In December, Stealth published a 800-page-plus edition of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. The massive collection was available as a trade hardcover, a 500-copy signed edition and as a lettered edition of fifty-two copies that sold out pre-publication. Featuring a cover photograph by the author and a new preface by Peter Atkins, it was the first and only edition containing all six books in one volume (including the final story, ‘On Jerusalem’s Street’, previously unavailable in any North American printing).
However, having gone through a reported $1.3 million in venture capital, Stealth suspended all publication at the end of the year and let its consulting staff go. Amongst those who found that they were out of a job were Craig Spector, Pat LoBrutto, Peter Schneider, Paula Guran, Douglas Clegg and Peter Atkins, while imminent editions of Ray Bradbury’s poetry collection They Have Not Seen the Stars and Tabitha King’s Small World were left in limbo.
Sporting a jokey dust jacket by Gahan Wilson, Acolytes of Cthulhu was the third Lovecraftian anthology edited and introduced by Robert M. Price and published in hardcover by Fedogan & Bremer. It contained twenty-eight stories (two original) by Joséph Payne Brennan, C. M. Eddy, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Hasse, Edmond Hamilton, David H. Keller M. D., Jorge Luis Borges, Randall Garrett, S. T. Joshi, Dirk W. Mosig, Don Burleson, Peter Cannon, Gustav Meyrinck, Neil Gaiman and others.
Fedogan also reissued H. P. Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth as an audio CD containing thirty-five sonnets and with an accompanying booklet.
Inspired by Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, Strange Aeons from Wiltshire’s Rainfall Records was an atmospheric two-disk CD collection of words and music produced and directed by artist Steve Lines. Contributors to the audio anthology included Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Simon Clark, John B. Ford, Joel Lane, Robert M. Price and Tim Lebbon.
Robert T. Garcia’s American Fantasy imprint published a 600-copy signed and slipcased edition of Michael Moorcock’s The Dreamthief’s Daughter: A Tale of the Albino, in which Elric of Melnibone, Count Ulzic von Bek and other characters battled the evils of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The beautifully designed volume, illustrated by Randy Broecker, Donato Giancola, Gary Gianni, Robert Gould, Michael Kaluta, Todd Lockwood, Don Maitz and Michael Whelan, was also issued in a twenty-six-copy lettered and tray-cased edition.
Ranging from Lovecraftian horrors to hard SF, Claremont Tales was a collection of twelve recent stories (one original) by Richard A. Lupoff, illustrated by Nicholas Jainschigg and published by Golden Gryphon Press.
Peter Crowther’s PS Publishing released Tracy Knight’s impressive and offbeat debut novel The Astonished Eye (originally scheduled to appear from the now defunct Pumpkin Books) with an introduction by Philip José Farmer and dust-jacket illustration by Alan Clark. The hardcover was limited to 500 signed and numbered copies and twenty-six deluxe lettered editions.
Introduced by Paul Di Filippo, Eric Brown’s novella A Writer’s Life concerned an apparently immortal author whose previous incarnations included Ambrose Bierce. Conrad Williams’s Nearly People included an introduction by Michael Marshall Smith and concerned a woman’s quest through a decaying and dangerous landscape. Both were published by PS in limited signed and numbered editions of 500 paperback copies and 300 hardcovers.
Manchester’s Savoy Books reprinted Anthony Skene’s (aka George Norman Philips, 1886–1972) incredibly rare 1936 pulp detective novel Monsieur Zenith the Albino as an attractive hardcover with an introduction by Jack Adrian, a foreword by Michael Moorcock, and numerous black and white illustrations and cover reproductions throughout.
From the same publisher, David Britton’s Baptized in the Blood of Millions was the third ‘Lord Horror’ novel with illustrations by the author, set in a bizarre alternate England spanning World War II and featuring the traitorous Lord Haw-Haw, British film star Jessie Matthews and poet Sylvia Plath as characters.
From editor David Sutton’s Shadow Publishing imprint, Phantoms of Venice was a solid anthology often tales (two reprints) by Peter Tremayne, Cherry Wilder, Conrad Williams, Mike Chinn, Tim Lebbon, Brian Stableford and others, including one by the editor himself, set in the ‘Serene Republic’ of dark canals. The hardcover also included an informative foreword by Joel Lane and dust-jacket art by Harry O. Morris.
Produced in conjunction with The British Fantasy Society, Telos Publishing was launched with Urban Gothic: Lacuna and Other Trips edited by David J. Howe, a trade paperback and hardcover anthology based on the disappointing Channel 5 TV series. Along with a very brief introduction by actor Richard O’Brien and interviews with the creators of the show, it included three original tales about London (the first two of them reprints) by Christopher Fowler, Graham Masterton and Simon Clark and a trio of stories by Paul Finch, Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis, and Debbie Bennett based on previously produced scripts by Tom de Ville.
Telos also began publishing a series of original hardcover Doctor Who novellas. The first, Time and Relative by Kim Newman, appeared as a standard hardcover and in a deluxe signed edition featuring a colour frontispiece illustration by Bryan Talbot.
Published in trade paperback by Brooklyn’s Small Beer Press, Stranger Things Happen was the first collection from the talented Kelly Link, containing eleven quirky, spooky and smart stories (two original). Meet Me in the Moon Room from the same imprint contained thirty-three often surreal tales (six original) by Ray Vukcevich.
California’s Dark Regions Press issued the attractive trade paperback collections Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance containing fourteen stories (two original) and thirteen poems by James Dorr with an introduction by Marge Simon; Winter Shadows and Other Tales featuring twenty stories (four original) by Mary Soon Lee, and Salt Water Tears, a collection of ten stories (one original) by Brian Hopkins with an introduction by Gary A. Braunbeck. All three volumes featured cover art by A. B. Word.
Gary Braunbeck’s This Flesh Unknown was an erotic ghost novel from Foggy Windows Books/Chimeras, while D. G. K. Goldberg’s. Doomed to Repeat It, published by The Design Image Group, was about a woman with an abusive ghostly boyfriend.
From Overlook Connection Press, Gary Raisor’s Graven Images appeared in various signed editions with an introduction by Edward Lee, who also somewhat predictably supplied the introduction for Duet for the Devil, a hard-core horror novel by T. Winter-Damon and Randy Chandler about serial slayer The Zodiac Killer. It was published by Florida’s Necro Publications in a signed and numbered edition of 400 trade paperbacks and 100 hardcovers.
Necro’s Bedlam Press imprint, dedicated to bizarre, weird and darkly humorous fiction, was launched withTangy Bonanza’., a collection of two novellas by Doc Solammen published in a signed and numbered trade paperback edition of 300 copies and a fifty-two-copy signed and lettered hardcover.