Published by Delirium Books, Scott Thomas’s Cobwebs and Whispers collected twenty-six stories (seventeen original) of quiet horror with a foreword by Jeff VanderMeer and an introduction by Michael Pendragon in a signed hardcover edition limited to 250 numbered copies.
Also from Delirium, Greg F. Gifune’s Heretics contained eight short horror stories with an introduction by Brian Hopkins and was limited to just fifty signed and numbered hardcover copies. This also became the first title in Delirium’s new trade paperback line.
From the same publisher and edited by Shane Ryan Staley, The Dead Inn was an anthology of hardcore horror subtitled Gross Oddities, Erotic Perversities & Supernatural Entities. It featured stories by Don D’Ammassa, Charlee Jacob, Steve Beai, Mark McLaughlin, John B. Rosenman, Trey R. Barker, Jeffrey Thomas and others, including the editor. 4x4 contained eight stories by Michael Oliveri, Geoff Cooper, Brian Keene and Michael T. Huyck, Jr., with an afterword in which the authors/collaborators discussed why they write horror.
From Shadowlands Press, Tom Piccirilli’s The Night Class involved a college student who found his life unravelling around him, while Steven R. Cowan’s Gothica: Romance of the Immortals was a time-travel tale from Southern Charm Press involving vampires.
New York’s Soft Skull Press published Nick Mamatas’s novel Northern Gothic, about two serial killers connected over more than a century by the city’s bloody history.
Confessions of a Ghoul and Other Stories from Silver Lake Publishing contained seven stories by M. F. Korn and an introduction by D. F. Lewis. Boasting ‘Six Honorable Mentions’ in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror on the cover, Odd Lot: Stories to Chill the Heart was a collection of nine stories (one original) written and published by self-proclaimed ‘Storyteller of the Heart’ Steve Burt, illustrated by Jessica Hagerman.
The Bubba Chronicles was a collection of eleven stories (including several collaborations) by Selina Rosen from Yard Dog Press. Bubbas of the Apocalypse was a follow-up anthology edited by Rosen containing sixteen stories and three poems set in a zombie-filled post-holocaust future. From the same editor and imprint, Stories That Won’t Make Your Parents Hurl contained fifteen young-adult stories and three poems inspired by the Brothers Grimm.
Edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel, Bending the Landscape: Horror was an anthology of eighteen original gay and lesbian horror stories published by Overlook Press.
Published by Chicago’s 11th Hour Productions and Twilight Tales, Blood & Donuts was a 250-copy trade paperback anthology edited by Tina L. Jens and containing eighteen crime/mystery stories (twelve original) by Jody Lynn Nye, Jay Bonansinga, Steve Lockley, Robert Weinberg, Brian Hodge, Yvonne Navarro, Edo van Belkom, Wayne Allen Salle and others.
John B. Ford’s collection of ten stories and four poems, Tales Of Deviltry & Doom, was published by artist Steve Lines’s Rainfall Books in a limited hardcover edition of 250 signed and numbered copies. Dark Shadows on the Moon contained a further thirty-six stories (seven original) by the same writer, published in trade paperback by Hive Press with an introduction by Simon Clark.
Meanwhile, Ford’s own BJM Press issued David Price’s The Evil Eye, Quentin S. Crisp’s The Nightmare Exhibition and Paul Kane’s Alone (in the Dark), each as trade paperback collections with introductions by the publisher.
Dark Whispers by Peter Ebsworth was a collection of ten stories published in trade paperback by Storybook, an imprint of David Searle’s Searle Publishing.
Edited and introduced by Nikolas Schreck for Creation Books, Flowers from Helclass="underline" A Satanic Reader featured stories, poetry and novel excerpts about the Devil by Edgar Allan Poe, John Milton, Charles Baudelaire and others.
The 1920s Investigator’s Companion to Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu role-playing game included background material by Keith Herber, John Crowe, Kenneth Faig, Jr. and others. Bruce Ballon’s award-winning Call of Cthulhu: Unseen Masters was another guide to the game, including a scenario partly inspired by Philip K. Dick. The trade paperback was illustrated by Paul Carrick and Drashi Khendup.
Also from Chaosium, Song of Cthulhu: Tales of the Spheres Beyond Sound edited by Stephen Mark Rainey contained twenty Lovecraftian stories (nine original) by Thomas Ligotti, Caitlfn R. Kiernan and others.
Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howardwas the latest Chaosium anthology edited and introduced by Robert M. Price. It included thirteen vaguely Lovecraftian stories by Howard plus five collaborations (including the round-robin tale ‘The Challenge from Beyond’ by Howard, C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft and Frank Belknap Long), illustrated by H. E. Fassl and Dave Carson.
Robert Price also contributed an introduction to The Gardens of Lucullus, a Cthulhu Mythos/Roman gladiator novel by Richard L. Tierney and Glenn Rahman, published as an attractive trade paperback by the enigmatic Sidecar Preservation Society.
Introduced by David G. Rowlands, A Ghostly Crew: Tales from The Endeavour was a welcome collection of fifteen all-reprint stories by Roger Johnson, published by Robert Morgan’s Sarob Press in a hardcover edition of 300 copies. Spalatro: Two Italian Tales was a slim 250-copy hardcover containing two stories from the Dublin University Magazine by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, edited and introduced by Miles Stribling and superbly illustrated by Douglas Walters.
The Sistrum and Other Ghost Stories by Alice Perrin (1867–1934) was the fifth volume in editor Richard Dalby’s ‘Mistresses of the Macabre’ series, with illustrations by Paul Lowe. The publisher had to revise the binding specifications for The Haunted River & Three Other Ghostly Novellas by Mrs J. H. Riddell (1832–1906), which included an introduction by editor Dalby and twenty-four full-page original illustrations that accompanied the Routledge’s Christmas Annual publication of the four stories. Both books appeared in 300-copy numbered hardcover editions.
Published the same month by Sarob was Can Such Things Be? & By the Night Express by the mysterious Keith Fleming, with an introduction by John Pelan, an afterword by Dalby, and dust-jacket and interior art by Randy Broecker. It contained the title novel from 1889 and three supernatural novellas (‘By the Night Express’, ‘Dolores’ and ‘Love Stronger than Death’) from the very rare 1889 paperback By The Night Express. The book was limited to just 250 hardcover copies.
From San Francisco’s Night Shade Books came The Devil is Not Mocked and Other Warnings and Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales, the second and third volumes respectively in The Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman series edited by John Pelan. Ramsey Campbell contributed a reminiscent introduction to the former and Stephen Jones to the latter. These welcome collections were once again only marred by the poor interior artwork.
The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists was a large collection of twenty-four stories (two original) by Norman Partridge, while Face was a new novel by Tim Lebbon about a supernatural hitchhiker. Both books were also issued in 100-copy signed/slipcased editions that included extra chapbooks.