A Book of Horrors

A Book of Horrors
edited by Stephen Jones
cover art by Les Edwards

About the Book:
Open this book at your own peril! That is because this volume is exactly what it says on the cover—A Book of Horrors contains all-original stories by some of the most successful and exciting names in modern horror fiction.

For the first time in many years, here is an original anthology of horror and dark fantasy in all its many and magnificent guises—from classic pulp-style tales of Dark and Stormy Nights, through more contemporary and psychological terrors, to the type of cutting-edge fiction that only the very best horror fiction can deliver.

Brought together from around the world by World Fantasy Award-winning editor Stephen Jones, one of Britain's most acclaimed and experienced anthologists of horror fiction, here are many of the authors who have helped shaped the genre in all of its forms, along with terrifying tales of unease by a new generation of storytellers devoted to the Dark Side.

But be warned: once you begin to delve within these pages, your imagination and senses will be assaulted by terrors both grim and gruesome, literary and lethal, that will stay with you long after you have closed its covers and tried to put aside the images and situations which have wormed their way deep within your mind.

Don't blame us for the bad dreams or cold sweats that these tales will induce. We did tell you—this is A Book of Horrors, and once you open it there is no way that these scarifying stories will ever be forgotten... no matter how much you wish that the nightmares will just go away!

Please Note: This project represents the first-ever collaboration between Cemetery Dance Publications (US) and PS Publishing (UK), so please read the letter from Peter Crowther in the next tab for some special information about how this edition came to be! You can order from either publisher and you will receive the same book. As with previous collaborative books like this, we will unfortunately be unable to provide copies for our lifetimers. Please contact our office directly if you have any questions.

Letter From Peter Crowther of PS Publishing:

Publishers do it “in parentheses”!
PS and CD join forces for a major limited signed edition . . .

Crumbs, what a week it's been! Mike has been on vacation but he's back now (everybody! “Hurrah for Mike!”) so we're feeling a little less stressed.

Anyway, just one thing to mention this week so listen up:

In the Introduction to his new anthology, A Book of Horrors, uber-editor Stephen Jones bemoans the fate of ‘horror':

WHAT THE HELL happened to the horror genre?
Whatever happened to menacing monsters, vicious vampires,
lethal lycanthropes, ghastly ghosts and monstrous mummies?
These days our bloodsuckers are more likely to show their
romantic nature, werewolves work for covert government
organisations, phantoms are private investigators and the
walking dead can be found sipping tea amongst the polite
society of a Jane Austen novel.

That's not an unreasonable question . . . particularly when it comes from Steve: he's read more of this stuff than most of the rest of us put together—hell, he's edited and published more of it, too. So he knows of what he speaks. And like the character in Paddy Chayefsky's Network, he declared himself mad as hell and not going to take this any more.

So he put out the call to fellow scare-scribblers, Come on . . . let's do it the way it used to be—the way it always was: let's find the proverbial cutting edge and then let's go across it and just keep going.

The response was a resounding thumbs-up . . . and lo, the stories came in. The resulting volume will appear around Hallowe'en, from the newly-formed Jo Fletcher Books imprint of Quercus (Jo herself being no stranger to the Dark Side . . . so the volume is truly a marriage made in Heaven). But with a line-up that boasts the following:

Ramsey Campbell
Peter Crowther
Dennis Etchison
Elizabeth Hand
Brian Hodge
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Stephen King
John Ajvide Lindqvist
Richard Christian Matheson
Reggie Oliver
Robert Shearman
Angela Slatter
Michael Marshall Smith
Lisa Tuttle

—both I and Richard Chizmar (then oblivious to each other's thinking) decided there just had to be a limited edition. Once we had discovered our mutual interest, it seemed to make a lot of sense for us to do it together. So around about Thanksgiving this year there's going to be an additional reason to cheer: a special super edition in two states featuring a specially commissioned new cover from Les Edwards (Les's cover for the JFB edition will appear on our endpapers . . . and it appears here on our temporary order page as a placeholder).

There'll be one thousand ‘bookshop' copies signed by Stephen Jones and Les Edwards, priced at $60 and a traycased edition signed by all contributors priced at $995. But be warned: there will be just 100 copies of the traycased edition—absolutely not a single copy more—and that quantity will have to accommodate a copy to each contributor, Stephen Jones and Les Edwards, plus Rich and me (though I already qualify as a contributor).

Please note that no matter where you place your order, all income—as well as all expenditure and productions costs—will be split equally between CD and PS, so go ahead and shop wherever your heart and your fingers take you.

Table of Contents:
"Introduction: Whatever Happened To Horror?" by Stephen Jones
"The Little Green God of Agony" by Stephen King
"Charcloth, Firesteel and Flint" by Caitlín R. Kiernan
"Ghosts With Teeth" by Peter Crowther
"The Coffin-Maker's Daughter" by Angela Slatter
"Roots and All" by Brian Hodge
"Tell Me I'll See You Again" by Dennis Etchison
"The Music Of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer" by John Ajvide Lindqvist
"Getting It Wrong" by Ramsey Campbell
"Alice Through The Plastic Sheet" by Robert Shearman
"The Man In The Ditch" by Lisa Tuttle
"A Child's Problem" by Reggie Oliver
"Sad, Dark Thing" by Michael Marshall Smith
"Near Zennor" by Elizabeth Hand
"Last Words" by Richard Christian Matheson

Published in two states:
• Limited Hardcover "Bookshop" Edition of just 1,000 copies signed by Stephen Jones and Les Edwards ($60)
• Leatherbound Deluxe Hardcover Edition in a handmade custom traycase, limited to 100 copies signed by all of the contributors, only 83 copies will be available for sale to the general public ($995)

Visit our official production update page for the latest news and updates about this project.

Artwork