Anders Monsen

Lost worlds and ports of call

Category: books (Page 4 of 25)

A Trio of Dark Harvest Books

November 29, 2025 /

Between 1983 and 1993, a small press from Arlington Heights, Illinois called Dark Harvest published close to 50 books. In that decade they released nine volumes in the seminal anthology, Night Visions, along with novels and story collections by such giants in the horror and SF field such as Fritz Leiber, Isaac Asimov, George R. R. Martin, Dean R. Koontz, Ray Garton, F. Paul Wilson, Dan Simmons, Robert R. McCammon, and many more. Toward the end of Dark Harvest’s run, they made a foray into the mystery genre. An anthology called Criminal Intent 1 appears to have been the last book they published. Perhaps the limited edition market collapsed in the early 1990s, or mystery readers didn’t care for small press editions as much as SF and horror readers. Or, maybe the publishers just decided to call it quits. At any rate, it’s a shame that Dark Harvest stopped publishing books.

I think I started buying Dark Harvest books with F. Paul Wilson’s books, then some of the Night Visions books and other anthologies, plus a few others here and there. Although I’m not aiming for a complete collection of Dark Harvest books, I recently picked up three books by this publisher from various locations.

Fiends, by John Farris (1990). A horror novel by an author of whom I know next to nothing. I’ve started reading this book, and it looks intriguing.

Blue Champagne, by John Varley (1986). A collection of short stories by this master of science fiction. I still have a vivid memory of seeing this book in the shelves at Austin Books on North Lamar in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I really wanted it, but back then was unable to afford the cover price. This year I paid a little bit more than cover price for this copy, but it’s in pristine condition and well-worth the price. Dark Harvest switching to SF is almost like Arkham House releasing SF books (oh, wait — they did release a few SF books), but the first story in the collection did make me a little nervous, almost like a horror story.

The Nightrunners, by Joe R. Lansdale (1987). An interesting book, and probably the only book that I’ve seen with this warning: “WARNING: Extreme violence, language and sexual situations may offend some readers.” Of course, that’s almost every Lansdale book, but it was strange to see this from one published back in 1987. I guess those were different times. Some of the pieces that make up this novel have appeared elsewhere as short stories or vignettes. One such episode I recently read, but I cannot remember where. I’m not about to hunt through all my books with Lansdale stories to find where I read it, but I do remember it was a disturbing piece, well worth that warning from the Dark Harvest edition.

There’s now a dozen of the 50 or so Dark Harvest books that I don’t own. I’m really only interested in six of these, but I won’t be surprised if I start looking for the rest. After all, they’re all a piece of history, at least in terms of genre fiction.

Silverberg’s Nightwings

November 29, 2025 /

The first Robert Silverberg book I bought was a paperback copy of Nightwings, which I found in some bookstore in Norway in 1987 or 1988. The book I bought was a British edition published by Futura/Obit in 1987. Do I remember anything about it now, even though I still have that book? Not really. Since then I’ve picked up roughly a dozen of Silverberg’s books, mostly paperback editions published a long time ago. The top pages of my paperback ave yellowed over time

I really ought to have far many Silverberg books in my library. Silverberg is a legend in science fiction. Part of my issue is that there are few books by him in new book stores these days, and when I come across them in in used book stores, most copies are battered and broken, and I tend to put those back. I’ve found a copy or two here or there, but I’m always on the lookout for more.

Then there’s Centipede Press… This is a publisher whose books are nearly works of art. Almost always sold out shortly after publication, Centipede Press books are usually quite pricey. They also fetch a premium on the second hand market (I recently saw a set of Gene Wolfe books listed for $45,000!!!!! Their Frank Herbert books start at $600 or more each, while their series of Masters of Science Fiction and Library of Weird Fiction books ratchet up quickly on the second-hand market). I do own a few of their books, usually because I focus on buying specific authors; my edition of a Michael Shea collection, bought for $65 or so, now I see is listed for $1,400 or so online, which is insane.

A couple of years ago I bought the Centipede Press edition of Dying Inside. This was a book I never could find in paperback. My copy is one of 500 signed books (some actual, some facsimile). I don’t care too much about that, but as I wanted this book, I paid the list price. This edition does not disappoint.

Then, in 2025, Centipede Press published a hardcover edition of Nightwings. Must, must have, I thought, and so I bought the book, also signed. As is almost always the case, the cover is beyond gorgeous, the binding superb. This book is a masterpiece to behold.

It’s a slim book; my paperback copy is 192 pages with no extra material, but the Centipede Press book adds an introduction and interview. The wrap-around cover by Joe Wilson is beautiful. Silverberg’s introduction gives some insight into when and why he wrote the book, which he originally did in three parts. This book embodies exactly what a limited edition should look and feel like.

Books added: Pohl and Turner

November 3, 2025 /

When I’m in Half Price Books I glance through the SF section. I rarely find books that I want these days, as I tend to focus on specific authors. I usually already have almost all their books, with rare exceptions. I know that I won’t find those rare exceptions in a used book store, not in the age of the internet, anyway. Still, if I find some nice editions of books from the 1980s and early 1990s, I’ll reconsider. This time, I did see a few books that must have been offloaded from someone’s collection, possibly an estate sale. I honed in on two of these.

Frederick Pohl’s The Years of the City (Timescape Books, 1984). This is the first edition hardback of a book I’d bought in a paperback edition many years ago. The book was in pristine condition, had a nice mylar cover, and was irresistible, especially as my 1995 BAEN paperback pages were already yellowing. The cover is sort of bland, with Pohl’s name and the title of the book dominating a small image. Curiously, some of the fonts in the paperback mirror the hardcover, but it’s nice to read crisp white pages vs. brittle yellowing ones.

George Turner’s The Destiny Makers (AvoNova/Morrow, 1993). Years ago, a friend of mine—who coincidentally shares the same last name as this Australian author—gave me a couple of George Turner paperbacks. I can’t remember if I’ve read them, but when I come across hardcover editions of his books I feel compelled to buy them, as I rarely see books by this author in my area. Turner died a few years ago. His stories are focused on eco-disasters, but I’ll probably try to read this one some day, and maybe I’ll find his other books at some point.

Phoenix Book Haul

October 14, 2025 /

Phoenix, Arizona apparently has quite a few used book stores. On a recent visit I hit up a trio of these stores. If I’m ever back I hope to visit more. On this trip I went to a Bookmans, a Half Price Books, and one of the Book Gallery locations. Along with a handful of nice-to-haves, I came away with some neat books.

Winterwood and other hauntings, by Keith Roberts, Morrigan (1989). Bought for the reduced price of $15 (down from $30) from Half Price Books. A collection of short stories, with a neat introduction by Robert Holdstock. I had no idea that Roberts used to live in Henley, a small town near Reading. I’m sure Henley’s changed a great deal since his time there, although the regatta still runs every year along the Thames. Then again, in the introduction to his 1988 collection, Anita, his location was Amesbury, Wiltshire, so maybe he moved around a bit. Roberts died in 2000.

Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos, edited by Robert M Price, Fedogan & Bremer (1992). An anthology of tales set in Lovecraft’s fictional world, many from Lovecraft’s contemporaries. Only my fifth books by this publisher, and third acquired this year. I’m not usually a fan of Lovecraft’s works, but some of the authors in this book are of interest.

Not Less Than Gods, by Kage Baker, Subterranean Press (2010). A limited edition of only 474 copies, signed by Baker. Illustrated by J. K. Potter. Bought for almost half the $60 cover price. I passed on quite a few books that I wanted, as the prices seemed random in many cases and higher than I wanted to spend at times. I’ve read Baker’s stories in the Golden Gryphon edition, Black Projects, White Knights. Baker died in 2010 from cancer.

Earthquake Weather, by Tim Powers, Subterranean Press (2008). The deluxe limited edition, signed by Powers and the illustrator, J. K. Potter. Bought for a bit less than the cover price of $75. I’d read the Tor Books edition years ago; my copy is inscribed to me by Powers with the message, “This love-letter to wine.” I won’t give up that edition. Meeting Powers meant a lot to me, as I’m a huge fan. I debated whether or not to get the Sub Press edition of book, but after some indecision, I decided I had to have it. The store also had the NESFA edition of An Epitaph in Rust, but I skipped it for now. However, I do know that finding Sub Press editions of Expiration Date and Last Call, both set in the same universe as Earthquake Weather, will be pricy at best. So, call this an impulse buy.

Second Chance, by Chet Williamson, Cemetery Dance (1994). I almost put this one back on the shelf, as there are three nasty tears in the dust jacket. Still, it’s a limited edition, signed by Williamson, and limited to 400 copies. Given the state of the dust jacket, or some obscure reason, it was priced at $11.24, a strange and almost random figure. Maybe one day I’ll be able to find a nice cover to replace this one. Williamson is still writing fiction, and I’ve read a couple of his books. They’re hard to find, at least in person, but worth it.

Muse and Reverie, by Charles de Lint, Tor Books (2009). A collection of stories set in de Lint’s fictional town of Newford. Despite having 33 of his books, I still lack a fair amount of de Lint’s nearly 60 published books, so I was happy to find this one.

The Trade of Queens, by Charles Stross, Tor Books (2010). This is book six in Stross’ Merchant Princes series. I don’t really read SF any more, nor really buy any new Stross books, but as I have the first five, I supposed I had to get this one. I think I’ve only read the first two, or maybe three, books in the series.

Earthsea

September 25, 2025 /

I dimly remember that I read the first three of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books in my pre-teen years. I’m fairly certain that I came across them in the library of The International School of Lusaka, possibly in sixth or seventh grade. Maybe I got them in a bookstore in Lusaka, but that seems unlikely, as I think that I would have kept the copies (or not, as I had to give up quite a few of my books from that time when leaving Zambia and beyond).

The content of those three books, The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore, are lost in the mists of my memories. Occasionally I come across battered paperback copies of one or another of these books, but I’ve never bought them, not once in the intervening 40+ years since I first read them.

Then, by chance, I came across a pristine omnibus edition of the three books, as well as a fourth one, which I’d never read. It’s sub-titled “The first four books”; apparently there are two more set in this world. I think that I only read The Dispossessed by Le Guin. This is a UK edition, which somehow ended up in the USA.

The word “Earthsea” is a brilliant combination of two disparate words by Le Guin. There’s no preface, no introduction, no afterword. You simply dive into the book, into her world. The design from Penguin Books is brilliant. It even smells like a book is supposed to smell. I wonder, as I start the hourney to re-read these books, will they resonate the same way that they did those four plus decades ago? Likely not, but we shall see what happens.

*Brief note: The cover image here has a quote from Telegraph. My copy has a quote from Neil Gaiman, who I guess has been canceled these days.

Adding a quartet of Arkham House books

September 25, 2025 /

Between 2015 and 2023 I didn’t buy a single Arkham House book. In 2023 I bought just one AH book, Lucius Shepard’s second collection published by Arkham House, The Ends of the Earth. Then, in 2025 an explosion of interest on my part suddenly resulted in me acquiring many more books from this publisher. With these four books, my collection reached a round 50 in number (I’ve since added one more). I’ve probably hit my peak (or close to it) when it comes to books from Arkham House. It’s just going to get harder and harder if I want to try to find the other 80+ books that I don’t have, without spending an excessive amount of money per book.

I bought my first Arkham House book in 1990: Michael Shea’s collection, Polyphemus. I bought this book from Austin Books (in Austin, Texas), back when they sold actual books, and not just graphic novels and comics. Between 1990 and 2015, I slowly picked up more Arkham House books, either from brick and mortar book stores or at SF conventions. Back then you still could buy AH books for between $7.50 to $15, at least the most recently published ones. After 2015, I pretty much stopped going to SF conventions. Also, local book stores didn’t really carry any Arkham House books, as they’d by now ceased to publish anything new. Fast forward a few years. The online world exists far more than the brick and mortar world. Occasionally I’ll search online for Arkham House titles, and occasionally I’ll end up with a few books like these ones:

Charles L. Grant, Tales from the Nightside (1984). A collection of short stories. Bought for $50, which is to me the upper limit of what I’ll pay at the moment. Grant, who passed away in 2006, was a prolific author and editor of horror fiction. I only have a couple of his books, as opportunity never presented itself to me to find others, at least in person. This book includes an introduction by Stephen King, another prolific horror writer.

Phyllis Eisenstein, Born to Exile (1978). According to Wikipedia, she died on December 7, 2020 in Chicago from COVID-19 and a stroke at the age of 74.
For some weird and unknown reason, Arkham House slapped a label of “SF” on the spine. Based on the first couple of pages, I’d consider it more in the vein of fantasy than SF.

Donald Sydney-Fryer, Songs & Sonnets Atlantean (1971). A collection of poems. Fryer, born September 8, 1934, compiled a bibliography of Clark Ashton Smith’s works, published by Donald M. Grant in 1978. From another entry in Wikipedia, I learned that “in May 2025, 91-year-old Sidney-Fryer suffered a stroke which necessitated his move to a nursing home.” I briefly corresponded with him in the 1990s, when he lived near Corpus Christi (if I recall correctly, as those emails have long since vanished). Soon he will be gone from this world, and I regret never driving down to visit him.

Gary Myers, The House of the Worm (1975). A slim book in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft. At 70-odd pages long, the text reads more like a poem in prose, than fiction. Peppered throughout are black and white sketches, almost as gloomy as the text. According to the note of the author, Myers went on to get his BA after this book, so maybe he wrote it while young. I don’t recall seeing other books by Myers, but not all Arkham House writers went on to publish a slew of books or reach fame.

To me, owning these books is like owning fragments of history, especially given the fate of several of the authors. In time, these books that I’ve acquired, either from bookstores or other owners, will move on to further owners. Hopefully they’ll appreciate them, take care of them, read them.

Iain Banks’ The Business

September 24, 2025 /

In my opinion, there’s a special circle in hell for people who mark their places in books with dog-ears—folding over pages in a triangle. May these people reside in eternal flames alongside people who break the spines of the books they read; use a bookmark! Then, there are those equally cursed people who paste in their personalized bookplates or stamp their ownership with “in the library of” with their names, who I cannot forgive. On the outer rim of hellish circles are those who write in books with pens. Pencil marks I can erase, but why mark a book with a pen if you don’t intend to destroy the book?

Scottish writer Iain Banks, who also published science fiction under Iain M. Banks, published books in the UK and USA. In the UK, some of these appeared in trade paperback by Abacus. A few years ago, an influx of these books appeared in the USA. I bought some as I came across them, always hoping to find more. Many years passed with no such luck. However, recently I came across a copy of The Business. Of course, in this book, someone had written “R” next to the titles Banks’ other books. I guess this is a handy way to keep track of what they had read. If so, I thought, why then would this book end up in a used bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona? What strange circumstance would put this book there? They’d also dog-eared the book, and stored it where the sun yellowed its pages. Otherwise the book was ok, and as Banks’ books are hard to find where I lived, I bought this copy.

Three of the five Abacus books I own only list other books written by Banks. The Business, as well as The Steep Approach to Garbadale, show twelve images of covers of Banks’ books from Abacus. The titles are hard to read, so I don’t quite know the seven books in this set that I lack. Given that I’m in the USA, and these are UK editions, and Banks died a few years ago, if I find any of those seven it will be a miracle.

The previous owner of The Business, the person who dog-eared the book, made it as far as chapter three ( page 61). nothing else appears to indicate they completed the book. Did they give up and chuck the book, or pass way before they could finish it? At least they didn’t write their name in the book, but even then, it would take some effort to find their fate if the name did appear there.

Somewhere in the USA those other books must exist. If I find them, I hope they’ll be absent of writings, ownership stamps, and other jiggery-pokery.

Tanith Lee’s Arkham House collection

September 24, 2025 /

Dreams of Dark and Light is a collection of stories by Tanith Lee (1947-2015), published by Arkham House in 1986. This my 51st Arkham House book. There are a few barely imperceptible spots on the outside edges of the pages, but otherwise it’s in good shape. I’d missed out on a couple of bids for other copes this book, so I was somewhat surprised when I ended up with this one. At any rate, I’ve long wanted a copy. So, many years after it was first published, I ended up with my copy at twice the original price.

I own only a handful of paperbacks by Lee (ok, five, but were it not the fact that I avoid paperbacks with broken spines I would own a fair amount more), which is a tiny fraction of her total output of “90 novels and 200 short stories.” She’s one of three authors in Dark Harvest’s first volume of the horror/dark fantasy anthology series, Night Visions. I bought that book many years ago. I’m fairly certain that I read her stories, but since then I’ve read so much that they’ve long vanished into the mists of time. Finding her books in bookstores, at least since the late 1990s and 2000s, however, is almost impossible.

According to an obituary in The Guardian, “her career went through the doldrums, exacerbated by changes in publishing in the 90s and thereafter. [T]hose qualities that had built her career…were liabilities in a publishing world obsessed with strict category and with authors who produce the same reliable product. At one point, she complained that she was writing books because she could do no other, but was stacking them unpublished in a cupboard.” This probably explains why it’s hard to find her books these days, and also makes you curse those publishing changes. I don’t really read modern fantasy, and maybe that’s due to those changes.

Perhaps now is a good time, as I start to read these stories, to take another look at her other books, and those stories of Lee’s in Night Visions 1.

A pair of Arkham House books

September 18, 2025 /

Slowly, slowly, I’m trying to acquire more Arkham House books. It seems that I’m mostly picking up books from the 1970s onward, as older books are harder to find.

Frank Belknap Long, mostly a writer of fiction within the Lovecraft circle, published a slim (66 pages!) Arkham House book in 1977. In Mayan Splendor collects a variety of poems by Long, and is illustrated by Stephen Fabian. Originally sold for $6, I picked this book up for just under twice the cover price, many, many years after it first was published.

From Evil’s Pillow is my third Basil Copper Arkham House book, but his first published by them. I already have And Afterward, the Dark (1977) and The House of the Wolf (1983), but when I saw this book listed for less than $12 I went for it without hesitation. There are a few scrapes or smudges on the back cover, but all in all the condition is quite good for a book published in 1973 and listed at $11.75. This book also originally was listed at the low cover price of $6.00, which makes me somewhat nostalgic for the 1970s.

Books like this in the current age would fetch $25 of more, given inflation and other related changes based on small press publishers. Of course, these days such books would have multiple states, such as signed/limited copies, vs. just published in an announced number of copies (3,500) in this case. It collects five short stories, with a cover by Frank Utpatel, who illustrated many Arkham House books.

This year I’ve been on an Arkham House bender, after many years of not looking for their books. I think that most of my AH purchases prior to 2025 were in-person acquisitions, but now I’m tossing my hat more in the online world. In many cases, at least where there are auctions involved, I’m losing out on books. So, instead, I’ve turned to fixed price options from resellers elsewhere. This means I’ll probably stall in terms of adding more books, as I do have an upper limit in terms of what I want to spend, and most fixed-price AH books from earlier than 1970 are well beyond my price range.

The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

September 18, 2025 /

James P. Blaylock’s The Adventures of Langdon S. Ives collects four short stories (“The Ape-Box Affair”, “The Hole in Space”, “The Idol’s Eye”, “Two Views of a Cave Painting”) and two novels (Homunculus and Lord Kelvin’s Machine) featuring Victorian inventor, Langdon St Ives in various adventures and escapades.

I already own both novels—Homunculus in the Morrigan edition and Lord Kelvin’s Machine from Arkham House. The short stories appear in other books that I also already own; “The Hole in Space” in the Subterranean Press edition of The Man in the Moon, and the other three in the Edgewood Press collection, Thirteen Phantasms. Why then buy this book? I recall buying The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives because, although I owned three of the novellas collected in that book, I lacked two of the short stories. But, I’d looked at the contents of the first Langdon St. Ives book many years ago and decided back then that I didn’t need it.

The itch was still there, somehow, and when an opportunity came along to pick it up at cover price, I took it. Originally published in 2008 as a trade and limited edition, I thought the copy I bought was a trade edition. However, when I received the book, the dust jacket listed the trade edition price, but the book was one of 200 numbered and signed copies, which matched the limited edition description. I suspect that I have a mix of book and cover, which is a strange circumstance. At any rate, it looks good next to my other Subterranean Press Blaylock books, and the introduction by Tim Powers and afterword by Blaylock are fun reads. Blaylock’s afterword, however, covers much of the same territory as his afterword to “The Hole in Space” in The Man in the Moon. I’ve read, I think, almost all of Blaylock’s works, barring a short story or two. So, all in all, I’m happy that I finally went ahead and got this book.

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