Tyson and Jonathan Thomas write very different stories on the association of these two figures. Mark Samuels focuses on Lovecraft s creation of imaginary tomes of forbidden lore, while the stories by Richard Gavin, David Hambling, Jason V Brock, and S. T. Joshi supply broader ruminations on the origins of Lovecraft s revolutionary motifs. While eschewing Lovecraft himself as a character, the tales by W. H. Pugmire and Simon Strantzas exhibit figures who reveal strikingly Lovecraftian elements while probing the psyche of the man from Providence. H. P. Lovecraft s work has captured the imaginations of millions and now he himself has become no less fascinating. In every sense of the word he was, as Vincent Starrett said of him, his own most fantastic creation.

His Own Most Fantastic Creation: Stories about H. P. Lovecraft

Donald Tyson

Donald R. Burleson

David Hambling

Jonathan Thomas

Richard Gavin

W.H. Pugmire

Scott Wiley

Harry Houdini

Mark Samuels

stephen-woodworth

SYNOPSIS This fourth instalment of S. T. Joshi s acclaimed Black Wings series features seventeen stories that continue to elaborate upon the conceptions, motifs, and imagery of H. P. Lovecraft, the most influential writer of weird fiction of the past hundred years. One of Lovecraft s favourite themes was the tale of archaeological horror, where venturesome explorers unearth hideous secrets of the ancient past that cast a baleful light on the fragility of our own existence. In this volume, a major new novella by the award-winning novelist and poet Fred Chappell, Artifact, treats this theme with his customary panache and subtlety, while other writers such as Richard Gavin, Lois H. Gresh, Ann K. Schwader, and Donald Tyson broach the same theme in their own distinctive and diverse ways. The cosmicism that was at the core of Lovecraft s vision finds vivid realisation in stories by Caitlín R. Kiernan, Cody Goodfellow, and Melanie Tem. John Pelan and Stephen Mark Rainey have co-written a vivid novelette fusing horror and science fiction, while Will Murray s tale of governmental espionage leads to a conclusion that bodes ill for the fate of the human race. Lovecraft was skilled at evoking the terrors inherent in the history and topography of his native New England, and several writers in this volume notably W. H. Pugmire and Jonathan Thomas do the same. Jason V Brock finds Lovecraftian terror in Prague, just as Gary Fry locates it in the British countryside. Lovecraft s patented motif of the forbidden book that reveals secrets too horrible to contemplate is the focus of Darrell Schweitzer s story of what can be found in an out-of-the-way bookstore, while stories by Simon Strantzas and Stephen Woodworth elaborate on the Lovecraftian themes of immortal gods and of dreams that reveal unwelcome truths about ourselves. The book s final contribution, by Charles Lovecraft, is nothing less than a recasting of Lovecraft s early tale The Lurking Fear in a cycle of twelve sonnets. Black Wings IV shows that H. P. Lovecraft continues to inspire some of today s leading writers of weird fiction.

Black Wings IV - More Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

Caitlin, R., Kiernan

Gary Fry

Revised and expanded, the startling debut of Simon Strantzas resurfaces with tales of dark gods and monsters of the flesh, emissaries from a world beneath our own. Here, a man searches for truth in a universe that has forsaken him and pays the price for that knowledge, and a woman without hope travels northward to find the place where her life fell to pieces and discovers of what she is truly made. They say no man is an island, no matter how much he wishes to be, but what then is that ship that sails toward him, and what pray tell is lashed to its bow? These are tales that infect our dreams, tales of things that live beyond our understanding and watch us with malignant indifference. They are tales of grief, of loneliness, of guilt. Tales of the liminal places that separate our world from that other world, the world to which our souls are merely a gateway. Come inside and witness what resides in us all, deep down beneath the surface.Foreword by Matt Cardin"One of the most important debut short story collections in the genre." -- Stephen Jones

Beneath The Surface

Dark Regions Press

Beneath the Surface

Humdrumming

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Books by Simon Strantzas