Skulls in the Stars

For day 18 of Blogtober, I look again at one of the collections of horror fiction by my twitter friend Orrin Grey! Grey’s work can be categorized as horror, but it is a *fun* sort of horror, As I say in the post, his stories aim more to chill and thrill, rather than disgust and horrify.

Day 16 of Blogtober! Let’s take a look at a recent excellent collection…

Valancourt Books (whom I have written introductions for) has really stepped up their game in recent years. Following the release of their excellent Valancourt Book of World Horror volume 1, which provided the first English translations of outstanding works by authors from around the world, they carried on and started releasing the first collections in English of a number of those authors! I’ve already written about the fantastic collection The Black Maybe, by Attila Veres, and now I’ve finished A Different Darkness and Other Abominations, by Luigi Musolino.

Musolino is one of Italy’s leading horror writers, and this collection highlights his best work, consisting of 8 stories and three novellas. I first encountered his fiction in the aforementioned Valancourt Book of World Horror volume 1, which contained his short story “Uironda,” also included in this collection. To be honest, “Uironda” didn’t stand out to me when I first read it, though it was a well-written story, but I trusted the Valancourt folks that his work as a whole would grab my attention. And it did! I read the whole book over the course of two evenings.

For day 15 of Blogtober, here is a novel that grinds the reader down with constant anxiety and dread — and I mean that in a good way! The Auctioneer is a story about the depths to which humans can descend, and the things that they will endure.

Day 13 of Blogtober, a Friday the 13th! Which makes it an appropriate time to talk about a real classic!

I have a special fondness for paperback horror of the 1980s, as that was the era that I first started getting really into horror fiction. I still have vivid memories of visiting Oakbrook Center in the Chicago suburbs and going to the now-vanished local bookstore chain Kroch’s and Brentano’s to hunt for new horror to read. There, in the back of the store, I could find all the twisted and often absurd titles, like Crabs on the Rampage by Guy N. Smith.

It was a golden age of horror, and you could even find paperbacks in the local grocery stores. I still vividly remember picking up my copy of Ramsey Campbell’s amazing novel Ancient Images at the local Jewel, which led me to a lifelong love of Campbell’s works. In 2017, Grady Hendrix wrote a definitive history of that era of paperback horror supremacy, Paperbacks from Hell, and many of the books he discussed are being rereleased by publishers such as Valancourt Books today, as horror has again grown in popularity.

Last year, Valancourt Books also released one of the cult classic paperback horror novels of that era, Carnosaur (1984), by Harry Adam Knight, and I jumped at the chance to finally read one of the books I missed as a teenager.

If you are not familiar with Carnosaur, you will be surprised at the similarities between this cult classic and a book that came out six years later! It is simultaneously a novel that really anticipated the future yet was also very much a product of its time, and overall very fun to read.

Day 12 of Blogtober, and I look back at one of the best novels written by John Blackburn, who was in essence the British Stephen King of his era (1960s-1970s). Our Lady of Pain is a novel inspired by the infamous Elizabeth Bathory, who may have murdered several hundred people while she was in power. I wrote an introduction to this book for Valancourt Books, and had a great time investigating the “real” history of Bathory and trying to separate the truth from the legend.

Our Lady of Pain starts as a mystery, where unexplained deaths lead to a truly twisted plan that connects all the way back to Bathory and her power over people…