And the Angel with Television Eyes was a new fantasy novel by John Shirley, loosely based on the short story of the same title, and Lies & Ugliness was a big new collection from Brian Hodge, containing two new stories. The signed/slipcased edition of the latter also included a CD by the author’s musical side project, Axis Mundi.
Also from Night Shade, editor S. T. Joshi’s The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft eventually appeared in hardcover and trade paperback after a few delays.
Edited with an introduction by Joshi, Robert Hichens’s The Return of the Soul and Other Stories from Seattle’s Midnight House contained eight reprint tales and was the first of a proposed two-book set presenting the definitive collection of the prolific author’s supernatural tales.
The Scarecrow and Other Stories was an expanded edition of the 1918 collection containing seventeen tales by G. (Gwendolyn) Ranger Wormser (1893–1953), edited by Douglas A. Anderson. As a follow-up to the author’s earlier collection The House of the Nightmare and Other Stories, the same publisher also issued Edward Lucas White’s (1866–1934) Sesta & Other Strange Stories, which included fifteen stories (several previously unpublished), two poems, an introduction by Lee Weinstein and a bibliography.
Nineteen of Fritz Leiber’s best horror tales were collected in The Black Gondolier & Other Stories, the first of two hardcover volumes edited by John Pelan and Steve Savile.
The Beasts of Brahm was a reprint of the rare 1937 novel by the possibly pseudonymous Mark Hansom, with a fascinating introduction by Pelan. The equally obscure H. B. Gregory’s Dark Sanctuary was another rare British novel also rescued from obscurity, with an historical introduction by D. H. Olson. Both volumes appeared on the late Karl Edward Wagner’s list of ‘forgotten’ works of fantasy and horror and, like all the titles from Midnight House, were published in hardcover editions of just 460 copies with cover artwork by Allen Koszowski.
From Tartarus Press, Ghost Stories by Oliver Onions collected twenty-two classic tales. First published in 1931, Forrest Reid’s Uncle Stephen was a dream-story with a new introduction by Colin Cruise, while L. P. Hartley’s The Collected Macabre Stories, also from Tartarus, contained thirty-seven ghost stories by the author of The Go-Between, with an introduction by Mark Valentine. All were limited to just 350 copies.
L. T. C. Rolt’s Sleep No More: Railway, Canal and Other Stories of the Supernatural was a trade paperback collection of fourteen classic ghost stories from Sutton Publishing, with an introduction by Susan Hill.
From Ash-Tree Press, Where Human Pathways End: Tales of the Dead and the Un-Dead collected all ten of the supernatural short stories of 1930s author Shamus Frazer, whose story ‘The Fifth Mask’ is cited as an influence on Ramsey Campbell, with an introduction by editor Richard Dalby. Edited and introduced by John Pelan and Dalby, The Shadow on the Blind and Other Ghost Stories reprinted the 1895 collection of nine stories by Alfred Louisa Bladwin, along with a previously uncollected tale, and included seven illustrations by Symington from the first edition.
The Golden Gong and Other Night-Pieces by Thomas Burke reprinted twenty-one tales complete with an introductory essay by editor Jessica Amanada Salmonson.
Edited by David Rowlands and limited to 500 copies, Mystic Voices by Roger Pater (aka Dom Gilbert Hudleston), a member of the Order of St. Benedict, collected fourteen stories about psychic squire-priest Father Philip Rivers Pater, along with a chapter from a companion work, My Cousin Philip, and a contemporary obituary of the author.
Mrs Amworth, the third volume of The Collected Spook Stories of E. F. Benson, was limited to 600 copies and contained sixteen short supernatural stories (dating from 1922–23), with an introduction by editor Jack Adrian. Adrian was also responsible for Couching at the Door and Other Strange and Macabre Tales, which collected the supernatural stories of popular novelist D. (Dorothy) K. (Kathleen) Broster (1877–1950), including one previously unpublished tale. It was also limited to 600 copies, with dust-jacket art by Jason Van Hollander.
As usual, Adrian edited The Ash-Tree Annual Macabre 2001, which was limited to 500 copies and contained thirteen stories, only one of which had appeared in book form before, by writers better known for working in other genres. These included such well-known names as Marjorie Bowen, Jessie Douglas Kerruish and Leigh Brackett.
After Shocks was a collection of eighteen ‘classical’ supernatural stories by prolific small-press contributor Paul Finch, and Steve Rasnic Tem’s The Far Side of the Lake was a welcome collection of eight of the author’s ‘Charlie Goode’ ghost stories and twenty-five other horror tales, limited to 500 copies.
The Five Quarters by Steve Duffy and Ian Rodwell collected five novellas about meetings of the eponymous society with a handful of members, at which the talk inevitably turned to the supernatural. It was limited to 500 copies, and the dust jacket was illustrated by Paul Lowe.
Probably Ash-Tree’s finest achievement of the year was A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings of M. R. James. With a preface by Christopher and Barbara Roden, and an introduction by Steve Duffy, the $75.00 hardcover reprinted thirty-four annotated stories plus prefaces, several rare fragments, articles, letters, translations, appendices, a bibliography, and information on James on film, radio and television. Paul Lowe also provided thirty-three illustrations along with a full-colour dust jacket.
The series of chapbooks published by the mysterious and elusive Sidecar Preservation Society (named after a classic Prohibition-era cocktail) continued with Richard L. Tierney’s The Blob That Gobbled Abdul and Other Poems and Songs, a collection of thirteen Lovecraftian verses, illustrated by Dave Carson and with an introduction by Ramsey Campbell. Tierney in turn introduced Campbell’s time-travel story Point of View, illustrated by Allen Koszowski.
Hugh B. Cave’s Loose Loot was a detective yarn featuring Officer Coffey with an afterword by Milt Thomas, while Swedish Lutheran Vampires of Brainerd was a humorous story by Anne Waltz, with an afterword by Karen Taylor and cover art by Jon Arfstrom.
Edited by D. H. Olsen, A Donald Wandrei Miscellany contained a number of shorter pieces of fiction, non-fiction, verse and humour by the late author, and Lee Brown Coye’s Chips & Savings and Another Writing (already in its second printing) was a collection of the artist’s homespun newspaper column in the Mid-York Weekly during the 1960s. Each of the Sidecar booklets was limited to 100 numbered copies (except for the Cave, which totalled 175), some of which may have been bound in boards by the publisher.
From Subterranean Press, Graham Joyce’s chapbook Black Dust contained the 1994 story ‘The Apprentice’ along with the previously unpublished title story, limited to 250 signed and numbered copies. From the same imprint, Graham Masterton’s The Scrawler, about an urban monster, was limited to 500 numbered copies.