Dark Delicacies: Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World's Greatest Horror Writers

by Del Howison, Jeff Gelb (Editor)

Overview

In an age of increasing specialization, horror anthologies have picked up on the trend. Zombie anthologies, vampire anthologies, and post-apocalyptic anthologies are among the many that have sprung up, creating an entire book filled with only one kind of story. But what are the roots of horror and what really frightens us? Bram Stoker Award-winning editors Del Howison and Jeff Gelb have gone back to the roots of our fears with a collection of horror of all types, new tales by the current masters of horror. Each story is a different disturbing dark narrative so that you never know what is coming for you next. After all, we really don’t know what is hiding in the dark, do we?

Includes stories by Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell, Nancy Holder, Richard Laymon, Brian Lumley, Joe Lansdale, Whitley Streiber, F. Paul Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarboro, and many more!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625672995
Publisher:	JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Series:	Dark Delicacies
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Del Howison is an award-winning editor, journalist, fiction author and actor. He has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award four times (and won it once), for the Black Quill Award twice, for the Shirley Jackson Award and for the Rondo Hatton Award. Along with his wife Sue, he founded and has operated Dark Delicacies (America's Home of Horror) in Burbank for 17 years. His short story The Lost Herd was retitled The Sacrifice scripted by Mick Garris and directed by Breck Eisner and used as the premiere episode on NBC's anthology show Fear Itself. He has co-edited five books including all three of the Dark Delicacies anthologies, The Book of Lists Horror, and Midian Unmade. His nonfiction includes When Werewolves Attack from Jabberwocky. He also co-wrote (under the pseudonym of D. H. Atrial) Vampires Don't Sleep Alone with Elizabeth Barrial. His film acting appearences include Dahmer Vs Gacy, The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula, Blood Scarab, and The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisted.

Editorial Reviews

If, as Howison writes in his afterword, "Horror has always been the blues of literature," then this anthology of 20 new tales of the macabre is an all-star concert whose performers work haunting riffs on gutbucket themes. In "The Reincarnate," Ray Bradbury makes a reanimated corpse the focus of a poetic reverie on death and loss. Clive Barker serves up a pastiche of the antique penny dreadful in "Haeckel's Tale," but with the traditional subtexts of sex and death unapologetically exposed to view. Supernatural and psychological horror interweave seamlessly in John Farris's "Bloody Mary Morning," a tale of modern horror with a classic Ambrose Bierce-style twist. In Ramsey Campbell's fiercely funny "The Announcement," a writer's psychological meltdown plunges him into a paranoid conspiracy distilled impurely from The Da Vinci Code. Howison, the proprietor of Burbank, Calif.'s Dark Delicacies horror bookstore, and Gelb, co-editor of the Hot Blood anthology series, have plundered their Rolodexes to recruit a formidable lineup of horror's top creative talents. Agent, Jabberwocky Literary Agency. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

From Ray Bradbury's languorous meditation on death and what comes after ("The Reincarnate") to Clive Barker's grotesque story of sex after death ("Haeckel's Tale"), the 19 original stories commissioned especially for this collection revel in the macabre. Whitley Streiber portrays a grim near-future where horror and politics go hand in hand ("Kaddish"), while Lisa Morton tells a horrific story of "things" in the water ("Black Mill Cove"). Edited by the founder of the legendary Los Angeles horror bookstore, Dark Delicacies, and a leading horror anthologist, respectively, the volume features contributions by other distinguished writers in the genre, including Gahan Wilson, F. Paul Wilson, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Libraries with a strong horror following should add this dark gem to their collections. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Twenty not-very-scary horror stories. The writers Howison (owner of the Los Angeles bookstore that gives this collection its name) and Gelb (veteran anthologist) have assembled are a mixture of the established (Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Whitley Streiber) and the striving, but none of them are able here to do the Poe thing, the Pit and the Pendulum thing, that ought to jumpstart the hackles. It's not that the collection is void of quality-there are two really good stories, one exceptional; the other well above average-yet, for differing reasons, both fail to scare. Nancy Holder's "Out Twelve-Steppin', Summer of AA" is full of wit and shine and wacky surprises. It's about a pair of rock stars who are also epicures of a particular bent-they're addicted to the joy of cooking human flesh. They realize that this at some juncture will run them afoul of the law, and so they decide to seek help. Posing as alcoholics-a more socially acceptable disease-they join a 12-step program. In spite of itself, it's a funny tale of cannibalism, and because it's hard to shudder while grinning, the creepiness factor is undermined. In David J. Schow's "The Pyre and Others," the theme is obsession. While it's too predictable to horrify, it does manage to haunt a bit. Vampires, zombies, werewolves, necromancers all get their due, though in an uninspired way. Sadly, nothing here goes bump in the night.

Kirkus Reviews