Leisure Horror Titles From July to December 2009

(13:17:41 CDT)

Leisure Horror Titles From July to December 2009

Leisure horror puts out a series of mid-list horror titles with some new and some out-of-print reprints. If horror is not your thing, then this post won't do much for you; but if you like horror but have stuck with the "A-list" horror of Stephen King and/or Dean Koontz then this is not a bad company to look at it to get a flavor of what else is going on in the genre. These novels are usually much closer to the works of Clive Barker and Joe Lansdale than King or Koontz, by the way, so if you are looking for the nearly relaxing morality tales that Koontz puts out, realize a good number end in not so pleasant ways. Not all are going to be good (kind of hard to tell with some Leisure Horror titles), but fair number of them are fun even when not so good.

In something of a bookclub format, Leisure Horror publishes two new horror novels a year. These are the upcoming titles from July to December of this year (as derived from their catalog). I buy most of the ones they put out, so this is as much for me as for anyone else who would read this. Also note that the books for each month tend to come out in the last week of the previous month. October's books will be out about September 20th or a little past, for instance. I have marked with * the ones that I am most interested in.

July 2009: Robert Dunbar's The Shore* and Nate Kenyon's The Bone Factory*.

August 2009: Gary A. Braunbeck's Far Dark Fields and Brian Keene's Urban Gothic*

September 2009: W.D. Gagliani's Wolf's Gambit and Richard Laymon's Flesh*

October 2009: Sarah Pinborough's Feeding Ground and Bryan Smith's Depraved*

November 2009: John Everson's The 13th and Edward Lee's The Black Train*

December 2009: Simon Clark's Ghost Monster and Wrath James White's The Resurrectionist*

Of the starred, Nate Kenyon is possibly the biggest one for me. I have enjoyed every one of his novels so far. Brian Keene's I haven't heard much about (purposefully avoiding press) but his works usually entertain me. Dunbar's The Pines was a slow burn but managed to get the vibe just right by the end, so I am curious if he can follow this up. Bryan Smith has had some hits and misses in my book, but overall his game seems to be tightening. A lot of the recent Laymon reprints have been losing the track some, but when he hits he hits. I'm not sure what this new one is about but I'm game to find out. Likewise, the last couple of bits by Edward Lee haven't really rocked my world, but he is so good when he is good that his bad is usually worth chugging through. Wrath James White's book is about a man who has the ability to raise the dead, and uses it to continously kill the same woman over and over. It's one of those "oh noes" style horror plot that could either win or lose really quickly. I'll let you know how it goes.

Si Vales, Valeo

• See other entries for June 09
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