The Horror Zine’s is a Werewolf & Shifter Thrillers novel by Ramsey Campbell. Read summary below.
Although werewolves are a classic monster standard, The Horror Zine’s Book of Werewolf Stories breathes fresh, terrifying life into the horrifying concept of human-to-wolf transformations.
The Horror Zine’s Book of Werewolf Stories is packed with original, never-before published stories of unique and contemporary takes on lycanthropy.
No Lon Chaney Jr. remakes here; instead, this spine-chilling anthology presents exciting, refreshing new ideas that won’t fail to impress even the most jaded horror readers.
Brought to you by the established, award-winning ezine and print magazine, only the best and most suspenseful tales can be found stalking the pages of The Horror Zine’s Book of Werewolf Stories.
Includes an introduction by Stephen Graham Jones, a foreword by WD Gagliani, and spine-chilling tales of lycanthropy from Ramsey Campbell, JG Faherty, Susie Moloney, Nancy Kilpatrick, and myriad other noteworthy authors.
READ; Sin & Salvation (Demigods of San Francisco)
4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Collection of Stories
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2022
If the image of a bank of clouds rolling back to reveal a glowing moon makes something tingle deep inside you…
If a chorus of distant howls causes a stirring in your blood…
If the image of a man, silhouetted against the moonlight as his bones crack and his face elongates into a snout and hair sprouts along the ridge of his back makes you pump your fist in the air and shout, YES!”…
Then this book is for you.
The Horror Zine’s Book of Werewolf Stories brings together twenty-five shirt-ripping, teeth-baring, guttural-snarling stories from names big and small. The collection includes tales written from both the victim’s and the wolf’s perspective. There are werewolves who are bloodthirsty monsters and those who try their hardest to retain some sense of humanity. There are stories which question whether their characters are werewolves at all or men suffering from psychiatric delusions. There are wolves at war, wolves at sea, wolves in the woods and wolves in the city.
A few stories which stood out to me:
“The Change” by Ramsey Campbell – a psychological horror in which a writer becomes obsessed with – and then paranoid about – the strangers who gather just beyond his window in the blue glow of a bus stop lamp, and regresses to a primitive form of himself in his distress.
“Savages” by Trish Wilson – a feral child is found and held for observation, until the wolves who raised him come back for what’s theirs.
“The Midnight Club” by David North-Martino – a serial killer who lives for the thrill of the hunt gets what’s coming to him when his prey turns to predator.
“Origin of the Species” by JG Faherty – easily my favorite story in the whole collection, this one gives us a fascinating origin story for the werewolf race.
With an introduction by Stephen Graham Jones and a foreword by WD Gagliani, this anthology of moonlight metamorphosis is a great addition to any horror lover’s library, and a much-needed tome on a worthy but oft-overlooked horror character.
5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond the same old into the terrifying
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2022
This book proved fresh and interesting – which given the subject matter is a pleasant surprise. Jenni Rector and Dean H. Wild compiled a book of the best werewolf stories from The Horror Zine and published it under this hard to decipher title. If you read current horror you’ll know The Horror Zine is the current best place to be as a writer. Jeani Rector publishes the zine online for FREE and pays her authors nothing. Yet she has the best of the best from Joe Lansdale to Ramsey Campbell sending her stuff. How? I think she sold her soul to Satan. Anyway, The Horror Zine is the 2010s – 2020s equivalent to Weird Tales in the 1930s and Unknown in the 1940s.
Most themed anthologies fall into one of two traps – the novel theory (“See vampires are really from outer space.”) or the reassuring predictable (“Who could have guessed the bereaved couple would buy a secluded mansion that was haunted by an evil child ghost?). This book (for the most part) skated by these traps. This is a book about human relations in a world with lycanthropy. Well rounded characters have complex responses to both the terror of the Wolf and the terror of modern life.
Some notable stories are Derek Austin’s “Full Moon Fever” which begins looking like “big city cop finds redemption by being a small town policeman” and then deconstructs into a scenario where his humanitarian values and desire to be thew white knight collapse into meaningless gestures and pure terror as he confronts something both outside the normal world and his middle class values.
Ramsey Campbell’s “The Change” likewise subverts expectations. A stressed out writer laboring on a non-fiction book on lycanthropic fiction and film develops a theory of its psychology, and like a Lovecraftian scholar with a forbidden tome begins to change – not through calling upon an eldritch bang but watching urban violence, economic stress, marital unhappiness, and synthetic moonlight. This is a great and chilling study of lycanthropy.
Gordon Linzer’s “Lysomania” totally reverses a trope – the suspected werewolf (trapped in a chair waiting to turn) is a regular and terrified human. Linzer is a veteran of both the small and large press and can adroitly handle dark humor with real dread.
Jeani Rector’s “in Any Language” begins with the sophisticated traveler hearing the local tales of the werewolf from the old pub keeper but mutates into a tale of something much more alien with a strong Ambrose Bierce vibe.
Nancy Kilpatrick’s “Wolf Moon” gives us a glitz filled world of the high end art world, deception and a big dash of the erotic. It hints at mysteries of the language, culture and burial rites of the “Lycans” while heading quickly into gory action.
I say get a copy. Hey, I know a little. I’ve taught horror writing for UCLA Extension for 17 years and latest horror collection Building Strange Temples was recommended by the Washington Post.
Ramsey Campbell Author Of The Horror Zine’s Book is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.
You can use the link below to get a copy of The Horror Zine’s by Ramsey Campbell
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