Books

Off Season: The Unexpurgated Edition
Off Season: The Unexpurgated Edition (Sterling Edition)
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Off Season: The Unexpurgated Edition

This edition restores cuts made for the original Ballantine paperback edition.

 

From the Afterword:

 

“I have very few regrets as a writer…A particularly graceless line here and there. An occasional bad edit. And that’s about it except for what happened to Off Season. What happened, exactly, was negotiation.

 

When Marc Jaffe at Ballantine bought the book it was on the condition that I’d be willing to rewrite. And I was. Of course I was. It was my first novel and I was delighted to have the contract. Did they think I was crazy? I’d rewrite in a minute. We were all very much aware that the book was over-the-top violence-wise, that it had the kind of teeth pretty much unseen before in mass-market fiction. It was just that quality that they were buying. But I knew I’d have to make some cuts.

 

I just wasn’t prepared for them to want so many.

 

…There were times we fought through paragraphs line by line. Word by word.

 

…This went on for a couple of weeks.

 

By then my manuscript was sporting a lot of red ink. [The editor’s] notepad had a lot of scratch-outs.

 

When it was over I went home and a few weeks later produced [this] version of Off Season… The original I tossed in the garbage.

 

Yeah, yeah, I know. You don’t have to tell me. I’m an asshole. What can I say?

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The Girl Next Door
The Girl Next Door (lettered edition)
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The Girl Next Door

Somebody’s Knocking’…

 

Suburbia in the 1950s. A nice quiet simpler time to grow up – unless you count the McCarthy trials and red-scares and the shadow of the Bomb, and the Cold War, unless you could see the dark side emerging. And on a quiet tree-lined dead-end street, in the dark damp basement of the Chandler house, it’s emerging big-time for teenage Meg and her crippled sister Susan – whose parents are dead now, who are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant Aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons – and finally an entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, tortuous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make. Between love and compassion, and lust and evil.

 

Features an introduction by Stephen King.

 

Limited Editions also feature afterwords by Christopher Golden, Lucy Taylor, Edward Lee, Philip Nutman, and Stanley Wiater, and are signed by all contributors, including Neal McPheeters, who provided the cover art.

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Offspring
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Offspring (UK)

The local sheriff of Dead River, Maine, thought he’d killed them off ten years ago – a primitive, cave-dwelling tribe of predatory savages. But he failed. Somehow the clan survived. To breed. To hunt. To kill and eat. And if the peaceful residents of Dead River are to survive, they too must unless their primal instincts. For blood…

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Off Season
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Off Season (UK)

This edition is slightly different than the original American edition, but not as complete as The Unexpurgated Edition.

 

From the Afterword to The Unexpurgated Edition (edited to avoid possible spoilers):

 

“There was one…change I made…for the British paperback.

 

At the very end of the original, [a character is] in the ambulance, shot up with painkillers and speculating through her haze on whether these people who are treating her are paramedics or doctors. She hoped they were doctors, reads the line.

 

A few months after the book was published I got a letter from a fan who said he’d enjoyed the read immensely. Until he got to that line.

 

He went on to say that he was in fact a paramedic and in [her] situation, she’d be far better off in the hands of a trained ambulance crew than with a bunch of doctors. I checked it out and he was right of course. Whoops. I hadn’t done my homework. I wrote back and apologized and thanked him for bringing the error to my attention and promised that if the book ever went into another printing anywhere I’d fix it.

 

In ’95 the Brits at Headline came along and I did.“

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Only Child
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Only Child (Stranglehold) (UK)

Released as Stranglehold in the United States.

 

Arthur Danse doesn’t live by the normal rules. He knows he has been put on earth for a purpose – to show people the the world is a dark and terrible place. To say no to Arthur Danse is to receive a lesson in fear and pain. No matter who you are. Wife…lover…stranger…or eight-year-old son.

 

Lydia McCloud is one of life’s givers. A nurse whose own hard upbringing gives her a special sympathy for those in need. Lydia doesn’t discover the real Arthur until it’s far too late. Until she’s married to him and their son Robert has become the centre of her world. And she’s forced into the battle of her life for the sake of her only child…

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Road Kill
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Road Kill (Joyride) (UK)

Released as Joyride in the United States.

 

Wayne keeps a record of offences. The kids who trash his fence, the dog that dumps in his yard, the guys  who give him stress in the bar – they’re all in his book. He hasn’t hit back yet, though the urge is strong. He’ll give in one day. He wonders why he hasn’t dared. So far.

 

Carole doesn’t want to do it but murder seems like the only solution. The only way to solve the problem of her ex – drunken, sadistic, clever. If the courts can’t protect her and the police can’t keep him away, how else will she ever be free?

 

On the sunny mountainside, above the creek, that’s where Carole has the courage to solve her problem. Her lover, Lee, has the baseball bat but she’s the one with the rock – and the nerve and desperation to crush a man’s skull and pitch him off a mountain.

 

Wayne sees it all. Every moment. It’s the very best day of his life. Because it points the way down the road for him. The killing road. And the way he plans it, he and Carole and Lee are all going to do a little traveling together…

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Стервятники
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Стервятники (“Vultures”) (Off Season and Offspring) (Russia)

Translated by Vyacheslav Shutov.

 

From a 2017 Interview with Darker Magazine (in Russian):

 

Readers in Russia know you mainly from the rather messy-made edition of «Vultures» [Off Season] and «Stai» [Offspring].The nineties were a paradise for horror lovers in Russia, although most publishers wanted to spit on copyright, high-quality covers / translations, etc. What do you think about this book? Did you receive any money for it?

 

Not a cent. These books were stolen by the editor of a magazine…and sold without my knowledge. Then one day I received this book in hardcover by mail, on the cover – a frightened man in the form of either a New York policeman, or the pilot of a Nazi attack plane, surrounded by zombie-like creatures. There was no return address, so where she came from, I don’t know.

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Meine besten Erzählungen
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Meine besten Erzählungen (Germany)

Für diese Festa-Sammlerausgabe hat Jack Ketchum noch selbst seine besten Erzählungen ausgewählt, bevor er im Januar 2018 überraschend starb. Leider hat er es nicht mehr geschafft, diese Ausgabe auch zu signieren.

 

34 Erzählungen in deutscher Erstveröffentlichung. Geschichten voller Schrecken, die mehr als nur Unterhaltungsliteratur sind. Ketchum steigt tief hinab in die dunklen Abgründe der Psyche.

 

Stephen King nannte Jack Ketchum den »furchteinflößendsten Autor Amerikas«. Seine Storys werden dich ängstigen und einige sind so verstörend, dass du das Buch einfach zur Seite legen musst, bis sich dein Pulsschlag wieder normalisiert hat.

 

For this  collector’s edition from Festa, Jack Ketchum personally selected his best stories before he unexpectedly passed away in January, 2018. Unfortunately he was unable to sign this edition. This book contains 34 stories published in German for the first time.

 

These stories are full of horrors that are more than just entertaining literature. Ketchum descends deep into the dark abyss of the psyche. Stephen King called Jack Ketchum “America’s most frightening author.”

 

These stories will not only scare you but some are so disturbing that you will have to put the book aside until your heart rate returns to normal.

 

Translated by Patrick Baumann

Illustrated by Jana Heidersdorf

 

Contents:

  • Jack Ketchum – Meister des (ganz alltäglichen) Grauens (Vorwart von Thorsten Hanisch)
  • Die Schachtel (The Box)
  • Die Rose (The Rose)
  • Schlangen (Snakes)
  • Das Gewehr (The Rifle)
  • Das große Schäbige-Flittchen-Massaker von San Diego (The Great San Diego Sleazy Bimbo Massacre)
  • Winterkind (Winter Child)
  • Feuertanz (Firedance)
  • Die Ausfahrt von Toledo Blade Boulevard (The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard)
  • Wenn der Penny fällt (When the Penny Falls)
  • Megan’s Law
  • Pech (Luck)
  • Vater und Sohn (Father and Son)
  • Sonntage (Sundays)
  • Zwillinge (Twins)
  • Für immer (Forever)
  • Verschwunden (Gone)
  • Das Spuklokal (The Haunt)
  • Mutter und Tochter (Mother and Daughter)
  • Rückkehr (Returns)
  • Abschnitt Zwei (Station Two)
  • Das tapfere Mädchen (Brave Girl)
  • Vertrauensbasis (Honor System)
  • Feierabend (Closing Time)
  • Olivia: Ein Monolog (Olivia: A Monologue)
  • Monster
  • Meerlandschaft (Seascape)
  • Der Besucher (The Visitor)
  • Hotline
  • Der Tyrann (Bully)
  • Das Richtige (The Right Thing)
  • Oldies
  • Wach (Awake)
  • Nachschlag (Seconds)
  • Der Gorilla in meinem Zimmer (Gorilla in My Room)
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