A Haunting Beauty/ The Harlem Horror

[demonik]

Sir Charles Birkin - A Haunting Beauty (Midnight House, 2000)

Introduction - Mike Ashley

Little Boy Blue, The Mousehole, Some New Pleasures Prove, King Of The Castle, Waiting For Trains, Lords Of The Refuge, Ballet Nègre, The Smell of Evil, Text For Today, The Smell Of Evil, A Right To Know, Fairy Dust, Hosanna!, The Horror On Tobit, A Haunting Beauty.

Sir Charles Birkin - The Harlem Horror (Midnight House, 2002)

Introduction - John Pelan

The Harlem Horror, A Poem And A Bunch of Roses, Don't Ever Leave Me, The Godsend, A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts, The Kiss Of Death, The Belt, Dance Little Lady, Old Mrs. Strathers, The Beautiful People, T-I-M, The Hitch, Green Fingers, Special Diet, Shelter.

I've got just about everything in these bar T-I-M but I'd probably buy them anyway, if only for the introductions. One thing I'm trying to work out is how many of these stories were his earlier, Creeps, work masquerading under new titles. I'm certain The Belt is Henri Larne and the title story in My Name Is Death was once The Terror On Tobit.

These are great selections, but there's definitely enough strong material left over for a third. The Happy Dancers, The Cockroach, Marjories On Starlight, Havelock Farm, Kitty Fisher ...

[demonik]

''In the 1960's one author was almost solely responsible for keeping the horror genre alive in Britain, Sir Charles Birkin. In the years from 1964 to 1971 the author produced a string of powerful collections including The Kiss of Death, Spawn of Satan, and The Smell of Evil. In the early 1980's the author and editor Mike Ashley undertook the preparation of a retrospective showcase of the author's work. Efforts to market the volume were curtailed by Birkin's death in 1986 and the collection, A Haunting Beauty has remained lost -- until now. Midnight House is pleased to announce the publication of A Haunting Beauty, complete with a special introduction by Sir Charles Birkin nearly two decades after the author and editor began work on it. In this volume, (which we hope shall be but the first of several volumes preserving the best of Sir Charles Birkin's stories); the full range and diversity of the author's work is demonstrated by tales that run the gamut from the eerie supernatural thriller ''Ballet Negre'' to the poignant ghostly tale ''Little Boy Blue'' and the grotesqueries of ''Lords of the Refuge''. Also included are a pair of fine examples of stories based on the author's war-time experiences, ''The Mouse Hole'' and a story that has to rank as a masterpiece, ''Waiting for Trains''. While best-known for his disturbing tales of psychological horror, Birkin was also adept at the supernatural tale of terror as is amply demonstrated by this collection''.

(Mike Ashley's ?) blurb for Birkin's posthumous A Haunting Beauty, (Midnight House, 2000) from the Cold Tonnage Books site.