New Book Designed to "Put the Spooky Back Into Christmas"
Vintage Horror Collection Published on November 1st
November 1st, 2022 Poplar Grove, Illinois – "Put the Spooky Back Into Christmas: Classic Holiday Horror Tales" is a new collection of vintage horror stories from publisher Tales of Wonder and Dread. While it's a largely forgotten tradition in the United States, spooky stories, ghosts and Christmas go together. In the UK and Canada spooky stories are a normal part of Christmas tradition. The rich tradition of telling scary stories for Christmas has been largely discarded in the United States. Poplar Grove, Illinois' Tales of Wonder and Dread Publishing has been on a quest to change that since the publication of last year's "Horrifying Holiday: Holiday Spookfest."
While not every story in "Put the Spooky Back Into Christmas: Classic Holiday Horror Tales" is explicitly tied to the Christmas period, all of them are generally considered to be related to that time of year. And, certainly plenty of them are definitely based around it. The collection is intended to bring that old-school spooky to the holidays. The tome gathers stories from Algernon Blackwood, Ada Buisson, Charles Dickens, Berwick Harwood, William Hope Hodgson, Jane Margaret Hooper, M.R. James, Charlotte Riddell and Sir Walter Scott.
2021's "Horrifying Holidays" is a collection of fiction and non-fiction stories, with all the tales having a Christmas angle to them. It actually opens with a poem about Krampus from Northern Illinois poet and writer Frank Coffman. There are modern fiction tales from Gary Hill, Stephen Osborne and Glenn Tilson. Diane Hill and Gary Hill provide non-fiction tales. Classic fiction from John Kendrick Bangs, E.F. Benson, the aforementioned Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell round out the book.
Poplar Grove based Tales of Wonder and Dread Publishing was founded in 2018, and all the T.O.W.D. books have a focus on science fiction, horror or generally macabre type subject matter. The most recent releases from T.O.W.D. to date were "Horrifying Halloween," "It Ends in the Graveyard," "Spooky Berwyn Two," "Spooky Stateline"
"Horrifying Halloween: Halloween Poems and Tales" gathers together poems and stories with a Halloween focus. There are vintage stories from Mary Wilkins Freeman and Eleanor L. Skinner along with retro poems from J. K. Bangs, Joel Benton, George Francis Dawson, H. P. Lovecraft, A.F. Murray, Eleanor L. Skinner and Robert Louis Stevenson. Frank Coffman and Eileen Eggert have new poems in the collection while Del Merritt, Paul Lubaczewsk, R. C. Mulhare and Gary Hill provide new stories.
The GoodReads description for "It Ends in the Graveyard" says, "They say you shouldn't give away the ending, but this tale ends in the graveyard. In Gary Hill's second horror novella a horror writer named 'Apexan' recounts the real life story that inspired their first book. It's a tale of an ancient mystery hidden in a forest. It's a saga of monsters and murders. It's also a story of change."
The follow up to 2019’s “Spooky Berwyn,” “Spooky Berwyn Two: More Creepy Tales from the Chicago Area” presents 17 non-fiction spooky tales (from Gary Hill, Rick Hale, Diane Hill and Mike Korn) and two fiction stories (Gary Hill and Jay Sturner) based in the greater Chicago area. Like its predecessor, the title is not totally accurate because the area covered is the full Chicago area, rather than the suburb of Berwyn. The title is an homage to horror host Svengoolie (Rich Koz) and his show.
The GoodReads description for "Spooky Stateline" says "You might be familiar with 'Spooky Rockford' and 'Spooky Rockford Two.' In a way you can look at this as Spooky Rockford Three, but it moves further out to the whole stateline area this time. This book features both non-fiction (Diane Hill, Gary Hill, Mike Korn and Stephen Osborne( and fiction (Gary Hill and Jay Sturner) contributions..
The book is available at lulu.com/spotlight/strangesound and GaryHillAuthor.com.
#####
Contact: TalesofWonderandDread@SpookyVentures.com
garyhillauthor.com/Tales-of-Wonder-and-Dread
www.facebook.com/TalesofWonderandDreadPublishing
|