Book Review: Fears

 October 2023 is Spooky StORIES MOnth 
at the PORPOR BOOKS BLOG !

Book Review: 'Fears' edited by Charles L. Grant

 4 / 5 Stars

Well, from 40 years ago, here we have a quintessential Paperbacks from Hell anthology: 'Fears' (280 pp.), published by Berkley Books in May, 1983. 

This was one of four horror anthologies edited by Grant for Playboy Press and Berkley Books, the others being 'Nightmares' (1979), 'Horrors' (1981), and 'Terrors' (1982).

I previously have read 'Nightmares' and found it a decent collection of tales, less influenced in their selection by Grant for their 'quiet horror' qualities, than I would have expected. So I had expectations that 'Fears' would be a good anthology, too.

The stories in 'Fears' saw publication during the interval from 1972 to 1983 (presumably those written in 1983 were done exclusively for this anthology).

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Surrogate, by Janet Fox: Steve Winston and his wife Diane have hired a young woman to gestate their child. This may not be a good idea. A subtle, but effective, tale of suburban horror.

Coasting, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: strange doings at sea. There is much build-up in terms of atmosphere and setting, but the denouement is so contrived it reads as something from fanfic.

Spring-fingered Jack, by Susan Casper: nepotism is in effect, as Casper was Gardner Dozois's wife. This is a short-short story about a particularly disturbing video game.

Flash Point, by Gardner Dozois: this story first appeared in Damon Knight's 'Orbit 13' (1974). It's set in a near-future USA where, alarmingly, violent behavior is on the rise. 

A Cold Day in the Mesozoic, by Jack Dann: Jody misses the school bus and on his long walk home, sees something perhaps he shouldn't have seen. A short-short tale, that fails to impress.

The Train, by William F. Nolan: practiced short-story hand Nolan gives us a well-plotted tale of a cold and wintry Montana night, and a train that you are better off not taking. Nolan later expanded this story into his 1991 novel 'Helltracks'.

The Dripping, by David Morrell: strange things are going on in a remote farmhouse. I suspect that most readers will guess the denouement quite early on in the story.

The Ragman, by Leslie Alan Horvitz: an affluent couple travel from their home in the Connecticut suburbs into New York City. Getting lost in the ghetto will have consequences.

Deathtracks, by Dennis Etchison: the obligatory Etchison entry. A young man is assigned to monitor the TV viewership of an elderly couple named Bob and Jenny Morrison. The television in the Morrison's living room makes strange noises and displays unusual lighting effects. This story is badly overwritten, and the horror / dark fantasy content unconvincing.

Father Dear, by Al Sarrantonio: the un-named, first-person narrator seeks revenge on his father for the infliction of all manner of cruelties during childhood. This story requires patience from the reader, as it take some time to unfold (and somehow the Greek goddess Artemis / Diana figures into the ending).  

As Old As Sin, by Peter D. Pautz: some punk kids learn, the hard way, that tomenting little old lady Mother Corbin is a bad idea. Another of the better stories in the anthology.

Fish Night, by Joe R. Lansdale: in 1983, Lansdale was a little less notorious, and a little less transgressive, than he would be later in the decade. Perhaps that's why editor Grant, a staunch advocate for Quiet Horror (and a firm opponent of splatterpunk) published this tale, which is more fantasy that horror. It's about some can opener salesmen stranded in the Arizona desert.

Remembering Melody, by George R. R. Martin: Melody is one of those dissipated hippie chicks that comes into your life.............and doesn't leave.

The Pond, by Pat Cadigan: little kids should stay away from the pond at grandma's house. This story takes its time developing, but has a satisfying conclusion.

The Beasts That Perish, by R. Bretnor: you'll never look at roadkill the same way after reading this imaginative story, one of the better ones in the anthology.

Cassie, Waiting, by Julie Stevens: maybe the bag lady who mumbles to herself as she stands at the corner of Eighty-third and Lexington knows something you don't. 

High Tide, by Leanne Frahm: this novelette, by Australian Frahm, is the best story in 'Fears'. It's about a camping / fishing trip to Newry Islands in the Seaforth Bay area of Queensland. Peter Cleaver, his son Mike, and Mike's friend Drip discover something alarming in the mangrove swamps. 'High Tide' presents its eco-horror theme with skill and suspense.

Summing up, I am comfortable with giving 'Fear' a 4-Star Rating. The inclusion of the stories from Fox, Nolan, Pautz, Martin, Bretnor, and Frahm gives it an impact that tended to be lacking in more than a few anthologies released in the early days of the Paperbacks from Hell.

Book Review: Playboy's Stories for Swinging Readers

It's Valentine's Day 2022 at the PorPor Books Blog !

Book Review: 'Playboy's Stories for Swinging Readers'

3 / 5 Stars

Here at the PorPor Books Blog we celebrate Valentine's Day by reviewing a book, either fiction or nonfiction, that deals with love and romance. For Valentine's Day 2024, our selection is 'Playboy's Stories for Swinging Readers' ! 

Hubba-hubba !

'Swinging Readers' (217 pp.) was published by the Playboy Press in 1969, and features 18 pieces that first appeared in the magazine during the interval from 1956 to 1966. 

Needless to say, the stories in 'Swinging Readers' are quite tame in terms of explicitness. They do heartily endorse the ethos of the Mad Men era, with protagonists who are randy bachelors looking to 'score' with 'broads' who are coy, and intent on Saving Themselves for Marriage. Needless to say, modern-day feminists (and the men who sympathize with them) will find this collection of stories to be 'transgressive'.

The authors constitute a 'Who's Who' of postwar writers, a reflection of that fact that in its heyday, Playboy was the among the most influential of those 'slick' magazines that showcased a higher brow of modern fiction.

Among the better entries are 'The Darendinger Build-Up' by William F. Nolan (is that broad's 'rack' too good to be true ?), 'The Secret Formula' by Henry Slesar (there's more than one way to trick a broad into giving it up), 'Thank You, Anna' by Bill Safire (the housekeeper isn't what she seems), and 'This One Is On the House' by Pat Frank (a neat twist at the end). 

The only story in the collection that deviates from the formula is Calder Willingham's 'Bus Story', a disturbing tale of a criminal on the prowl. Its inclusion is unexpected, and evidence that some of the short fiction appearing in Playboy could firmly deviate quite firmly and effectively from a celebration of hedonism.

My recommendation ? While I can't designate 'Playboy's Stories for Swinging Readers' as a must-have, if you have a fondness for the short fiction of the postwar era, and have not been traumatized by the revelations of the Me Too movement, then if you see a copy of the book on a bookstore shelf, it's worth picking up.

Book Review: The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XII

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XII'
edited by Karl Edward Wagner

3 / 5 Stars

'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XII' (239 pp) was published in November 1984 and features cover artwork by Segrelles. It's DAW Book No. 503.

All of the stories in this collection were previously published in 1982 - 1983 in various magazines and anthologies.

In his Introduction, editor Wagner does a bit of pontificating, announcing to his satisfaction that the 'horror fad' is receding, and 

......people are no longer standing in line to see films like Rototiller Dentist or assaulting the paperback racks to buy novels about giant maggots gobbling up Los Angeles or possessed teenagers turning other teenagers inside out. Readers have been affronted by enough garbage served up as horror; now they demand something better.

And what is, indeed, 'better' ? Why, the entries in 'The Year's Best Horror Stories', edited by Karl Edward Wagner, of course !

(Devotees of Paperbacks from Hell and splatterpunk novels undoubtedly will grasp my sarcasm).

So here are my capsule reviews of the gems awaiting you in this DAW anthology:

Uncle Otto's Truck, by Stephen King: in the 80s, having an entry by King in your anthology was marketing magic. This story is about an abandoned truck that menaces the first-person narrator's Uncle Otto. It's a successful enough horror tale from King, one that takes advantage of being set in his familiar territory of rural Maine.  

3:47 am, by David Langford: psychological horror tale of a man beset with increasingly disturbing nightmares. 

Mistral, by Jon Wynne-Tyson: on the French Riviera, a middle-aged man enjoys the company of a beautiful mistress whose attitude is a bit........feral.

Out of Africa, by David Drake: big-game hunting in Africa, for an unusual animal. A competent tale, if not all that imaginative.

The Wall Painting, by Roger Johnson: an English ghost story in the M. R. James tradition.

Keepsake, by Vincent McHardy: children in an elementary school use witchcraft against their teacher. The premise is interesting, but the story is so over-plotted that it misfires. 

Echoes, by Lawrence C. Connolly: a short-short story about a grieving family. One of the better entries in the anthology.

After-Images, by Malcolm Edwards: World War Three strikes an English town and the results are unexpected. Effectively mixing horror and sci-fi along with a unique depiction of growing dread, this is not only one of the better entries in this anthology, but one of the best horror stories of the 1980s.

The Ventriloquist's Daughter, by Juleen Brantingham: a woman confronts her father and her past. Unremarkable.

Come to the Party, by Frances Garfield: Garfield was Manly Wade Wellman's wife. This haunted-house tale adheres to a pulp writing style and would have been at home in Weird Tales.

The Chair, by Dennis Etchison: ahhh, yes, the inevitable Etchison 'quiet horror' entry. So superior to those novels about 'giant maggots' ! 

Here, Etchison gives us a high school reunion that goes awry. 

Etchison wasn't shy about vying with Ramsey Campbell for the use of purplish metaphors: 

A rusty tricycle like a twisted spider littered a shadowy yard. 

Like too many Etchison stories, the over-effort to depict mood, atmosphere, and setting fails to offset weak plotting.

Names, by Jane Yolen: Yolen was an established writer of children's books, and this apparently was her first attempt at something for the adult market. 'Names' is about Rachel, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor; Rachel is psychologically distressed. The premise is contrived, and the story unimpressive. 

The Attic, by Billy Wolfenbarger: editor Wagner was really scraping the barrel by including this entry, which is a chapter from some poet's unpublished novel, rather than a short story per se. 'The Attic' is a prose poem about a man's reveries, triggered when he rummages around his attic. Yeah, it's that lame................

Just Waiting, by Ramsey Campbell: the opening pages of this story about a man who returns to a forest, and the scene of childhood trauma, were written in an unusually clear and unadorned manner........ and my hopes rose that here, finally, Campbell might deliver something worthwhile ! Sadly, however, the story's final pages are so overloaded with descriptions of phantasmagorical happenings that the plot simply collapses under their weight. 

One for the Horrors, by David J. Schow: less a horror story than a treatment of classic movies, old movie theatres, and nostalgia. 

Elle Est Trois, (La Mort), by Tanith Lee: in 18th century Paris, three Starving Artists are confronted by Death ('La Mort') in its feminine incarnations. This being a Tanith Lee story from the early 80s, I anticipated a thin plot burdened with ornate prose, and that's what I got. But the denouement holds up well enough.

Spring-Fingered Jack, by Susan Casper: short-short story about a particularly disturbing video game.

The Flash! Kid, by Scott Bradfield: Rudy stumbles across an Alien Artifact concealed in a termite nest; there are Big Consequences. This story is a humorous sci-fi tale (it was originally published in Interzone) with no horror content. Its presence in this anthology suggests that editor Wagner wasn't trying as hard as he could have to collect worthy material for this volume.

The Man with Legs, by Al Sarrantonio: Willie, and big sis Nellie, decide to take the bus on a cold Winter's day to a house where their father - assumed to be dead - may in fact be alive and well. Or so it seems............. 

This story is not only another of the best entries in the anthology, but a gem of 80s horror, period. I actually devoted an entire post to a comic based on 'Legs'.

The verdict ? I finished 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XII' thinking that editor Wagner could have done a better job of seeking out genuine horror short stories, written with genuine skill, rather than settling for too many duds as part of his effort to promote material of the 'highest quality'.

That said, the inclusion of the stories by Connolly, Edwards, and Sarrantonio is enough to give this particular incarnation of 'The Year's Best Horror Stories' a three-star rating, and it is these stories that make this volume worth searching out. 

Book Review: A Matter for Men

Book Review: 'A Matter for Men', by David Gerrold
Book One of 'The War Against the Chtorr'

0 / 5 Stars

‘A Matter for Men’ first was published in paperback in 1983 under the Timescape imprint; this version (368 pp) was issued by Pocket Books in July 1984. Boris Vallejo provided the cover art.

[The word ‘Chtorr’ is pronounced Kuh-TORR]

‘Matter’ is the first volume in ‘The War Against the Chtorr’ series, which, as of the end of 2019, consisted of ‘A Day for Damnation’ (1984), ‘A Rage for Revenge’ (1989), and ‘A Season for Slaughter’ (1993).

I remember seeing ‘Matter’ on the bookstore shelves in the early 80s and passing on it with the awareness that David Gerrold’s novels could be good……….or bad.

And ‘Matter’ is bad. 

The premise is worthy enough: the novel is set in the early 21st century, after a series of plagues has decimated the Earth’s population and left the U.S. with very little of its former status as a world power. Barely has civilization had a chance to restart when a new threat arises: a slow-motion invasion of alien species, one of which is a race of bug-eyed monsters known as the Chtorr. 

Jim McCarthy is a young soldier in the United States Armed Services, Special Forces Operation, Exobiologist. As the novel opens he is a member of a team assigned to destroy a Chtorran nest in the wilderness of Colorado. There he learns firsthand of the danger the aliens pose to mankind.

Subsequent events lead McCarthy to the High Command center in Denver, where he finds himself – against his will – drawn into an unfolding series of intrigues and conspiracies, directed by agents unknown. And unless Jim McCarthy can figure out who his real allies are, he’s going to find that he is just another expendable grunt…….. in a war that the U.S. is coming ominously close to losing…………

Why is ‘Matter’ a dud ?

Well, for one thing, actual combat with the Chtorr takes up only about 30 of the book’s 368 pages. The remaining text is laboriously devoted to all manner of exposition, with the life-or-death struggle against the aliens reduced to the backstory.

The reader is going to find himself or herself plodding through successive segments of empty dialogue……….internal monologues designed to reveal lead character McCarthy’s self-doubts and torments……cryptic visits from a cast of operatives who watch from the shadows…flashbacks to role-playing in a Poly Sci class (?!) taught by a grizzled veteran named Whitlaw…….and even, in a particularly turgid chapter, a session of psychoanalysis ?!

To give you a sense of what ‘Matter’ is all about, here’s an excerpt:

Hm.

Did I think like a duck ? Was that it ? Did I keep on doing ducklike things because I didn’t know how to do anything else ? Was it that obvious to the people around me ?

Maybe I should stop being me for a while and start being someone else – someone who didn’t have so much trouble being me.

I wasn’t hungry anymore. I got up, took my tray to the bus window and left the commissary.

I wondered if I walked funny. I mean, I was short and a little pudgy around the bottom. Did I look like a duck ? Maybe I could learn to walk differently – if I stood a little taller and carried my weight in my chest instead of in my gut – “Oof ! I’m sorry.” I had been so busy walking, I hadn’t been looking and had plowed straight into a young woman. Quack. Old synapses never die, they just fire away. “I’m really sorry  - oh!”

Yep, Earth is in deadly danger, and our hero is preoccupied with the psychological impact of a past taunt that he is a duck………?!

I finished ‘Matter’ confident that I am not going to spend any time with the remaining volumes in the series. Take my advice and avoid ‘The War Against the Chtorr’.

Book Review: The Black Death

September is Outbreak Month.......at the PorPor Books Blog !

Book Review: 'The Black Death' by Gwyneth Cravens and John S. Marr

4 / 5 Stars

‘The Black Death’ (354 pp) first was published in 1977 in hardcover; this paperback version from Ballantine Books was issued in March, 1978. The artist who provided the effective cover illustration is uncredited.

The novel is set in New York City in the late 70s. It’s Labor Day weekend, and the city is in the grip of a major heat wave. A strike by the Sanitation Worker’s Union means that garbage has gone uncollected for weeks. The city’s financial crisis means that many agencies and offices are underfunded and understaffed.

Sarah Dobbs, a sixteen year-old girl from an affluent family, has just gotten off a bus at the Port Authority terminal. She is returning to the city from a vacation spent in California. Sarah isn’t feeling well, and she just wants to get home and get some rest. When a pimp named Flash tries to recruit her, Sarah can’t help coughing right into his face……….

Within the next 48 hours, Sarah Dobbs is deathly ill, and in the intensive care ward of Metropolitan Hospital. The attending physicians have diagnosed her with a particularly virulent case of pneumonia. They think the scratches on the girl’s forearm are from injecting drugs. Little do they know that Sarah is not a drug user. But she did take an up-close photograph of ground squirrel while vacationing in California…..and the squirrel had fleas. Fleas that have infected Sarah Dobbs with plague……..

‘The Black Death’ is a medical thriller that deals with an outbreak of plague in New York City. It’s an effective book, probably due in part to the fact that author John S. Marr (b. 1940) is a physician, and the book reflects his knowledge of the intricacies of autopsies, hospitalization, public health, and epidemiology. Indeed, during the mid-70s Marr served as New York’s primary epidemiologist, and directed the city’s response to the Swine Flu outbreak of 1976.

A number of features make ‘The Black Death’ an effective novel. One is the use of a documentary-based prose style similar to that showcased by Michael Crichton in his medical thrillers. Another is its excellent re-creation of the state of New York in the late 70s, and its unique atmosphere of squalor, decay, and chaos:

Whatever had been bothering him in Chelsea was gone, or at least set aside, by the time he passed Sheridan Square in the Village. Two drag queens dozed on a bench in the dusty little park. From the smashed wine bottle, squeezed-out tubes of K-Y jelly, and the clumps of Kleenex, Hart concluded that the night there had been a busy one.

***

They walked to 118 East 104th Street, a decaying five-story walkup that was about 80 years old, built for the middle-income Irish and Italians moving up from the Lower East Side to escape the Jews……After some bloody skirmishes in the early sixties, the Irish and Italians left, mainly for the suburbs. The few who remained were locked into the area by poverty. “Boy, what a dump”. Maldonado looked at the explosion of garbage on the steps – banana peels, orange rinds, a rotting papaya, smashed bottles, an empty Pampers box, a broken doll. Several bulging plastic sacks ballooned with the foul gas of fermenting garbage.

***

The night was hot in the streets and even hotter in the small basement apartment.

“Your son is very sick,” Rodriguez told the old woman in Spanish. “He must go to the hospital.”

The woman pursed her mouth and shook her head. She looked at the man stretched out on the bare mattress on the floor. He wore only a pair of trousers. He was breathing very rapidly and his chest gleamed with sweat. His chin was smeared with dried blood.Two small children in diapers played on the dirty, cracked linoleum floor nearby. Three men and two women sat on a sagging sofa drinking beer and watching television.

The only weak note in the novel is the inclusion of the 70s thriller novel staple of the Megalomaniacal Military Officer; in this case, it's a General Daniel Cosgrove, who sees the situation in New York City through the dual lenses of paranoia, and opportunism. A sub-plot involving Cosgrove runs throughout most of the book, and contributes to its rather contrived ending.

Summing up, however, 'The Black Death' manages to be a very entertaining medical thriller and a great evocation of the era in which the Rolling Stones song 'Shattered' summed up the state of New York City:

Don't you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bed bugs uptown
What a mess this town's in tatters I've been shattered
My brain's been battered, splattered all over Manhattan
Uh-huh, this town's full of money grabbers
Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don't mind the maggots, huh

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner
from the November 1985 issue of Heavy Metal

'The Bus'

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

from the August 1985 issue of Heavy Metal

The Bus

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner
from the July 1985 issue of Heavy Metal

The Bus

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

The Bus by Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

The Bus

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

The Bus

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

The Bus by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

Book Review: The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV', edited by Karl Edward Wagner

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIV’ (291 pp) is DAW Book No. UE2156 / 688, published in October, 1986. The cover art is by Michael Whelan.

All of the entries in this edition were first published in 1984 -1985, usually in the pages of other anthologies, or in magazines like The Twilight Zone Magazine, Interzone, and Night Cry.

There is a brief, two-page introduction by editor Karl Edward Wagner.

‘Series XIV’ is a standard-issue ‘Year’s Best’ compilation; in other words, the Usual Suspects are represented and accounted for: Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, Tanith Lee. 

But there also are some newcomers to Series XIV, and they provide the better entries.

My brief summary of the contents:

‘Penny Daye’, Charles L. Grant: mildly threatening British ghosts, ancient monuments, and the anomie of modern life. Another forgettable psychological horror tale from Grant.

‘Dwindling’, David B. Silva: Quiet Horror story about a boy whose family life is subject to unusual circumstances.

“Dead Men’s Fingers’, Philip C. Heath: in the South Pacific, the American whaler Reaper is found adrift, her crew vanished. One of the best stories in the anthology.

‘Dead Week’, Leonard Carpenter: a coed has unusual visions. Predictable, if competently written.

‘The Sneering’, Ramsey Campbell: British pensioners find life in a neighborhood undergoing urban renewal has its drawbacks. I wasn’t hoping for much from Campbell with this story, and he didn’t disappoint me........ Although it’s the first time I’ve ever read the sentence: ‘A car snarled raggedly past the gate.’ Cars …….snarling…..? Raggedly ? But then, who am I to say what is Art ?

‘Bunny Didn’t Tell Us’, David J. Schow: a burgeoning splatterpunk practitioner makes it into a DAW ‘Year’s Best’ anthology ! Hurrah ! Clever tale of grave-robbing gone bad…..because the grave belongs to a deceased pimp……!

‘Pinewood’, Tanith Lee: predictable tale about a grieving widow.

‘The Night People’, Michael Reaves: a hipster seeks solace for his angst by walking the city streets at night. I suspect most readers will guess the ending well in advance.

‘Ceremony’, William F. Nolen: a late-night bus ride leads to a creepy small town. Atmospheric, with a good ending; another of the better entries in this collection.

‘The Woman in Black’, Dennis Etchison: while employing his usual oblique, overly wordy prose in this story about a boy navigating a troubled neighborhood, Etchison makes this tale work by virtue of a bizarre ending.

‘Beside the Seaside, Beside the Sea’, Simon Clark: more a fragment rather than a genuine short story. Supernatural events at night, in a British seaside resort.

‘Mother’s Day’, Stephen F. Wilcox: a man attends to his nagging mother. Not really a horror story, but in fact a psychological drama.

‘Lava Tears’, Vincent McHardy: confused tale of a psycho killer.

‘Rapid Transit’, Wayne Allen Sallee: an aimless young man witnesses a murder in a train yard. Essentially plot-less, and badly overwritten by Sallee, who at the time was a poet trying his hand at short fiction.

‘The Weight of Zero’, John Alfred Taylor: not a short story per se, but actually the first chapter of a never-published novel…?! It’s never a good indicator of editorial competence when the editor has to use a first chapter of an unpublished novel in order to meet his obligation for a requisite number of entries….anyways, this is the vague tale of a Euro-hipster pursuing occult rituals.

‘John’s Return to Liverpool’, Christopher Burns: as you can guess, Dead Lennon is resurrected and visits his hometown. Relying on New Testament tropes, the story comes is too mawkish and insipid to be effective.

‘In Late December, Before the Storm’, Paul J. Sammon: unimaginative tale of a dissipated young man fated to relive a traumatic event. Sammon would go on to edit the seminal Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror anthology of 1990.

‘Red Christmas’, David Garnett: a murderer is on the loose, just before Christmas. I started this story thinking it was yet another clichéd ‘serial killer’ tale, but it provides a genuinely imaginative, offbeat ending. The best story in the anthology !

‘Too Far Behind Gradina’, Steve Sneyd: it’s not a good sign when a story in a horror anthology starts off with a really awful poem in blank verse….this despite the fact that the author is a published poet…..’Gradina’ is about a bored British housewife on vacation in Croatia; she follows a pair of German tourists, brother and sister, to a forbidding destination in the hills above the coast. This novelette was a true chore to finish, as it consisted of the type of run-on sentences, heavily overloaded with stilted, figurative prose, that typified SF writing of the New Wave era. It closes the anthology on a very unimpressive note. 

The verdict ? ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIV’ is no better, and probably a little worse, then the other volumes in this series that were edited by Karl Edward Wagner. But hardcore horror short story aficionados may want it for the virtues of the tales by Heath, Schow, Nolen, and Garnett.

The Bus by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus'

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner