As I Embrace My Jagged Edge by Lee Thompson (Sideshow Press) is about a Jewish family constantly on the run from forces of evil that are intent on using a powerful talisman taken from Solomon’s Temple. Old Albert by Brian J. Showers (Passport Levant) is a series of episodes in the life of a house called Larkhill, built by a rich man obsessed with the study of birds. There is much horror here but as the prologue explains there are no solutions. While increasingly disturbing and creepy, the overall story is a bit too muddled to provide a satisfying conclusion. Four Legs in the Morning by Norman Prentiss (Cemetery Dance Publications) is number nine in the signature series of CD chapbooks. It includes three stories, or “curiosities” as they are dubbed — all linked by the presence of Dr. Sibley, distinguished Chair of the English and Classical Literature Department of a small southern University. His specialty is Oedipus Rex and anyone who crosses him should beware. Some wonderfully creepy stuff. Bad Moon Books brought out the following chapbooks: The Cranston Gibberer by Martin Mundt is a clever, over the top little epistolary parody of Lovecraftian literature purportedly written by someone very much like H. P. Lovecraft. Humorous but not very scary. When the Leaves Fall by Paul Melniczek is about sinister happenings in the town of Haverville and the two boys who get caught up in them one Halloween night. Ursa Major by John R. Little is about a camping trip gone very very bad. Heart of Glass by David Winnick is about a married couple who have grown apart. The husband discovers a glass jigsaw puzzle in an antique shop and is certain that with his wife’s help they can reassemble their marriage as they solve the puzzle. The Bone Tree by Christopher Fulbright is about two boys in rural Texas in the late 1960s suddenly faced with supernatural evil. Alice on the Shelf by Bill Gauthier is a dark variation of Alice in Wonderland in which a man searches for a friend who disappeared. This Little Light of Mine by Nate Southard (Burning Effigy Press) is about a man trapped underground after an earthquake and what ensues. Ill at Ease is a chapbook of three dark stories by Stephen Bacon, Mark West and Neil Williams (PenMan Press). A Ghost Story for Christmas by Sam Dawson (Supernatural Tales) is about a divorced man who spends Christmas with his sons in the house he grew up in. Ink in the Veins: Pioneering Writing on Stephen King and Ink in the Veins: Further Writings on Stephen King is a two volume chapbook profiling critics of King’s work by Kevin Quigley (Cemetery Dance Publications). Drawn into Darkness: The Comic-Book Landscapes of Stephen King by Kevin Quigley (Cemetery Dance Publications) is a look at graphic novels made of King’s prose. A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff by Neil Gaiman (Borderlands Press) is the final volume in this adorable hardcover series and contains nineteen poems, essays, memorials, reviews, and other bits and pieces. Blindspot by Michael McBride (Dark Regions Press) is about an experimental process enabling the user to see through the eyes of the dead — the only possible chance to avert nuclear annihilation. Rusting Chickens by Gene O’Neil (Dark Regions Press) is about a veteran of a secret black ops mission in Pakistan who returns home to more horror. Dark Regions Press debuted their “doubles” series with the first book by William Meikle, including a short novel and a novella. The Light is the Darkness by Laird Barron (Infernal House) is a novella about a modern day gladiator whose FBI agent sister goes missing and his search to find her. The Cases of Dana Roberts by Joe R. Lansdale is a chapbook published by Subterranean Press as a bonus to purchasers of the limited edition of Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2. The two well-told tales are the start of a new series by Lansdale about a skeptical detective of supernormal happenings.
There is a new series from The Burns Archive Press, which over the years has published a number of gorgeously produced books of memorial photography, including Sleeping Beauty volumes I and II. Masterpieces of Medical Photography: Selections from the Burns Archive, and Harm’s Way: Lust & Madness, Mystery & Mayhem among many other volumes.
The new series is designed as pocket-sized, square hardcover volumes as lovingly produced as the usual, larger books. The first in the new format is Sleeping Beauty III, Memorial Photography: The Children. Dr. Burns provides a preface about his own history of collecting memorial photography and in a fascinating introduction explains why the new technology of photography became so popular for memorializing the dead, especially children in the 1900s. The photographs are annotated with information about the kind of technology used. Some of the photographs are of dead children posed with a surviving sibling, held by one of its parents, or perhaps most pitiably, tiny and alone and dressed in finery in a coffin or crib. The practice has begun to take hold once more in the twenty-first century as some contemporary families pose with their stillborn or newly dead children. Disturbing all, but with a quiet beauty.
The second volume is Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R. B. Bontecou. Bontecou was a military surgeon who recorded and photographed soldiers with amputated limbs and others with minor bullet wounds. The book itself is as much a mediation on war and suffering (focusing on the Civil War, just two years before Joseph Lister announced his discovery of antiseptic surgical principles and almost twenty years before Robert Koch described the germ theory of disease). Some of the photos are accompanied by detailed case histories of the soldier, and those are perhaps the most interesting.
The Monstrous Book of Monsters by Libby Hamilton illustrated by Jonny Duddle and Aleksei Bitskoff (Templar/Candlewick) is the popup book to enchant or perhaps entice your favorite child into the world of horror. Something has taken a bite out of the cover. Inside is a spread on how to spot monsters (watch out for sunglasses hiding strange eyes or hair hiding an extra eye), another about infestations at home, (watch out for critters in the toilet or the oven). I love popup books and this one is icky and has gooey things and is almost as good as my old favorite Fungus the Bogyman.
Deborah Turbeville, the Fashion Pictures (Rizzoli) is a gorgeous and disturbing coffee table book of photographs by one of the major photographers of the last forty years. She’s best known as a fashion photographer for the American, Italian, and Russian Vogue and other magazines but her work encompasses much more than fashion photography. She was in the fore-front of the idea that what’s important in a fashion shoot, isn’t the clothing per se but the lifestyle hinted at by the photographs. In Turbeville’s eye this lifestyle is sumptuous and decadent — and often very creepy. One of her most famous fashion spreads is a series taken of bathing suit models photographed in an abandoned New York City bathhouse that looks like an insane asylum for abused women. Another spread is of several ruined “Camilles” lethargically lounging among the many rooms of a mansion. A series of photographs taken in the woods of Normandy looks like a vignette on the horrors of war as beautiful dead-eyed women wait — for death? For liberation? Each series of photographs tells an enigmatic story.