Robert R. McCammon – Baal

Robert R. McCammon – Baal (Sphere, 1979: 1989)

Steve Crisp (1989 edition)

Blurb:

A woman is ravished, and to her a child is born, unleashing an unimaginable evil upon the world! And they call him BAAL in the orphanage, where he leads the children on a rampage of violence in California, where he appears as the head of a deadly Manson-like cult in Kuwait, where crazed millions heed his call to murder and orgy. They call him BAAL in the Artic’s hellish wasteland, where he is tracked by the only three men with the will to stop him: Zark, the Shaman; Virga, the aging professor of Theology; and Michael, the powerful, mysterious stranger.

1979 edition

Robert R. McCammon – Bethany’s Sin

Robert R. McCammon – Bethany’s Sin (Sphere, 1980; 1989)

Bethany's Sin, Sphere 1989 edition. Artwork Steve Crisp

When Evan Reid brought his wife and small daughter to Bethany’s Sin it seemed the perfect setting. A small village, far from the noise and pollution of the city, it was quaint and very peaceful.
Too peaceful. There were no sounds at all . . . almost as if the night had been frightened into silence.
Then Evan noticed there were very few men in the village, and that those he knew of were crippled. And sometimes he thought he heard the sound of horses galloping in the dead of night.
Soon he would know the superhuman secret that kept the village alive. And he would watch in horror as Kay and Laurie underwent a hideous transformation right before his eyes.
He would know the terror that happened at night — and only to men … in Bethany’s Sin.

Visit Goathunter’s excellent official Robert R. McCammon site.

Clive Barker – The Damnation Game

Clive Barker – The Damnation Game (Sphere, 1986)

Cover illustration by Steve Crisp

Blurb:

`IT WAS AN ODD DISEASE. ITS SYMPTOMS WERE LIKE INFATUATION – PALPITATIONS, SLEEPLESSNESS. ITS ONLY CERTAIN CURE,
DEATH…’

Chance had ruled Marty Strauss’ life for as long as he could remember. Now at last luck was turning his way.
Parolled from prison, he becomes bodyguard to Joseph Whitehead, one of the richest men in Europe.
But Whitehead has also played with chance – an ancient game which gave him vast power and wealth, in exchange for his immortal soul.

Now the forces he played against are back to claim what’s theirs. Terrifying forces, with the power to raise the dead; and Marty is trapped between his human masters and Hell itself, with just one last, desperate game left to play …

I think Clive Barker is so good that l am almost literally tongue-tied  – Stephen King
‘Clive Barker writes about horrors most of us would scarcely dare imagine’ – Ramsey Campbell
`The most impressive first novel I’ve read for a long, long time. Touches of sheer brilliance throughout ‘ – James Herbert

Peter Tremayne – Angelus!

Peter Tremayne – Angelus! (Sphere, 1985)

The Most Evil Horror Wears The Mask Of Innocence

SEND NOT TO ASK FOR WHAT THE BELL TOLLS
IT TOLLS FOR STARK, BLOODY HORROR …
The exclusive college of St Peter Damian stood in one of the most beautiful parts of the remote Irish countryside.
Yet there was nothing beautiful about the nightmare sequence of rape, mutilation and gruesome death that beset the college that fatal autumn.
Ed Devlin, the young Irish-American tutor who thought he’d achieved a lifelong ambition in getting a post at St Peter Damian, had no idea of the vicious vortex of slaughter into which he was about to be drawn. Soon the regular ringing of the college’s Angelus bell took on overtones of demonic terror as it tolled out ever more horrific messages of carnage most foul …