Originally announced as Look Out, He’s Got a Knife! a few years ago, David J. Schow’s collection Crypt Orchids finally appeared as a signed and numbered 500-copy hardcover from Subterranean. With an introduction by Robert Bloch (written in 1992), it was only fitting that several of the eleven stories (three original) and one stage play were inspired by the late author of Psycho. It was also available in a lettered edition.
From Dark Highway Press, Robert Devereaux’s sexually explicit Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups came with forewords by editors David Hartwell and Pat LoBrutto and illustrations by the ubiquitous Alan M. Clark.
Published by Mark V. Ziesing, Black Butterflies: A Flock on the Dark Side was a collection of seventeen horror stories (two original) by John Shirley, with a foreword by Paula Guran and illustrations by John Bergin.
Faces Under Water was the first volume in Tanith Lee’s new dark fantasy series “The Secret Book of Venus”, about a league of murderers in an alternate 18th century Venice, from the Overlook Connection Press. The same publisher issued a trade hardcover of Jack Ketchum’s (Dallas Myr) 1986 novel The Girl Next Door, which retained the 1996 limited edition’s introduction by Stephen King.
Obsidian Books published The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard, the first collection from Ketchum, containing twelve stories (six original), along with a memoir about the author’s meeting in the 1980s with Henry Miller and an introduction by Richard Laymon. It was available in a signed and limited edition of 500 copies and 52-copy lettered and leatherbound edition in a matching traycase. Ketchum also contributed the introduction to the novel Shifters by Edward Lee and John Pelan, published by Obsidian in a signed and numbered edition of 375 copies.
Splatter spunk: The Micah Hayes Stories was a collection of five hardcore horror stories by Lee and Pelan, available in a limited trade paperback edition of 550 copies and a lettered hardcover from Sideshow Press.
From Florida’s Necro Publications, Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman by Edward Lee and Elizabeth Steffen concerned an emotionally disturbed advice columnist who attracted the attention of a crazed serial killer. It was available in a signed and limited trade paperback edition of 500 copies, a 150-copy signed hardcover and a deluxe lettered slipcased edition for $150. Also from Necro, Charlee Jacob’s vampire novel This Symbiotic Fascination was available in a 100-copy hardcover edition and a 300-copy trade paperback, both of which were signed and numbered.
Terminal Fright Press published the aptly-titled Terminal Frights edited by Ken Abner, which featured twenty-two stories originally scheduled for the eponymous magazine or specially commissioned for the anthology from such writers as Peter Crowther, Yvonne Navarro, J. N. Williamson, Tom Piccirilli and other regulars of the small press field. The same publisher also issued David Niall Wilson’s novel This is My Blood, which combined vampires with the Bible’s New Testament as an undead Mary Magdalene tempted Jesus Christ.
From Meisha Merlin Publishing, BloodWalk was an omnibus of Lee Killough’s vampire detective novels, Blood Hunt (1987) and Bloodlinks (1988), with a new foreword by the author.
Limited to 500–600 copies each, the latest releases from Canada’s busy Ash-Tree Press included Binscombe Tales: Sinister Saxon Stories by John Whitbourn, which collected fifteen linked stories (seven original) set in the southern England village where bizarre things always seemed to happen, and The Night Comes On, which included sixteen stories in the tradition of M. R. James by Steve Duffy. The Fellow Travellers & Other Ghost Stories by Sheila Hodgson contained twelve stories, several based on plot ideas by M. R. James and eight originally written as radio plays.
Edited and introduced by Hugh Lamb, Out of the Dark: Volume One: Origins by Robert W. Chambers was the first of two volumes and collected nine stories written prior to 1900, while The Black Reaper by Bernard Capes was a revised and expanded version of Lamb’s 1989 Equation edition, collecting twenty-three stories with a revised introduction by the editor and a foreword by Ian Burns. Nightmare Jack and Other Stories by John Metcalfe collected seventeen stories and an afterword by Alexis Lykiard, and Nights of the Round Table by Margery Lawrence was a reprint collection of twelve stories from the 1920s. Both volumes were edited with an introduction by Richard Dalby.
The Clock Strikes Twelve and Other Stories by H. R. Wakefield contained all eighteen stories from earlier editions plus a further three uncollected tales, along with a new introduction by Barbara Roden. Jessica Amanda Salmonson edited both Twilight and Other Supernatural Romances, the first of two collections by Marjorie Bowen, containing seventeen stories, and Lady Ferry and Other Uncanny People which included eleven stories by Sarah Orne Jewett and a preface by Joanna Russ. The latter volume was the first in Ash-Tree’s “Grim Maids” series, reprinting the supernatural fiction of unjustly neglected women writers.
Collected Spook Stories: The Terror by Night was the first in a series of five volumes collecting all E. F. Benson’s strange and supernatural tales. Edited and introduced by Jack Adrian, it contained fifteen stories. Adrian was also the editor of Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer by Alice and Claude Askew, a collection of eight stories which was the first volume in Ash-Tree Press’ Occult Detectives library, and The Ash-Tree Press Annual Macabre 1998, an anthology of six ghostly stories by authors not usually associated with the genre. These included W. Somerset Maugham, Arthur Ransome, Ford Madox Ford, E. C. Bentley, Hilaire Belloc and John Buchan.
Sarob Press in Wales launched a series of limited, numbered hardcovers with yet another edition of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, limited to 200 copies. It was followed by a 350-copy numbered edition of Vengeful Ghosts collecting eight stories (two original) by C. E. Ward, and Skeletons in the Closet by William I. I. Read collected nine stories (three reprints) involving Dennistoun, the World’s Most Haunted Man.
Tartarus Press published a new edition of the 1907 novel The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen, with a new introduction by Mark Valentine, a 1954 introduction by Lord Dunsany and a previously unpublished introduction by the author. Featuring tipped-in illustrations by Sidney Sime, this was limited to 350 copies. Also from Tartarus, The Collected Strange Papers of Christopher Blayre reprinted author Blayre’s three short story collections in a single volume.
The Child of the Soul and Other Tales contained four unpublished stories plus a letter by Count Stenbock, limited to 500 numbered copies from Durto Press. Atlas Press published Jean Ray’s Malpertius in an English translation by Iain White.