Ray Garton’s Sex and Violence in Hollywood lived up to its title, while John Shirley’s novel The View from Hell was published in a signed edition of 1,000 copies and a twenty-six-copy lettered edition.
Published as an attractive hardcover limited to 750 signed and numbered copies, Thomas Tessier’s novella Father Panic’s Opera Macabre concerned a successful historical novelist who stumbled upon a remote Italian farmhouse filled with supernatural secrets. The story was unfortunately marred by some extremely graphic depictions of Nazi tortures.
Delayed from the previous year, David J. Schow’s collection Eye contained thirteen stories (two original) and a witty afterword by the author, limited to 1,000 signed copies. An extra new story was included in the lettered-state edition.
Edward Bryant’s The Baku: Tales of the Nuclear Age contained a new introduction by the author, three short stories and a previously unpublished teleplay, bought by The Twilight Zone but never produced. It was limited to 500 signed copies and a twenty-six copy lettered edition.
Guilty But Insane was a collection of Poppy Z. Brite’s non-fiction, limited to 2,000 signed hardcover copies with a full-colour dust jacket and autograph page art by J. K. Potter. Brite and Caitlin R. Kiernan each had a new story plus a collaboration in Wrong Things, an attractive hardcover illustrated by Richard Kirk and published in a signed edition of 1,500 copies and a lettered edition.
Subterranean also revived the old Dark Harvest Night Visions series with the tenth volume. Edited by Richard Chizinar and illustrated by Alan M. Clark, it contained new novellas by Jack Ketchum and John Shirley, along with five original short stories by David B. Silva. The volume was available as a trade hardcover and a 500-copy limited edition.
Simon Clark’s new novel, Darkness Demands, appeared from Cemetery Dance in a signed edition limited to 1,000 copies. It involved a writer of true-crime stories faced with choosing between the survival of his daughter or the rest of his family. A reissue of Clark’s 1995 end-of-civilization novel, Blood Crazy, was also available from the same publisher in a signed edition of 1,000 copies.
The signed, limited edition of Christopher Golden’s The Ferryman came with a quote from Clive Barker and involved a woman who spurned the eponymous soul-taker during a near-fatal medical ordeal. The book’s prologue was published as a chap-book with illustrations by Eric Powell.
Tim Lebbon’s short novel Until She Sleeps was about a young boy’s battle against a resurrected 300-year-old witch who released her suppressed nightmares on a quiet village. It was available in a deluxe limited edition of 1,000 signed copies. Edward Lee’s City Infernal was a Southern Gothic horror novel set in Hell and also limited to 1,000 copies.
The Cemetery Dance hardcover of Richard Laymon’s Night in Lonesome October was the first US edition of the late author’s Halloween novel. Also from CD, Friday Night at Beast House was a short novel that was nominally a sequel to the author’s previous three books in the series. Laymon’s fable The Halloween Mouse was a thin, oversized hardcover illustrated in full colour by Alan M. Clark and limited to only 300 signed and numbered copies inside a handmade cloth slipcase.
Richard Matheson’s Camp Pleasant was possibly an early novel, about a murder at a children’s summer camp, while a limited edition of 1,500 copies of Jack Ketchum’s The Lost was published by Cemetery Dance simultaneously with the Leisure paperback.
Edited by Richard Chizmar, Trick or Treat was the first in a new hardcover anthology series celebrating Halloween. It collected five original novellas by Gary A. Braunbeck, Nancy A. Collins, Rick Hautala, Al Sarrantonio and Thomas Tessier. It was also available in a signed edition, limited to 400 slipcased copies.
F. Paul Wilson’s Sims Book Two: The Portero Method was the second in a new series of hardcover novellas published exclusively by Cemetery Dance in a limited edition of 750 signed copies. Wilson’s latest ‘Repairman Jack’ novel, Hosts, appeared from Gauntlet Press in a signed, limited edition of 475 copies, with cover art by Harry O. Morris. It introduced the enigmatic Jack’s sister, Kate Iverson, and featured an insidious virus that threatened to deprive humanity of its individuality.
Originally published in 1991 as a paperback original, Nancy A. Collins’s second novel, Tempter, appeared from Gauntlet Press in a completely rewritten version that the author considered the preferred text. It was available as both a signed and numbered hardcover and in a lettered, leather-bound and tray-cased edition priced at $150.
Edited by Donn Albright, Ray Bradbury’s classic collection Dark Carnival was limited to only 700 numbered and slipcased copies signed by Bradbury and Clive Barker (who contributed the afterword). This edition added five stories not contained in the 1947 Arkham House edition, along with several black and white pulp-cover reproductions and an archival section featuring photos of manuscript pages, letters, and some other rare items. Bradbury produced the dust-jacket art and interior illustrations himself. A lettered, leather-bound, tray-cased edition of fifty-two copies, containing an extra twenty-five pages, sold for $1,000 apiece.
For those who purchased the book directly from the publisher, there was also a chapbook of Bradbury’s story ‘Time Intervening’, limited to 752 copies.
The deluxe reissue of Richard Matheson’s classic The Shrinking Man contained a new afterword by David Morrell, photos from the movie and several pages of facsimile script. It was limited to 500 numbered copies signed by Matheson and Morrell.
Gauntlet’s new Edge imprint concentrated on publishing mass-market trade paperbacks and hardcovers. Released as an Edge title, Barry Hoffman’s serial-killer novel Judas Eyes was the third in the series about bounty hunter Shara Farris, with an afterword by Jack Ketchum.
The Gauntlet Press Sampler was a chapbook featuring new stories by Richard Christian Matheson, Barry Hoffman, Rain Graves and Richard Matheson, along with a poem by Clive Barker, illustrated by Harry O. Morris and David Armstrong.
Launched in November 2000 by Craig Spector and a venture capital company to sell books directly through the Internet, Stealth Press consolidated its publishing schedule in 2001 with a raft of nicely produced hardcover volumes that were not initially available in bookstores.
Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Dennis Etchison’s first professional short-story sale, Talking in the Dark: Selected Stories was a handsome collection of twenty-four tales (one original), the earliest dating back to 1972. Unfortunately, despite being a commemorative volume, the book contained neither an introduction nor any story notes by the author.
Darkness Divided collected twenty-two stories (four original) by John Shirley, presented in two sections — one featuring stories set in the past and the present, and the other set in myriad futures. The book included collaborations with Walter Gibson and Bruce Sterling, plus a short introduction by Poppy Z. Brite.
Dark Universe contained forty-one stories that author William F. Nolan considered to be amongst his best work from the past fifty years, with an introduction by Christopher Conlon. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Tempting Fate, her third Saint-Germain vampire book from Stealth Press, weighed in at more than 600 pages.