George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones Special Collectible 20th Anniversary Boxes From Random House & HBO!

We’re so blown away by what our friends at Random House are doing for their incredible George R.R. Martin collectible set that we just had to let our collectors know about it. We’re not involved in the production or distribution, but we’re ordering a few sets for the office! Here are the details we grabbed from the official website:

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the publication of A Game of Thrones, Random House has created three boxes in partnership with author George R.R. Martin and HBO. The boxes contain collectibles, exclusive items, and a special, illustrated edition of A Game of Thrones, the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin’s internationally bestselling fantasy series. This edition is not available in stores and includes an alternate cover and a full-color insert of illustrations. The box will be available for a limited time while supplies last in three versions: Special Edition, Limited Numbered Edition, and Ultra Limited Numbered Edition. Boxes will ship in December in time for the holidays.

GRRM

Read more on the official Random House promotional website while supplies last!

Review: ‘The Last Firefly of Summer’ by Robert Ford

lastfireflyThe Last Firefly of Summer by Robert Ford
CreateSpace (July 2016)
64 pages; $5.95 paperback; $1.99 e-book
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia

Over the past few years, Robert Ford has become the go-to writer when it comes to emotionally-wrenching fiction. Give him a little bit of your time and eventually, without fail, he’ll have your heart on a platter. The Last Firefly of Summer is no exception. With lean prose and and a powerful voice, Ford spins a tale about summer love gone wrong, and a vengeful adoration which must be satisfied. Continue Reading

Shining In the Dark: Celebrating Twenty Years of Lilja’s Library (Featuring Stephen King, Clive Barker, Stewart O’Nan, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Jack Ketchum, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Keene, and many others!)

We’re pleased to announce Shining In the Dark: Celebrating Twenty Years of Lilja’s Library edited by Hans-Åke Lilja, a brand new anthology that includes both original stories like an original novella by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), very rare reprints like “The Blue Air Compressor” (a Stephen King story that has never appeared in any of his collections and hasn’t seen print anywhere since 1981), and at least one classic tale that inspired Lilja’s love of the macabre at a very young age!

Shining in the Dark

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

A Halloween Thing A Day: ‘Season’s Greetings’

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In 1996, Michael Dougherty released a short animated film called “Season’s Greetings,” which introduced a creepy, child-like character with a burlap mask and a love for Halloween. That character was named Sam, and you can see his introduction to the world below:Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: ‘Monster Problems’

Halloween Thing A Day

Monsters in the closet….monsters under the bed….I think we all, at some point in life, believed in these things. We also believed that certain things would protect us from such creatures: keeping your feet under the covers…night lights…Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Silver Shamrock!

Halloween Thing A Day

Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween
Happy, happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock!

If you’re a fan of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, you might be
cursing me right now. That little ditty (from the Halloween countdown
commercials that play a huge part in the movie’s plot) is one of the
hardest-to-ditch earworms in earworm history, and I’ve just infected you.Continue Reading

Stars In My Eyes by David Morrell: Signed Limited Edition From Borderlands Press & Gauntlet Press!

We’re pleased to report we will be receiving some copies of Stars In My Eyes by David Morrell, a new SIGNED LIMITED EDITION being published by Borderlands Press and Gauntlet Press:

Stars In My Eyes

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

A Halloween Thing A Day: Giving Credit to ‘Halloween 4’

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1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is neither the most beloved nor the most reviled entry in the franchise. It’s a bit on the bland side for me (Michael’s mask, in particular, lacks any personality whatsoever), but man—I do love these opening credits.Continue Reading

Camelot

End of the Road

“So,” author John Urbancik said as we drove across Florida from Tallahassee to Land O’ Lakes, “let me see if I understand this correctly.” (That’s how John talks. If you’re writing dialogue for John Urbancik, he would never say something like, “Let me get this straight” or “You’ve gotta be shitting me.” He would say, “Let me see if I understand this correctly.”)

“You’re on the second leg,” John continued, “of a book signing tour for The Complex and Pressure. In the first week of this second leg, you’ve been orphaned by the publisher of one of those books, and you’re waiting to hear the outcome of that. You have also seen three previously scheduled signings unceremoniously cancelled by the venues. A bookstore and a vehicle caught on fire, the radiator in your Jeep blew up, and you are running low on money, hope, and gas—and running even lower on fucks to give.”Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Neil Gaiman’s “Witch Work”

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Earlier this month, we featured Neil Gaiman, in a graveyard, talking about All Hallow’s Eve. Now, with Halloween peeking around the corner, we return to Mr. Gaiman, broadcasting from the woods on Halloween 2015, reading a poem called “Witch Work.”Continue Reading

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #193

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Hearts in Suspension-the new Stephen King book that contains his long essay “Five to One, One in Five,” the novella “Hearts in Atlantis,” four of his “King’s Garbage Truck” essays from the University of Maine newspaper, and essays by a dozen fellow students—will be out from the University of Maine Press in a few weeks. The book also contains a photograph and document gallery that chronicles his university years. UMaine will host the book launch on November 7 at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Is Your Halloween Candy Poisoned?

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poisonAmong the top Halloween urban legends that circulate each year is the idea that the candy your child accepts from strangers while trick-or-treating could be poisoned.

It was in wide circulation when I was of trick-or-treating age; I vividly remember my parents inspecting my candy haul piece-by-piece while I stood by impatiently. Of course, this was back in the ’70s, which means we didn’t have the Internet and we didn’t have Snopes.Continue Reading

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin Signed Limited Edition Hardcover Announced Today!

Hi Folks!

We’re pleased to report we have some copies of The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin left available for the general public, but these will not last long as collectors who bought the previous volumes elsewhere scramble to complete their sets by purchasing these copies at the regular retail price instead of chancing the second-hand market down the road!

The City of MirrorsAbout the Book:
The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place?

The Twelve have been destroyed and the terrifying hundred-year reign of darkness that descended upon the world has ended. The survivors are stepping outside their walls, determined to build society anew—and daring to dream of a hopeful future.

But far from them, in a dead metropolis, he waits: Zero. The First. Father of the Twelve. The anguish that shattered his human life haunts him, and the hatred spawned by his transformation burns bright. His fury will be quenched only when he destroys Amy—humanity’s only hope, the Girl from Nowhere who grew up to rise against him.

One last time light and dark will clash, and at last Amy and her friends will know their fate.

Special Features Exclusive to this Collector’s Edition:
• epic cover artwork by Tomislav Tikulin
• at least ONE DOZEN black & white interior illustrations by Jill Bauman
• deluxe oversized design with a fine binding
• Smyth sewn with a bound-in satin ribbon page marker
• extremely collectible print run that is a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of copies of the edition you’ll see in bookstores — and you will NOT see our edition in chain bookstores!

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

‘Pet Sematary’ and Why Sometimes Dead is Better

What I Learned From Stephen King

bookThere is a bit of lore that exists around the origins of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. It was a novel he never intended to publish, the one he felt was “too dark” to unleash upon us Constant Readers. That is somewhat difficult to believe, considering it was only two years before Pet Sematary’s publication in 1983 that King picked up his typewriter and hit us over the head with Cujo, wherein five-year-old Tad Trenton dies by the novel’s final pages. King has said on numerous occasions that he received a lot of flack for that one, to be sure. One of the most popular questions he would get asked at the time is: Why, Steve, why? Why did you have to go and kill the kid?Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Froggy Fresh’s ‘Halloween’

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Hip hop music and horror movies go way back. Sometimes the two came together as a promotional gimmick (see Freddy Krueger’s collaborations with Will Smith and The Fat Boys), sometimes it was a case of an artist paying homage to (or making fun of) the horror icons of their time.Continue Reading