Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Occult & Horror Fiction 1

I must admit I am not much of a fan of horror fiction. Call me squeamish if you like, but it is not a genre I would go out of my way to collect. However, I do have a small selection, mostly from the occult side of the spectrum. I don’t mind the supernatural or the spooky at all.

First up an interesting supernatural thriller by Thomas Bontly, called Celestial Chess with a striking cover illustration. This Ballantine paperback was published in 1980.

bontly_celestialchess1980 

Suzy McKee Charnas is well known for her feminist dystopian trilogy which began with Walk To The End Of The World and is generally referred to as the Holdfast Chronicles. She also penned this superior vampire novel, The Vampire Tapestry.

This paperback was published in 1981 by Pocket Books.

charnas_vampiretapestry_pocket1981

An Affair of Sorcerers is a novel in George C Chesbro in his Mongo The Magnificent  series of detective novels, so probably this book belongs in the crime fiction section, despite having sorcerers in its title, though the cover image looks spooky. This book was published by Signet in 1979.

chesbro_affairofsorcerers_signet1979

Another two vampire novels, this time by Nancy A Collins, Sunglasses After Dark, and its sequel, In the Blood. Sunglasses was her first published novel and is an interesting take on the vampire genre, and has a rather stylish cover. There’s a whole series of Sonja Blue novels, but these are the only two I’ve read or indeed possess.

collins_sunglasses collins_intheblood

I will finish this entry with two old style occult novels, firstly The Witch of Prague by F. Marion Crawford, published in the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult in 1974,  and  Moonchild by Aleister Crowley in an old 1971 Avon edition.

crawford_witchofprague_sphere1974 crowley_moonchild_avon1971

More occult and horror to follow.

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