William Gagliani

Having published stories in various anthologies and with a story collection to her credit, A WALK ON THE DARK SIDE (1998), Wormhole editor and publisher Dawn Dunn here offers her work for the first time as a chapbook. Bearing another superb cover by Joanna Erbach, this one a blend of influences from realism to Baroque/Renaissance, the contents are the stories "Pink Marble" and "Never Say Die."

"What is terror? Life is terror. It's a long, wretched journey through a horrifying landscape. Take one wrong turn and you're in hell. Stop by the roadside to rest, and you risk getting sucked into the past."  These words by Patricia Lee Macomber come as close as anything I can write to describe both the power and the draw of PERSONAL DEMONS.

Here's a brief celebration of noir literature—a couple of classics by Richard Stark, who sometimes cops to the alias Donald Westlake*. Generally speaking, Westlake does the funnier stuff. Not that it's all funny, mind you, but at least darkly sardonic. Classic caper novels like the Dortmunder books The Hot Rock and Bank Shot, not to mention The Ax, The Hook, and so many others. When it's time to get tough, though, then it's Richard Stark all the way. Here we have two recent Stark releases,

One thing I can tell you for sure is that I never want to be trapped in one of Tim Waggoner's nightmares. Seriously twisted stuff happens on Pandora Drive, and if you landed there, it would be something like starring in a slasher flick directed by Ken Russell, complete with gigantic phalluses. And I don't mean the metaphorical kind. Cross that giant phallus with a shotgun and you have a sense of where Waggoner wants to send his readers. Allow me to shiver.

Every field must have its new blood, for without it the field would wither. So it is in our field that new writers irrigate this fertile soil with the rich, coppery elixir of their relatively untested talents. Open Graves is an anthology of horror tales showcasing the talents of a group of writers of which you might not have heard—but it's a safe bet some of them you'll hear a lot about in the not too distant future.

With the legal wrangling over the status of the poet William Ashbless (is he alive or dead? is he very, very old, or just pretending to be? and is he a plagiarist or someone whose work just happens to "bring to mind" the work of others?) not quite over, this tiny but valuable collection hits the streets with introductions by Powers and Blaylock and with an afterword by Ashbless himself, accusing them of profiteering from his supposed death. What is one to make of these allegations and accusations? Did Ashbless survive that helicopter crash? If not, who has "untouched up" the story

It's difficult to avoid turning this review into an essay. But how else do you discuss a classic? Off Season was a classic even in its emasculated 1981 Ballantine version, and rightly so. Now Ketchum (the pseudonymous Dallas Mayr) adds an Afterword discussing the negotiations surrounding the clipped version. Doug Winter adds his historian's view in an introduction.

Anyone who has read any of the following knows that Jay Bonansinga can deliver: The Black Mariah, Sick, The Killer's Game, Head Case, The Sleep Police, and Bloodhound. Each of these helps make the case that Bonansinga can take high-concept and turn out mind-numbing, nail-biter plots in which the pace is almost as much of a star as the plot itself. Most Bonansinga novels scan like movies, which explains why so many are optioned or in production.

Tom Piccirilli may well be the most literate, poetic voice our field has ever produced. No, really, he's that good. And November Mourns proves the case effortlessly.

There's more than a little "Romeo and Juliet" in Elaine Bergstrom's newest Austra novel, the first in a long while and worth the wait. Bergstrom's vampires (Shattered Glass, Blood Rites, Daughter of the Night, Blood Alone) are her own—sexy beings who need blood for sustenance but who prefer a knife or blade to their canines. The Austras are few in number because of the difficulty finding human women who can bear their children, and their family bonds are so strong that they are incapable of hurting each other.

There are those days when the mail brings something that makes you grin. A nod from the gods of literature. A pat on the back for clean living and piety. Okay, maybe not that ... but still, you open the package and find in your hand justification for doing more of what you do. 

Harry Shannon loves a good monster. You can tell by the pleasure he takes in bending the familiar tropes to his own ends, reshaping them into new and entertaining adventures with a cinematic flair. Here he takes on the werewolf, until recently an almost forgotten monster.

I decided to revisit this novel as a Classic Return when I saw the adulation Gaiman fans have for their hero. At April's World Horror Convention, I had the pleasure of signing a few copies of ROBERT BLOCH'S PSYCHOS while Neil accommodated hundreds of fans just a few yards away. Despite the length of his line, Neil smiled at everyone and stayed until the crowds were sated. He is a charming man who sets a great example for his fellow writers.

This is the first HWA anthology to hit the stores as a hardcover and not as a limited edition, and for this Leisure Books deserves the credit. Spreading the horror gospel is something HWA and Leisure can partner on, and this volume is handsome enough to catch a casual reader's eye. As an ambassador for HWA, MUSEUM gets a good jump out of the gate. But how does it finish?

MOONFALL jumps out of the gate fast with the suicide of a young teacher, but she's not the first to opt out of her contract with St. Gertrude's Home for Girls. In fact, lots of strange things have happened around the old converted abbey the locals call St. Gruesome's in homage to its gothic architecture, ghosts, and horrifying gargoyles, which—legend has it—fly off at night and steal babies. What's even stranger is that people have a tendency to forget what they think of St. Gertrude's and its bizarre nuns, so much so that Sheriff John Lawson still doesn't know whether or

With Mojo Hand, this musician turned horror writer comes into his own. In his fourth novel, Kihn brings back rock musician Beau Young, ten years after the events of Big Rock Beat. The decade hasn't been so good to Beau, who survived the bizarre goings-on of the previous novel and went on to mild success as part of Beau and the Savages, composer of one and a half hit songs and married to the lovely Gayle Mimi, B-movie up-and-comer. But Beau succumbed to every possible rock musician's curse, especially the booze and drugs, and he's now divorced from Gayle and late on his child

This Enigmatic chapbook contains three varied stories, bound in an attractively clean design with a glossy cover. Meikle has over a hundred story credits and it shows these tales are streamlined and concise, wasting no time to get to the meat.

In the likely Bob Bloch-influenced "The Dark Island," a man travels to his friend's ancestral home. A family curse, a mysterious island in the center of the loch, and night rowboat trek all add up to a tidy little Scottish tale of vague but atmospheric grue. Definitely a journey worth taking.

Everybody loves horror movies. Look at weekend box office grosses and, more often than not, the new horror flick cleans up. Some go on to do fantastic business, others fade, but usually they do well up front because a lot of people want to be scared, grossed out, or kept on the edge of their seats. So an anthology blending the horror movie biz and traditional horror short fiction would seem to be a natural. You may remember previous anthologies called Silver Scream and It Came from the Drive-In.

Author Harry Shannon takes a detour from his "NIGHT OF" trilogy (Beast, Werewolf, and the upcoming Demon) to turn in a completely winning, engaging first mystery. Memorial Day isn't a strict whodunit or howdunit, though it masquerades as the former. It's located squarely in the grey area between the noir school and that of the breezier, more modern mysteries—as well as playing off a long-standing amateur sleuth tradition. Shannon's sleuth, Mick Callahan, is no detective or cop. He's no private dick. No, he's a disgraced and defrocked television