Skulls in the Stars

Wouldn’t be a Blogtober if I didn’t give a shoutout to some of the incredible Laird Barron’s work! So for Blogtober day 23, I look back on Laird’s first short story compilation, The Imago Sequence, an incredible collection of horror and great introduction to his oeuvre!

Day 21 of Blogtober, and let’s look at another book I’ve had on my shelf forever and was only recently motivated to go back and read!

Obviously, I’m a big fan of Ramsey Campbell’s work, and I endeavor to read his books as soon as they come out. But he is incredibly prolific, and I often miss books when they first appear, and sometimes I end up picking one up but end up distracted by other things and don’t get back to reading it till long after.

Such is the case with Campbell’s The Kind Folk, which was first published in 2012, and was his follow up to the 2011 novel Ghosts Know, which has become one of my favorites of his.

First of all, check out that cover: this is the PS Publishing hardbound edition of the book, which came out in 2012. The image is remarkably freaky and unsettling, and the distorted hand gestures are the sort of thing that only Campbell could imagine. (They play a significant role in the novel itself, as a symbol of the titular Kind Folk; it is a sign that actual humans cannot do.) The PS Publishing edition contains no book description, leaving one to figure out for oneself what exactly the story is about, and that’s for the best — learning what is going on is part of the fun.

For Blogtober day 20, I look back at another Valancourt Books reprint, and another book I wrote an intro for! Devil in the Darkness is a wonderful haunted house story written by an author who was both a professional astronomer and a paranormal investigator!

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.