Next SFF Author: Tim Horvath

Series: Horror

Cell: Cell phones turn users into zombies

Cell by Stephen King

In The Stand, Stephen King basically wrote the book on contemporary post-apocalyptic settings. However, one of the few things that 1000+ page novel missed was zombies. King corrects that omission in Cell, a novel in which cell phones turn users into zombies.

Unlike in The Stand, King wastes no time assembling his heroes. Clayton Riddell, who is, of course, from Maine, writes graphic novels. Clay barely has a moment to enjoy his first big break in publishing before the world is ending after the “pulse.” Amidst the ruin,

No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories: A horror collection

No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories by Brian Lumley

Brian Lumley became a name in horror fiction in the late 1980s. He was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, like many others, then branched out into different types of horror. He is probably best known for the NECROSCOPE series, but he has also written short fiction, and Subterranean Press has published a collection titled No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories.

Subtitled “The Best Macabre Stories of Brian Lumley,” the book contains pieces picked by the author.

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror: Difficult to engage with

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror by H.P. Lovecraft

Fans of Stephen King take note: This work and other tales of H.P. Lovecraft were among King’s main inspirations. Lovecraft bases most of his stories out of his Providence, just as King uses small town Maine so often as a setting. Likewise, each utilizes quirks of rural life and old wives’ tales to spin tales of the macabre that never quite fully explain themselves. Ghosts, miasmas, fiery pentagrams, voodoo magic, mysterious deaths, and the other typical plot devices used by horror are never intended to fully connect with reality.

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart: 25 works by an accomplished stylist

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Caitlín R. Kiernan is a powerful writer, with a prodigious vocabulary, a mastery of prose and the ability to ground a sentence with a perfectly chosen detail. Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, published by Subterranean Press, contains 25 works by this accomplished stylist. Many of the works have graphic sexual imagery and intense sexual violence. In many cases that is the sole intent of the piece.

I have no complaints at all with the line-by-line prose, but the anthology is a mixed bag.

Noctuary: A horror collection

Noctuary by Thomas Ligotti

“For we are the specters of a madness that surpasses ourselves and hides in mystery. And though we search for sense throughout endless rooms, all we may find is a voice whispering from a mirror in a house that belongs to no one.”

Thomas Ligotti is a master of madness. He writes short stories in the horror vein. Subterranean Press has collected eight of them, along with twenty vignettes or “flash fiction,” not more than 750 words, in the anthology Noctuary (originally published in 1994).

Supernatural Noir: A Datlow anthology

Supernatural Noir edited by Ellen Datlow

Ellen Datlow suggests in her introduction to Supernatural Noir that noir fiction and supernatural fiction, with its roots in the gothic, have a lot in common. The main character in each tends to be a hard-living guy, usually down to his last flask of scotch, haunted by a sexy dame whose middle name is trouble. So it seemed natural to her to combine the two genres for an original anthology.

Despite my general rule that any anthology edited by Ellen Datlow is one I want to read,

July 9th, 2012. Terry Weyna´s rating: 5 | Caitlín R. Kiernan, Elizabeth Bear, Ellen Datlow, Gregory Frost, Jeffrey Ford, Joe R. Lansdale, John Langan, Laird Barron, Nick Mamatas | Horror, Shirley Jackson Award | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The 2012 Shirley Jackson Award Nominated Novellas

The Shirley Jackson Awards will be handed out in just less than two weeks, at Readercon in Burlington, Massachusetts. This is the third of three columns about the short fiction nominees, this column covering the novellas; the short stories are discussed here, and the novelettes are discussed here (now updated to include a discussion of Jeffrey Ford’s wonderful novella, “The Last Triangle” from the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology, Supernatural Noir).

Michael Morano’s “Displacement” from Stories from the Plague Years begins with a chilling picture: a serial killer is “showing” a victim’s body to her decapitated head,

Horns: Frightening, sad and ultimately hopeful

Horns by Joe Hill

CLASSIFICATION: Horns is a murder mystery/love story/revenge thriller with a dark supernatural twist in the vein of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub.

FORMAT/INFO: Horns is 384 pages long divided over 4 titled Parts and 50 numbered chapters. Narration is in the third-person, mainly via the protagonist Ignatius “Ig” Perrish, but also includes narratives by the villain and Ig’s older brother Terry. Horns is self-contained.

The 2012 Novelette Nominees for the Shirley Jackson Award

This week Terry looks at the four novelettes nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, which will be presented at Readercon. This year Readercon will take place July 12 through 15, in Burlington, Massachusetts.

“Omphalos” by Livia Llewellyn, is the first nomination for this writer whose first book, The Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors is also nominated in the single-author collection category (“Omphalos” appears in the collection). It is about a horrifically dysfunctional family in which every family member seems to be having sex with every other family member of the opposite sex,

The 2012 Short Story Nominees for the Shirley Jackson Award

These horror stories are so good that they’ve been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. Read all about them, then try to find them for yourself and figure out which one will be the winner before the awards are handed out at Readercon, July 12-15, 2012.

The Shirley Jackson Awards are awarded “for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.” They are one of my favorite awards each year, along with the World Fantasy Awards. The Shirley Jackson Awards single out the Weird fiction that I enjoy most: the fiction that straddles boundaries,

Next SFF Author: Tim Horvath

Previous SFF Author: Anthony Horowitz

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