Ken Johnson – Blue Sunshine

Ken Johnson – Blue Sunshine  (Sphere, 1977)

Blurb:

PSYCHOSIS…
It started off as a great party – just eight of them in a ski-lodge in upstate New York. But then the last guest, Frannie, arrived. There was something wrong with Frannie’s hair. And something very wrong with his eyes. And what he did to three of the girls was too hideous for description….
That was just the start. After that, things began to happen all over New York – ugly things: psychosis, insanity, murder – and no one could find an explanation. The police were helpless – because they didn’t know that behind all the grisly happenings lay a single, uncontrollable horror. A horror called
BLUE SUNSHINE…
Based on an original screenplay by Jeff Lieberman

Jere Cunningham – The Legacy

Jere Cunningham – The Legacy (Sphere, 1980: originally Fawcett, 1977)

Blurb:

SOMEWHERE IN THE DARKNESS IT IS WATCHING AND WAITING – FOR YOU
Chester Rawlings is the first victim – he blows his brains out to escape a living death.
Then old Sam is discovered lying beside his master’s grave, dead of an unnatural heart attack- two corpse-like fingers clutched in his hand.
Now a child watches as her parents struggle in the grip of an unspeakable horror: only the child knows the awful truth – it is already too late to save them from THE LEGACY

The Best Of Fritz Leiber

The Best Of Fritz Leiber  (Sphere, 1974).

Introduction

Sanity    
Wanted – An Enemy    
The Man Who Never Grew Young    
The Ship Sails at Midnight
The Enchanted Forest
Coming Attraction
Poor Superman
A Pail of Air
The Foxholes of Mars    
The Big Holiday    
The Night He Cried    
The Big Trek    
Space-Time for Springers    
Try and Change the Past    
A Deskful of Girls    
Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee    
Little Old Miss Macbeth    
Mariana    
The Man Who Made Friends With Electricity    
The Good New Days    
Gonna Roll the Bones    
America the Beautiful    

Bibliography

Blurb:
Fritz Leiber began writing science fiction in the 1940s and, to the delight of his fans, is still going strong. Perhaps best known for his Big Time series and the Hugo and Nebula awards winner Gonna Roll The Bones, Leiber succeeds in blending fantasy and science fiction in superbly readable fashion. This collection of twenty-two short stories is intended to demonstrate the development of his fascinating talent.

The collection includes

Gonna Roll The Bones – Joe Slattermill knew he could roll dice better than any man in Night Town. But then he played against the Big Gambler.
The Big Trek – He didn’t know where he was or how he got there. But he did know he shouldn’t be able to
understand the creatures he met.
Mariana – She flicked a switch that turned off the world . . . and the last one had her name on it.

This anthology includes a bibliography and an introduction by Fritz Leiber.

Raymond Rudorff – The Dracula Archives (1977)

Raymond Rudorff – The Dracula Archives (Sphere, 2nd edition, 1977)

Blurb:
The undead are haunting the night…

Out of the dim mists of the past, a mysterious narrator has reconstructed the terrible history of the House of Dracula.

He pieces together the letters and journals of seven people who became caught up in a web of terror, a nightmare that finally brought them face to face with a hellish legend turned to reality.

But what are this strange narrator’s motives? Why has he dedicated himself with such fervour to uncovering the long-lost secret of the Vampire Count?

Could it be that the old prophecy that the blood of Dracula would rise again has yet to be fulfilled?

John Stockholm – Succubus

John Stockholm – Succubus (Sphere 1985)

Cover illustration: Kevin Tweddell

Blurb:

Succubus: n. a fiend or devil who assumes female form and in such guise consorts wickedly with the souls of sleeping men

Uncanny things began to happen to Peter Conway almost as soon as he set foot in the remote Cornish village of Penthor. First there was the shipwreck, those two rotting corpses alongside the perfectly preserved body of the sea´s third victim. Then there was the beautiful, mauve-eyed woman whom he had greedily watched making love on the cliff-top, her aura of erotic energy seemingly reaching out to flicker all around him. And there was the reunion with his old friend Andrew, long devoted to other-worldly pursuits, who in the few short years since he had last seen him had aged by a quarter-century or more.

Yes, he thought with a shudder, there was in Penthor an unmistakable sense of evil, spiced with the heady, musky scent of forbidden lusts and passions. And even as he pondered on what he had seen, Penthor´s macabre miasma was sucking him in, enticing him deeper and deeper into the a dark and fearsome mystery enshrouded in necromancy, terror and death …