Annal:2003 International Horror Guild Award for Collection
From AwardAnnals
Results of the International Horror Guild Award in the year 2003. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- International Horror Guild Award for Collection
- Horror books
- Horror authors
- Speculative Fiction books
- Speculative Fiction authors.
The Two Sams: Ghost Stories
- 2003 IHG–Collection winner
- Score: 10.53
In the title story of this unique collection a husband struggles with the grief and confusion of losing two children, and forms an odd bond with the infant spectrals that visit him in the night. “Dancing Men” depicts one of the creepiest rites of passage in recent memory, when a boy visits his deranged grandfather in the New Mexico desert. In “Mr. Dark’s Carnival,” a college professor confronts his own dark places in the form of a mysterious haunted house steeped in the folklore of grisly badlands justice. “Struwwelpeter” introduces us to a brilliant, treacherous adolescent whose violent tendencies and reckless mischief reach a sinister pinnacle as Halloween descends on a rundown, Pacific Northwest fishing village. Tormented by his guilty conscience, a young man plumbs the depths of atonement as he and his favorite cousin commune with the almighty Hawaiian surf in “Shipwreck Beach.” With The Two Sams author Glen Hirshberg uses his remarkable gift for capturing mood and atmosphere to suggest the possibility that the most troubling ghosts of all are not the ones that hover above us and walk through walls, but those that linger in our memories and haunt our souls.
- 2003 IHG–Collection winner
- 2004 WFA–Collection nominee
- Score: 16.53
Going well beyond the scope of his UK collection from several years ago, this is the definitive collection of Smith’s shorter fiction, as well as his long overdue first US collection. More Tomorrow & Other Stories features 30 of the author’s best stories, plus an introduction by award-winning editor Stephen Jones and an afterword by Michael Marshall Smith. A massive book, at almost 500 pages! There are no UK or US trade paperback, trade hardcover, or any other edition currently planned, so once these are gone, they’re gone! Wraparound cover art by John Picacio.
- 2003 IHG–Collection nominee
- 2003 Stoker–Collection nominee
- Score: 12.53
Told by the Dead is Ramsey Campbell’s first short story collection for five years.
Spectral terrors abound, and monsters who might live next door or in our own heads. We learn why we should never play cards with strangers, and the perils of attending press shows of films. We glimpse a book that may render all others redundant, and encounter another that is too full of ghosts. A roadside mirror contains more than a reflection, and a bedroom mirror shows what may be in store for us all. Telephone advertising gives rise to a nightmare, and so does a Mediterranean holiday. A nostalgic train journey ends in dread, but leaving a train leads there too. Two street musicians may make the reader anxious to placate such entertainers with at least a coin. The author’s wife exerts a calming influence in a collaboration, but his delirium is irrepressible, and readers with recherché preferences will be rewarded by a troupe of rampant midgets.
All this, of course, is in the best possible taste.
The contents range from immediately after the completion of Demons By Daylight thirty-five…
- 2004 WFA–Collection winner
- 2003 IHG–Collection nominee
- 2003 Stoker–Collection nominee
- Score: 22.54
From Elizabeth Hand, one of America’s leading literary fantasists, comes a collection of extraordinary novellas of damnation and dark revelation, epiphany and redemption. Written in the author’s characteristic poetic prose, and rich with the detail of lives traumatic yet luminously transformed, these stories form a remarkable tapestry interweaving the supernatural and the mundane.
“Cleopatra Brimstone”—a young woman’s obsession with winged insects achieves a dangerous climax in the streets and nightclubs of London’s Camden Town.
“Pavane for a Prince of the Air”—a reflection on death and attendant neo-pagan rituals commits a much-loved soul to something other than eternal rest.
“Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol”—the strange innocence of old TV shows mysteriously redeems existence in the bleak and haunted present (Appearing here for the first time in print)
“The Least Trumps”—a lonely woman sees the world anew through the intricacies of tattooing and the complex symbolism of a most unusual Tarot deck…
- 2004 WFA–Collection nominee
- 2003 IHG–Collection nominee
- Score: 12.54
Over 400,000 words. More than 1,000 pages, including nine novellas, unpublished teleplays, rare, never before collected short stories, and a small volume’s worth of introductions and commentary.
Each of the more than 30 stories will feature a full-page black and white illustration commissioned especially for this volume by Tim Truman, Mark A. Nelson, Janet Aulisio, Ron Brown and other fine artists.
