Search Worlds Without End

Ramsey Campbell is perhaps the world's most honored author of horror fiction. He has won four World Fantasy Awards, ten British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, and the Horror Writers' Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Three decades into his career, Campbell paused to review his body of short fiction and selected the stories that were, to his mind, the very best of his works. Alone With the Horrors collects nearly forty tales from the first thirty years of Campbell's writing, including several award-winners.

Campbell crowns the book with a length preface-revised for this edition-which traces his early publication history, discusses his youthful correspondence with August Derleth, and illuminates the influence of H.P. Lovecraft on his work.

Alone With the Horrors provides readers with a close look at a powerful writer's development of his craft.

A colleague's violent death and its apparent cause--a stolen copy of an old, never-released Karloff/Lugosi film--set film editor Sandy Allan on the trail of the film's origins and history. Mystery surrounds the movie, and as Sandy learns of the tragedies which haunted its production, she finds herself threatened by an ancient force protecting secrets deeper than the suppression of a 50-year-old movie.

When his father disappears, Gavin Meadows's search uncovers a race of semihuman beings that have existed in, and under, the city for centuries.

A brilliant collection of stories by one of the masters of horror.

Not all companions are friendly. There are many that you most definitely do not want to see. When Elaine was working late at the office, she thought she was all alone. But something sinister was in the elevator shaft... working its way to her floor. Miles, too, thought he was alone in his new house, the house of a murderer, but he, too, had an unwanted companion. And Knox will never forget what was waiting for him in the dense fog.

Come and meet all of these companions and more in this chilling collection of horror tales by award-winning master of terror Ramsey Campbell. That clawing sound you hear, the haunting singing, the moving shadow--they all mean that something is waiting to make your acquaintance.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Ramsey Campbell
• Mackintosh Willy - (1979) - short story
• The Proxy - (1979) - short story
• The Companion - (1976) - short story
• The Chimney - (1977) - short story
• Conversion - (1977) - short story
• The Depths - novelette
• The Show Goes On - short story
• Down There - (1978) - short story
• Heading Home - (1978) - short story
• Drawing In - (1978) - short story
• Calling Card - (1982) - short story
• Call First - (1975) - short story
• In the Bag - (1977) - short story
• The Pattern - (1976) - novelette
• Napier Court - (1971) - short story
• The Little Voice - (1978) - novelette
• Out of Copyright - (1980) - short story
• Above the World - (1979) - short story
• Baby - (1976) - short story
• The Puppets - novelette
• The Invocation - short story

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1987) - essay
• The Room in the Castle - (1964) - shortstory
• Cold Print - (1969) - shortstory
• The Scar - (1969) - shortstory
• The Interloper - (1973) - shortstory
• The Guy - (1973) - shortstory
• The End of a Summer's Day - (1973) - shortstory
• The Whining - (1974) - shortstory
• The Words That Count - (1976) - shortstory
• The Man in the Underpass - (1975) - shortstory
• Horror House of Blood - (1976) - shortstory
• The Companion - (1976) - shortstory
• Call First - (1975) - shortstory
• In the Bag - (1977) - shortstory
• The Chimney - (1977) - shortstory
• The Brood - (1980) - shortstory
• The Voice of the Beach - (1982) - novelette
• Out of Copyright - (1980) - shortstory
• Above the World - (1979) - shortstory
• Mackintosh Willy - (1979) - shortstory
• The Ferries - (1982) - shortstory
• Midnight Hobo - (1979) - shortstory
• The Depths - (1982) - novelette
• The Fit - (1980) - shortstory
• Hearing Is Believing - (1981) - shortstory
• The Hands - (1986) - shortstory
• Again - (1981) - shortstory
• Just Waiting - (1983) - shortstory
• Seeing the World - (1984) - shortstory
• Apples - (1986) - shortstory
• Boiled Alive - (1986) - shortstory

Fellstones takes its name from seven objects on the village green. It's where Paul Dunstan was adopted by the Staveleys after his parents died in an accident for which he blames himself. The way the Staveleys tried to control him made him move away and change his name. Why were they obsessed with a strange song he seemed to have made up as a child?

Now their daughter Adele has found him. By the time he discovers the cosmic truth about the stones, he may be trapped. There are other dark secrets he'll discover, and memories to confront. The Fellstones dream, but they're about to waken.

A Chilling new anthology of all-original tales of horror

Includes New Stories by:

• Ray Bradbury
• Graham Joyce
• Peter Crowther
• Kim Newman
• Sara Douglass
• Thomas Tessier
• M. John Harrison
• Gahan Wilson

The anthology market these days is awash with small, themed works focused on very specific markets, like vampire erotica and tales of werewolves, or it features best of the year reprints. It has been years since anyone has dared to bring out a broad-reaching anthology that seeks to define the current state of the genre with all original tales from both masters and hot new writers.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2003) - essay by Ramsey Campbell and Jack Dann and Dennis Etchison
• The Hanged Man of Oz - (2003) - short story by Steve Nagy
• The Bone Ship - (2003) - short story by Terry Dowling
• Li'l Miss Ultrasound - (2003) - novelette by Robert Devereaux
• The Intervention - (2003) - short story by Kim Newman
• Blake's Angel - (2003) - short story by Janeen Webb
• The Obedient Child - (2003) - short story by George Clayton Johnson
• Sounds Like - (2003) - short story by Mike O'Driscoll
• The Wind Sall Blow for Ever Mair - (2003) - short story by Stephen Dedman
• "The Mezzotint" - (2003) - short story by Lisa Tuttle
• The Lords of Zero - (2003) - short story by Tony Richards
• Smoke City - (2003) - short story by Russell Blackford
• Moments of Change - (2003) - short story by Thomas Tessier
• The Big Green Grin - (2003) - short story by Gahan Wilson
• The Big Green Grin - interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• Both And - (2003) - short story by Gary Fry
• Love Is a Stone - (2003) - short story by Simon Brown
• Memento Mori - (2003) - short story by Ray Bradbury
• The Mistress of Marwood Hagg - (2003) - short story by Sara Douglass
• The Right Men - (2003) - short story by Michael Marshall Smith
• The Raptures of the Deep - (2003) - short story by Rosaleen Love
• Out Late in the Park - (2003) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Bedfordshire - (2003) - novelette by Peter Crowther
• Mr Sly Stops for a Cup of Joe - short fiction by Scott Emerson Bull
• Finishing School - (2003) - short story by Cherry Wilder
• Jennifer's Turn - (2003) - short story by Fruma Klass
• Mother's Milk - (2003) - short story by Adam Nevill
• No Man's Land - (2003) - short story by Chris Lawson and Simon Brown
• The Watcher at the Window - (2003) - short story by Donald R. Burleson
• Coming of Age - (2003) - short story by Joel Lane
• Picking Up Courtney - (2002) - short story by Tim Waggoner
• Watchmen - (2003) - short story by Aaron Sterns
• Gardens - (2003) - short story by Melanie Tem
• Under the Bright and Hollow Sky - (2003) - novelette by Andrew J. Wilson
• The Dove Game - (2003) - novelette by Isobelle Carmody
• Tiger Moth - (2003) - short story by Graham Joyce
• About the Authors - essay by uncredited
• About the Editors - essay by uncredited

Ramsey Campbell's Ghosts Know is a fascinating exploration of the twists and turns of reality-media personalities, the line between the dead and the living... and how the truth can be twisted to serve all manner of reality.

Graham Wilde is a contentious, bombastic host of the talk radio program Wilde Card. His job, as he sees it, is to stir the pot, and he is quite good at it, provoking many a heated call with his eccentric and often irrational audience. He invites Frank Jasper, a purported psychic, to come on the program. He firmly believes that the man is a charlatan, albeit a talented one. When Jasper appears on his show, Wilde draws upon personal knowledge about the man to embarrass him on air, using patter similar to that which Jasper utilizes in his act.

Wilde's attack on Jasper earns him the enmity of his guest and some of the members of his audience. He next encounters Jasper when the psychic is hired by the family of a missing adolescent girl to help them find her. Wilde is stunned and then horrified when Jasper seems to suggest that he might be behind the girl's disappearance.

Thus begins a nightmarish journey as circumstantial evidence against Wilde begins to mount, alienating his listeners, the radio station, and eventually, his lover. As Wilde descends into a pit of despair, reality and fantasy begin to blur in a kaleidoscope of terror....

One of the most respected living horror writers in the world, Campbell has more awards for his horror tales than any other author, and "is likely to be remembered as the leading horror writer of our generation," according to S.T. Joshi. One of the heirs apparent to early-twentieth-century American author H. P. Lovecraft, Campbell's horror stories are often set in contemporary Merseyside, England, his own hometown, and involve quite ordinary characters. His unsettling, dreamlike prose, however, transforms his work into very effective horror fiction.

Holes for Faces collects many of his best tales from the first decade of this century. An attempt to avoid a haunted house leads into worse danger. The announcements at a railway station deal with stranger things than trains, and is that another railway station in the distance or a different kind of destination? A childhood game becomes a source of terror, and so does a radio quiz show. Even Christmas decorations may not be trusted, and beware of that Advent calendar! A hotel provides amenities you mightn't welcome, and a visit to a tourist attraction attracts an uninvited follower. A train journey may never end, unless it already has, and a visit to a hospital brings back more than memories. A myth about a horror film has unwanted consequences. There are angels you mightn't want to see too clearly, if that's what they are. And you'll have to decide if it's better to stay in the dark or see what's waiting there. You'll find uncanny dread in these pages, and disquiet and terror, but also poignancy and comedy of paranoia. One theme runs through all the stories: youth and age.

Table of Contents:

• Passing Through Peacehaven - (2011)
• Peep - (2007)
• Getting It Wrong - (2011)
• The Room Beyond - (2011)
• Holes for Faces - (2013)
• The Rounds - (2010)
• The Decorations - (2005)
• The Address - (2012)
• Recently Used - (2011)
• Chucky Comes to Liverpool - (2010)
• With the Angels - (2010)
• Behind the Doors - (2013)
• Holding the Light - (2011)
• The Long Way - (2008)

When an experiment in prophetic dreaming begins to go wrong, it is immediately aborted. Many years later hallucinations invade the lives of the original participants and one by one they succumb to a diabolical force that threatens more than their lives.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology More Devil's Kisses (1977) edited by Linda Lovecraft. The story can also be found in the collections Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and Death (1987) and Alone with the Horrors (1993).

World Fantasy Award winning short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Shadows 2 (1979), edited by Charles L. Grant. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Dark Descent: The Evolution of Horror (1987), edited by David G. Hartwell, and The Century's Best Horror Fiction 1951-2000 (2012), edited by John Pelan. It is included in the collections Dark Companions (1982) and Alone with the Horrors (1993).

Ben Sterling brings his wife and children to his childhood village, where in a great forest, an old house holds the promise of all their dreams. But among the pines something seems to be gathering, glittering in the icy air.

The emotional turmoil of a teenage girl's adolescence is matched by her father's midlife crisis, and it becomes clear that this battle is only one stage in a centuries-old war between authority and rebellion, innocence and suspicion.

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos) - essay by Ramsey Campbell
• 3 - Crouch End - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by Stephen King
• 33 - The Star Pools - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by A. A. Attanasio
• 73 - The Second Wish - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by Brian Lumley
• 101 - Dark Awakening - [Cthulhu Mythos] - shortstory by Frank Belknap Long
• 115 - Shaft Number 247 - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by Basil Copper
• 145 - Black Man with a Horn - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by T. E. D. Klein
• 187 - The Black Tome of Alsophocus - [Cthulhu Mythos] - shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft and Martin S. Warnes
• 197 - Than Curse the Darkness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by David Drake
• 223 - The Faces at Pine Dunes - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by Ramsey Campbell
• 255 - Notes on Contributors (New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos) - essay by uncredited

The deal seemed too good to be true. Until it came time to pay.

The letters said, "Whatever you most need, I do. The price is something that you do not value and which you may regain." To four teenagers, it seemed an offer too good to pass up. They filled out the enclosed forms. Indeed, they soon got what they needed most, but in shocking ways they never imagined.

Twenty-five years later, they have never been able to forget the horror. But it's not over yet. In fact, it's about to get much worse. Now it's time to pay the price.

Daniella Logan, daughter of a film impresario, is stunned to see a group of robed men performing a ritual above the newly-turned earth of her father's grave. Daniella's father and his friends--politicians, newspaper magnates, highly-paid actors, top-flight surgeons, high-ranking police officials, and many more--are bound by an unholy blood pact that calls for the sacrifice of their first born children. Now, the more she learns, the more Daniella makes herself a target. But she must not be silenced, for she is not the only firstborn in danger, only the oldest.

Here, gathered for the first time in a single volume, are seven stories that portray a world in which love has gone terribly awry--where unholy desires lead to chaos, madness and death. From the bestselling author of Obsession, The Hungry Moon and Incarnate.

Table of Contents:

• The Bare Bones: An Introduction - (1987) - essay by Clive Barker
• Dolls - (1976) - novelette
• The Other Woman - (1976) - novelette
• Lilith's - (1976) - short story
• The Seductress - (1977) - novelette
• Stages - (1987) - novelette
• Loveman's Comeback - (1977) - novelette
• Merry May - (1987) - novelette

Later editions also include:

• The Limits of Fantasy - (1992) - short story
• The Body in the Window - (1995) - short story
• Kill Me Hideously - (1997) - short story

You're an underpaid civil servant who dreams of chucking it all to become a famous author. You live with your overbearing mother who always seems to interrupt when you're writing a key scene. Your imagination is dark, your inspiration the terrible things that happen to can happen to a young woman traveling alone....

Your terrifying short story about a horrible murder on an underground train is to be published. Even better, it will be made into a movie. A pretty young journalist is pursuing you.

Except.

You've been fired.

The journalist wants an interview, not a date.

The film's director wants you to make a few changes in your story.

And, worst of all, your imagination has run dry.

You'll just have to kill someone new...

Once upon a time there was a man who loved children. He loved them so much he tried to save them from their imperfect parents. Unfortunately, Hector Woollie didn't work for Child Protective Services... and the children he rescued, he murdered.

Once upon a time, Leslie had a happy marriage, a happy son, and a happy life. Now divorced, she is trapped in ongoing battles with her ex-husband, Roger, especially over their newly-adolescent son, Ian.

When Ian and his young stepsister disappear, Roger insists the boy kidnapped the girl, while Leslie thinks Ian might have run away. She prays that her son is near and will come home soon.

Ian is near-right next door, just on the other side of a shared wall. Ian can hear his parents fighting and his mother's desperate weeping, but he can't call for help. Hector Woollie has him and his stepsister, and if either child makes a peep, the madman will slit both their throats.

WFA winning short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror (1977), edited by Stuart David Schiff. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Twelve Frights of Christmas (1986), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Carol-Lynn Rössel Waugh, Urban Horrors (1990), edited by William F. Nolan and Martin H. Greenberg, and The Mammoth Book of New Terror (2004), edited by Stephen Jones. It is included in the collections Dark Companions (1982), Dark Feasts: The World of Ramsey Campbell (1987) and Alone with the Horrors (1993).

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Frights (1976), edited by Kirby McCauley, and was reprinted in Nightmare Magazine, July 2013. The story can also be found in the anthologies The World Fantasy Awards, Volume Two (1980), edited by Stuart David Schiff and Fritz Leiber, and The Arbor House Celebrity Book of Horror Stories (1982), edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collections Dark Companions (1982), Dark Feasts: The World of Ramsey Campbell (1987) and Alone with the Horrors (1993).

Read the full story for free at Nightmare.

Just when he feels that his life is on the right track, Jack Orchard finds that a chain letter he has thrown away has brought him terrible luck, and he is determined to make things right again by keeping the chain going, no matter what.

For decades the lives of the Price family have been snarled with the fate of the ancient forest of Goodmanswood. There, Dr. Lennox Price discovered an hallucinogenic moss which quickly became the focus of a cult. Though the moss is long gone, the whole forest can now affect the minds of visitors.

After Lennox is killed trying to return to his beloved wood, his widow sees and hears him in the trees-or is it a dark version of the Green Man that caresses her with leafy hands? Lennox's grandson heeds a call to lie in his lover's arms in the very heart of the forest-and cannot help but wonder what the fruit of that love will be.

And Heather, Lennox's daughter, who turned her back on her father's mysteries and sought sanctuary in the world of facts and history? Goodmanswood summons her as well...

It was a freak accident. The man had suddenly stepped into the road, and the breaks had failed. Clare could only steer wildly, the car finally crashing into a tree and on to the kerb. Now her brother Rob was dead, silent in the passenger seat, slumped against the door. He died of massive head injuries.

But there was something else, something that at first she couldn't quite grasp, that seemed in explicable. His right arm was missing. Gone. Someone had taken it.

A former professor offers film critic Simon the chance of a lifetime-to write a book on one of the greatest long-lost comedians of the silent-film era, Tubby Thackeray. Simon is determined to find out the truth behind the jolly fat man's disappearance from film-and from the world.

Tubby's work carries the unmistakable stamp of the macabre. People literally laughed themselves to death during his performances. Soon, wherever Simon goes, laughter-and a clown's wide, threatening grin-follow. Is Simon losing his mind? Or is Tubby Thackeray waiting for him to open the door back to the world?

Campbell's seventh novel is set in Northern England, in the small bleak town of Moonwell, edged by moors pitted with treacherous mineshafts. To Moonwell comes the preacher Godwin Mann, whose particularly intolerant brand of fundamentalism appeals to the inhabitants. They rally almost as one behind him and ostracize and persecute the few independent souls who do not.

Mann descends into the pit in which the ancient malignant being worshipped by the Druids millenia past is said to dwell. Intending to exorcise the demon and claim the land for God, he is instead overwhelmed. What emerges from the pit is the monstrous creature, clothed now in the flesh of Mann, and it is only the town's pariahs who can see that something is radically wrong, that an evil has been unleashed on the community.

Slowly Moonwell is isolated from the world, as telephone lines break down, a cloud cover brings continuous darkness, watches and clocks stop, roads mysteriously lead nowhere. And within this isolation, the monster's power grows unimpeded.

An elderly spinster dies, leaving her English country estate to a poverty-stricken niece and her family, who pay dearly the true price of the inheritance, in this story of a woman's search for immortality.

In Ramsey Campbell's The Kind Folk, fairies are real... and they're coming for you.

Luke Arnold is a successful stage comedian who, with his partner Sophie Drew, is about to have their first child. Their life seems ideal and Luke feels that true happiness is finally within his grasp.

This wasn't always the case. Growing up in a loving but dysfunctional family, Luke was a lonely little boy who never felt that he belonged. While his parents adored him, the whole family knew that due to a mix-up at the hospital, Luke wasn't their biological child. His parents did the best they could to make the lad feel special. But it was his beloved uncle Terence who Luke felt most close to, a man who enchanted (and frightened) the lad with tales of the "Other"--eldritch beings, hedge folks, and other fables of Celtic myth.

When Terence dies in a freak accident, Luke suddenly begins to learn how little he really knew his uncle. How serious was Terence about the magic in his tales? Why did he travel so widely by himself after Luke was born, and what was he looking for? Soon Luke will have to confront forces that may be older than the world in order to save his unborn child.

Joe Hunter has begun to adjust to the loss of his wife when he hears her calling from beyond, "Where am I?" His urge to help leads him into her afterlife, which is made up of their memories. Even the best of those is no refuge from the restless dead, and Joe can only lure them away from her. Soon they begin to invade his everyday life, and every journey he makes to find her leaves him less able to return.

When her refuges turn nightmarish he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice to keep her safe...

David and Joelle's long-lost relative, Gwendolen, helps them recover from a family tragedy, but soon the young couple is caught in a web of evil and dark secrets seemingly spun from Gwendolen's white hair.

Barbara Waugh receives a phone call from her daughter, who was brutally murdered years ago, and is drawn into an evil world of inhuman torture and bloody murders, of gruesome initiations, locked doors and unheard screams.

This short story originally appeared in Weird Tales, Summer 1991. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 3 (1992), edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fifth Annual Collection (1992), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX (1992), edited by Karl Edward Wagner. The story is included in the collection Ghosts and Grisly Things (1998).

Patrick Torrington's aunt Thelma was a successful artist whose late work turned towards the occult. While staying with her in his teens he found evidence that she used to visit magical sites. As an adult he discovers her journal of her explorations, and his teenage son Roy becomes fascinated too. His experiences at the sites scare Patrick away from them, but Roy carries on the search, together with his new girlfriend. Can Patrick convince his son that his increasingly terrible suspicions are real, or will what they've helped to rouse take a new hold on the world?

Who could have believed that a night's camping on Thurstaston Common would lead to a haunting of such power and reach. After ten years Charlotte Nolan and her cousins unwittingly disturb something that should never have seen the light, their very dreams are filled with a suffocating darkness and each is pursued by an undefined figure that seems to have slipped straight out of a nightmare. Together, they must investigate an occult mystery stretching back one hundred years and confront the malevolent force that was once a man.

I scurry up the ladder to tug at his ankles. This time he can t keep his cry to himself. As I dislodge one of his feet from the rung they re desperate to stay on, he lunges upwards to clutch at the gutter. I m down the ladder in a moment, and in another I ve snatched it away. It clatters at full length on the concrete as its owner dangles from the flimsy gutter. Help, he screams. Look what he s done. Christ, someone help. He s saying more than he needs to, as so many of them do. You d think they ve taken a vow to use up all the oxygen they can, but he won t for much longer. I watch him struggle to haul himself up and find a handhold on the roof. His hand slips off the wet tiles, and the gutter emits a creak that sounds as if it s splintering. I might enjoy watching him dangle and wave his helpless legs for however many seconds he has left . . .

David Botham just wants a quiet ordinary life his job at the travel agency, his relationship with his girlfriend Stephanie. He doesn t want to be a writer, and he certainly doesn t think he s one. The online blog that uses a title he once thought up has nothing to do with him. He has no idea who is writing it or where they get their information about a series of violent deaths in Liverpool. If they re murders, how can the killer go unseen even by the security cameras? Perhaps David won t know until they come too close to him until he can t ignore the figure from his past that is catching up with him. Perhaps denying it isn t just the worst thing he can do but fatal...

In Ramsey Campbell and the Twenty-First-Century Weird Tale Richard Bleiler argues that Campbell has brought the new century into supernatural fiction. Following The Grin of the Dark and The Seven Days of Cain, Think Yourself Lucky finds new demons online. But perhaps they are ourselves . . .

Twenty years after a game of Ouija ends in a ten-year-old's disappearance, Rose Tierney discovers that she has developed psychic powers that enable her to see into the future and travel without her body, but that make her vulnerable to an evil force.

Published in the UK as: The Parasite

An Early Collection of Horror by Campbell.

Contents:

• At First Sight - (1973) - shortstory
• Concussion - (1973) - shortstory
• Made in Goatswood - (1973) - shortstory
• Potential - (1973) - shortstory
• The Enchanted Fruit - (1973) - shortstory
• The End of a Summer's Day - (1973) - shortstory
• The Franklyn Paragraphs - (1973) - shortstory
• The Guy - (1973) - shortstory
• The Interloper - (1973) - shortstory [as by Errol Undercliffe]
• The Lost - (1973) - shortstory
• The Old Horns - (1973) - shortstory
• The Second Staircase - (1973) - shortstory
• The Sentinels - (1973) - shortstory
• The Stocking - (1968) - shortstory
• Foreword (Demons By Daylight) - (1990) - essay

The first annual collection of the world's best horror stories and short novels showcases fiction from every part of the field--from terror to supernatural chills--and features the talents of Ian Watson, Stephen Gallagher, Ramsey Campbell, and others.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Horror in 1989 - essay by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell
• Pin - (1989) - short story by Robert R. McCammon
• The House on Cemetery Street - (1988) - novelette by Cherry Wilder
• The Horn - (1989) - novelette by Stephen Gallagher
• Breaking Up - (1989) - short story by Alex Quiroba
• It Helps If You Sing - (1989) - short story by Ramsey Campbell
• Closed Circuit - (1989) - novelette by Laurence Staig
• Carnal House - (1989) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Twitch Technicolor - (1989) - short story by Kim Newman
• Lizaveta - (1988) - novelette by Gregory Frost
• Snow Cancellations - (1989) - short story by Donald R. Burleson
• Archway - (1989) - novelette by Nicholas Royle
• The Strange Design of Master Rignolo - (1989) - short story by Thomas Ligotti
• ...To Feel Another's Woe - (1989) - short story by Chet Williamson
• The Last Day of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux - (1989) - novelette by Robert Westall
• No Sharks in the Med - (1989) - novelette by Brian Lumley
• Mort au Monde - (1989) - short story by D. F. Lewis
• Blanca - (1989) - novelette by Thomas Tessier
• The Eye of the Ayatollah - (1990) - short story by Ian Watson
• At First Just Ghostly - (1989) - novella by Karl Edward Wagner
• Bad News - (1989) - short story by Richard Laymon
• Necrology: 1989 - essay by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman

Twenty-eight spine-tinglers are showcased by the editors, both veteran horror writers,in this fine anthology, which runs the horror gamut from occult shocker to psychological thriller. Though it opens with a rather tasteless entry, K. W. Jeter's grisly "The First Time" (told with au courant splatterpunk brio), the collection redeems itself many times over with a score of tales that make the prerequisite suspension of disbelief a hair-raising pleasure. In Michael Marshall Smith's imaginative "The Man Who Drew Cats," a mysterious street-artist stretches his creativity to alarmingly grim lengths when an abused child wins his heart. Thomas Ligotti's fluently written novella, "The Last Feast of Harlequin," reveals the dark nature lurking just beneath the whiteface. The searing final image in "Cedar Lane," by Karl Edward Wagner, will invoke for many genre fans Ray Bradbury's classic "There Will Come Soft Rains." J. L. Comeau's riveting "Firebird" pits supernatural forces against a feisty ballerina who also happens to be a cop. In one of the collection's strongest entries, "Mister Ice Cold," cartoonist Gahan Wilson proves that a few thousand well-chosen words just might be worth more than a picture, after all.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Horror in 1990 - essay by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell
• The First Time - (1990) - shortstory by K. W. Jeter
• A Short Guide to the City - (1990) - shortstory by Peter Straub
• Stephen - (1990) - novelette by Elizabeth Massie
• The Dead Love You - (1989) - shortstory by Jonathan Carroll
• Jane Doe #112 - (1990) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Shock Radio - (1990) - shortstory by Ray Garton
• The Man Who Drew Cats - (1990) - shortstory by Michael Marshall Smith
• The Co-Op - (1990) - shortstory by Melanie Tem
• Negatives - (1990) - shortstory by Nicholas Royle
• The Last Feast of Harlequin - (1990) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti
• 1/72nd Scale - (1990) - novelette by Ian R. MacLeod
• Cedar Lane - (1990) - shortstory by Karl Edward Wagner
• At a Window Facing West - (1990) - shortstory by Kim Antieau
• Inside the Walled City - (1990) - novelette by Garry Kilworth
• On the Wing - (1990) - shortstory by Jean-Daniel Brèque
• Firebird - (1990) - novelette by J. L. Comeau
• Incident on a Rainy Night in Beverly Hills - (1990) - novelette by David J. Schow
• His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood - (1990) - shortstory by Poppy Z. Brite
• The Original Dr Shade - (1990) - novelette by Kim Newman
• Madge - (1990) - shortstory by D. F. Lewis
• Alive in Venice - (1990) - shortstory by Cherry Wilder
• Divertimento - (1989) - shortstory by Gregory Frost
• Pelts - (1989) - novelette by F. Paul Wilson
• Those of Rhenea - (1990) - shortstory by David Sutton
• Lord of the Land - (1990) - novelette by Gene Wolfe
• Aquarium - (1990) - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Mister Ice Cold - (1990) - shortstory by Gahan Wilson
• On the Town Route - (1989) - novelette by Elizabeth Hand
• Necrology: 1990 - essay by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman

Through intelligent selection and commentary, Jones (ed. Fantasy Tales) and Campbell (The Count of Eleven, p. 479, etc.) again prove that horror literature, widely considered an oxymoron not so very long ago, is a field of fiction worthy of serious cultivation. As in their first two annuals, the authors have combed through sources both high-profile (A Whisper of Blood, 1991, etc.) and desperately obscure (Tekeli-li! Journal of Terror) to dig out "a varied selection... that illustrates the themes and ideas currently being explored in the genre." The emphasis on ideas can be seen in the authors' roster, which includes big names (Robert McCammon, Dennis Etchison, Thomas Tessier, et al.), fast-rising young stars (Nancy Collins, Thomas Ligotti, Kathe Koja, et al.), and several newcomers--but only a couple of splatterpunks and absolutely no hacks, with most of the 29 entries distinguished by deft style and ambitious subjects. The triangle of love, suffering, and death surfaces as the dominant theme--from K.W. Jeter's opening "True Love" (a vampire's daughter cares for her senile but immortal father) through Douglas Clegg's gothic "Where Flies are Born" (a woman reanimates her dead child through grotesque means), Alan Brennert's "Ma Qui" and S.P. Somtow's "Chui Chai" (two wrenching Vietnam-set tales), and the collection's strongest story, Grant Morrison's "The Braille Encyclopedia" (a sly shocker about the pursuit of sensual pleasure), and others. A few stories fail, mostly through straining (e.g., those by David J. Schow and Charles Grant) but the vast majority succeed, and equally of interest is the editors' opinionated rundown of the year's (1991) horror fiction, criticism, film and comics, and their invaluable necrology. For the third year running, horror's annual of record, as well as its premier showcase. Not to be missed by any serious fan.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Horror in 1991 - (1992) - essay by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell
• True Love - (1991) - shortstory by K. W. Jeter
• The Same in Any Language - (1991) - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
• Impermanent Mercies - (1991) - shortstory by Kathe Koja
• Ma Qui - (1991) - shortstory by Alan Brennert
• The Miracle Mile - (1991) - novelette by Robert R. McCammon
• Taking Down the Tree - (1991) - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Where Flies Are Born - (1991) - shortstory by Douglas Clegg
• Love, Death and the Maiden - (1991) - shortstory by Roger Johnson
• Chui Chai - (1991) - shortstory by S. P. Somtow
• The Snow Sculptures of Xanadu - (1991) - shortstory by Kim Newman
• Colder Than Hell - (1991) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• Raymond - (1991) - shortstory by Nancy A. Collins
• One Life, in an Hourglass - (1991) - shortstory by Charles L. Grant
• The Braille Encyclopedia - (1991) - shortstory by Grant Morrison
• The Bacchae - (1991) - shortstory by Elizabeth Hand
• Busted in Buttown - (1991) - shortstory by David J. Schow
• Subway Story - (1990) - shortstory by Russell Flinn
• The Medusa - (1991) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti
• Power Cut - (1991) - shortstory by Joel Lane
• Moving Out - (1991) - shortstory by Nicholas Royle
• Guignoir - (1991) - shortstory by Norman Partridge
• Blood Sky - (1991) - shortstory by William F. Nolan
• Ready - (1991) - shortstory by David Starkey
• The Slug - (1991) - novelette by Karl Edward Wagner
• The Dark Land - (1991) - shortstory by Michael Marshall Smith
• When They Gave Us Memory - (1991) - shortstory by Dennis Etchison
• Taking Care of Michael - (1991) - shortstory by J. L. Comeau
• The Dreams of Dr. Ladybank - (1991) - novella by Thomas Tessier
• Zits - (1991) - shortfiction by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• Necrology: 1991 - (1992) - essay by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones

A collection of short horror stories features the work of Peter Atkins, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Peter Straub, Karl Edward Wagner, and others.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Horror in 1992 (Best New Horror 4) - essay by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell
• The Suicide Artist - (1992) - short story by Scott Edelman
• Dancing on a Blade of Dreams - (1992) - novelette by Roberta Lannes
• The Departed - (1992) - short story by Clive Barker
• How to Get Ahead in New York - (1992) - short story by Poppy Z. Brite
• They Take - (1992) - novelette by John Brunner
• Replacements - (1992) - novelette by Lisa Tuttle
• Under the Pylon - (1992) - short story by Graham Joyce
• The Glamour - (1991) - short story by Thomas Ligotti
• Under the Ice - (1992) - short story by John Gordon
• And Some Are Missing - (1992) - short story by Joel Lane
• The Little Green Ones - (1992) - short story by Les Daniels
• Mirror Man - (1992) - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Mothmusic - (1992) - short story by Sarah Ash
• Did They Get You to Trade? - (1992) - novelette by Karl Edward Wagner
• Night Shift Sister - (1992) - short story by Nicholas Royle
• The Dead - (1992) - short story by M. John Harrison and Simon Ings
• Norman Wisdom and the Angel of Death - (1992) - novelette by Christopher Fowler
• Red Reign - (1992) - novella by Kim Newman
• Aviatrix - (1992) - short story by Peter Atkins
• Snodgrass - (1992) - novelette by Ian R. MacLeod
• The Day of the Sharks - (1992) - short story by Kate Wilhelm
• Anima - (1992) - short story by M. John Harrison
• Bright Lights, Big Zombie - (1992) - novelette by Douglas E. Winter
• The Ghost Village - (1992) - novelette by Peter Straub
• Necrology: 1992 - essay by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman

This new edition of the premiere collection of the year's finest horror stories continues its tradition of riveting tales of terror from some of the best-known contemporary writers. Contributors include Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Lisa Tuttle, Thomas Ligotti, Karl Edward Wagner, and Kim Newman.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Ramsey Campbell and Stephen Jones
• Later - (1993) - shortstory by Michael Marshall Smith
• When the Red Storm Comes - (1993) - shortstory by Sarah Smith
• The Exhibit - (1993) - shortstory by Martin Plumbridge
• Leavings - (1993) - shortstory by Kathe Koja
• Human Remains - (1992) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• Flying Into Naples - (1993) - shortstory by Nicholas Royle
• The Sixth Sentinel - (1993) - shortstory by Poppy Z. Brite
• The Brothers - (1993) - shortstory by Rick Cadger
• The Owen Street Monster - (1993) - shortstory by J. L. Comeau
• One Size Eats All - (1993) - shortstory by T. E. D. Klein
• Mulligan's Fence - shortstory by Donald R. Burleson
• How She Dances - (1993) - shortstory by Daniel Fox
• Passages - shortstory by Karl Edward Wagner
• Easing the Spring - (1993) - shortstory by Sally Roberts Jones
• Safe at Home - (1993) - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem
• Mother of the City - (1993) - shortstory by Christopher Fowler
• Justice - (1993) - novelette by Elizabeth Hand
• The Big Fish - (1993) - novelette by Kim Newman
• In the Desert of Deserts - (1993) - shortstory by Thomas Tessier
• Two Returns - (1993) - shortstory by Terry Lamsley
• The Moment the Face Falls - (1993) - shortstory by Chet Williamson
• Darker Angels - (1993) - novelette by S. P. Somtow
• The Timbrel Sound of Darkness - (1993) - shortstory by Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg
• The Tsalal - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• In the Still, Small Hours - (1993) - shortstory by Charles L. Grant
• Ice House Pond - (1993) - novella by Steve Rasnic Tem
• The Dog Park - (1993) - shortstory by Dennis Etchison
• The Marble Boy - (1993) - shortstory by Gahan Wilson
• Mefisto in Onyx - (1993) - novella by Harlan Ellison
• Necrology: 1993 - essay by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones

Dominic Sheldrake has never forgotten his childhood in fifties Liverpool or the talk an old boy of his grammar school gave about the First World War. When his history teacher took the class on a field trip to France it promised to be an adventure, not the first of a series of glimpses of what lay in wait for the world. Soon Dominic would learn that a neighbour was involved in practices far older and darker than spiritualism, and stumble on a secret journal that hinted at the occult nature of the universe. How could he and his friends Roberta and Jim stop what was growing under a church in the midst of the results of the blitz? Dominic used to write tales of their exploits, but what they face now could reduce any adult to less than a child...

There s a place past all the stars that s so dark you have to make your eyes light up to see, Toby said. There s a creature that lives in the dark, only maybe the dark s what he is. Or maybe the dark is his mouth that s like a black hole or what black holes are trying to be. Maybe they re just thoughts he has, bits of the universe he s thinking about. And he s so big and hungry, if you even think about him too much he ll get hold of you with one of them and carry you off into the dark...

More than thirty years have passed since the events of The Searching Dead. Now married with a young son, Dominic Sheldrake believes that he and his family are free of the occult influence of Christian Noble. Although Toby is experiencing nocturnal seizures and strange dreams, Dominic and Claudine have found a facility that deals with children suffering from his condition, which appears to be growing widespread. Are their visions simply dreams, or truths few people dare envisage? How may Christian Noble be affecting the world now, and how has his daughter grown up? Soon Dominic will have to confront the figures from his past once more and call on his old friends for aid against forces that may overwhelm them all. As he learns the truth behind Toby s experiences, not just his family is threatened but his assumptions about the world...

Born to the Dark is the second volume of Ramsey Campbell s Brichester Mythos trilogy.

More than thirty years have passed since the events of Born to the Dark. Christian Noble is almost a century old, but his and his family's influence over the world is stronger than ever. The latest version of their occult church counts Dominic Sheldrake's son and the young man's wife among its members, and their little daughter too. Dominic will do anything he can to break its influence over them, and his old friends Jim and Bobby come to his aid. None of them realise what they will be up against - the Nobles transformed into the monstrousness they have invoked, and the inhuman future they may have made inevitable...

The Way of the Worm is the final volume of Ramsey Campbell's Brichester Mythos trilogy, in which he returns to his original themes and develops them in his mature style. The first volume, The Searching Dead, received the Children of the Night Award from the Dracula Society for the best original Gothic fiction of the year.