Paperbacks From Hell!!!

Paperbacks from Hell has a lot to answer for. Not only is the book excellent but it also kicked off my latest book buying obsession - paperback horror, specifically those gruesome and downright horrible (but oh so delicious) mass market editions of the 1970's and 1980's. 

The covers are cheesy with a splash of sleaze and are often better than the books themselves. But hey, readers don't collect these things for the content. No. It's the aesthetics and the hope that one of those books may actually turn out okay. That was my thoughts anyway. Happy to say, I was pleasantly surprised by a couple of recent reads that I managed to pick up cheap from a rural secondhand bookstore. 

One, The Omen, comes as no surprise really. I also picked up the sequel, Omen II and have heard mixed reviews, but for The Omen itself, I rated it 5 stars; a classic horror which everyone should read. It's better than the film in my opinion. 

Blood Worm was another fun gory romp into the world of giant blood worms and killer beetles as they terrorized London. Not up to the quality of The Omen, it was still a fun form of escapism. While Mantis by K.W Jeter is tense psychological horror derived from madness and a warped sense of reality, thanks to a schizophrenic subtext and an unreliable narrator - one of the finds of the bunch. 

Not all of these gory books are great or particularly noteworthy but that doesn't make collecting them any less desirable. Take The Longest Night by J.N. Williamson for example, cool cover, cool concept but crappy book (The Tupla by the same author is much, much better). Disembodied by Robert W. Walker falls into the same category; cool concept with a crappy execution but a coveted cover. 

Yet all is not lost! In addition to the aforementioned, Blood Worm and The Omen, Night Tran by Thomas F. Monteleone is a very good book, one, that somehow crams everything horror into one mass market paperback from ghosts to monsters and everything in-between.  

Simple and plain, Paperbacks from Hell is a must-own for fans of horror fiction, and purveyors of cool covers. Stacked with information and witty write-up of obscure works - some best left in dusty old book bins, others proverbial diamonds in the rough, there's something here for everyone. Come inside, who knows how your life will change once you step back into the real world...