The Mammoth Book of Vampires Horror Book Review

Award-winning horror editor Stephen Jones presents thirty-six modern masters of the macabre-among them Harlan Ellison, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Paul McAuley, Peter Tremayne, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Ramsey Campbell-in this collection of the very best in vampire fiction which blends sheer horror with dark humor, deadly tenderness with tingling terror. For the classic vampire, as this volume amply shows, the Blood is the Life. So you’ll discover throughout these always scary and diversely crafted pages, from Hugh B. Cave’s pulp thriller “Stragella” through to Harold Waldrop’s bizarre mix of vampire and Nazis in “Der Untergang Des Abendlandesmenschen” and Christopher Fowler’s “The Legend of Dracula Reconsidered as a Primetime TV Special.” In between lie artful chillers by the likes of Clive Barker, Brian Lumley, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Robert Bloch and John Burke, along with new and original stories by Niel Gaiman with “Cards from a Vampire Tarot,” and Kim Newman with “Andy Warhol’s Dracula: anno Dracula 1978-79.” You can sink your teeth, too, in F. Paul Wilson’s fast-paced thriller “Midnight Mass,” Manly Wade Wellman’s “Chastel,” offering bloody intrigue and adventure with Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant; and Les Daniel’s “Yellow Fog,” which features his enigmatic vampire-hero Don Sebastian de Villanueva.