Product Description
PSYCHOLOGICAL CUTTING-EDGE TERROR WITH A WICKED TWIST!A TURN OF THE SCREW!F. Paul Wilson . Ramsey Campbell . Mort Castle .Tim Lebbon . Tina L. Jens . Robert Weinberg . Nancy Kilpatrick . Sephera Giron . Thomas Deja . J. Knight . these along with other masters of suspense plunge you into their corkscrew world of hateful revenge, uncertain fate, and finally--panic. You drift deeper and deeper, tumbling into "THE BLACK SPIRAL."In twenty maximum-fear-factor tales of suspense you'll encounter . Elvis rising from the grave to wreak havoc on a rap group who's been sampling his songs . the uncertainty of crossing over into the shadowy world of the near death experience .a writer who finds himself hunted like a character in the pages of his own screenplay . a young couple who think they've found their dream home. that is, until they learn of its blood-soaked past . a seductive vixen who uses her voluptuous body as bait as she prowls the Goth scene's nightlife looking for fresh meat, leading to an orgiastic night that guarantees eternal life for Vanessa and her all-consuming passions. lust-filled ghosts who covet andseduce unsuspecting women as they sleep .a beautiful, hard-drivingfemme fatale who's on the run in the dusty heart of the Arizona Desert and races the devil for pink slips . and a serpent-handling, traveling preacher man who gets more than he bargained for when he unwittingly makes a pact with old "Mr. Scratch."These stories are at once eerie and haunting, chilling and nightmarishly brilliant.Guaranteed to prickle your skin with gooseflesh, and keep you reading until the wee hours of dawn.THE BLACK SPIRAL: TWISTED TALES OF HORROR A FINGERNAILS-ON-THE-BLACKBOARD THRILLFEST ! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Loved it
Some of these stories are so twisted - the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Way to go Ramsey. Keep writing.

Top of their game horror authors ...
Jeffery Spencer, Colorado
Heavy on the suspense, light on the bloodshed; each story was unique but blended well for a good antho.
Have to say I like the first spoof of ol' Elvis rising from the grave the best ... with Campbell's quiet horror a close second.
Something for everyone.

From the Publisher Robert Gunner
PSYCHOLOGICAL CUTTING-EDGE TERROR WITH A WICKED TWIST!
A TURN OF THE SCREW!

F. Paul Wilson ... Ramsey Campbell ... Mort Castle ...Tim Lebbon ... Tina L. Jens ... Robert Weinberg ... Nancy Kilpatrick ... Sephera Giron ... Thomas Deja ... J. Knight(RISEN) ... these along with other masters of suspense plunge you into their corkscrew world of hateful revenge, uncertain fate, and finally--panic. You drift deeper and deeper, tumbling into "THE BLACK SPIRAL."

In twenty maximum-fear-factor tales of suspense you'll encounter ... Elvis rising from the grave to wreak havoc on a rap group who's been sampling his songs ... the uncertainty of crossing over into the shadowy world of the near death experience ...a writer who finds himself hunted like a character in the pages of his own screenplay ... a young couple who think they've found their dream home... that is, until they learn of its blood-soaked past ... a seductive vixen who uses her voluptuous body as bait as she prowls the Goth scene's nightlife looking for fresh meat, leading to an orgiastic night that guarantees eternal life for Vanessa and her all-consuming passions... lust-filled ghosts who covet andseduce unsuspecting women as they sleep ...a beautiful, hard-drivingfemme fatale who's on the run in the dusty heart of the Arizona Desert and races the devil for pink slips ... and a serpent-handling, traveling preacher man who gets more than he bargained for when he unwittingly makes a pact with old "Mr. Scratch."

These stories are at once eerie and haunting, chilling and nightmarishly brilliant.Guaranteed to prickle your skin with gooseflesh, and keep you reading until the wee hours of dawn.

THE BLACK SPIRAL: TWISTED TALES OF HORROR

A FINGERNAILS-ON-THE-BLACKBOARD THRILLFEST! ... Read more

Product Description
Ramsey Campbell has won four World Fantasy Awards, ten British Fantasy Awards, and the Horror Writers' Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. Publishers Weekly calls Campbell "a horror writer's horror writer," adding, "His control of mood and atmosphere is unsurpassed." The Cleveland Plain Dealer says his horror fiction is "of consistently high quality," and The Washington Post praises Campbell for continuing "to break new ground, advancing the style and thematic content of horror fiction far beyond the works of his contemporaries."

The original publication of Scared Stiff almost created the sub-genre of erotic horror.Never had sex and death been so mesmerizingly entwined.Clive Barker, in his Introduction, says, "One of the delightfully unsettling things about these tales is the way Ramsey's brooding, utterly unique vision renders an act so familiar to us all so fretful, so strange, so chilling.Sex . . . is the perfect stuff for the horror writer, and there can be few artists working in the genre as capable of analyzing and dramatizing [this] as Campbell."

For this edition, Campbell has added three new stories which have never before appeared in book form.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Not Free SF Reader
A short selection of Campbell's story wherein he is dealing more explicitly with
sexuality, from the disturbed and the alone kind, to the volunteer for group ritual with bad end variety.They are pretty decent, overall, with a 3.45 average.

Scared Stiff : Dolls - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : The Other Woman - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : Lilith's - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : The Seductress - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : Stages - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : Loveman's Comeback - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : Merry May - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : The Limits of Fantasy - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : The Body in the Window - Ramsey Campbell
Scared Stiff : Kill Me Hideously - Ramsey Campbell


Coven lubrication.

3 out of 5


Throat art.

3.5 out of 5


Artificial Love Mate.

3 out of 5


Must satisfy.

3.5 out of 5


It's a trip to not do it by myself.

3.5 out of 5


Sexual summoning.

4 out of 5


Ritual ending.

4 out of 5


New scenes.

3 out of 5


Spin show recognition.

3.5 out of 5


Like to be a victim, please.

3.5 out of 5

Essential Ramsey Campbell
If you bought this book expecting a lot of sexual action, then you'll be sorely disappointed.Eroticism is *not* hot sex. Try your local adult bookstore, instead.That said, *real* Ramsey Campbell and/or *real*fans of the horror genre will appreciate this collection.To be fair, the first three titles aren't all that.They are, in fact, rather dull.However, the shudders and shivers pick up in "The Seductress" and increase from there. Hot sex seekers should look elsewhere for their carnal fixation(s).

A keeper!!!
Not as much hot sex as title impresses, but by far my best collection of Ramsey Campbell's stories. I only like about half of his book, but this one's a keeper!

I would give this book a zero if I could!
I bought this book for $5.00 in hardcover at Barnes & Noble, and it was the worst $5 I have ever spent.I usually don't feel compelled to write reviews here, but I couldn't sit on my disappointment with this book.The stories are so nonsensical that half the time when they were over I had no idea was happened.Every story in the book stinks!I kept reading, hoping that at least one would be enjoyable, but nope.Sorry to say it, but this book is a huge stinker. Don't even waste the time getting it for free from the library!

The deadly art of seduction
Clive Barker's introduction is as good as the stories themselves, stating in regards to the melding of horror and erotica that "In an age when characters in all manner of fiction have forsaken their blushes to fornicate, horror fiction clings to its underwear with a nunnish zeal."Since Scared Stiff was first published in 1988, this was one of the influential books that led to the production of more erotica in horror, such as the Hot Blood series.

There are only seven tales in this collection, making it a wonderful traveling companion or vacation book.Starting with `Dolls', we visit a quiet village and the witch's coven that conjures the devil during orgies, leading to `The Other Woman', a tale of an artist's obsession with his work bleeding over onto the canvas of his own life.

Next is `Liliths', probably my favorite story in the compilation.A strange shop appears out of nowhere, and a man makes a purchase that changes his life.A life sized doll that fills him with compulsive behavior.
`The Seductress' is a low-key suspense tale, of obsessive love and a mother's revenge.`Stages' tells of us a deadly combination of $ex, drugs, and voyeurism.`Loveman's Comeback' speaks of possession, and the lengths one will go to in order to break out of a bad relationship.And finally, `Merry May' is about wandering into a strange town, and finding their odd celebration a little more than you can handle.

While in comparison to today's erotic horror, Scared Stiff is a bit tame for this blossoming genre, but Ramsey Campbell's early foray into this forbidden realm truly opened doors for those of us who enjoy peeking into the bloody rooms to find titillating delights within.If you are really a fan of visceral lust run amok, then you should own a copy of Scared Stiff.Enjoy!
... Read more

Product Description
Dead Souls contains twenty five stories that will only ensure the darkness without enfolds you in its cold embrace. Within these pages, you will find a man so affected by the horrors he witnessed at war, he believes another is guiding his actions; a small boy with enough malevolence to shake a young girl to her very core; a tattoo artist with a hidden agenda. You will read about a future not as bright as we might have imagined or hoped; a puppet show with a damning message; a new twist on the theory of Beethoven's Immortal Beloved; Adolf Hitler in a new guise, and something terrible that approaches us in the desert. All this, plus many, many more, tales of darkness and human suffering. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The horror is all in her mind - literally
There is just something unique about Campbell's writing that continues to draw me back, even though I sometimes find myself floundering in his prose.Although I sometimes lose track of who is speaking to whom and find myself plodding through a miasma of words that sometimes lose my full attention, inevitably there are moments of brilliant insight or wide-eyed instances in which I realize that Campbell has lulled me into a sense of false security as a conscious means of entrapping me within a mental padded cell of his deft creation that make me glad I paid for the ride.The Parasite, published in 1980, is one of his older novels, and it seems to offer, in a way, both the best and worst of the writer.Although it seems somewhat rushed, the prologue is a gripping little presentation of a ten-year-old girl's terrifying though somewhat nebulous encounter with something called up from a seemingly playful Ouija-induced séance, a force she alone encountered inside a darkened, locked room after her older companions abandoned her to whatever horror they had unwittingly summoned.After this electrifying start, the bulk of the book plods along at a sometimes tedious rate, very slowly preparing us for the last hundred pages of ever-intensifying mental anguish brought to bear upon our grown up little girl as she is not only compelled to remember the things her mind has tried to lock up forever but to deal with forces of an almost cosmic nature that threaten her life and marriage from the outside.Even this pales in comparison to the real evil here, though, in the form of a long-dead practicioner of black magick (which is worse than just magic) who resides inside her own mind.

In a way, this novel is one of self-discovery, with a grown up Rose finding her seemingly placid life as a teacher and writer drawn unstoppably toward matters of an occult nature.Her terrifyingly new out-of-body experiences come in time, with study and practice, to empower her, and she begins to feel strengthened in some way by the unnatural talents she reluctantly admits to possessing.Then her world falls apart before her eyes, and she realizes that her new powers were never really hers to begin with but instead belong to the parasite that has lived within her own mind undetected for twenty years.Some part of her inner strength saves her from a total breakdown, but the mad scramble of the final major section of the book proves an increasingly unnerving experience for the reader seeing the world through her eyes.Even the ending is not really the ending, but that is only to be expected from a man of such insidious talents as Ramsey Campbell.While far from his most exciting novel, The Parasite more than satisfies the seeker of psychological horror who stays with it until the end.

good
what ever u sa

Suspenseful but depressing
The premise of this book was interesting and the story was fairly well written, however I found the latter part of the story extremely depressing. ... Read more

Product Description
The sixty-fifty anniversary issue of Weird Tales showcases the work of Featured Author Gene Wolfe and Featured Artist George Barr (who contributed all the artwork). Also includes work by Ramsey Campbell, F. Paul Wilson, T.E.D. Klein, Tanith Lee, and many more. ... Read more

Product Description
Don't answer the phone...it might be for you!
Geoff is happily married with a young son who is the delight of his life. A famous, successful investigative journalist, he is in the middle of a publicity tour when a voice on the phone plunges him into the darkest part of his past, and into a deadly present.

The voice is that of Geoff's long-missing brother, Ben. When they were children, Ben was blamed for every trouble, large or small. And Ben was not always innocent--he performed acts of vandalism; he stole; sometimes he seemed, even as a child, to be a borderline sociopath. He was also abused, emotionally and physically, by their father. Without that abuse, what might Ben have become? With it, was has he become?

When they were small, Ben devised tortured puzzles for his brother to solve. New Ben offers Geoff a new set of clues with a terrible secret at their core. Someone is killing happily married couples. Ben challenges Geoff to solve the murders...and warns him that his own family may be in danger if he does not. If Geoff fails, his son may pay the price--but if he succeeds, will he find that is brother has become a killer? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Super Suspense!
Ramsey Campbell's specialty is families: some good, beautiful, and loving; some cold, terrifying, and detestable.He doesn't allow any faceless victims; you know them all too well and suffer accordingly.

Geoffrey Davenport is a moderately famous investigative TV journalist who appears to have it all:an attractive business-partner wife and a delightful four-year old son.For no particularly good reason that I can see, Geoff chooses to keep a big chunk of his life a secret-his older half-brother Ben who he has not seen or heard from since Ben left home for good at age 18.

Geoff begins getting anonymous phone calls that he fears are from Ben.He gradually comes to realize that Ben is a serial killer who claims Geoff can stop the killing if he wins a tortuous "game" of clues, a surreal Treasure Hunt.Unfortunately, for the reader's peace of mind, we get to know Ben and have a certain amount of sympathy for him.The parents loved, cosseted, and supported Geoff; yet treated Ben with Dickensonian cruelty.As the "game" continues, Geoff realizes the danger is coming closer and closer to home and the tension and suspense ratchet up accordingly.The finale is slam bang with touches of Dali surrealism, and the imagery is remarkable.

I had a few minor irritations with the book.I think the son's age should have been two at the most, rather than four.Four-year olds use complete sentences and don't toddle.I never could satisfactorily figure out why the parents treated Geoff and Ben so differently.But these were very minor annoyances.The book has beautiful characterizations, concise but perfect.Nothing slows down the pace, ever-increasing dread and tension of the story.For all but the faint-hearted, I highly recommend the book.

Cambell is at the top of his game
Investigative reporter Geoff Davenport is happy with both his personal and professional lives.He loves his wife and his job.He is currently on an enjoyable publicity tour of Britain, trying to sell his newly released book.For Geoff, life is good.

However, one phone call in the middle of the night abruptly turns everything upside down for Geoff.The voice on the other end apparently is his brother Ben, who accuses Geoff of letting it happen.

At about the same time, a serial killer is murdering happily married couples.Goeff thinks the culprit is Ben.He decides to investigate the killings in an effort to stop them in case it is a family affair.

Ramsey Campbell has a richly deserved reputation for his quality novels outlining the strengths and weaknesses of families (see ONE SAFE PLACE and NAZARETH HILL).His latest book, THE LAST VOICE THEY HEAR, is a brilliant thriller that emphasizes the down side of familial rellationships.Geoff is a wonderful amateur sleuth, and his investigation and fears ring true.Mr. Campbell has written a shocker that is most people's worst nightmare.

.Harriet Klausner

A stunning piece of suspense horror from the master
I read an advanced proof of this book and can tell you it is Campbell at the top of his form. Geoff Davenport is a successful investigative journalist working on a high profile TV series. His wife works in TV too, and they have a young son, Paul. Someone has been quietly killing couples in the Windsor area for a number of years but the police have no leads. A telephone call taken by Geoff on a publicity tour brings his childhood roaring back to haunt him. And the killer might be a part of that past, Geoff's half brother Ben. Campbell has here written an intense and emotional thriller with enough suspense to keep us turning the pages long after lights out. The climax of the book is one of the most tense I have ever read and did my fingernails no favours at all! Highly, highly recommended. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Great Cthulhu Mythos Anthology
(This review contains spoilers -- caution is advised.)

"The final section of the transcript was considerably more interesting, however; it recorded a number of brief scenes that must never have appeared in the finished film.I quote one of them in its entirety:
PLAYROOM, CHURCH SCHOOL -- LATE AFTERNOON.
(DELETED)
INT: This Malay youth has sketched a picture of a demon he calls Shoo Goron.
(To boy) I wonder if you can tell me something about the instrument he's
blowing out of.It looks like the Jewish shofar, or ram's horn.(Again
to Boy)That's all right.No need to be frightened.
BOY: He no blow out.Blow in.
INT: I see -- he draws air in through the horn, is that right?
BOY: No horn.Is no horn.(Weeps) Is HIM,"

That is one of many fine moments in one of the greatest Lovecraftian tales ever penned, "Black Man With A Horn," by T. E. D. Klein.The story had its first publication in this excellent anthology of Mythos fiction edited by Ramsey Campbell for Arkham House.Every time I return to "Black Man With a Horn" it stuns me with its brilliance, similar to the effect of rereading Karl Edward Wagner's classic "Sticks."The tale is told in first person, and it is structured in similar fashion to the way H. P. Lovecraft himself structured tales such as "The Call of Cthulhu," with bits of quotations and news articles and revelations that, piled up, paint a terrifying portrait of supernatural horror.There are many wonderful references to Lovecraft, and here and there we are delighted with a wee quotation from one of HPL's letters (the story begins with the epigraph,
"The Black (words obscured by postmark) was fascinating--I must get a snap shot of him."
--H. P. Lovecraft, postcard to E. Hoffmann Price, 7/23/1934;
and this combination of fanciful play, a wink of the Lovecraftian eye, with a tale that grows more and more terrifying, is delicious.Every time I return to this tale I am tempted to call it my all-time favourite Mythos tale written by someone other than H. P. Lovecraft (a position held by Robert Bloch's magnificent "The Shadow from the Steeple").

Ramsey Campbell's first book was an Arkham House hardcover that was published when he was 19 years old, and it was a collection of Cthulhu Mythos stories.He has now become one of the genre's masters, hailed by some as the most important weird fiction writer since Lovecraft.Although he went through a phase where he tried to write tales that shewed absolutely no Lovecraftian influence, he has, now and again, returned to the Mythos mode.For this book he penned a great wee tale, "The Faces at Pine Dunes."Unlike some modern writers, who feel that the only way to approach the Lovecraftian tale is to treat it with humor, Ramsey's approach is almost always dead serious, and thus chilling.Ramsey has a wonderful talent for evoking a dark and haunting sense of place, and he does so with brilliance in this fine tale.

One curious fragment in the oeuvre of H. P. Lovecraft is "The Book," a thwarted attempt by HPL to write a weird tale based on the opening three poems in his "Fungi from Yuggoth" sonnet sequence.With "The Black Tome of Alsophocus," Martin S. Warnes has completed HPL's fragment, and the tale is published under a dual bi-line with Lovecraft's name first.Such a practice cannot be considered a success unless the living author captures the essence of Lovecraft's singular style.This is something that Derleth tried to do, but could not accomplish, in his less-than-inspired (with some few exceptions) "posthumous collaborations" that are collected in THE WATCHERS OUT OF TIME.Happily, Mr. Warnes succeeds where Derleth did not, and he gives us a tale that is purely Lovecraftian.One wishes that Robert M. Price had included this tale of the Crawling Chaos in his Chaosium Cycle anthology, THE NYARLATHOTEP CYCLE.

I have not yet read any of the many fantasy novels penned by A. A. Attanasio, but I quite enjoy his magnificent tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and have long wished to see an entire book under his bi-line of such tales.(The only other tale of his that I remember reading was "Glimpses," which Gerald W. Page included in his fine Arkham House anthology, DARK THINGS, 1975.)His tale in this book, "The Star Pools," is a rousing adventure story with a subtle Mythos subtext, and it is enormously effective.He has a wonderful talent for characterization and dialogue that one does not always find in Mythos tales.

Other tales include: "Crouch End," a rather silly yet entertaining tale by Stephen King; "The Second Wish," by Brian Lumley; "Dark Awakening," by Frank Belknap Long; "Shaft Number 247," by Basil Copper, and one of the scariest Lovecraftian tales that I have ever read, brilliant; and "Than Curse the Darkness," by David Drake.The cover illustration of the Arkham House hardcover is a delightful work by Jason Van Hollander -- I especially love the landscape of Kingsport as portray'd on ye back cover.Editor Campbell has also supplied an interesting introduction in which he pens a wee history of the Mythos.This is an excellent book for anyone interested in seeing what modern authors have done with this imaginary landscape spill'd from ye mind of our finest dreamer, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Esq.

After reading this, see how *you* sleep!
I was terrified of just about everything after reading this book.Even the great Stephen King writes similarly to Lovecraft!Oh, and speaking of King, with that story "Crouch End"... YIKES!If you want to readthis Stephen King story, it is now in Nightmares & Dreamscapes.Sweetdreams... ... Read more

Product Description
A Chilling new anthology of all-original tales of horror

Includes New Stories by:
Ray Bradbury
Graham Joyce
Peter Crowther
Kim Newman
Sara Douglass
Thomas Tessier
M. John Harrison
Gahan Wilson


The anthology market these days is awash with small, themed works focused on very specific markets, like vampire erotica and tales of werewolves, or it features best of the year reprints. It has been years since anyone has dared to bring out a broad-reaching anthology that seeks to define the current state of the genre with all original tales from both masters and hot new writers.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Horror Dead and Buried
This book's back cover proclaims that "horror may never be the same." Well if this predominantly mediocre collection is any indication, that statement is unfortunately accurate. Perhaps modern writers, trapped with the rest of us in our media-saturated society, have lost the ability to be truly scary. Personally I've never read anything more frightening than ol' Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft; and even Stephen King, Clive Barker, or Dean Koontz, when each was in his prime, could deliver serious thrills and chills. But this collection, of what currently passes for "horror," proves that it may be time to nail the coffin shut on this genre for good.

Granted, of the 34 short stories here, there's a smattering of winners. Robert Devereaux offers a quite disconcerting look at our society's obsession with beauty, while Michael Marshall Smith, Stephen Dedman, and Adam L.G. Nevill show an affinity for inherent human evil that's healthily influenced by the classics. Still-dependable Ray Bradbury even supplies a whimsically dreadful update on the Grim Reaper. There are a few other stories here that can keep the reader perfectly interested even if they're not particularly scary, with well-drawn themes and characters.

But otherwise, the majority of selections here illustrate, embarrassingly, everything that's wrong with current "horror" writing (plus the editing of collections such as this). I'll make an example of Lisa Tuttle. Her story features a woman who is suspicious of her boyfriend's secrecy, so she goes through his stuff, learns he's a murderer, and that's pretty much the end. Oh the horror! Aaron Sterns and Chris Lawson/Simon Brown deliver stories that frightfully showcase human cruelty or struggle, only to have stock undead creatures or supernatural processes pop up in the final paragraphs, as unsatisfying explanations for man's inhumanity. These so-called surprises are actually far more predictable than they are scary. Several other tales are so genre-deficient that you wonder why they're even in a "horror" collection, those by Melanie Tem and Fruma Klass being prime examples. This collection is a failure in so many respects that it's almost scary. But not in a good way. [~doomsdayer520~]

More of the same
I read a lot of horror.Lots of it.And I should know by now that any book which promises to redefine the genre with taglines like, "Horror may never be the same!" really means, "These authors had agents with enough clout to intimdate the publishers into printing this dreck!"

I picked up this anthology because it promised stories from "around the world", and I thought it would have some interesting ideas and stories.Turns out that England, Australia, and the US are so similar in culture and outlook that this collection really brings absolutely nothing new to the genre.At least three of the stories in here focus on vampires.Vampires, for crying out loud!Vampires haven't been scary since Anne Rice emasculated them in the 70s.And most of the anthologies I read have stories from these three countries anyway, so I did not encounter anything new.A truly international collection of horror would contain stories from Asia (Chinese ghost stories are among the creepiest I've ever read), more of Europe (although the English may deny it, Europe is a much bigger continent than just the UK), and Latin America (the brand of magical realism that Latin American writers bring to their fiction can be truly frightening).Even if you're going to stick with England, America, and Australia, though, you could still find excellent African American writers, or Aboriginal writers, and so on.Instead, this anthology offers just another mediocre collection of generic white bread horror with nothing shocking, bloodcurdling, or new.

Unless you like contemporary horror and want just more of the same stuff you've already been reading, don't bother with this collection.

The only reason I'm giving this book a 2 instead of a 1 is because there are one or two stories in here that are at least interesting.

Target Practice
That is what this book should be used for--target practice. Not a single tale is remotely bloodcurdling. More than a dozen yawns went unsurpressed while attemptly with foolhardy optimism to complete this pedestrian compilation. Why stifle a yawn, that'll kill ya. STAY AWAY!

The Beautiful Judith
We *know* the beautiful Judith mentioned in this book. And it's all TRUE!

Contemporary horror
The two stories I most enjoyed in this book, convince me that I am not a fan of contemporary horror. Tiger Moth by Graham Joyce, and the Big Green Grin, by Gahan Wilson, are more in tune with the fantasy genre.

Most of the other stories are well written, but they didn't scare me, or make me break out in a cold sweat. In my opinion, several are simply depressing, (Picking up Courtney, Sounds Like, Bedfordshire) and that is not what I look for in any story.Terry Dowling's "The Bone Ship" reminded me of Roald Dahl's story The 'Landlady', except I didn't care for the protagonist. I didn't finish Lil' Miss Ultrasound because the subject matter didn't interest me. I thought Stephen Dedman's story was interesting, but in the end seemed to be a fairly predictable tale of revenge. I lost interest in Andrew Brown's story half way through, I thought it was too long. Perhaps it is OK to use said bookisms/adverbs in dialogue, if Simon Brown's story is a guide. No man's land, finished suddenly, I thought there might be more to it, the ending didn't impress me at all.

Overall, this is a better anthology than "Dreaming Down Under", but if these tales are representative of where contemporary horror is headed, then it is not my cup of tea. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

It's just ok
As a big fan of Horror Literature and more specifically of Ramsey Campbell I couldn't skip this book. I had just read "The Parasite" and loved it so I had great expectations for "The Nameless".
It's not a bad book, the story is catching and it is a page turner as you get more and more curious to find out more about the cult and about Angela. However, when you get to the end of the book you are left wanting more as the author does not offer enough details about the cult or about the powers that Angela is supposed to have or who was the girl that they shot so as to make Barbara believe it was her daughter and how and why Arthur keeps showing to Angela and Barbara.
I thought Ted's character deserved a little bit more development too. I found myself curious to know more about his personality and his motives since he has such a relevant role in the story. Also, it appears to me that some things are mentioned in the book just for the sake of being there as they lead to nothing and in the end there was no purpose to them whatsoever.
All in all I found this book to be just ok.

IDENTIFIED
Effectively scary can only describe this supernatural tale of a woman's quest to find her supposedly murdered daughter which leads her into a cult activity that may or may not exist. Ramsey Campbell succeeds in topping himself with this one.Everything about THE NAMELESS is highly impressive: from its multi-dimensional protagonist to its perfect plot pace, to its many edge-of-your-seat atmospheric moments.His prose is as gripping as the dark presence looming over the heroine.The ability with which he uses his narrative is reason enough to pick this one up.One word, one sentence, says so much.THE NAMELESS should definitely be on top of everyone's reading pile.-----Martin Boucher

Spectacular Horror Tale
First let me say that you should ignore the rubes who have bashed this book for a reason i simply can't fathom. It's obvious that they have no idea what makes a horror novel great.

Okay let's discuss the story. It starts off with the abduction of a woman's child and than her apparent murder. Years later the mother of the girl recieve's a phone call from a girl saying that she's her murdered child. It all picks up pace after that.

Later in the book we learn about a cult that's members have no names (hence the title). The girl says she is living with them or that they are keeping her prisoner and only her mother can help rescue her. The cult worship some force or being that reminds me of one of H.P. Lovecraft's Old One's or nameless terrors. I can't reveal much more about the story because i do not want to ruin it for those who have not read it yet.

This book starts alittle slow and than like a cannon blast it explode's never leaving the reader time to catch his or her breath. The horrible deeds of the cult will shock and disturb you a great deal and if they don't your a sick person. This book is downright scary because of Campbell's ability to scare the living daylights out of us with his descriptions of the enviorments and the shadows and things half glimpsed before all goes dark. Pick this up and enjoy it as much as i did...i have to say though that the ending is very different and some may not like it but if you have read Campbell before you will be able to take it better than most.

The Nameless or The Numbing?
When I brought The Nameless I thought it was
written by an author that I quite liked.
Then doubt crept in and I feared the
author was none other than RC who had
written The Doll who Ate His Mother.

After I confirmed my fears that it was
indeed the same author I dithered on
whether to read the book but decided
to give RC another chance.

It wasn't worth it! RC is very good
at describing things, so good in
fact that most of the Nameless
describes the countryside, houses
etc and maybe about a 1/5th of
the book has dialogue or
advancement of the plot. As Stephen
King put it in In Writing, description
is a tool that needs to be used
appropriately. RC seems to want
to describe everything not just
the important or significant things
and in this book he doesn't
move very much beyond doing exactly
that.

So if you like endless descriptions,
a plot that hardly goes anywhere
(except maybe in circles) than this
is your book.

But if you want a good horror novel
DON'T buy this book and don't
waste your time reading it thinking
that maybe in the next page- or the
next- or the next etc, that something
might happen and that you might
actually be rewarded for
plodding your way through The
Numbing! I fell into that trap
and by the end of the book I
was in horror at the fact that
not only had I bought the book
but that I'd also forced
my self to read it to it's
uninspired and unoriginal ending.

The Numbing!

What makes good horror? Well I won't claim to know
that as everybody likes a horror (or not) for his
or her own reasons, and we should respect other
people's right to have their own opinion with out
labelling them as 'country bumpkins'[dictionary
definition of a rube].

Having said that I *can* recommend Cold Print
by Ramsey Campell, an excellent read perhaps
because he can't ramble on endlessly in a
short story.

However for a truely good horror I suggest
Graham Masterton's Ritual- now there's a
book that's bound to make you squirm!

Campbell's conclusion is a betrayal of the evil he created
I had high hopes for this novel.Ramsey Campbell, a master of psychological horror, seemed poised to add some uncharacteristically tangible frights and perhaps even it a bit of good old-fashioned gore to this particular work of fiction.The concept is far from original-cult activity at its most disturbing-but I anxiously awaited the results of the author's decision to really get his hands dirty this time.The book crawled along in places, but intermittent moments of foreboding kept my optimism intact as I continued my quest to reach what I felt would be the shocking conclusion.Sadly, all of this great buildup essentially came to naught in the form of a sudden, anticlimactic, depressingly disappointing ending.This novel proves that where there's smoke, there is not in fact always fire.I actually felt cheated by the seeming rush job of an ending here, and I can only look back with regret at the high hopes I associated with this book as I made my way through it.After the complete absence of tension or excitement at the end, one is left with a number of unanswered questions and a small set of characters who apparently served no purpose whatsoever in the narrative.It is as if the author suddenly decided at the last minute that he just didn't care anymore.

Perhaps the term "the nameless" makes you think of unimaginable entities out of space and time with revoltingly indescribable features; it certainly brought a Lovecraftian connotation to my mind initially.In terms of this novel, though, the Nameless are a cult who forego all earthly experience (such as names) in service to their cause.It remains unclear, but there goal seems to consist of gaining power for themselves and presumably opening the door for something evil, I suppose, to manifest itself.All I really know is that they were obsessed with torturing their victims and offering them up as sacrifices to nefarious agents (or so we are told but never really shown).There is some type of nonhuman agent associated with them, but I never really learned what it was or why Campbell thought it needed to be included in the first place.This cult had kidnapped Barbara Waugh's beloved three-year-old daughter, leaving behind an unrecognizable dead body which was naturally determined to be that of a murdered young Angela.Nine years later, Barbara suddenly begins to receive mysterious phone calls from someone purporting to be her long-dead daughter.Desperate to find out the truth and to rescue her daughter if she is in fact still alive, the distraught mother embarks on a frantic search for the group's whereabouts, assisted by her boyfriend Ted and a young reporter looking for her big break.They pick up rather easily on the trail of the cult and seem to always be a few days behind it as it moves around.But just who is chasing whom here?The Nameless have designs on Barbara herself, and they know that her obsession with finding her lost daughter will lead her to them.Some but by no means all of my own questions about Angela's real story are answered in the end, but they are less than satisfying.

Ramsey Campbell is certainly a talented author, but he seems to have misfired on this comparatively early effort.He never goes as far as the storyline would seemingly require him to go here, and this retreat from the abyss he has spent so much time constructing damages the novel's effectiveness and appeal a great deal. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection offers some of the best stories from authors who influenced James, such as Sheridan Le Fanu and Augustus Jessopp, stories from his contemporaries, such as T.G. Jackson and "D.N.J.", and tales from more recent practitioners, including Fritz Leiber and Terry Lamsley. The collection also includes a checklist of writers in the Jamesian tradition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

16 stories in the tradition of M. R. James
The sixteen stories in this collection easily satisfy the criterion, "stories in the tradition of M. R. James (MRJ)" and who should know this better than the writer who selected and introduced them, Ramsey Campbell?Some of the stories such as "The Upper Berth" (1886) by F. Marion Crawford can be found in other anthologies, but others were completely new to me, e.g. "Petey" (1979) by T. E. D. Klein.Campbell also includes one of his own best stories, "The Guide" (1989) that actually uses a book by MRJ as a plot device.

This book also contains a bibliography of "writers in the M. R. James tradition" compiled by notable Jamesian scholar and editor of the journal "Ghosts & Scholars," Rosemary Pardoe.

These are the stories in "Meddling with Ghosts":

"The Familiar" (1872) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu--This Irish author was MRJ's favorite source of ghost stories.Sir James Barton returns to Dublin after a distinguished career in the navy and is pursued by a ghastly apparition that calls itself `the Watcher.'

"The Upper Berth" (1886) by Marion F. Crawford--A transatlantic voyager is disappointed to learn that he will have to share his cramped state-room with another passenger. Then on the first night of the crossing, his room-mate runs topside and throws himself into the ocean. This is the fourth time an inhabitant of that particular state-room has flung himself overboard. Furthermore, it seems as though one of the drowned men is trying to climb back inside through the state-room's porthole.

"Let Loose" (1890) by Mary Cholmondeley--A vampire is unwittingly let loose on a Yorkshire village where a young architect has come to study an old church fresco.

"An Antiquary's Ghost Story" (1896) by Augustus Jessopp--Conventional story of a man who sees a ghost in his friend's library.

"Glámr (1904) by Sabine Baring-Gould--The retelling of an episode from an Icelandic saga in which a hero battles with the undead.Gruesome surprise at story's end.

"Thurnley Abbey" (1908) by Perceval Landon--The new owners of Thurnley Abbey invite one of their friends to stay overnight, without telling him that he will be sleeping in the haunted bedroom. Believing the creature that appears at his bedfoot to be a hoax, the angry guest tears it apart bone by bone.

"The Red House" (1919) by T. G. Jackson--During the reign of George III, a young man turns to robbery on the King's highway to support his dissolute lifestyle.A friend of his uncle recognizes him and tries to reform young man.

"The Death Mask" (1920) by Mrs. H. D. Everett--A widower tries to remarry, but the death mask of his first wife keeps insinuating itself between himself and his fiancée.

"The Moon-Gazer" (1920) by D.N.J.--The dreams and temptations of a Cambridge University mathematician who is seduced by pagan magic.Lots of curious Latin formulae.

"Smoke Ghost" (1941) by Fritz Leiber--And now for something completely different.A ghost "with the soot of factories on its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul."

"The Mine" (1948) by L. T. C. Rolt--A disused lead mine called "Hell's Mouth" is the grim setting of this story of vanished miners, and a thing that came up out of the mine on top of the miners' cage elevator.

"The White Sack" by A. N. L. Munby--Some great horror stories are narrated by Alpinists and rock climbers.This one takes place on the island of Skye, where a young man is separated from his more experienced companion, then trapped by a sudden fog.

"Petey" (1979) by T. E. D. Klein--A house-warming party gone bad.Lots of creepy foreshadowing in this long story as we learn how the new owner came by his house in the woods.The climax is signaled, but still horrible.

"Echoes from the Abbey (1987) by Sheila Hodgson--This story began as a radio play, written as though M. R. James were the narrator.Our favorite antiquarian visits an acquaintance, who is headmaster of the failing Medborough Academy For Young Gentlemen, near the ruins of Medborough Abbey.One of the students who is staying with the headmaster over the Christmas holidays keeps seeing the ghost of a monk.

"The Guide" (1989) by Ramsey Campbell--Old Mr. Kew is on holiday with his children and grand-children but is made to feel like a nuisance. He buys a guide-book of the area and decides to visit a deserted Norfolk church by himself--one that supposedly had suggested a ghost story to M. R. James..."'James nearly saw, but he didn't believe,' said the figure by the altar, and stepped into the light that seeped through a pinched grimy window. 'But you will,' it said out of the hole that was most of its face."

"Two Returns" (1993) by Terry Lamsley--An old man out Christmas shopping is followed home from the railway station by a shadowy figure in a cape.He returns to his Victorian-era apartment, only to find the cape hanging on his coat peg.

Hours of boredom---minutes of shrill Terror. Worth it.
Ghost tale anthologies are always a mixed bag: a few tasty, grisly chillers to spike an otherwise tepid punch bowl of lackluster stories included to plump up the book and appease the publisher. "Meddling with Ghosts" provides no exception to the rule, but British horror grandmaster Ramsey Campbell keeps an exceptionally tight focus to his collection and consequently serves up the a few rare, ghoulish treasures amidst the fodder.

Campbell ("Alone with the Horrors", "The Hungry Moon") is a horror-fiction giant in a landscape ridden with dwarves, and the best of his own writing has always drawn on the stylistic and thematic qualities of fellow English ghost-writer Montague Rhodes James, provost of Cambridge and Eton and a genius at crafting the true tale of the unsettling and bizarre.

James has no equal in English letters when it comes to brewing up a terrifying tale, and : a common theme is the scholarly bachelor loner who, drawn to some remote locale, or forgotten tome, or garden folly found in his newly inheireted country home, stumbles on some ancient, reticent, mouldering secret thing and unleashes something unpleasant. Unpleasant for the bachelor-scholar-hero, that is---but gloriously fun for you, tucked under the bedclothes with the cat in the wee hours of the morning. With that in mind, "Meddling with Ghosts" assumes the reader has ample affection for James; if you haven't gotten a taste of M.R. James yet, then at the very least go read "Count Magnus", "Oh Whistle and I'll come to you, My Lad" and "Casting the Runes" to get a taste for the Old Master before you fork over lucre for this worshipful collection.

Campbell sets up a few ground rules, all of them Jamesian: the stories in "Meddling" must involve malignant spirits, true horror, and an attention to historical detail. And James, more than any other horror writer, was a master when it came to conjuring up the truly unsettling, the brain-rattlingly wrong, with a minimum of prose. Stephen King has written "whenever possibly, I try to terrify---but when I can't terrify, I go for the gross-out." James never had to settle for the gross-out, for his writing never fails to terrify.

Campbell opens up with a puzzlingly brief introduction, which is terse but tastily creepy and appropriately sets the mood. "The Familiar", the first tale in the collection, is a rare piece by J. Sheridan LeFanu, but a few spooky bits aside was too dry to get my blood flowing. F. Marion Crawford's "The Upper Berth" is a rousing tale of spectral nastiness, but it really isn't very Jamesian, has been anthologized a million times, and you've probably read it by now. "Let Loose", "Death Mask", "The Red House", and "The Moon Gazer" are grindingly dull, and "Thurnley Abbey", while fleetingly spooky, is the ghost-tale equivalent of going out for Japanese food: 15 minutes later and you'll be hungry again.

But there are supple, scary treasures here. "Petey", by the inimitable T.E.D. Klein, is intensely Jamesian and frankly terrifying, and will have you making sure the curtains are pulled tight. Sabine Baring-Gould's "Glamr" is only scantly Jamesian, and yet is, in my opinion, not Jamesian at all, but I confess a weakness for terror tales from the Scandinavian mountains, and besides---once you read it you'll understand---as bad a troll as the awful Glamr is, how much more nasty is the unnamed dead thing that killed him out in the frozen wastes beneath the mountain?

The two best tales in "Meddling" are worth the price of admission alone: Campbell apprentice Terry Lamsley's "Two Returns" accomplished the twofold task of freezing my blood cold (his story is a masterwork of icy grue) and introducing me to his work, and Campbell's own "The Guide", omitted from his larger collection "Alone with the Horrors", is archetypically Jamesian, and centers on the all-too-curious author himself and---well, an *admirer*.

Campbell finishes off the collection with Rose Pardoe's scrupulously detailed bibliography of ghost-tale writers who have incorporated Jamesian elements, all tasty stuff to be sure and thoroughly researched.

So if you're still wrestling with yourself as to whether you should buy it, wrestle no further and give in. Settle in beneath the covers, turn down the lamp, listen to the wind howl and the tree branches fumble and claw at your bedroom window, and settle in to "Petey" or "The Guide". What's a few pence compared to a night of pleasant terror, anyway? You'll be glad you meddled.

Indispensable for those who love ghost stories
This book is well worth the purchase price, both for the first-rate stories it contains and for the extensive, annotated bibliography it includes. The stories give a comprehensive overview of the "Jamesian" ghost story, and Campbell's brief notes before each are interesting and will be helpful to those who wish to read more by the authors. The bibliography that concludes "Meddling With Ghosts" would justify the book's purchase all by itself: it includes enough authors (many not well-known), and enough explanatory notes about the works of each, to keep the ghost story aficianado busy for years. Not a book for those whose main interest is explicit, gory horror, but anyone who enjoys classic ghost stories whose terror is more subtle and disturbing will love this book and return to it again and again.

A spiritually transcendent literary journey
Knowledgeably compiled and ably edited by Ramsey Campbell, Meddling With Ghosts is an outstanding anthology of memorable short stories by a variety of talented authors, all of whom deliberately offer sumptuous and bone-chilling tales of supernatural horror in the literary tradition of M. R. James. From J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Familiar" (1872) to Terry Lamsley's "Two Returns" (1993), this compendium of spooky tales set in bygone decades ranges from the 1870's to the 1990's and make Meddling With Ghosts a spiritually transcendent literary journey through time as well as through the occult planes of the mind-chilling, spine-tingling unknown.

Big on literary history, small on horror
Campbell's collection is unique.He attempts to -- and does -- capture the the aura of M.R. James' horror work.He has collected pieces from before James, contemporary to James, and since James.Most of them are entertaining and well-written, but they do inspire terror in the reader.If you are looking for a collection of quaint ghost stories, you have found it.If you are looking for horror, look elsewhere. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of outstanding horror fiction contains two novellas, Needing Ghosts and Medusa, along with eight shorter works about such places as forbidden castle ruins where children's games can be transformed into chilling reality. Reprint. PW. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

5 stars for "Needing Ghosts"; 3 for the rest of the book
STRANGE THINGS AND STRANGER PLACES, another welcome short-story collection from horror grandmaster Ramsey Campbell, nevertheless doesn't offer quite enough in terms of quality and quantity to compare favorably with his great earlier collections of short horror fiction, from DEMONS BY DAYLIGHT in the early '70s all the way through to WAKING NIGHTMARES and ALONE WITH THE HORRORS, both dating from the early '90s.

While the stories on offer in this volume are, on the whole, as good as anything being done in horror fiction today--except for one regrettable entry entitled "Cat and Mouse", which doesn't exactly open the collection on a note of high promise--none of them quite exhibits the genius for subtle, intricate, blood-curdling storytelling evident throughout Campbell's work. The best of the shorter pieces here is undoubtedly the truly creepy "Run Through", a story that needs to be read first, described later. A few other stories also offer some decent chills along more familiar lines: an odd new children's toy craze of unknown and possibly sinister origins in "Passing Phase", a lonesome, gloomy detour through a particularly twisted and unwelcoming mirror maze in "The Next Sideshow", and the malevolent miniature escapee from an ancient, broken-down arcade machine in "Little Man". Other stories ("Rising Generation", "A New Life", "Wrapped Up") less successfully attempt to breathe new life into musty old pulp horrors, while the novella "Medusa", possibly Campbell's only published attempt at science fiction, almost succeeds as a strange tale of visionary terror and awe, perhaps hindered by its potentially alienating reliance on oblique language and invented terminology.

But the jewel of this volume is unquestionably its final entry, the remarkable and terrifying novella "Needing Ghosts", whose appearance in this collection marked its first (and presumably only) publication in the US. This extended journey through an eerie twilit landscape where lingering anxieties coexist with nightmare horrors is a crowning achievement in modern weird and horror fiction. The conclusion, which, quite unexpectedly, both completes and intensifies this sublimely hellish vision, is one of Campbell's most powerful and stunning (and that's saying something), offering perhaps the most stoically unflinching glimpse into the heart of the void the world of horror literature has yet put forth. One of the major works of horror fiction from this, or any, era, "Needing Ghosts", all by itself, is worth at least the full price of this collection. ... Read more

Product Description
Simon Mottershead is lost. He's searching for his family and for his identity as a published writer, whose talent is almost too big to bear. "Needing Ghosts" is one day in Simon's world. One day in which he doesn't need to imagine the worst - it's all around him. ... Read more

Product Description
Unknowingly, he had brought it home from Africa. Beautiful, hypnotic, ancient, it was the sacred and deadly talisman of the fabled Leopard Men. Now its influence would insinuate itself into his mind, bringing horrifying destruction into his home. The author has twice won the World Fantasy Award. ... Read more

Product Description
When an ignored chain letter leads to near disaster, family man and video store owner Jack Orchard allows his obsession with numerology to lead him on a murderous rampage. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Predictable, Tedious
Jack Orchard lives in New Brighton, England, with his wife (Julia) and 12-year-old daughter (Laura). He's a fairly successful video store owner (Fine Films), but considers himself foremost a loving and attentive husband and father. He would do anything to protect them and make them happy--and does just about everything.

At the beginning of "The Count of Eleven", Jack's luck starts to run out when a series of misfortunes occur one after the other: his uninsured store burns down, his credit card is stolen and charged to its limit, and now he's losing his house. Nothing could be worse. So when he receives a chain letter promising him good luck if he sends out thirteen duplicated letters, Jack's superstitious nature overtakes him and he immediately follows through with it. All the while, he follows an obsessive routine of counting numbers. Anything that equals eleven he considers lucky.

However, when his luck doesn't turn around, Jack can only conclude that it's not himself who's to blame, but the recipients. They must not have continued the cycle by sending out their thirteen letters. So, Jack visits every person he had sent letters to. Those who admittedly refuse to continue the foolish chain are killed with a blowtorch, Jack's weapon of choice. Or rather, I should say, the Count's weapon of choice since Jack's alter ego is the guy in charge most of the time.

On and on these visits go, until the pursuits became predictable and tedious, taking up a good third of the book which would have been better if they had been omitted or at least shortened.

"The Count of Eleven" wasn't too terrible, but it wasn't what I expected either. It's not scary or a full-fledged horror novel. I thought the front cover was a little misleading with the blood coming out of an envelope since there was no real bloodshed, just a couple attacks with a blowtorch that were more humorous than anything else. But the ending at least was decent enough, so I figured it deserved three stars instead of a two.

I would only recommend this book to Ramsey Campbell fans and people who like soft English horror that is more character-oriented than violent.

Quirky study of a killer.....
i love Ramsey Campbell as an author and this book did not disappoint although i found comparisons to 'American Psycho' and 'Silence of the Lambs' totally bewildering since none of the novels really bear anyresembelance to each other. Campbell really gets inside the head (so tospeak) of his protagonists and towards the end of the novel you feel almostsorry for the total mess the lead character gets himself into. However iagree with the previous reviewer that some of the aspects of comedy in thisnovel are ill at ease with the rest of the content. But anyway this is anexcellent and original thriller which typically of its author is very wellwritten. PS excuse my spelling....

Detached view of a serial killer
I could not help comparing this book with Donald Westlake's "The Ax." In both books we have a man ready to do anything, even commit murder, to defend his life and his family. But, whereas Westlake's rationaland focused Burke Devore would be lucky if he got off with just temporaryinsanity, Jack Orchard could comfortably use the all-out insanity defense.Jack, who in the beginning is seen as only slightly batty, is laterrevealed to have a split personality: besides his usual self, he is alsoJack Awkward, a goofier version of Jack Orchard, and the Count of Eleven, acold-blooded killer who really enjoys his murderous activities. To followthis evolution is interesting, like watching a chrysalis unfolding toreveal a hideous butterfly, and to describe it Mr. Campbell uses his usualintrincate and attractive prose. However, the story never jells completely;I think the rather disconcerting introduction of slapstick at the mostawkward moments is partly to blame. Also, the succession of killingsbecomes eventually repetitive. At one point Jack feels he is repeating thesame lines with different actors, and so do we. The overall result isreadable enough, but far less compelling than Westlake's novel or otherbooks by Ramsey Campbell.

Engrossing page-turner
This is my first book by this author and I liked his twist.It took me a while to catch on the the wierd mindset of his protagonist but his justification for his actions seemed to make sense.Anyway to his mentally disturbed mind.I liked it, and read it only as a preface to a new book by the same author.I like to read books written in chronological order to get a feel for the author.I'd read additional books by this author.This one seemed plausible; that a man's mind could really work this way, which is not the case in some horror books.Hard to put it down. ... Read more

Product Description
Fiction, articles, interiviews and a three-part special including a story an article and an exclusive interview with none other than Clive Barker ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Barker fans beware!
I bought this item under the mistaken assumption that, considering what a big deal the cover makes out of the three-part Clive Barker special, the Barker story would be something published for the first time.I guess it was too much to hope for; I didn't pay much attention to the caliber of this magazine.The story included was part of the Books of Blood, first published over twenty years ago.The interview with Barker is brief and covers The Midnight Meat Train's limited theater release, The Scarlet Gospels and the future of the Abarat series, all of which Clive has discussed elsewhere. ... Read more