Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch
An utterly sublime collection of powerful short stories mingling the real
and the fantastic in incredible ways, mixing tales of horror in the
middle ages as well as work situated in more contemporary settings. A vein
of cruelty and loneliness, abuse and neglect, runs through all the stories.
There are over thirty stories in the collection and it's strength lies in
the fact that their effect doesn't dimish as you progress through the
collection, they remain as disturbing and compelling as ever. Many of them
are set in orphanages, which was where Haynes grew up, and reveal that
particular world from the inside. Highlights (and there are many) include
the title story, a tale of the persecution of Witches in the middle ages,
Fully Integrated an excellent story where a family move into a
seemingly idyllic village and eventually find it holds an ancient secret,
and To Give an Illustration, a story about a lie puts a girl in an
extremely unpleasant situation. [in print - UK / US]
The Dark Descent : A Fabulous Formless Darkness An absolutely inspired collection of tales where the horror comes more from what is hinted at than what is actually on display; where on occasion the very sanity of the narrator is under question. Highlights include Robert Chamber's The Repairer of Reputations, Ivan Turgenev's Clara Militch, Robert Aikman's The Hospice and Oliver Onion's The Beckoning Fair One. [in print - US]
The Dark Descent : The Medusa in the Shield Another collection spanning the great breadth of horror fiction. From the brilliant Thomas M. Disch story The Roaches, to the completely unnerving Bright Segment by Theodore Sturgeon, from modern masterpieces, i.e. Barker's Dread, to real classics: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Brilliant from start to finish. [in print - US]
The 'Conan' series Forget the terrible movies, and the equally bad pastiches released every year. The original Howard stories are good solid stories, with an excellent backdrop of a decadent society, with Conan as a barbarian with morals, stuck in the centre of a world he distrusts and miscomprehends. These stories are the bedrock on which most modern sword and sorcery developed and although they are occasionally a bit coarse and repetative, they have a strong energy and vitality which makes them worth reading. Though the novel, Conan the Conqueror, is not particularly good.
Marchers of Valhalla
Skull-Face Omnibus An excellent short story collection featuring some of Howard's best writing, including "Worms of the Earth", where the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn uses a ancient evil to overcome his Roman enemies, and "Wings of the Night" a Solomon Kane story with a race of hideous flying creatures. There are no low points, even the cowboy story is good... [out of print]