Review: Keeping Score: Angry Tanka by Susan Burch

Cover of Keeping Score: Angry TankaKeeping Score: Angry Tanka by Susan Burch
Velvet Dusk Publishing (December 2019)

46 pages, $8.99 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage

Susan Burch is a prominent composer of English Language Tanka.  She began writing tanka in April 2013 after reading winning contest poems on the Tanka Society of America website. She loved the brevity of the form and submitted to Ribbons, which published her first tanka and encouraged her to keep writing. Since then she has placed in Mandy’s Page’s tanka contest, the World Tanka Competition, Diogen contests, the Haiku Poets of Northern California contests, the British Haiku and Tanka Awards, the TSA’s Sanford Goldstein tanka contest, and most recently, the Fleeting Words tanka contest. Her most recent collection is keeping score: Angry Tanka.Continue Reading

Review: The Night Doctor and Other Tales by Steve Rasnic Tem

The Night Doctor and Other Tales by Steve Rasnic Tem
Centipede Press (December 2019)
336 pages; $20 unsigned limited edition (700 copies) hardcover
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia

I first encountered Steve Rasnic Tem’s work in the inaugural edition of the Greystone Bay series. “In a Guest House” was a startlingly quiet piece, humming with the same undercurrent of unease that can be found in the best Twilight Zone episodes. After that, I continued to encounter Tem’s work here and there, especially as I collected classic horror anthologies from the eighties and nineties. I loved the quiet restraint I found in his work, so when I happened upon a review copy for The Night Doctor and Other Tales, his most recent short fiction collection, I dived right in.Continue Reading

Revelations: Ramsey Campbell

Banner for Revelations, the column written by Kevin Lucia for Cemetery Dance

Author Ramsey Campbell
Author Ramsey Campbell

I read my first Ramsey Campbell novel, Creatures of the Pool, in October 2010. A little over ten years ago. Yes, I know. A little late to the party, right? But, like so many other horror authors, Ramsey Campbell was just another name I’d heard spoken reverently as “an author all aspiring horror authors should read.” Continue Reading

Review: The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson

The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson
MCDxFSG Originals (February 11, 2020)

416 pages; $10.99 paperback; $9.99 e-book
Reviewed by Sadie “Mother Horror” Hartmann

Last year, if I talked about highly anticipated novels in 2020, The Boatman’s Daughter was at the top of my list. This is Bram Stoker Award finalist Andy Davidson’s second novel. His debut, In the Valley of the Sun (2017) was one of the best books I read last year. Continue Reading

The Bank by Bentley Little: Brand New Original Novel Coming In April!

We’re pleased to report we’ll be publishing a brand new, original Bentley Little novel called The Bank this April, and this one is destined to be a classic!

About the Novel:
In the small town of Montgomery, Arizona, Kyle Decker’s book shop is barely breaking even. When a bank opens in the empty storefront next door, he hopes the new establishment will bring in more foot traffic.

Trouble is, nobody has ever heard of The First People’s Bank, and the local branch has appeared mysteriously overnight. Their incentives for new customers seem reasonable… at first. But is it a coincidence when Kyle’s wife has her identity stolen, and his son receives emails that seem to know his private thoughts? Or when the manager of a competing financial institution dies a gruesome death?

Soon, if people in Montgomery, Arizona, want to buy a new car or home, or if they need a small business loan, they have no choice but to work with The First People’s Bank. As The Bank makes increasingly bizarre demands on its customers, it becomes clear the town may be in too deep… and the penalty for an early withdrawl is too terrifying to imagine.

With his latest original novel, Bentley Little’s dark, razor-sharp satire takes on the worst practices of our banking industry, and you’ll never look at your loan officer the same way again.

The Bank

Read more or place your order on our website!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Review: To The Bones by Valerie Nieman

To the Bones by Valerie Nieman
West Virginia University Press (April 2019)
204 pages; $19.99 paperback; $11.49 e-book
Reviewed by R.B. Payne

At the core of every person, there is a twisted black seam which offsets the good that we might do. Some call it original sin. Others recognize it as karma. It is a swirling darkness of the soul from which no light escapes.

In West Virginia, it’s called coal.

The exploitation of lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite coal is as addictive as heroin to those who have no conscience about the subjugation of their fellow man and the natural world. This is true, at least in Redbird, a struggling community on a backroad in Appalachia, where the Kavanagh clan has built a mining empire atop death, black lung disease, cave-ins, suffocation, and the occasional gas explosion.Continue Reading

THE YEAR of THE STAND 2020 Stephen King Catalog Desk Calendar!

We’re pleased to report we’ll be getting some copies of THE YEAR of THE STAND 2020 Stephen King Catalog Desk Calendar by Stephen King Catalog, which includes trivia, quizzes, quotes, facts, and informative articles covering the novel and the original film directed by Mick Garris from a screenplay written by Stephen King.

Our allotment of these won’t last long, so please don’t wait to place your order today!

Stephen King Calendar

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Review: Doll Crimes by Karen Runge

Doll Crimes by Karen Runge
Crystal Lake Publishing (November 2019)
222 pages; $11.66 paperback; $3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms

We could be looking at the next Jack Ketchum here. Actually, Karen Runge is quite her own identity, her own voice that simply delves into the deep, dark places which Ketchum mined so well. Doll Crimes is a novel that will likely disturb while it also examines the human soul, the good, the bad, and the downright evil in a manner that digs so deep, readers will have a tough time forgetting the characters long after the final page is turned.Continue Reading

Four New STEPHEN KING Novellas Coming Soon!

Some of Stephen King’s very best stories are novellas — Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Body (filmed as Stand by Me), and The Mist being just a few examples — which is why we’re so excited about If It Bleeds, his brand new novella collection due out in just a few months!

This collection includes FOUR original, never-before-published novellas: Mr. Harrigan’s PhoneThe Life of ChuckRat, and the title story If It Bleeds—each of which pull readers into intriguing and frightening places.

We are getting copies of the US hardcover edition, and we’re also producing one of our famous custom slipcases, but we’re going to have to cut off sales soon, so please don’t wait to place your order today!

If It Bleeds

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

The Best of Cemetery Dance 2 is rolling along at the printer!

The Best of Cemetery Dance 2
An Epic Anthology Two Decades In the Making!

Read Stephen King’s “The Glass Floor,” Which Has Never Appeared In His Collections! (Story Includes An Introduction By King As Well!)

Hi Folks!

A couple of quick, important notes:

* As you might remember, a long-time Cemetery Dance staffer is parting with some of her small press collection this month via eBay, including some much sought-after CD titles, and some of the most popular auctions are ending TONIGHT! More will be ending later this week. Keep checking this eBay link for new listings, and please bid early and often!

* The Best of Cemetery Dance: Volume Two has been rolling at the printer, and things are moving along very nicely on this BIG book! This new special edition showcases the very finest short stories from Cemetery Dance magazine, picking up where the acclaimed and award-winning first “Best of” volume left off.

For those Stephen King fans out there who want to read one of his earliest published short stories, this massive anthology concludes with his short story “The Glass Floor,”
which was originally published in Startling Mystery Stories in 1967 and marked King’s first professional sale, earning him $35! We reprinted this one in Cemetery Dance a few years ago and are very pleased to be able to include it in The Best of Cemetery Dance: Volume Two with an introduction by Stephen King that appeared in Weird Tales way back in 1990!

Featuring a virtual “who’s who” of today’s greatest authors of dark fiction, The Best of Cemetery Dance: Volume Two will be one of the most important anthologies published this year. Just a handful of the contributors include Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, Michael Marshall Smith, Ray Garton, Jack Ketchum, Douglas Clegg, Poppy Z. Brite, Joe R. Lansdale, Nancy A. Collins, Peter Crowther, Norman Partridge, Ed Gorman, William F. Nolan, F. Paul Wilson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Simon Clark, Richard Christian Matheson, David J. Schow, Stewart O’Nan, Glen Hirshberg, Ramsey Campbell, and dozens of others!

Cemetery Dance magazine has been published for more than thirty years now, and is the winner of the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Critics Guild Award, as well as a nominee for both the British Fantasy Award and the American Horror Award. Don’t miss what’s sure to be one of the most talked about anthologies of the year!

Best of Cemetery Dance 2

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Review: The Chill by Scott Carson

The Chill by Scott Carson
Atria (February 11, 2020)
448 pages; $24.30 hardcover; $12.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms

What is The Chill?  Answer: the first great novel of 2020 that sets a high bar for the rest of the genre with a story that both mines familiar territory but digs deeper than most.Continue Reading

Brian Keene’s History of Horror Fiction, Chapter Eight: The Monk and 1796 Cancel Culture

In our last column, we discussed Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto—a novel written in 1764 that merged supernatural situations with realistic characters in a natural setting. I mentioned that while it was inarguably the world’s first supernatural horror novel, the marketing category of Horror wasn’t invented until the Eighties, so it was instead categorized as a “Gothic.” Continue Reading

New Signed Limited Edition Announced: The Notch by Tom Holland!

First Novel Ever by the director and screenwriter of Fright Night and the original Child’s Play!

We’re very pleased to report we’ll be publishing The Notch by Tom Holland, the very first novel ever by the director and screenwriter of Fright Night and the original Child’s Play!

About the Book:
Joe Arachro pulled to a halt on a small hillock, looking across the expanse as it rose up into a sudden flat top butte. There was another jagged butte tilting at an angle next to the mesa, not as wide or long. It was like they just appeared from nowhere, dropped down here in the middle of the desert. And in the shimmering glare in the notch between these two buttes, a ten-year-old boy walked out of the sun, surrounded by the blazing rays.

The boy doesn’t speak, but he has startling powers: he heals a young girl’s torn cuticle, and later erases all damage to a man’s badly burnt hand, and it seems there’s no limit to the miracles he can perform. After a dog gets run over by a car, the boy apparently brings the animal back to life, and a video of the event goes viral. Suddenly everybody has an idea of who the boy is, and what he might do for them — and it’s a race against time to see who can get to the boy first and gain control over him.

In the wrong hands, the boy’s powers could be catastrophic.

From Tom Holland, director and screenwriter of Fright Night and the original Child’s Play, comes this new fast-paced thriller with surprises at every turn.

The Notch

Read more or place your order on our website while supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Review: Bloody Walls – A Collection from a Fractured Mind by Thomas Scopel

Bloody Walls: A Collection from a Fractured Mind by Thomas Scopel
Independently Published (July 2019)
236 pages; $7.99 paperback; $0.99 e-book
Reviewed by R.B. Payne

A corpus is technically defined as a collection of a single writer’s work or grouped writings about a particular subject—in this case, Thomas Scopel and his horror scrivenings. Given there are eleven tales of terror in this volume and about an equal number of speculative dark fiction shorts, there is certainly something here for everyone.Continue Reading

Review: Grim Harvest by Patrick Greene

Grim Harvest by Patrick Greene
Lyrical Underground (September 2019)
197 pages; $7.85 paperback; $4.99 e-book
Reviewed by R.B. Payne

Grim Harvest by Patrick C. Greene is the second novel of “The Haunted Hollow Chronicles,” a planned series centering on Ember Hollow, an isolated community in the American heartland where cell phones and the internet simply don’t work. When, at the annual Halloween Harvest, events take a nasty supernatural turn, they have only themselves to count on. 

And that may not be enough.Continue Reading