Trick or Treat

Cemetery Dance Publications is very proud to announce the debut volume of a brand new series: Trick or Treat. A collection of five terrifying full-length novellas, Trick or Treat is a celebration of all things Halloween!Hornets by Al Sarrantonio: During the hottest October ever, something evil is about to happen. Peter Kerlan, famous children's horror author, finds that not all horrors are mere fiction. For in the midst of a late autumn heat wave, a force of terror is unleashed, along with the true meaning of Halloween — all in the guise of an orange and black insect...Tessellations by Gary A. Braunbeck: A haunted, young actress returns home after the death of her father to discover that her brother has seemingly gone insane. Over the course of one unnerving night she first witnesses — and then becomes a part of — a Halloween nightmare that, piece by piece, physically brings back the past, rips a hole in her consensual reality, and allows demons, monsters, and even a miracle or two to shamble into this world and transform it into the darkest of fairy tales...The Eighth Devil by Nancy A. Collins: In the sleepy little farming town of Seven Devils it is said that on Halloween night the Eighth Devil wanders the countryside, hunting down naughty children and dragging them down to Hell. While trapped inside a house of horrors, four young boys discover the terrible truth behind this terrifying legend...Miss Henry's Bottles by Rick Hautala: As far as Andy Draper and his friends are concerned, Miss Henry is the strangest — and scariest — person in the small coastal town of Stonepoint. Then one October night, a harmless prank goes wrong, and Mark is forced to deal with "Old Lady Henry" face to face. When he begins to delve into the secret she's been harboring all these years, what he learns has surprising and tragic consequencesScramburg, U.S.A. by Thomas Tessier: Who says you can't go home again? In the summer of 1962 some people decided that they'd had enough of teenage punk Howie Hackett, so they threw him out of town. Howie came back and made them pay... but it didn't turn out the way he'd hoped. Now Halloween is coming, and so is Howie — one more time...

From Publishers Weekly

Last year Chizmar co-edited October Dreams, a Halloween tribute volume that won the International Horror Guild Award for best anthology. This compilation of new novellas by five horror heavyweights reprises the Halloween theme, but proves a very mixed bag of treats. The book leads with strength: Al Sarrantonio's "Hornets" strikes an eerie pitch of autumn gloom in its account of a blocked horror writer battling an insect infestation and the creeping influence of the dark lord Samhain. Gary Braunbeck, in "Tessellations," evokes the dark carnival atmosphere of Halloween revels, but in a spew of chaotic images that virtually derail its sensitive account of a woman's exorcism of family guilt one All Hallows Eve. Nancy Collins's "The Eighth Devil" and Rick Hautala's "Miss Henry's Bottles" are both teen coming-of-age stories in which the authors try with varying degrees of success to juxtapose the childish innocence of Halloween make-believe with real-life horrors spawned by adult lies and illusions. Although competently told, the majority of stories fail to deliver any of the expected holiday magic or chills, and might just as easily have taken place another day of the year. This is most obvious in Thomas Tessier's uncharacteristically over-the-top "Scramburg, U.S.A.," a tale of juvenile delinquents on a Fourth of July rampage that segues unconvincingly into Halloween hijinks only in its last few pages. Horror devotees will find most of these stories thematically forced and not up to their authors' usual standards. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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