Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling contained twenty-two erotic stories of magical, obsessional and irresistible love by Storm Constantine, Joyce Carol Oates, Tanith Lee, Edward Bryant, Neil Gaiman, Brian Stableford, Conrad Williams and others.
At 550-plus pages, Dreaming Down Under was a major new anthology of Australian speculative fiction edited by Jack Dann and Janeen Webb. It contained thirty-one stories by such Australian authors as Cherry Wilder, Lucy Sussex, Damien Broderick, Stephen Dedman, Terry Dowling, Aaron Sterns, George Turner, Robert Hood and Sean McMullen, plus a preface by Harlan Ellison.
Ellison was also one of the writers featured in In the Shadow of the Gargoyle edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Thomas S. Roche, which included sixteen stories and a novel excerpt (three reprints) by Charles L. Grant, Neil Gaiman, Katherine Kurtz, Brian Lumley, Christa Faust and Caitlin R. Kiernan, Brian Hodge and others.
The Crow: Shattered Lives & Broken Dreams edited by J. O’Barr and Ed Kramer contained nineteen stories and ten poems based on O’Barr’s graphic novel and movie series. Authors included Iggy Pop, Gene Wolfe, John Shirley and Nancy A. Collins, and it was illustrated by Bob Eggleton, Tom Canty, Don Maitz and others. A. A. Attanasio supplied the introduction.
Edited by Ric Alexander (Peter Haining), The Unexplained: Stories of the Paranormal contained twenty-one stories by Nigel Kneale, Ramsey Campbell, Richard Matheson, J. G. Ballard, Theodore Sturgeon, Arthur Machen, Basil Copper, Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison and others, including two originals by Graham Masterton and Richard Laymon and an introduction by Peter James. Under his own name, Haining also edited The Mammoth Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories, which reprinted thirty tales from such unexpected authors as James Hadley Chase, Jack London, Stevie Smith, John Steinbeck, Muriel Spark, A. Merritt and P. G. Wodehouse, along with old hands Henry James, Agatha Christie, Arthur Machen, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and others.
Only available in a book club edition, editor Marvin Kaye’s Don’t Open This Book! was an anthology of thirty-nine dark fantasy stories (sixteen original) that included Tanith Lee, Ron Goulart and Patrick LoBrutto.
The Ex Files: New Stories About Old Flamesedited by Nicholas Royle contained twenty-five original stories about the breakup of relationships, from such authors as M. John Harrison, D. F. Lewis, Pat Cadigan, Conrad Williams, Joel Lane, John Burke, James Miller and Michael Marshall Smith. Royle also edited Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing Vol. 1, the first in a series of annual anthologies which featured Christopher Fowler (with the very clever “Thirteen Places of Interest in Kentish Town”), Mike O’Driscoll, James Miller, Jason Gould, Christopher Kenworthy and Conrad Williams.
Editor and book packager Martin H. Greenberg celebrated the publication of his 1,000th book in a career so far spanning twenty-three years. With John Heifers he edited Black Cats and Broken Mirrors, which included seventeen original stories based around the premise that superstitions can come true from such authors as Bruce Holland Rogers, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Peter Crowther and Charles de Lint.
Lawrence Schimel and Greenberg edited Fields of Blood: Vampire Stories of the Heartland, containing thirteen stories (four original) by Henry Kuttner, Nancy Holder, P. N. Elrod and others, and Streets of Blood: Vampire Stories from New York City, collecting another baker’s dozen tales by such writers as Suzy McKee Charnas, Edward Bryant and Esther M. Friesner.
From the editorial team of Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg and Greenberg, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories was a massive, 700-plus page instant remainder anthology published by Barnes & Noble Books. It featured original short shorts by numerous horror authors, both new and established, including Peter Atkins, Steve Rasnic Tem, Don Webb, Brian McNaughton, Brian Hodge, Nancy Kilpatrick, Phyllis Eisenstein, Donald R. Burleson, Mandy Slater, Michael Marshall Smith, Wayne Allen Sallee, Edward Bryant, Lisa Morton, Brian Stableford, Yvonne Navarro and Hugh B. Cave.
A much better anthology from the same editorial team was 100 Twisted Little Tales of Terror, also published by Barnes & Noble. It contained some excellent reprints by such well-known names as David J. Schow, Les Daniels, Karl Edward Wagner, Tanith Lee, H. P. Lovecraft, Frank Belknap Long, Fritz Leiber, Joe R. Lans-dale, Thomas Ligotti, Kim Newman, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Ramsey Campbell, Hugh B. Cave, August Derleth, John Shirley, Edward Bryant, Joel Lane, Michael Marshall Smith, Clark Ash-ton Smith and many more.
Stefan Dziemianowicz, Denise Little and Robert Weinberg edited the Barnes & Noble instant remainder Mistresses of the Dark: 25 Macabre Tales by Master Storytellers, which included reprints by Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Daphne du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, Ruth Rendell, Muriel Spark and Fay Weldon.
The Raven and the Monkey’s Paw was an uncredited anthology of fifteen stories and eight poems. Eight of the tales and all the poems were by Edgar Allan Poe, and there were also classic reprints from W. W. Jacobs, Charles Dickins, Saki and Edith Wharton, amongst others. Classic Ghost Stories edited by John Grafton featured eleven tales of the supernatural by Charles Dickens, M. R. James, J. Sheridan Le Fanu and other familiar names, and Patricia Craig edited 12 Irish Ghost Stories for Oxford University Press.
Hot Blood X was the tenth volume in the sexual horror series edited by Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett. It included seventeen pieces of fiction (one reprint) from Ramsey Campbell, Graham Masterton, Lawrence Block, Nancy Holder, Melanie Tem, Brian Hodge, and Bentley Little, amongst others. Demon Sex edited by Amarantha Knight (Nancy Kilpatrick) contained eleven explicit horror stories (including one reprint by Neil Gaiman) from Thomas S. Roche, Edo van Belkom and Kilpatrick herself.
Lisa Tuttle edited Crossing the Border: Tales of Erotic Ambiguity, which included twenty-two stories (thirteen reprints). Although not really a horror book, it included stories by Poppy Z. Brite, Graham Joyce, Angela Carter, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Blumlein, Nicholas Royle, Carol Emshwiller, Lucy Taylor, Neil Gaiman, Geoff Ryman and the editor.
The Ghost of Carmen Miranda and Other Spooky Gay and Lesbian Tales edited by Julie K. Trevelyan and Scott Brassart, contained twenty-three stories (five reprints).
Most horror readers also probably passed on Otto Penzler’s new crime anthology Murder for Revenge. If they did, they missed Peter Straub’s remarkable novella “Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff”, plus new stories by David Morrell, Joyce Carol Oates, Eric Lustbader, Lawrence Block and others.
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Eleventh Annual Collection,ably edited as usual by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, weighed-in at more than 500 pages and contained thirty-seven stories, nine poems, and summaries by the editors, James Frenkel, Edward Bryant and Seth Johnson, along with the usual pointless list of “Honorable Mentions”. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Nine edited by Stephen Jones contained nineteen stories, only one of which (Stephen Laws’ “The Crawl”) overlapped with the Datlow/Windling volume.