Book Reviews

Harvest Tales & Midnight Revels:
Stories for the Waning of the Year
Edited by Michael Mayhew
Bald Mountain Books (1998) Out of print, used copies available online

I was looking for a Halloween-themed book to review for Down in the Cellar recently and, lacking any new releases dealing with my favorite holiday, I combed through my bookshelves for a fitting Fall read.

I stopped at this short-story collection, which has been burning a hole on my shelf for almost 10 years now. I’m not sure why it took me so long to get to it; I had been wanting to read it ever since it first caught my eye at Barnes and Noble.

I’m glad I finally delved into its pages, and I thought I’d bring this hidden gem to your attention, not for the stories, though many were very good, but for the concept.

The book grew out of a yearly Halloween story-reading party editor Michael Mayhew and his friends began in college, seeking to rediscover the joy and mystery of the holiday that went away as they left childhood behind.

Mayhew collected 19 of the 80 or so stories, all dealing with Halloween in some way, he and his friends originally read out loud on Halloween night over the course of 10 years.

The best stories in the book are Joshua Mertz’s “Roadgod,’’ about a cult of scavengers who prey upon accident victims; Ed W. Marsh’s “Dark Vegas’’, where an apprentice is charged with containing evil in the Sin City; Stuart Chapin’s “Bullfrog’’, a story about a young boy and his twisted older brother; Mayhew’s “Graveyard’’, a ghost story about lost innocence; Edith Weil’s “A Cross at the End of a Circle’’, about an old witch hanging onto traditions; and it ends on a high note with Carey Curtis Smith’s chilling “Hannah of the Fields.’’

If the stories weren’t enough, Mayhew also offers tips for starting your own story party, a tradition as old as time. As Mayhew points out, a similar party gave rise to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. While there’s no story here that is likely to become a classic decades from now, it’s certainly a fun read to help you reconnect with what is probably your favorite holiday, too.

-- Jeff Cercone

Dead Sea
By Brian Keene
Leisure (2007) $7.99

Brian Keene’s new zombie novel has the jaw-chomping gore, plot twists and horrific scenes that his fans have come to expect. It is a radical departure for Keene, who takes storytelling to a new plane.

This rocking action novel is not a sequel set in the world of The Rising and The City of the Dead. There are no talking zombies here.

Keene shakes up the status quo and makes his main character, Lamar, a gay African-American, who awakes one day to a world in the throes of an evolutionary change. Rats have arisen from the sewers of New York and are infected by a disease that quickly spreads to other species, notably humans. Once the infection explodes into human veins, a living death ensues.

Lamar is in a desperate race to flee his home town of Baltimore, but is trapped by zombies. He's rescued by two children, and Lamar suddenly has a family to watch over. By a hectic series of events, Lamar and his kids join a band of others who flee a burning Baltimore and end up on a rickety museum ship.

The rest of the desperate adventure is then set at sea as they struggle with interpersonal issues while trying to find a safe port.

Keene, sets teeth grinding with passages like: "...the door burst open. It slammed against the wall with a loud bang, spilling zombies into the foyer ... their stench burned my nostrils ... like a thin layer of film in my sinus and throat..." , and "...without a sound, a corpse lurched .. its face was concealed by a hockey mask. The zombie clutched a hockey stick ... with its free hand, it reached for my head, trying to pull me toward its gaping mouth..."

Dead Sea works as myth and epic. Keene frequently quotes from the Bible and discusses ideas made popular by historian of mythology Joseph Campbell. Lamar is sometimes Ulysses sailing home for Ithaca; sometimes Jason and his Argonauts, and sometimes a member of the crew of Noah's ark. But is he a hero, or just a man trying to save his own skin?

Keene knows his Bible and quotes 1 Corinthians and Jeremiah. He's listened to Sunday morning sermons. He alludes to passages in Genesis about Noah fleeing on an ark, and in Revelation about the burning of a city because of its heinous sin. Keene peppers the narrative liberally with spit-in-your-eye, venomous contempt of many common fundamentalist American ideas. He also asks a lot of philosophical questions: Why are we here? Is there a God? If there is a God, why is there evil? He moves to deeper theological questions. How do I love my neighbor? Who is my neighbor? He continues by examining anthropological questions. If one is burdened by poverty, what price is too high to survive? What is a family? What is the reason for racism? Why do we jump to conclusions and stereotype another person?

Dead Sea is a snapshot of today's America, but it is not a pretty picture. Keene tells us we need to get our shit together or we're gonna be royally fucked. And he ain’t just talking about a little air pollution or global warming, he's letting us know that we have serious issues that are being swept under the rug that are gonna bite us in the ass.

With Dead Sea, Keene spits in the face of REM's lyric, "It's the end of the word as we know it ... and I feel fine." Bullshit. The apocalypse sucks. It stinks of dead bodies. People you love get killed, and converted into something gory, slimy, and disgusting. Despite the terror, Keene tells us that humans are human. People remain people by telling stories, seeking love, and even as the last person turns the lights out, we remain annoyingly, endearingly human.

Dead Sea is a magnum opus for Keene and a treat for his fans. He alludes to his previous novels effusively, with scenes taken from Terminal, The Rising and The City of The Dead. Fans will smile when they read his various asides about music, comic books, and more. Dead Sea is a helluva fun read at 318 pages, a typical Keene page-turner, with characters so rich, I wish it had been longer. I can’t wait for the Hollywood movie!

Keene and his publisher, Leisure, give us a bonus at the end of the book: The first chapter on his February 2008 book: Dark Hollow.

-- Chris Perridas

12 Collections and the Teashop
By Zoran Živković
PS Publishing (2007) $50 hardcover, $20 paperback

Prior to this book each time a Zoran Živković book arrived at our house my wife claimed it as her own. With his work described as fantasy, I have never objected to this. However as my wife is not a fan of short fiction this book found its way onto my reading pile. All I can say is that I am glad This book is stunning and so very original.

This is a book in two sections as the title suggests. The major part is a series of short stories about people who collect things. Don’t think that this is going to be a tedious selection of people musing over collections of stamps or coins or records or vintage wines however. In this book the collections are far more removed from everyday life, and come in two distinct strands - each of which manages to be very creepy.

The first strand is the inside view and deals with the mundane - newspaper clippings, self-portrait photographs, fingernail clippings etc - and all told in the third person, as if looking into the collector's world.

In themselves the collections are not perturbing -- OK maybe the fingernail one is a little bizarre but not threatening in any way. It's the people collecting them that unnerve the reader. All of the people described are loner types, the kinds of people who everyone thinks of as weird but harmless until they poison their wives or plant bombs. Well the author takes you inside the head of these collectors and shows you their reasoning regarding their collecting, and it's a disturbing trip.

The second strand involves normal people but surreal collections and are all seen from the outside. From the opening tale when the narrator enters a pastry shop and purchases a very special cake for a day of his life, through collections of final stories, hopes, dreams and more, each tale here is told in the first person by the non-collector encountering the collector.

These tales disturb you because of the sense of intrusion into what should be considered private or unknown -- knowledge of when you die or the dreams in your head. The narrators are versions of “The Everyman", the normal person in us all, which serves only too well to make you feel this could happen to you.

Completing the book is “The Teashop", a wonderfully surreal piece featuring a young woman seeking out a cafeteria in which to wait for her train, drink a cup of tea and read some of her book. That was her plan, what she gets however is far more when she is told a tale by the inhabitants of the café along with her drink.

The thirteen tales in this short book (only 107 pages) are superbly written (and superbly translated from the Serbian of the original). They are fascinating, and seem out of time - somehow not connected with our modern world or our notions of the real. Each time you finish a tale something in you will feel wrong but you will be compelled to read the next.

My wife's dislike of short fiction was my definite gain. I just hope that this book's small size (especially when given its price tag) doesn't put many other people off. From my reading these thirteen tales, Mr. Živković has a new fan.

--I.E. Lester

The Grin of the Dark
By Ramsey Campbell
PS Publishing (2007) $30

Simon Lester is a film writer, or rather wants to be a film writer. After college, he took a job as the movie reviewer for a Lancashire newspaper for two years. But his next job, as a writer for an irreverent movie magazine edited by an old college friend, sidetracked his once-promising career.

The magazine's attitude soon got it into trouble and it became the subject of a libel case. Although not directly named in the case, it ruined Simon's reputation. Unable to find writing work, he finds himself working the night shift at a gas station and living in a student house owned by the parents of his girlfriend.

So when his old university professor Rufus Wall contacts Simon with a chance to restore his reputation, Simon thinks things must be taking a turn for the better. Rufus is setting up a new publishing house and offers Simon a book deal complete with an advance and expense account. The book Simon is to write is an extended version of his college thesis, the story of forgotten silent-film slapstick comedian Tubby Thackeray. But, much in tune with Simon's life, things don’t go as smoothly as Simon would like.

This disturbing book has an unsettling undercurrent running throughout. This is managed largely due to the lack of supernatural elements. Nothing seems to go right for Simon after he begins work on his book. He ends up in a slanging match on an Internet chat-room with an unknown individual named "Smilemime" who knows all the buttons to press to aggravate Simon. He finds his research material keeps disappearing, as does the money in his bank account.

None of the events portrayed are in themselves anything more than just dumb luck or cases of people forming instant dislikes for each other. But the way that these are handled by Campbell serves to fill you with a sense of dread, while making you desperate to know what is going to happen on the next page.

I'd only read Campbell's non-fiction before and found him to vary from insightful to comedic to vitriolic at times. His fiction though is creepy; he knows just how to unnerve you in just the kind of ways that simply introducing a monster-of-the-month-club bad guy would not do. These are the things we all dread, and to assign a sinister purpose underneath them is simply wonderful. No, on second thoughts the word "wonderful" is not so appropriate, it implies something uplifting and this is not. It is compelling though.

--I.E. Lester

Night Caller
By Daniel Ransom
Zebra (1987) Used copies available online

When the recently widowed Sally and her teen daughter Jamie run into car trouble in the small Midwestern town of Haversham, Jamie finds herself the recipient of strange looks from the locals. Since their car can't be fixed right away, the two are forced to stay overnight.

Though she is at first hesitant to stay at the town's Royal Hotel, she and Sally end up staying there anyway. They learn that Jamie is the spitting image of Anne Edmonds, a girl who murdered her mother and three hotel guests at the inn back in the 60s. The crime spree is still a town mystery years after her death. Carleton Edmonds, Anne's father, continues to run the place.

Ransom then begins to introduce more of the townspeople and creates an interesting cast of characters, including the local black sheep -- a man with one eye aptly called One Eye, the town prostitute, the hotel's maid, and a former CBS reporter, Hanratty. He is in town to investigate the hotel in hopes of getting a book deal about it.

Besides the '60s murders there, interesting occurrences still happen. People hear a phone in the attic, unattached to any lines, ring by itself. A mysterious glow lights up in there. Hanratty is trying to find out if the occurrences are supernatural while also uncovering the hotel's history.

During Jamie's first night in Haversham, she hears the attic phone ringing and goes up to answer it. Soon after, Hanratty, Sally, and Carleton find her there with an axe in her hand and a mutilated body on the floor. She is then committed to a mental hospital. Sally is shocked and can't believe that her daughter would kill anyone. The similarities between the murder and the '60s ones are brought out, making some of the characters and the audience ponder the connection. Was Jamie possessed? Was Anne?

Night Caller is a worthwhile page-turner, with tight, clear and easy writing. It’s peppered with '80s pop culture references, making it a bit of a time trip. Under the surface, though, there isn't much depth. The characters, while interesting enough, aren't the lingering type who stay with you after you finish the book. They all connect together eventually, though, each serving some purpose to move the story along.

--Angela Crockett

The Town that Forgot how to Breathe
By Kenneth J. Harvey
Picador (2006) $14.00

Soon after Joseph Blackwood visits a small Newfoundland fishing village, his daughter makes friends with a young ghost next door and later catches a large fish that immediately turns bright red and spews a small, plastic doll’s head from his mouth.

And then things start to get weird.

Soon, strange sea creatures start showing up in the water, and many residents are stricken with an unknown breathing disorder. And villagers long thought lost at sea begin washing ashore. Dozens of them, preserved almost as if kept on ice rather than rotting away in the sea for decades.

Harvey, a Canadian writer making his American debut, is generally not a horror writer, but manages to deliver a few chills in this bizarre fantasy tale.

Such as this scene, where the living but grieving mother of the young ghost tries to discourage the girl from harming her neighbor’s daughter:

“I’m going to play with Robin.’’
With a scant shake of her head, Claudia laid down her brush.
Jessica’s voice came louder, distorted, wavering the candle flames: “I want someone to play with.’’
“Don’t,’’ Claudia whispered. “Please.’’
“They’re losing their grip on her. They’re not paying attention. They’re against each other, not for.’’
Claudia listened, wondering at the silence, wondering how long it had gone on, until her doubt was contested by the voice of a little girl.
“I’m taking her,’’ said Jessica. “Then I’m taking you.’’

Harvey also creepily details the victims’ mental deterioration and violent thoughts as the breathing illness slowly makes them lose their grip on reality, particularly Joseph, who is already on edge due to his impending divorce.

As one might guess, the bodies washing ashore are connected to the stricken people and the novel risks becoming a fairly predictable lesson about the importance of reconnecting with family, the earth and cultural traditions.

But Harvey’s dazzling prose and quirky characters, particularly longtime Bareneed resident Miss Laracy, keep the pages turning and leave you hoping for a prequel about the village’s first bout with the supernatural.

--Jeff Cercone

Come Closer
By Sara Gran
Berkley (2007) $6.99

Most people have inappropriate thoughts every now and then; it’s only human nature. We all want to tell off or punch that annoying co-worker or rude sales clerk. But what would you do if the thoughts started coming all the time? And the voice in your head started telling you to hurt people, even the ones you loved?

Sara Gran’s 2003 novel, Come Closer, just released in a mass market paperback edition, answers that question. The weirdness starts from page one, when Amanda leaves a proposal on her boss’ desk. The only problem was the first page contained a flurry of obscene insults about him. They were both convinced that it was merely a co-worker playing a trick on Amanda and let it go.

But things quickly start to spiral downhill for Amanda. There’s that incessant tapping in the walls whenever she’s around. She begins fighting with her husband over little things. She gets stopped for shoplifting a tube of lipstick she didn’t remember taking.

And she starts meeting a mysterious woman in her dreams. A woman she finds intriguing at first, but soon starts to believe is a demon trying to possess her body.

The reader suspects that as well, either that or Amanda is just having a nervous breakdown. But by the time Amanda, during a quiet night at home, turns and unknowingly jams her lit cigarette into her husband’s thigh, we are convinced as well.

The dream scenes where Amanda meets her invader, Naamah, are the best parts of the book. And when Naamah assures her that she’ll never leave, we believe her. And all we, and Amanda, can do is watch in horror as the possession develops and her life unravels.

Gran’s thin novel is a quick, but intense read, one you could probably finish in one sitting if you had a few hours. You might want to read it in the daytime though, because it will leave you with a creepy vibe, listening for tapping in your walls or afraid of what dreams may come.

--Jeff Cercone

Blaze
By Stephen King
writing as Richard Bachman
Scribner (2007) $25.00

Some would say that a book written 34 years ago that has gone unpublished probably ought to stay that way. After reading Blaze, a novel King wrote in 1973 while working under the name Richard Bachman, I agree….in part.

The younger King certainly created a compelling character in Blaze, a 6-foot-7 behemoth of a man-child whose diminished mental status belies his more stately given name, Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.

King, who revised the story after finding the original transcript last year, has also created a thoroughly readable tale.

Blaze, who was tossed down a flight of stairs by his father as a child, grew up a ward of the state and eventually settled into a life of odd jobs and odd con jobs, easily led astray into a life of petty crime by criminals eager to add his slow-witted bulk to their arsenal.

His latest partner in crime met an unfortunate end, but Blaze decides to finish the last big job they had planned, the one that would set them up for life: Kidnapping a wealthy family’s baby.

You may actually find yourself rooting for the big lug, despite the heinousness of the crime and your fear for what he might do to the child, especially with the voice of his deceased partner George in his head, telling him to kill the boy. .

King does a wonderful job with Blaze, particularly the flashback scenes to his childhood, but he fails to flesh out other characters that would have made this novel a richer experience. King has a tendency to be too indulgent, as many readers of his more bloated novels can attest, but here is a case where a little heft would have done the book justice.

I wanted to hear more about George, who never really becomes more than a voice in Blaze’s head. We learn more about Blaze’s childhood friend than the inspiration for the crime for some reason. I wanted to get to know the officer leading the search for the child more, not to mention the boy’s parents, about whom we get nothing.

The book -- whose proceeds benefit The Haven Foundation, which supports freelance artists -- is an interesting read for King fans curious about his earlier work and it also contains a short story called Memory, that later became the basis for his next novel, Duma Key. But ultimately it will leave you wishing King has done some more revision.

--Jeff Cercone

The Freakshow
By Bryan Smith
Leisure Books, 2007. $6.99

A small Tennessee town once again falls prey to unexpected horrors in Bryan Smith’s third novel, The Freakshow. Pleasant Hills is the most recent site of The Flaherty Brothers Traveling Carnivale and Freakshow, and the sideshow is irresistible -- but not for the usual reasons.

Smith’s previous novel, Deathbringer, was a revelation: a zombie novel not only with a fast-paced plot but also with intelligent, relatable characters (and including the only sympathetic zombie I have yet encountered). I was looking forward to his next book with great anticipation, eager to see what he would do for a follow-up, because a horror novel with fully developed characters is a rare thing indeed.

Instead, Smith took another direction entirely and surprised me with his variability. The Freakshow is very much like the carnival it portrays in that it focuses almost entirely on the visceral experience. Events occur quickly and feverishly, with little time to take a breath during the carnage.

With two novels so different in style and execution, it is impossible to deny Smith’s range of skill. The only downside to this kind of roller-coaster writing is that I was a hundred pages in before I found a character I could identify with. By then, though, I was so swept up in the imaginatively presented torture being inflicted, that it was too late to care; I was in for the long haul.

Smith doesn’t linger on the character development this time around, and they all seem to talk with the same voice. The language is invariably profane; even the omniscient narrator sprays F-words with abandon. I don’t have a problem with foul language per se, but to be effective, it should be used sparingly and suit the situation.

However, despite the lack of depth, Smith offers a fascinating cast of types: a two-headed woman with a love for humiliation, a jerk boyfriend with a taste for necrophilia, a clown with retractable teeth, and a car versed in sexual assault, just to name a few. If you’re looking for a literary thrill ride to tide you over until the state fair comes to town, The Freakshow is the book for you. Sit back and enjoy the ride; just don’t expect it to linger long in your memory.

-- Craig Clarke

Ancestor
By Scott Sigler
Dragonmoon Press, 2007. $19.95

A quick list of the various elements making up this novel - genetic engineering; neurotic scientists; a ruthless-to-the-point-of-pure-evil businessman; an ex-CIA operative at a crossroads in his life; and sub-Aliens style science fiction horror monsters - does not make this book sound like the most appealing of reads.

If we add the support characters - a gung-ho ex-grunt soldier-boy; a female pilot who is determined to show she's as good as any man; a grizzled aging caretaker of a remote island hotel; and a CIA-planted mole - the situation seems to beyond all hope of retrieval. It reads like someone has taken an assortment of two-dimensional characters too wooden even for Hollywood, and attached them to a rejected Alien 5 script. You could spend a long time looking through the pages of this book trying to find true originality without much joy.

But somehow Scott Sigler has grouped these elements together into a highly entertaining read.

In some ways you would say he has managed this by taking many of these stereotypical elements to a further extreme than most. Magnus Paglione, one of two brothers running biotech firm Genada, is seriously evil, a Special Forces trained giant of a man. He kills without even a second's consideration and will do whatever it takes to ensure the project succeeds.

The idea of the book is this - Genada are running a secret genetics project. Their aim is to produce a genetically engineered creature by extracting the "Ancestor" DNA common to all mammals and creating a chimera, one with human-compatible internal organs - capturing the market on human organ transplants. They are so certain that they are staking everything on it.

It is an illegal project though. Despite Genada's best efforts to keep it hidden (including locating it on Baffin Island), it attracts the attentions of the CIA. And the CIA is intent on closing down any such operation - by any means. This is where we join the story, right in the middle of the action. The CIA has a mole on the science team, Paul Stilwell.

Soon after another failed genome test, Stilwell receives his instructions - to destroy the equipment, detain all members of the science team and await support. Unfortunately for him the man in charge of security, P.J. Colding, is himself ex-CIA and dedicated to the success of the project. Colding manages to diffuse the immediate threat, and the scientists are evacuated to a new facility just prior to the CIA support team's arrival.

On their new base on remote Black Manitou Island, the scientists manage to overcome the instability issues that have been plaguing their engineered genomes, and impregnate cattle with the foetuses. These foetuses, though, develop in a way far beyond the expectations of the scientists, and far from producing small, harmless animals; these are more akin to the monsters of the Alien movies.

And so the tale changes from being a shady research operation trying to remain one step ahead of the authorities into a fight for survival. I did say this wasn't the most original of tales. One thing it is though is tense. The reason for this is that Sigler has managed to make some of his characters likeable, and one of them anything but likeable.

Colding for one is a character you can root for. The hotel caretaker Clayton Detweiler is a wonderfully hard-edged cynical man, endlessly telling tales of the glory years of the hotel and the celebrity visitors he met in days gone by. And in Magnus Paglione you have one of the most ruthlessly evil men I've ever come across in fiction, all the worse than some villains for his not being insane.

Sigler's descriptions are brutal; he doesn't waste time trying to be nice about his violence. He is straightforward and writes novels that are not for the squeamish. He doesn't waste time over-flowering his backgrounds, and describing the patterns on his concierge's tie. He writes quick fiction, full of action. Yes, there are lulls in the action - fiction that was always "up" would be next to impossible to read - but they are short, as long as they need be to punctuate the hits.

This is not a perfect novel, but it is a highly entertaining one. There are glimpses in this book of someone who is capable of becoming a great writer. I'm looking forward to watching him get there.

--I.E. Lester

The Terror
By Dan Simmons
Little, Brown and Compay (2007). $25.99

Dan Simmons is one of those writers whose works can be found on several different shelves at bookstores. The prolific Simmons has jumped successfully from Sci-Fi/Fantasy (Hyperion) to horror (Carrion Comfort, Song of Kali) to crime thrillers (Darwin’s Blade) to historical thrillers (The Crook Factory).

With The Terror, Simmons has something for lovers of all of those genres, crafting a novel that is as hard to pigeon-hole as it is to put down.

In 1845, a crew led by Sir John Franklin sets sail from England on an Arctic expedition to chart the Northwest Passage. If you’re not a student of history and had never heard of this voyage, which I hadn’t, you might want to stop reading here.

I’ll give you one more paragraph to avert your eyes. And ….on with it now.

If you’re still here, the short story is the voyage ended badly. What exactly happened has been the subject of historical curiosity ever since.

Simmons decides to answer that question, starting us off in the middle of the action, two ships frozen in the ice in the middle of nowhere, then using flashbacks and multiple points of view to weave his historical tale of adventure, suspense and horror, with a touch of the supernatural.

Not only are Franklin’s men stuck on the ice with food supplies dwindling or rancid, there is a mysterious creature that is stalking the crewmen. At first, they think it’s a polar bear, but it’s impossibly large and seems to strike from nowhere.

It might have been enough of a novel to just document the men’s struggle for survival against the elements, starvation and disease, but the presence of the creature keeps the men, and the readers, on edge for the entire 769-page journey.

One could argue the monster is merely a manifestation of the men’s fear and urgency to survive. At the end, the reader must decide if its mythological origin is real or if we’re reading the hallucinations of a dying man.

Whatever its origin, when the creature attacks, the novel springs to life. One scene, the demise of one character I won’t name here, is so haunting I found myself flipping back to it frequently, re-reading in awe.

It was obvious that Simmons put a ton of research into the novel. He goes to great lengths (sometimes a bit too much; it could have been tightened somewhat) to get the details right.

With a huge cast of characters, Simmons still manages to make us care about the majority of them. Sure, there are some that serve mainly to be dispatched, but most minor characters are fleshed out sufficiently. And Simmons doesn’t play favorites. Just when you find yourself rooting for someone, Simmons jams his pen into your heart. There’s no time to get comfortable here. He wants you to feel the immediacy of the struggle at hand, and he succeeds.

--Jeff Cercone

The Scalding Rooms
By Conrad Williams
PS Publishing, 2007. $50 hardcover, $20 semi-hardcover

There's a word I feel sums up this book - bleak. Every aspect of this virtually drips despair. This world is dying, the people on it living as though walking through a waking nightmare.

The book set the mood right from page one. We meet Junko Cane as he sits in his small boat on the poisoned waters of the river waiting for the fall of one of the bodies hanged from the cantilever bridge. His intention is to scavenge what he can from the corpse, before the waters and the creature in it devour the body, and all to make a little extra money to support his family.

He spends his days working in a slaughterhouse, surrounded all the time by death - mostly of the animals they bring in, but every so often of co-workers. Whether by deliberate acts of suicide or the apathy of men who have lost all hope not avoiding accidents is not made clear, although the root cause of both options is the same. These people live hard lives, filled with despair and offering little for the future. Losing the desire to continue living in this situation is all too understandable.

This is not all Cane has ever been. He is a man with a shady past, as a "heavy" for local crime-boss Krave Weaste. Unfortunately for him even the little piece of happiness he has been carving for himself as a family man is threatened - Weaste's future plans include him. And things are about to get a lot worse for Kane.

This is your worst nightmare in print. I'm not talking about the demons and devils type of nightmare though. This I find is all the more unsettling as it reads like a post-Armageddon Earth. There are no supernatural beings; the creatures in the Black-Glass desert wasteland beyond the town are human, although regressed, feral and cannibalistic versions of humans. Getting lost out there would leave you at risk of ending your days as their evening meal.

I'm not sure many people will say they truly enjoyed reading this tale. It's just not that type of book. It is totally absorbing though. The plot here has some touches that might sound like clichés. The "enigmatic" Boa Cleethe, a woman who arrives at the abattoir, who Kane finds so absorbing, is familiar. Williams is certainly not the first author to introduce a shady past coming back to haunt his main character.

But Williams does take them and make them his own much darker versions of these standard themes - twisted somewhat and made empty.

If you want to read something uplifting, this is not it. If you want something with closure, this is not it. This book relates the events of a few days of Junk Cane's life. It does not begin with all pieces lined up ready for action, it does not finish when all the loose threads have been tied up and everyone's story completed. It starts at one point, follows Junk around for a while and then ends.

I've always had a liking for this type of tale. Life doesn't provide you all the answers so why should fiction. The author gets the length right as well. I have mentioned already that this is filled with despair, yet is intensely compelling, but that is for 102 pages. I am not sure I would have finished 350 pages of novel, but as a novella I can find little fault.

--I.M. Lester

In case you missed it

Witch Spell
By Guy N. Smith
P Mass Paper (2001 reissue), Zebra (1993). Out of print, but readily available online

Fans of Richard Laymon should seek out the works of British author Guy N. Smith. Smith offers the same focus on sex and violence to draw in the reader, and the same ability to keep you reading in spite of some almost-silly plot contrivances.

Though best known for his two series of novels that began with Night of the Crabs (five sequels) and Werewolf by Moonlight (two sequels), Smith has peopled Witch Spell entirely with ... people. Bobbie Wheeler is the sixteen-year-old result of the pairing of a white-magic witch (her mother Yvonne) and a Satanic black-magician (her father Alec), who divorced when neither was willing to change their beliefs.

Bobbie was raised by her mother in the meantime, but now at boarding school, her father’s influence (which grows even stronger after his death) is taking hold. Bobbie begins to exercise her previously unknown talents for seduction and murder in order to “deny Christ and glorify Satan,” recruiting other members of the faculty and student body (by skillfully using her own student body) in the process.

Most of Witch Spell is just that: Bobbie’s promise of sex and use of violence to gain and keep her followers, who gather for sacrifices and orgies a number of times during the novel. Smith’s intent is not to write the next great classic, but simply to offer a diversion from mundane reality, a task at which he succeeds admirably.

As an added bonus, Smith has a healthy sense of humor that comes through in some satirical, pulpy tendencies. Where some authors would attempt to avoid melodrama, Smith embraces it and asks you to laugh along with him. (After all, can a book that focuses on the struggle between the followers of Christ and Satan be anything but melodramatic?) Witch Spell is a tight little story, well told by an author who was already a twenty-year “veteran of terror” (the tagline from the cover) when it was told.

--Craig Clarke

Heart-Shaped Box
By Joe Hill
William Morrow, 2007. $24.95

Heart-Shaped Box, the debut novel of Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King, follows the story of a famous rocker Judas (Jude) Coyne, who buys a ghost at an online auction site. He receives a heart-shaped box containing a dead man’s suit, which is supposed to contain the spirit.

Hill wastes no time getting started, introducing us to the ghost a few pages in. The first third of Heart-Shaped Box while fast-paced and entertaining, is difficult to believe.

Coyne soon finds out that the ghost he bought was intended for him. His old girlfriend, Anna, whom he called Florida because of where she was from, killed herself about a year before the book takes place. The ghost is the spirit of Anna’s stepfather, Craddock, who died after Anna. He blamed Jude for Anna’s death and swore to his other stepdaughter, Jessica, that he would get revenge. Craddock had been into many mystic things, including hypnotism, so he knew he would have powers in the afterlife.

Craddock tries to get Jude to kill his new girlfriend, whom he calls Georgia, and himself. He tries to hypnotize him into doing so. Jude fights off the ghost's forces and wills himself to think with his own mind, but the ghost won't give up trying. Jude decides that he and Georgia must leave their home in New York to head for Florida, where Jessica Price lives. He thinks she is the only one who will be able to call off Craddock.

On their journey, Jude and Georgia have many life-threatening encounters with Craddock, who won't go away. It's an action-packed ride the whole way through.

In the midst of the action, there are a lot of disturbing themes and images, which push at the reader's level of tolerability. It's a little too disturbing at times, something that could've been toned down. Much of this is dealing with Anna's life.

Jude ends up finding out crucial secrets about her past before she knew him. His past also weaves into the story, with flashbacks about his sickly father, whom he hasn't seen in decades. None of his memories of his father are fond, as they involve his abusiveness to Jude and his mother.

Heart-Shaped Box, while starting out too unreal, develops into an engaging story with lots of action. The characters are well-developed and real, holding the reader until the end. Though it is a very dark novel, at the heart of it, love is the main theme.

- Angela Crockett

20th Century Ghosts
By Joe Hill
PS Publishing, 2005. $25.00

20th Century Ghosts is one of the best, if not the best, short story collections published to date. The writing style -- gripping, vivid, and clear -- hooks the reader right from the beginning, a hidden story in the introduction, to the end of the collection. Though it is Hill's first published book, the work feels seasoned to perfection, without any amateur signs that sometimes befall first-time authors.

The stories are sure to please horror and fantasy fans alike, with a share of stories in each genre, some a blend of the two. A few are neither of the speculative types of fiction, but mainstream.

"Best New Horror," the opening tale, is aptly named. The scariest story in the book, it follows the goings-on of a horror magazine editor. It's realistic horror, and very creepy.

"20th Century Ghost," is a ghost story with haunting imagery that is more nostalgic than scary. "Ghost," about a spirit who haunts her favorite movie theater, is one of the most touching stories in the collection. It gives a nod to many classic movies, and includes a character who appears to be the fictitious version of film great Steven Spielberg. Hill's movie knowledge is well-displayed.

"Pop Art" is the best story in Ghosts. A vivid fantasy about an inflatable boy and his friendship with a regular one, it is also very touching. It's probably the only time in literature that the audience feels pathos for a piece of plastic. Sound impossible? Far from it. Hill makes the unusual concept believable right from the start, as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

"You Will Hear The Locust Sing" feels like a throw to the Franz Kafka novella "The Metamorphosis." It's about a teenage boy who wakes up as a locust one day and the struggles he faces. "Locust" is a good sci-fi and fantasy mix.

"Abraham's Boys" was featured in The Many Faces of Van Helsing before the release of Ghosts. It takes a dark, disturbing look at the character through the eyes of his sons.

"Better Than Home" is one of the mainstream stories. It's a sad story about a young boy with many issues, whose father is a professional baseball player. Told from the perspective of the boy, "Home" is another of the sentimental pieces in the book.

"The Black Phone" also has a boy as the protagonist, who is kidnapped. Much of the story takes place in the room in which he is held captive. Fear is the driving force here, creating a strong thriller.

"In the Rundown," "The Cape," and "Last Breath" follow one another next in the collection, all being horror of a sort. "Rundown" is mainstream most of the way through, before taking a dark yet realistic turn. "The Cape," however, is anything but realistic. A horror and fantasy blend, it's about a magical cape that enables its owner, the protagonist, to leave the ground when he is wearing it. "Last Breath" is one of the shortest stories in Ghosts, but also one of the creepiest and most satisfying.

"Dead Wood," at only two pages, is a descriptive piece about ghost trees.

"The Widow's Breakfast," another of the shortest stories, has a 1930's hobo as its central character. While not the strongest story in the collection, it is still an interesting read.

"My Father's Mask" is one of the stranger tales in Ghosts. It follows the story of a boy going to a cabin on a lake with his parents. His mother is constantly in a playlike mode of make-believe and insists on all three of them wearing masks. His parents don the masks at the place, and the boy is a little disconcerted by their odd behavior. It's a disconcerting story for the reader as well with its fantastical turns.

"Voluntary Committal" is the 2006 recipient of the World Fantasy Award for best novella. The main character is a man looking back on his childhood and teen years spent with his younger brother, who couldn't speak until age four. The little brother has an obsessive hobby of building forts out of boxes in the basement. The forts are an essential part of the story, giving way to the dark fantasy element of it. The older boy's friendship with a schoolmate, who is a very bad influence on him, is also a main theme of the story. These two plot lines weave together.

20th Century Ghosts deserves all the awards it won, including the Bram Stoker for best fiction collection. A fast read, the stories flow from one to the other, captivating the reader's imagination. Hill's talent is impressive, making his stories, no matter how fantastical in subject matter, all believable. Ghosts is the start of what will probably be a very strong career.

--Angela Crockett

Lost Classic

The Book of Skulls
By Robert Silverberg
Del Ray, (reprint) 2006. $12.95

This novel came out in 1972 under the Signet Science Fiction imprint, which is quite misleading. There is nary a hint of sci-fi in its pages. Rather, The Book of Skulls is a deeply compelling psychological study, a book full of mystery and existential dread.

The story is told by four narrators: Eli, Ned, Oliver, and Timothy, Harvard students who are the book’s protagonists. Each of the 42 chapters is narrated by one of the four, so we are constantly shifting among the four minds. We get four strongly delineated perspectives as the story unfolds through their cross-country road trip, to their ultimate goal: an ancient mystery cult in the Arizona desert that may possess the secret to physical immortality.

Eli, we learn, came across The Book of Skulls during one of his forays into the rare and uncatalogued manuscripts section of the university library. Translating it, he discovered the bizarre claim of the Brotherhood of Skulls, that they can forestall death. Further translation revealed that to become an initiate into their secrets of immortality, four candidates must come, a four-sided Receptacle. But part of the demand of the initiation is that two of the four must die: “The Ninth Mystery is this: that the price of a life must always be a life. Know, O Nobly-Born, that eternities must be balanced by extinctions. As by living we daily die, so then by dying we shall forever live.’’

Eli has talked his three roommates into going with him in search of the cult over Spring break, and each has his own motives for going along, which are gradually revealed as we get into their heads.

Silverberg skillfully invokes four distinct personalities:

Eli is a Jewish city boy, a brilliant philologist who is full of self-doubt but has the passionate desire to believe in something outside himself. Defying rational 20th-century science and materialism, he persuades his friends to take a leap of faith with him.

Ned, an aspiring poet, is a homosexual and a lapsed Catholic. He revels in playing the role of devil’s advocate, and I couldn’t help but recall something his gay-poet predecessor Walt Whitman wrote: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes).’’

Ned, in fact, tries to practice the contradiction or paradox of believing and disbelieving simultaneously, maintaining a bizarre dichotomy in his head, scoffing at the whole idea of the Brotherhood of the Skulls while also opening his mind to entertain the possibility.

Oliver comes from a humble Kansas farm-boy background, but he is driven, determined to defy death, which claimed his father and mother at an early age. Though he appears to be a quiet, handsome jock, he possesses the most brilliant mind of the four, a mind that got him off the farm to Harvard on a full scholarship, and which now compels him to find the Brotherhood and pry from them their secrets.

Timothy is the American aristocrat, his family name going back through eight generations of distinguished gentry. He plays along as a lark, part of his self-assigned programme to observe how “other folk’’ live. But he is a hedonist at heart, and will find this adventure is no longer much of a lark when they reach their destination.

All four characters deal with varying degrees of doubt and belief, and each must wrestle with the ramifications of the Mysteries of the Book of Skulls. What if it turns out to be true? What if two of us must die, one—according to the Ninth Mystery—at his own hand, and one at the hands of the others? Would I be the one to commit suicide for the sake of my friends? Would they turn on me and make me the sacrificial victim? Would I turn on them?

Silverberg displays an impressive understanding of human nature here, illuminating dark recesses in the civilized minds of well-educated men, providing insight to the deepest existential motives that drive us. He manages to evoke many permutations of the fear of death and the love of life, encapsulated in the image of the skull: symbol of death, lying just below the skin of our living face. It is a mind-bending book, and well worth a read. If it had not been pigeon-holed with its genre label, it may well have garnered more of the recognition it deserves, as a work of literature that is deeply contemplative yet also a page-turner. Coming out of the era of Vietnam and love-ins, it is a timely and timeless meditation on the root motives—the profoundest fears and primal desires—that compel us all.

--Nicholas Ozment

The Attraction
(Also includes The Necromancer)
By Douglas Clegg
Leisure Books, 2006. $6.99

Author Douglas Clegg likes to challenge himself with each new piece of fiction. He tries his hand at B-grade movie horror with the title novella in The Attraction, and succeeds marvelously.

A group of college friends who have decided to travel during their break come upon the Brakedown Palace. It is a lot like any other out-of-the-way service station, except for what lurks under glass in the back room. It is The Attraction: the mummified skeleton of a figure the owners nicknamed Scratch. According to the signage, “once Scratch gets fresh human skin under his fingernails and the taste of blood, he'll come back ... to reap the human harvest.’’

Of course, two of the guys get into a scuffle, break the glass, and one of them accidentally bleeds on Scratch. Trouble ensues. It’s a simple and familiar plot, and Clegg runs with it. If you've seen the kinds of movies The Attraction is so obviously inspired by, there are few surprises, but Clegg keeps the tension high and puts the scares in their expected places. You'll be getting chills even while you're chuckling at the pure silliness of it all.

Also included with The Attraction is another Clegg novella. The Necromancer is a terrific prequel to Clegg's Harrow House series. In it, Justin Gravesend (who built the house) tells the story of his early years. From his birth in Cwthshire, Wales, to the horrific discovery that changes his attitude toward his parents, and finally to the meeting of the title character who introduces him to the power of black magic.

Some readers may be disappointed by its brief nature and abrupt ending, but I found The Necromancer thoroughly compelling. I finished this relatively short tale in two sittings. Hopefully, Clegg will address the history of the man behind Harrow more fully at a later time, but until then, this is satisfying enough -- and the price is right.

--Craig Clarke

Stock up for next Halloween

Dark Harvest
By Norman Partridge
Cemetery Dance Publications, 2006. $40

Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest is his first book for Cemetery Dance since they published his debut novel, Slippin' into Darkness, in 1994, and what a return it is! It is so much better than the early fiction that came out in his short-story collection, Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales that it is hard to believe they were written by the same person.

You know this kind of story: it's the legend every small midwestern town has, and Partridge has managed to keep things familiar and yet fill his novella with surprises. The nostalgia of classic Bradbury combines with a touch of The Twilight Zone and the kind of dark suspense that Cemetery Dance specializes in, but a melancholy thread adds depth.

It's Halloween night, 1963, the night when all teenage boys are released, after being locked up for five days, and sent off to find The October Boy, a cornfield nightmare with a jack-o'-lantern for a head and one thing on its mind: getting to the church on time (no, really). The boy who kills the Boy gets to leave town, or "jump the Line," something that has become increasingly more difficult with Officer Jerry Ricks enforcing the law. But Pete McCormick thinks this is his year. He steals Officer Ricks' .45 and is determined to get out of the town that has been holding him, his family, and everyone else in it, down for generations.

Dark Harvest is at turns frightening and sad, scary and tragic. It is a pure Halloween horror story, but one whose ripples extend past the time it takes to read it (only a few hours in my case). The characters are people you know, only in a situation you couldn't have imagined that nevertheless feels entirely plausible given the right set of circumstances. I believe, even at this early stage, that Partridge has crafted a new Halloween classic, one that should find a permanent place on the shelf of every fan of the holiday who appreciates solid writing with no spare parts.

--Craig Clarke

The Baby
By Al Sarrantonio
Cemetery Dance Publications, 2006. $35

The Baby is part of Al Sarrantonio's Orangefield series that includes the novels Hallows' Eve and Horrorween and other stories with similarly holiday-oriented titles. It is also the third in the Signature Series of books from Cemetery Dance. These focus on giving somewhat less story but considerably more art for a comparable price to their usual books.

Detective Bill Grant wishes that "weird shit" wouldn't happen in Orangefield every Halloween, but the town's resident Celtic Lord of the Dead, Samhain, is going to make sure his wish isn't about to come true. After spending a night out with the boys, Jack Carlin comes home a little after one o'clock in the morning to fulfill his promise to his wife Marianne: to try and make a baby. She's a little miffed that she’s had to wait, but they make love and she quickly falls asleep afterward, only to wake up an hour later to find Jack gone again.

Detective Grant has to inform her that Jack actually died outside the bar ... a little before one in the morning. But the fact remains that she is now pregnant. How this happened and what exactly happened to Jack are up for debate -- what is not is that Samhain has plans for this baby ("life created from death"), and he is not above cashing in a couple of favors to do it. But favors for Samhain have a way of making people dead.

The Baby is a thin, narrow volume of 129 pages, with two dozen beautifully rendered realistic and evocative illustrations from artist Keith Minnion. The story reads very quickly, however, and followers of Sarrantonio may feel that their $35 was not well spent. (Minnion fans like myself will likely be more pleased with the quality and value.) Nevertheless, the book itself is beautiful, stands out on the shelf, and the story is engaging and tautly written enough to justify revisiting it every Halloween.

--Craig Clarke

Lost Classic

Bereavements: A Tale of Dysfunctional Horror
By Richard Lortz
Out of print, but used copies can be readily found

“Grief, if profound, is a kind of madness,’’ writes Richard Lortz in the opening scene of Bereavements, where the wealthy socialite Mrs. Evans spots a boy on the street who she thinks is her son Jamie. She showers the startled boy with hugs and kisses only to be pulled away by her long-suffering driver Dori.

Mrs. Evans still hasn’t accepted the fact that her boy is dead. So unwilling to accept, in fact, that she keeps the boy preserved in a tomb of honey, removed from all oxygen so that his flesh will remain unchanged forever.

Lortz, in this bizarre tale published in 1980, the same year as the author’s death, takes us through Mrs. Evans’ painful descent into madness and her struggle to climb out of it. She starts to look for a surrogate son, placing an ad in The Village Voice that would look strange today, even in the days of Craigslist: “Mother who lost son seeks son who has lost mother.’’

After weeding through a few dirty responses from men who thought she was after something else, she ends up meeting three potential replacements, all flawed and grappling with their own demons.

Her favorite is Angel, a Puerto Rican teen from a poor family with an abusive father. But two others fight for her attention, including Martin, an aspiring actor, and Bruno, a young writer trapped in a ghoulish body.

This depressing, fascinating, creepy and ultimately hopeful novel of murder, suicide, incest and unbearable grief was republished in the mid-90s, but still hasn’t reached the audience it deserves. It’s well worth seeking out.

-- Jeff Cercone

The Ruins

By Scott Smith

$24.95, Knopf (July 2006)

Thirteen years after his successful debut with the suspense novel A Simple Plan, Scott Smith is back on the bookshelves with a new novel, The Ruins. I'm not sure what took him so long, as it's a fairly slim volume, but it was worth the wait.

The story is about two young American couples taking a last vacation in Mexico before they go off to grad school or the real world.

If you're the type of person who would see Snakes on a Plane and not enjoy it because "that could never happen!" then you might want to take a pass on this book.

People don't do logical things. It's doubtful that you would meet some German and Greek tourists and on a whim decide to go off into the jungle to help someone you don't really know find his brother, just for a little adventure. It's doubtful that when the local cab driver tells you to stay away from that place once you reach your destination that you would just go ahead anyway. What would a local know that you don't?

And you'll really need to suspend your disbelief when you discover the horrible thing awaiting the group in the jungle.

Despite those flaws, Smith makes it all work. Smith draws vivid characters and the tension is relentless once they get into their predicament. And Smith doesn't hold anything back when they meet their gruesome fates, especially one poor fellow. If writers sometimes base characters on people they know, Smith must have really hated this guy, considering what he put him through.

I don't know that I'd pay $24.95 for it, but if you can get it on sale or at the library, The Ruins is a gripping, entertaining read.

-- Jeff Cercone

Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth
By Kim Paffenroth
$19.95, Baylor University Press (October 2006)

What's George A. Romero been telling us all these years?

More than you think according to Kim Paffenroth's upcoming examination of Romero's zombie films, a moral and philosophical dissection of the Romero-directed fright flicks (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead) with nods to remakes and offshoots including Shaun of the Dead.

My first exposure to the Dead films came in Famous Monsters of Filmland which sometime in the '70s devoted a significant number of pages to the first gorefest, already several years old. It was in that exuberant FM style: "Oh no, the ghoul's got him. He didn't run fast enough" one photo caption proclaimed.

Celebrated were the black and white terrors and the unrelenting point of view, all in a way that left my unsophisticated, early-adolescent-self perplexed¿the film seemed to have no real heroes, only conflict. I did not yet possess the term Nihilism but it's probably the essence of what I thought.

Only a little later, when the original Dawn was released did I really start to pick up on the nuances and social commentary that were being discussed.

Paffenroth drills deeper than ever into almost each celluloid frame to find archetypes, sociological metaphors and more¿religious messages for the faithful. For those who scoff at and dismiss horror films, such a serious critical study might seem unwarranted, even unworthy, but this is a challenging work drawing parallels to Dante's Inferno and gleaning nuances about not just racism and materialism but also sin, sinfulness and redemption as well as the nature of hell itself.

The author examines each Romero film and the 2004 Dawn remake with a synopsis followed by analysis and a conclusion that pinpoints the key relevance.

Paffenroth focuses on many interesting subtleties of context. Some of the most intriguing points include:

The impact of the loss of ritual and mourning by the immediate transition of zombies from dead to living dead

The class envy implications of the Dawn remake's shoot the celebrity look-alike zombie game.

The failings of human nature in Night of the Living Dead

Land of the Dead's Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) as Satan symbol and tempter

Gospel of the Living Dead is not for the casual horror viewer, but for the horror aficionado and reader interested in the deeper messages of the genre, and the zombie subgenre in particular, it is a meaningful and reflective volume.

--Sidney Williams

sidneywilliams.blogspot.com