DIRTY WEEKEND
What we have here is essentially a feminist minded DEATH WISH, although this novel presents itself as something far deeper
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
Grayson Perry is a renowned British artist and notorious cross dresser with a penchant for the gross and pornographic. I’m assuming this humorous and frankly obscene graphic novel is at least partially autobiographical.
ANYHOW STORIES
This remains one of the great curiosities of the Victorian era, a children’s book of considerable richness, bizarre, and not a little darkness. You’ll find few books of any sort with as strong a grasp of otherworldly apprehension as these “Anyhow Stories,” not all of which are explicitly horrific.
CREATURE
An example of something that’s all too common in horror fiction: a paperback novel whose contents diverge quite radically from the packaging. That packaging portends a trashy horror fest a la Stephen King at his most lurid, and indeed the first half of the book delivers just that, with a naive English traveler finding himself stuck in a rural Austrian village. Eventually he enters a foreboding castle and discovers…something.
THE COUNT OF ELEVEN
England’s Ramsey Campbell is one of the finest horror scribes on the scene, and THE COUNT OF ELEVEN one of his best-ever novels
The Brahan Seer
An assured and compelling fictional account of “Scotland’s Nostradamus” Coinneach Odhar, a 17th Century man who allegedly possessed telekinetic powers that allowed him to see into the future. As this novel tells it, Coinneach foresaw quite a few assorted disasters, as well as the devastation of World War II and his own demise.
The Beckoning Fair One
This is the most famous tale written by the late Oliver Onions, and widely considered one of the classic English language ghost stories. Turns out there’s a definite reason THE BECKONING FAIR ONE is so well regarded: it’s simply one of the finest stories of its kind, with a descriptive flair and psychological acuity you just don’t see in too many other scare stories then or now.
AUTOMATIC SAFE DOG
In this novel, the first by English writer/musician Jet McDonald, we’re introduced to the burgeoning industry of Pet Furnishing.
THE ANUBIS GATES
As with all the Tim Powers novels I’ve read, THE ANUBIS GATES is a difficult book to summarize. At its simplest it’s about Brendan Doyle, an American professor thrust back in time to England of 1810.
AN EXCHANGE OF SOULS
A novel that’s best known today as an alleged inspiration on H.P. Lovecraft’s “Thing on the Doorstep,” AN EXCHANGE OF SOULS also anticipates Michael Blumlein’s horrific gender-swap classic X,Y in its account of a mad doctor who becomes trapped in his fiancée’s body after a soul-switching experiment goes wrong.