Available from Cemetery Dance Publications, Stephen King’s The Secretary of Dreams was a collection of six classic stories illustrated in varying styles by Glenn Chadbourne.
Dark Harvest was a short novel by Norman Partridge set on Halloween night in 1963, when the boys of a Midwestern town were pitted against the October Boy, a legendary creature with a Jack O’Lantern face.
Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear was a twenty-year retrospective of Terry Dowling’s work from CD Publications, while Destination Unknown contained two stories and a novella about automobiles by Gary A. Braunbeck.
Havoc Swims Jaded collected thirteen short stories by David J. Schow (including a collaboration with Craig Spector), along with an Introduction by Bertrand Nightenhelser and a usual idiosyncratic Afterword by the author. Published by Subterranean Press, the special numbered edition was limited to 150 copies signed by Schow and artist Frank Dietz. Water Music was a special chapbook produced to accompany the limited edition. It contained Schow’s eponymous “Hellboy” story, a brief Afterword, and a fascinating article on the author’s Creature from the Black Lagoon fanzine, The Black Lagoon Bugle.
Made Ready & Cupboard Love collected two stories by Terry Lamsley, illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne. It was limited to a 500-copy signed edition and a twenty-six copy lettered edition.
Reassuring Tales contained ten stories, including a film treatment, by T. E. D. Klein, along with an Introduction by the author. There was also a signed edition of 600 copies and a twenty-six-copy lettered, leather-bound and slipcased edition.
Published by Subterranean as an attractive hardcover illustrated by Ted Naifeh, Alabaster collected all five stories featuring Caitlín R. Kiernan’s albino heroine Dancy Flammarion, including the original tale “Bainbridge” and a new Author’s Preface.
Joe R. Lansdale edited Retro-Pulp Tales, an anthology of pre-1960s style stories by such authors as F. Paul Wilson, Chet Williamson, Tim Lebbon, Kim Newman, Al Sarrantonio, Norman Partridge and Alex Irvine. A 1985 short story by Lansdale was the inspiration for Joe R. Lansdale’s Lords of the Razor edited by Bill Sheehan and William Schafer. The titular tale kicked off the anthology, followed by twelve contributions from Chet Williamson, Thomas Tessier, Bradley Denton, Gary A. Braunbeck and Elizabeth Massie, amongst others, including an original story from Lansdale to also close the book. It was limited to a 500-copy signed and slipcased edition, and a leatherbound, lettered and traycased edition of twenty-six copies.
Edited by Kealan Patrick Burke, Night Visions 12 was the latest volume in the long-running anthology series and included a total of eight stories by Simon Clark, Mark Morris and P. D. Cacek. It was also available in a signed edition of 250 copies.
The twentieth anniversary edition of Brian Lumley’s vampire novel Necroscope included an original Introduction by the author plus five full-colour and multiple black and white interior illustrations by Bob Eggleton. The book was available in both signed hardcover and deluxe slipcased editions. Lumley’s Screaming Science Fiction: Horrors from Outer Space, also from Subterranean, collected nine stories (one original) along with a new Foreword by the author and more interior illustrations from Eggleton. A 1,500-copy signed edition was available, along with a twenty-six lettered traycased edition.
Kim Newman’s The Man from the Diogenes Club was an attractive trade paperback from MonkeyBrain Books that collected eight tales (including an original novella) about outlandish psychic investigator Richard Jeperson and the secret organisation he answered to. For American readers, there was a very useful guide to the names and terms used in the stories.
Co-published by MonkeyBrain and the Fandom Association of Central Texas (FACT) to tie-in with the 2006 World Fantasy Convention, Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard was edited by Scott A. Cupp and Joe R. Lansdale. The trade paperback collected twenty-one original stories by Ardath Mayhar, Bradley Denton, Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, Chris Roberson, Neil Barrett, Jr, Michael Moorcock and others.
From Golden Gryphon Press with a Foreword by Howard Waldrop, Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts collected nineteen horror stories (one original) by George Zebrowski, who also contributed an Afterword. All the stories differed from their original appearances, and two were significantly revised.
From the same imprint, Charles Stross’ Lovecraftian spy novel The Jennifer Morgue was a sequel to The Atrocity Archives and featured nerdy CIA demon expert Bob Howard.
Jack Ketchum’s 1991 novel Offspring, the sequel to Off Season, was reissued by The Overlook Connection Press in a trade paperback edition, a 1,000-copy signed edition, a 100-copy slipcased edition, and a fifty-two-copy boxed and leather-bound lettered edition. This “definitive” version contained the author’s preferred text, a revised Afterword and a reprint article.
And Hell Followed With Them was an attractive hardcover anthology from Solitude Publications featuring a novella each by Geoff Cooper, Brian Knight, Tim Lebbon and Brian Keene, with impressive cover art by Chad Savage. It was available in signed hardcover editions of 500 numbered copies and twenty-six lettered.
Michael Cadnum’s Can’t Catch Me and Other Twice-Told Tales from San Francisco’s Tachyon Publications collected eighteen stories (two original) that were described as “fairy tales for the tough-minded”. From the same imprint, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel contained fifteen mostly reprint stories by Carol Emshwiller, Bruce Sterling, Kelly Link, Jonathan Lethem, Jeff VanderMeer, Karen Joy Fowler, Jeffrey Ford, Michael Chadbon, Howard Waldrop and others.
Available from Sean Wright’s Crowswing Books, Clinically Dead and Other Tales of the Supernatural was a hardcover collection of ten stories (two original) by David A. Sutton with an Introduction by Stephen Jones and an Afterword by Joel Lane. It was limited to 250 signed copies and a thirty-copy slipcased edition. Also from Crow-swing, The Impelled and Other Head Trips collected eighteen stories (six original) by Gary Fry, along with an Introduction by Ramsey Campbell and an Afterword by the author.
She Loves Monsters was an impressive novella from Simon Clark about the search for a legendary lost movie. Featuring an Introduction by Paul Finch, it was published by Necessary Evil Press in a hardcover edition of 450 signed and numbered copies and twenty-six signed and lettered copies.
Gary McMahon’s Rough Cut, a short novel about another fabled lost film and one man’s journey into his own family’s darkness, was published by Pendragon Press. From the same imprint, At the Molehills of Madness was a collection of twenty-five previously published stories by Rhys Hughes, dating from 1991 – 2003. The book also included a very brief Foreword and Afterword by the author, and a signed stickered edition was available of the first 100 pre-ordered copies.
Edited by Christopher C. Teague, Choices was an anthology of six novellas by Andrew Humphrey, Stephen Volk, Paul Finch, Gary Fry, Eric Brown and Richard Wright, also available from Pendragon Press.
Mirror Mere collected seventeen stories (five original) by Marie O’Regan. Published by Rainfall Books, it had an Introduction by Paul Kane, whose own collection of two novellas and a story, Signs of Life, was reissued by the same imprint with an Introduction by Stephen Gallagher and illustrations by Ian Simmons.