Dark Screams: Volume One

Random House has started a new series of horror story collections edited by Brian Freeman and Richard T. Chizmar, famed editors of the magazine Cemetery Dance. The first of these short volumes is titled, Dark Screams: Volume One (Amazon link). Featured are stories by Stephen King, Kelley Armstrong, Bill Pronzini, Simon Clark, and Ramsey Campbell. While the variety of stories is decent, the quality varies. Note to parents: The stories are fine for young adults, and gore is at a minimum.


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Originally written in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and published as Digital Knight, Baen Books has just released a revised and expanded version titled, Paradigms Lost, by Ryk E. Spoor (Amazon link). According to the author’s preface, he made a few changes to existing stories to clarify a few incidents. The major difference is that he’s added about 50% new material. This should make this revision well worthwhile to readers of the original book (which I have not read — this review is based solely on this one). Paradigms Lost is a roller-coaster of a ride through an alternate Earth where vampires, werewolves, and other creatures all go bump-in-the-night. It is a very enjoyable read.


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The Cthulhu Mythos are real! Ostensibly written for the “young adult” market, Billy Lovecraft Saves the World, by Billy Lovecraft, Curiosity Quills Press (Amazon link) is wonderful fun. I’m 60-years old, and as a long time H.P. Lovecraft fan, I loved this book. Well written, endearing characters, scary, but with a big-sized dollop of humor thrown in, I believe that you will get a kick out of this story, too.


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Poe, by J. Lincoln Fenn

Halloween is rapidly approaching and I’ve got a wonderful book for you to read: Poe, by J. Lincoln Fenn (Amazon Link) is great fun from start to finish. It’s a romantic-comedy-horror novel all wrapped up in one near perfect roller coaster of a read. It has a truly likable cast of characters (well, most of them) caught-up in a series of mysteries, gruesome murders, and marvelously laugh-out-loud-funny dialogue.


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When you die, you simply wake up in another world, possibly in another universe. It’s not reincarnation in the classic sense, since you usually arrive at the age you were at, at “death,” and your memories are intact. Earth is an original-born world, not one of the steps along the way. Eventually, when it’s time to really die — if you’ve “earned it” — you wind up on a strange, squalid world known as the City Unspoken. That’s the premise of The Waking Engine, by David Edison. This big book is a heady mixture of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror, with an ambitious plot: Something has gone wrong with the machine that actually allows the mix of creatures from various worlds to finally rest in peace. The City Unspoken is becoming overcrowded, out of control, and various forms of ennui, or insanity, are rising.


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The Troop, by Nick Cutter

Some 45-years ago, the Boyscout troop I was in went on an overnight camping trip in late November. It rained and then snowed and we were huddled in our tents, and half of us got the stomach bug. Thinking back on it, that was a walk in the park compared to what The Troop, by Nick Cutter  faces as the five of them and their scoutmaster begin a weekend camping trip on a small, deserted island off the coast of Prince Edward Island.

The short review: Frightening, relentless, graphically gory.


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