Skulls in the Stars

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.

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…