The Dark Masters Trilogy (2018) by Stephen Volk

The Dark Masters Trilogy (2018) by Stephen Volk, containing the following novellas:

Whitstable - 1971 (2013): The first of the three fictional novellas featuring real people stars Peter Cushing, days after losing his beloved wife to emphysema in 1971. 

While sitting on the beach near his home in Whitstable, Cushing is approached by a boy who thinks Cushing IS Van Helsing, vampire fighter and nemesis of Dracula. And the boy believes he is being preyed on by a vampire -- his stepfather.

The truth is just as horrible. Cushing begins by trying to shirk responsibility, and then tries getting the authorities to help out. But in the end, the actor has to discover how to face Evil himself, as himself -- though the art of acting does come in handy.

It's a marvelous, sympathetic character study in which the metaphor of vampirism is explored sensitively through one of the real-world evils that it can be a metaphor for. Despite the grim and mournful subject matter, Volk injects appropriate humour throughout -- especially when it comes to people mixing Cushing up with his oft-time co-star Christopher Lee, or to only recognizing him from cameos on current comedy TV shows. Highly recommended.


Leytonstone - 1906 (2015): Alfred Hitchcock's anecdote about his father having him put in jail for a night as a young boy in order to teach him to be good is the spark for this meditation on childhood fears and the peculiar character of the world's greatest thriller and suspense director. As he notes in his afterword, Volk alters the real nature of Hitchcock's family to make him an only child, doted upon by his mother and worried about by his father, who decides on the police visit.

Needless to say, the police visit does not yield the expected results. Volk examines the roots of fear here in childhood trauma, while also having what seems to be a good time coming up with precursors for many of Hitchcock's most famous film scenes. His Boy Hitchcock isn't entirely sympathetic, but he is certainly sympathetically drawn when it comes to his motivations and fears. Highly recommended.


Netherwood - 1947 (2018): In the last year of his life, 'The World's Wickedest Man,' Aleister Crowley, summons England's most popular post-war horror novelist -- that would be Dennis Wheatley -- to a peculiar hotel in Netherstone. Why? 

Because Crowley believes a recent apprentice has gained enough magical power to conquer the world -- and, more importantly to Crowley, who lost a daughter at a young age, to fully claim that power the apprentice will sacrifice his own infant daughter.

This really is a great work, straddling reality and the supernatural without ever conclusively establishing that Crowley's fears are "real." One of the things that links the two men is a concern with permanence -- as a philosopher and thinker for Crowley, as a novelist for Wheatley. The third-person narrative focuses on Wheatley's thoughts and reactions, leaving Crowley to be imagined throughout from the outside by Wheatley. This choice generates suspense (is Crowley really on the level or is he just 'aving a laugh?). 

But this narrative POV also allows the reader to judge Wheatley as he's judging Crowley -- and equivocating in that judgment. This seems fitting because one's assessment of Crowley relies a lot on just how much one believes in what he supposedly did, and how much one believes HE believed in what he supposedly did. It all makes for a fascinating fictional trip through the lives of two people who are increasingly forgotten as the decades slip by. Highly recommended.

In all: A great book of 2018. Highly recommended.

By the Light of My Skull (2018) by Ramsey Campbell

By the Light of My Skull (2018) by Ramsey Campbell, containing the following stories:

• The Words Between • (2016) : An homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari written for a theme anthology is both a chilling appreciation of that seminal horror film and a grim portrayal of a disintegrating mind.
• The Wrong Game • (2016) : A fictional Ramsey Campbell is visited by haunting memories of a 1970's science-fiction and fantasy convention.
• The Impression • (2014) : Perhaps the most overt nod to M.R. James sees an innocent bit of grave-marker rubbing unleash something on a boy and his grandmother.
• The Watched • (2014) : Sensitive, harrowing portrayal of a boy, an obsessed cop, and a stressed grandmother.
• Reading the Signs • (2013) : Don't get lost. Don't pick up hitchhikers.
• Know Your Code •  (2016) : A portrait of a couple in their 'dotage' also involves some of Campbell's love of wordplay and puzzles.
• Find My Name • (2013) : A satisfying nod to a classic folk tale pits a grandmother against a familiar foe for the life of her grandchild. Word play abounds.
• On the Tour • (2014) : A forgotten Liverpool musician becomes increasingly obsessed with the Beatles bus tour.
• At Lorn Hall • (2012) : A tour of an English mansion has no need for a tour guide when those headphones are available! A modern spin on an M.R. James set-up.
• Fetched • (2016)  (aka "Nightmare" 2015): You can't go home again. Or maybe shouldn't. Another story dealing with aging and loss.
• The Moons • (2011) : Children in the woods meet a helpful forest ranger. Though he does look peculiar. Very unnerving.
• The Callers • (2012) : Another reason to avoid Bingo with Grandma. Fine portrayal of young and old.
• The Page • (2012) : Campbell's homage to Bradbury also homages Philip K. Dick's conspiracies.
• Her Face • (2018) : Solid vignette about a child's fear of a corner-shop owner, a fear that only increases after her death. Another broken family.
• The Fun of the Fair (2018): A dive into his notes for the classic 1970's story "The Companion" yields a new story with few shared traits with the old story. Well, other than a fearful, lost fairground/carnival and a fearsome meditation on aging.

Overall: My favourite Campbell non-reprint collection of stories since Dark Companions in the mid-1980's. And Dark Companions was one of the ten greatest original horror stories ever. The stories are especially good in their characterization characters young and old, and in striking sparks both dark and light from these interactions. 

One of the important lessons one can learn from Campbell is that horror is at its most effective when it's not portrayed as some sort of supernatural revenge. One can find thematic reasons for the types of horror the characters face stemming from their personal histories, but there's no justice in real horror. It's an existential plague. 

That doesn't mean there can't be humour, lightness, or word play in a horror story. Or to riff on Campbell's love of word play, I'd say that his 50+ year career spent terrifying us makes him... an eminence grisly... !!! Highly recommended.

The Dulwich Horror and Others (2015) by David Hambling

The Dulwich Horror and Others (2015) by David Hambling, containing the following stories: "The Dulwich Horror of 1927," Two Fingers," "The Thing in the Vault," "The Monsters in the Park," "The Devils in the Deep Blue Sea," "The Norwood Builder," and "Shadows of the Witch House."

Excellent collection of innovative yet Old School tales in the Mighty H.P. Lovecraft Manner by way of August Derleth. Hambling sets many of his stories in and around Dulwich, a real suburb of London, England whose name resembles that of Lovecraft's fictional Dunwich, Massachusetts. The most Old School thing, I suppose, is Hambling's homage-oriented titling of his stories, as many play on HPL stories either specifically or in general syntax. Well, and a nod to Sherlock Holmes with "The Norwood Builder." 

The stories range from the late 19th century (""The Devils in the Deep Blue Sea," a nod to William Hope Hodgson as well as HPL) to today (the bleakly satiric "Two Fingers," a story about the rich getting what they want regardless of the consequences for everyone else). Several stories share the idea of a secret society working against the Great Old Ones, while three stories form a connected narrative occurring over 11 years ("The Monsters in the Park," "The Dulwich Horror of 1927," and "Shadows of the Witch House"). The last of these also nods to Arthur Machen's seminal, pre-Lovecraftian work of cosmic horror, "The Great God Pan," incidentally one of Stephen King's favourites.

Hambling often spices up his speculations on cosmic horror with contemporary science and physics unavailable to Lovecraft in the 1920's and 1930's. Genetics, epigenetics, stem-cell therapy, quantum entanglement, and astrophysics rub shoulders with Deep Ones, shambling shoggoths, the rugose cones of the Great Race, the mysterious Others, and those lovable, space-faring, brain-collecting fungoid crustaceans the Mi-Go. 

While there are deliberate invocations of specific Lovecraft stories in the titles and in the stories themselves (one story ends with a paraphrase of the ending of "The Dunwich Horror," for instance), these are very much Hambling's stories. They use the quasi-documentary narrative approach favoured by Lovecraft while expanding upon it in interesting ways, including a story which criticizes an earlier story in the volume for a lack of truthfulness at certain points. 

There aren't any true misfires here. Hambling's greatest strengths lie in his creation of a malevolent, historically specific, British past. That simply means that the present-day stories ("Two Fingers" and "The Norwood Builder") are good but not as engaging as the historical tales. "The Thing In the Vault," playing with literary tropes associated with American hard-boiled detective fiction, also lacks the truthful sense of time and place of the other Britocentric historical stories, though it remains a fun piece of work.

The scientific explanations for certain events in certain stories sometimes gets in the way of the horror. The mysterious Others of HPL's "The Shadow Out of Time" are literalized into pesky sci-fi aliens in "The Monsters In the Park." The Mi-Go in "The Thing In the Vault" come across as a little too dumb to be cosmically menacing. These are minor points really, but they are more reminiscent of August Derleth's attempts to organize and codify Lovecraft's malign cosmos after HPL's death. To quote Ramsey Campbell, sometimes "explanation is the death of horror." But in all, highly recommended.

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper: Volume 3 (2013)

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper: Volume 3 (2013) by Basil Copper, edited by Stephen Jones.

The third and weakest paperback volume of the Collected Basil Copper does allow the reader of the previous two volumes to survey the writer in full, and here that writer is in decline but still intermittently strong and vital.

An Interview with Basil Copper by Johnny Mains.
Introduction  (Darkness, Mist and Shadow: Volume 3) by Christopher Fowler.

• When Greek Meets Greek (1997): Vague, disturbing slow-burn revisionist vampire novella.
• Line Engaged (1999): We've seen the twist more than once.
• One for the Pot (1999): One of those 'The killer is really...' stories, short and mostly sweet.
• In a Darkling Wood (1999): Absolutely loopy period piece involving black magic in the 18th-century English countryside. The last 20 pages are weird but utterly unconvincing.
• The Grass (1999): A piece of juvenalia written when Copper was 14.
• Riding the Chariot (1999): Psychological horror flips over and crashes over the last few hasty, unconvincing pages.
• Final Destination (1999): Technically, the final line makes this horror story a 'Paul Harvey.'
• The Obelisk (1999): Unconvincing tale of invasion from an alternate Earth.
• Out There (1999): Until the last three pages or so, "Out There" is up there with Copper's superior, earlier stories along similar lines, "Shaft Number 247" and "The Flabby Men." The last three pages are startlingly rushed and ridiculous, but the rest of the story is very satisfying.
• The Summerhouse (1999): A creaky tale of a child's revenge on a father completely loses its way as the events are explained to us over the last couple of paragraphs.
• As the Crow Flies (2002): Mildly interesting tale of a crow that hates a guy, but so long.
• Poetic Justice (2002): Almost a story fragment about the evils of vivisection.
• Ill Met By Daylight (2002): Fun, M.R. Jamesian tale of a graveyard haunted by... what, exactly?
• Charing Cross-Dover-Charing Cross (2010): Very much a Twilight Zone fantasy of revenge.
• There Lies the Danger ... (2002): A real time-waster about rejuvenation treatments leads to a real dud of a final line. 
• Queen Bee (2005): Mildly interesting tale of a bee that loves a guy, or maybe hates him..
• Death of a Nobody (2005): Yes, another one of Copper's 'Paul Harvey' stories that eventually reveals it's about a real, historical personage. Zzz.
• Reflections (2005): There's an evil mirror in this overlong story about... an evil mirror that belonged to a real historical personage!
• The White Train (2005): Holocaust revenge story is very, very familiar.
• Hunted by Wolves (2005): Science-fiction background adds nothing to a story about a guy hiding in a tree from some super-wolves.
• Storm Over Stromjolly (2005): Dud of a revenge story... with a twist!
• The Silver Salamander (2005): Very slow thriller about a man, his mistress, her husband, and a piece of jewelry.
• Voices in the Water (2005): Fine, building piece is technically Lovecraftian in its monsters. Not a bad story to finish a career on.

Overall: Lightly recommended, and best read after the first two collections.

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper: Volume 2 (2013)

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper: Volume 2 (2013) by Basil Copper, edited by Stephen Jones.

The second volume of PS Publishing's Collected Basil Copper is a solid effort with several stand-outs. Not as consistently excellent as the first volume, but well-worth buying for fine stories that include "The Flabby Men," "Shaft Number 247," and "Beyond the Reef."



Introduction  (Darkness, Mist and Shadow: Volume 2) by Kim Newman.

• The Flabby Men (1977): Sinister post-apocalyptic tale shares characteristics with "Shaft Number 247" (1980) and "Out There" (1999). A combination of the Lovecraftian and the post-atomic mutant story.
• The Way the World Died (1978): Very minor sf story.
• The Treasure of Our Lady (1978): A throwback to tales of explorers searching for treasure in the jungle, unironically told. Wouldn't be out of place in a 1927 issue of Weird Tales.
• Justice at the Crossroads (1978): Ironic, non-supernatural tale of a 'real' vampire.
• Mrs. Van Donk (1978): Minor bit of Hitchcockian social satire/thriller.
• The Stranger (1980): A psychological horror story with a 'twist' you will probably see coming.
• The Madonna of the Four-Ale Bar (1980): See "The Stranger."
• Shaft Number 247 (1980): Copper's brilliant, vague novella written for Ramsey Campbell's New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. One of ten or at most 20 of the greatest post-Lovecraft Lovecraftian stories ever written. 
• The Candle in the Skull (1984): Fun, slight tale of a creepy child and Hallowe'en revenge.
• Wish You Were Here (1992): Excellent, slow-building ghost story doesn't quite have a workable ending. Still, the ride is a lot of fun.
• Better Dead (1994): A bit of marriage-based horror that satirizes the too-committed film buff (the title comes from Bride of Frankenstein).
• Beyond the Reef (1994): Neo-pulp follow-up to Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Fun stuff, though far better as an homage than as actual horror.
• Death of a Demi-God (1995): Weak, creaky story falls into the 'Paul Harvey' category enumerated in my review of Volume 1 -- Copper's 'Paul Harvey' stories eventually reveal that they're about a real, historical personage.
• Reader, I Buried Him! (1995): Fun little vampire story seems to exist for the sole purpose of its title's play on the last line of Jane Eyre.
• Bright Blades Gleaming (1995): Another 'Paul Harvey' story, intermittently interesting but with an extremely telegraphed ending.

Overall: Recommended, though the stories start to sag after 1980. 

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper: Volume 1 (2013)

Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper: Volume 1  (2013) by Basil Copper, edited by Stephen Jones.

Once he turned to fiction writing in his late 30's, Basil Copper was pretty much a professional's professional. He wrote a lot of stories of horror and the weird, collected here in their entirety in three thick paperbacks by PS Publishing. He also wrote over 50 hard-boiled detective novels set in a Los Angeles he never visited in real life, non-fiction books, and several continuations of August Derleth's Holmes pastiche, Solar Pons. Like I said, a professional writer.

And as a professional writer who wasn't a great writer, he's a good study for aspiring writers -- especially those who start publishing relatively late. Copper may not be great, but he wrote several great stories and many that were very good. Keep plugging!

This first paperback volume covers roughly the first 15 years of his fiction-writing career.

• Introduction  by Stephen Jones.
• The Spider (1964): Creepy little gem involving arachnophobia.
• Camera Obscura (1965): Excellent period piece with more than a touch of Ray Bradbury. Faithfully adapted for Night Gallery.
• The Janissaries of Emilion (1967): One of Copper's most-anthologized works is a study in dreams and paranoia. You'll see the ending coming, but the details and vaguely dream-like quality of the story make it stand out.
• The Cave (1967): A fine ghost story 'recounted' in the tranquility of a men's club. The story owes a debt to M.R. James, as it riffs at the end on a bit from James' "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook."
• The Grey House (1967): The forgettable title is the only problem with this slow-building tale of misguided home ownership. Builds to a near-Grand Guignol finale with a touch of Jules de Grandin -- which is to say, flame-throwers versus the living dead!
• Old Mrs. Cartwright (1967): Almost reads as if Copper were riffing on Roald Dahl in this cruel tale of an old aunt and her disturbing young nephew at the zoo.
• Charon (1967): Less Bradburyesque than Serlingesque -- as in, a gentle fantasy that could have been an episode of The Twilight Zone.
• The Great Vore (1967): A delightful romp that's a self-aware homage to Sherlock Holmes that also works as a satire of detective stories.
• The Academy of Pain (1968): Cruel little story goes exactly where you expect, unpleasantly.
• Doctor Porthos (1968): A deft revisionist vampire tale.
• Archives of the Dead (1968): Solid tale of witchcraft in the modern world.
• Amber Print (1968): A nice horror piece about movie obsessives and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
• Out of the Fog (1970): The first of what I think of as Copper's 'Paul Harvey' pieces, in which the story builds to reveal that it's about a real, historical personage. This one at least has a nice twist.
• The House by the Tarn (1971): Straightforward, mysterious horror in the British countryside features another bad house.
• The Knocker at the Portico (1971): Psychological horror and obsession collide.
• The Second Passenger (1973): Over-long supernatural revenge piece seems like Copper's rewriting of A Christmas Carol at points.
• The Recompensing of Albano Pizar (1973): Refined tale of revenge with a bloody climax.
• The Gossips (1973): Chilling, very much M.R. Jamesian ghost story about a trio of very unpleasant Italian statues.
• A Very Pleasant Fellow (1973): A bit of a science-fictiony dud that could have been published in 1913.
• A Message from the Stars (1977): Twist is telegraphed in an unconvincing story about alien invasion.
• Cry Wolf (1974): Weak twist story involving werewolves.
• The Trodes (1975): See "A Message from the Stars."
• Dust to Dust (1976): Solid but unspectacular ghost story involving messages from the dead written in the dust on a windowsill. 

Overall: The strongest of the three Copper Collected volumes has a few duds -- though all of them solidly written -- and many greats. The volume also offers Copper at his most chameleonic as the stories riff on a number of prominent antecedents, most notably the great English ghost-story writer M.R. James. Highly recommended.

Where Furnaces Burn (2012) by Joel Lane

Where Furnaces Burn (2012) by Joel Lane, containing the following stories:

A Cup of Blood (2004), A Mouth to Feed by (2008), Beth's Law (2009),  Black Country (2010),  Blind Circles (2004),  Blue Smoke (2012),  Dreams of Children (2012),  Even the Pawn (2012),  Facing the Wall (2004), Incry (2011), Morning's Echo (2010), My Stone Desire (2007),  Point of Departure (2012), Quarantine (2012), Slow Burn (2012), Stiff as Toys (1998), Still Water (2007),The Hostess (2010), The Last Witness (2010), The Receivers (2002), The Sunken City (2012), The Victim Card (2004), Waiting for the Thaw (2012), Wake Up in Moloch (2012), Winter Journey (2008), and Without a Mind (2012).  

Winner of the 2013 World Fantasy Award for best collection, Where Furnaces Burn is a story cycle from the late and much lamented Joel Lane, England's horror-poet of the industrial, rusting North where much of this book is set. Where Furnaces Burn follows the police career of its first-person narrator in and around the Manchester area.

Lane tended to avoid long short stories, preferring to write short, dense works that nonetheless generally worked as stories and not as fragments of vignettes. That's true here -- though the stories form a larger pattern, they also for the most part stand on their own.

Here we deal again and again with horrors rising out of industrial decay, poverty, and modern alienation (and the protagonist may be the most alienated of them all). Lane's prose is superbly suited to his interests -- poetic at points, grim, and pragmatically matter-of-fact even in the most poetic moments.

These are supernatural stories, mind you, not simply hardboiled excursions into Northern English crime. Ancient horrors adapt to the modern world; new horrors are born. Lane's spiritual forebears include American Fritz Leiber, whose 1940 short story "Smoke Ghost" invented a new way of evoking the horrors of the industrialized world. They also include Ramsey Campbell and his groundbreaking 'kitchen-sink' horror that began in the late 1960's. 

It's all disturbing, sad, and often strangely moving. But Lane also conjures up some fearsome horrors, whether newly minted or ancient and adapting to the Brave New Decaying World. It's brilliant stuff, and a fitting coda to a great writing career. Highly recommended.

Ramsey Campbell, Probably (2015 edition)

Ramsey Campbell, Probably (1968-2015/Collected in 2015 Revised Edition) by Ramsey Campbell, edited by S.T. Joshi: 40 years of non-fiction pieces by World's Greatest Horror Writer Ramsey Campbell. There are autobiographical pieces which illuminate Campbell's often harrowing early life, essays on various writers, pieces on social issues related to horror, and essays and introductions originally written for Campbell's novels and short-story collections. 

In all, they're dandy. And so many of them in this big book from PS Publishing! Campbell is thoughtful and often self-effacing when he writes about his own work, and those essays that do this offer a wealth of information about how and why certain decisions were made in the writing process, and what Campbell thinks about those decisions in retrospect. 

He's also debilitatingly funny in many of the essays, never moreso than when he deals with The Highgate Vampire hoax. There's also hilarity to be had in portions of his self-appraisal (for some reason, a section on his attempt to include the word 'shit' in a Lovecraftian story submitted to August Derleth's Arkham House nearly had me lying on the floor). 

His essays on writers are occasionally scathing but for the most part positive. A melancholy essay on the late John Brunner stands out as a painful meditation on what happens when a very good writer is forgotten in today's publishing climate. A wide-ranging essay on the novels of James Herbert is a sensitive reappraisal of that (alas, also late) best-selling writer's work as a foundational stratum of working-class, English horror shot through with deeply held social concerns not usually seen in English horror up to that time.  Many of the writers Campbell writes about are also friends, thus shedding a certain personal light on writers ranging from Robert Aickman to the (then) Poppy Z. Brite.

General pieces include the almost-obligatory '10 horror movies for a desert island' essay, several examinations of horror in general and the general public's attitude towards horror, the 'Video Nasties' censorship hysteria in the Great Britain of the 1980's and early 1990's, and examinations of the history of horror. Campbell's lengthy autobiographical essay "How I Got Here" is also invaluable in understanding his life and work. He's almost painfully self-revelatory at points, while remaining refreshingly free of self-pity. 

Oh, and there's an essay on British spanking-based pornography. Really, you can't go wrong with this collection. How often is one going to find revelatory close readings of major H.P. Lovecraft stories and brief 'plot' synopses of faux-English-school-girl spanking pornography in the same book? Highly recommended.

Best New Horror Volume 2 (1990) and Volume 3 (1991): 2015 Revised PS Publishing Editions

Best New Horror Volume 2 (1990): 2015 Revised PS Publishing Edition: edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, containing the following stories:

• Apostate in Denim* by Roberta Lannes: Removed from the original edition by the publisher due to concerns over its violence. It's well-written and very unpleasant.
• The First Time  by K. W. Jeter: Brutal road trip/coming of age story becomes graphic and surreal towards its end.
• A Short Guide to the City  by Peter Straub: Straub's most Borgesian work, complete with a shout-out to a famous Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story.
• Stephen  by Elizabeth Massie: Award-winning and right on the cusp of unintentional hilarity, especially if you remember In Living Color's Head Detective.
• The Dead Love You  by Jonathan Carroll: Bonkers, surreal, disturbing, weird.
• Jane Doe #112  by Harlan Ellison: Another Ellison story that starts off as horror and ends as a shrill condemnation of anyone who doesn't lead what Ellison considers an exciting, meaningful life -- which is to say, anyone who isn't either famous or well-regarded in a creative field. Thanks for the lecture, Mr. E!
• Shock Radio  by Ray Garton: Enjoyable revenge piece involving, well, a shock-radio jock.
• The Man Who Drew Cats  by Michael Marshall Smith: Moody, very Bradburyesque piece was one of the soon-to-be-prolific Mr. Smith's first published stories.
• The Co-Op  by Melanie Tem: Augh! Very disturbing, feminist take on body horror. 
• Negatives  by Nicholas Royle: Brilliant short piece in which the horror arises from distorted perception.
• The Last Feast of Harlequin by Thomas Ligotti: Probably still the estimable Mr. Ligotti's most anthologized story, a creepy, oddball reimagining of concepts from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Festival."
• 1/72nd Scale  by Ian R. MacLeod: Mournful tale of a boy, his dead brother, and his grieving family builds both sorrow and horror with careful, slow precision, and then moves in an unpredictable and cathartic direction in the last few pages. Quite brilliant, I think.
• Cedar Lane  by Karl Edward Wagner: Minor, late-career Wagner with a nifty twist and a story that overall riffs on a famous Bradbury story from the 1950's.
• At a Window Facing West  by Kim Antieau: Interesting but weirdly unfinished.
• Inside the Walled City  by Garry Kilworth: Disturbing, claustrophobic horror in Hong Kong.
• On the Wing  by Jean-Daniel Breque: Pretty minor.
• Firebird  by J. L. Comeau: Witchcraft and embattled cops in decaying Detroit.
• Incident on a Rainy Night in Beverly Hills  by David J. Schow: Much more Hollywood humour than horror.
• His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood by Poppy Z. Brite: A career-defining early work from Brite riffs on Lovecraft's tale "The Hound" in disturbing, erotic, and decadent ways. 
• The Original Dr Shade  by Kim Newman: Brilliant, horrifying, metafictional riff on British pulp heroes, racism, and Thatcherism.
• Madge  by D. F. Lewis: Pretty minor.
• Alive in Venice  by Cherry Wilder: Nice 19th-century period piece.
• Divertimento  by Gregory Frost: Science fiction horror.
• Pelts by F. Paul Wilson: Don't catch, kill, and skin raccoons from a haunted forest. Just don't.
• Those of Rhenea  by David Sutton: Interesting but not entirely successful piece set on a haunted Greek island.
• Lord of the Land by Gene Wolfe: Great, mysterious nod to Lovecraft from the great and giant Mr. Wolfe.
• Aquarium  by Steve Rasnic Tem: Weird near-horror from the finely tuned, poetic Mr. Tem.
• Mister Ice Cold  by Gahan Wilson: Oh no, another unstoppable serial killer. Yuck.
• On the Town Route  by Elizabeth Hand: Weird, atmospheric jaunt through extremely rural America.

Overall: Many of these stories have become repeatedly republished classics, and others merit rediscovery. There are very, very few misses. Fine editorial work from the team of Jones and Campbell. This new edition updates the biographies for the writers, so there is new material if one already owns the original edition. As well, a story meant to appear has been added back in (See * above for details). Highly recommended.

Best New Horror Volume 3 (1991): 2015 Revised PS Publishing Edition: edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, containing the following stories:

• True Love  by K. W. Jeter: Really disturbing character study.
• The Same in Any Language  by Ramsey Campbell: A visit to the Greek islands turns out badly for a boy and worse for his annoying father.
• Impermanent Mercies  by Kathe Koja: Totally weird and strangely disturbing.
• Ma Qui  by Alan Brennert: Marvelous piece of posthumous narration set during the Viet Nam War.
• The Miracle Mile  by Robert R. McCammon: Pretty slight entry from a zombie anthology.
• Taking Down the Tree  by Steve Rasnic Tem: A weird, poetic piece from the prolific and valuable Mr. Tem.
• Where Flies Are Born  by Douglas Clegg: OK bit of body-horror.
• Love, Death and the Maiden  by Roger Johnson: Moody horror-quest sort of fizzles out in murkiness.
• Chui Chai  by S. P. Somtow: Another unimpressive piece of horror from someone who was a really impressive science-fiction writer in the 1970's and early 1980's.
• The Snow Sculptures of Xanadu  by Kim Newman: Fun metafictional oddity for Citizen Kane fans.
• Colder Than Hell  by Edward Bryant: Chilly psychological horror story recalls Sinclair Ross' classic "The Painted Door."
• Raymond  by Nancy A. Collins: Collins creates a sad werewolf.
• One Life, in an Hourglass  by Charles L. Grant: Riff on Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes is low-key but mostly satisfying.
• The Braille Encyclopedia  by Grant Morrison: Creepy horror piece suggests that mostly-comic-book-writing Morrison is riffing hard on Clive Barker.
• The Bacchae  by Elizabeth Hand: Brilliant piece of feminist, mythological horror set in a rapidly disintegrating near-future.
• Busted in Buttown  by David J. Schow: Interesting, but it really feels like Schow is riffing on Dennis Etchison here.
• Subway Story  by Russell Flinn: Flinn abandoned writing soon after this was published, which is a shame -- he was like a somewhat more surreal but quite horrifying version of Ramsey Campbell in terms of his subject matter and descriptive focus.
• The Medusa  by Thomas Ligotti: One of Ligotti's relatively early, much-anthologized, weird pieces.
• Power Cut  by Joel Lane: Sharp, satiric horror about homophobia.
• Moving Out  by Nicholas Royle: Excellent, unusual, disturbing ghost story.
• Guignoir  by Norman Partridge: Fun, pulpy piece of American ultraviolence, complete with carnival.
• Blood Sky  by William F. Nolan: Unusual, affecting character study of a serial killer.
• Ready  by David Starkey: Interesting.
• The Slug  by Karl Edward Wagner: Writer's block horror from the late, great writer and anthologist who faced these demons and others at the time of publication.
• The Dark Land  by Michael Marshall Smith: Excellent early bit of horrifying, somewhat surreal journey into... something.
• When They Gave Us Memory  by Dennis Etchison: A typical Etchison oddity, which is to say unusual in subject matter, elusive in meaning, keenly observed in physical detail.
• Taking Care of Michael  by J. L. Comeau: Sort of yuck.
• The Dreams of Dr. Ladybank  by Thomas Tessier: Tessier works some very modern, gender-bending, boundary-pushing changes on the basic set-up for such horror classics as Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Parasite."
• Zits  by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: Bleak, disturbing vignette.

Overall: Many of these stories have become repeatedly republished classics, and others merit rediscovery. There are very, very few misses. Fine editorial work from the team of Jones and Campbell. This new edition updates the biographies for the writers, so there is new material if one already owns the original edition. Highly recommended.