Books

Notes from The Cat House

Stephen Sondheim wisely said that content dictates form, and sometimes something short and tight is what seems necessary to what I want to say at that particular moment – not something a novel or novella would explore, nor even something the length of a short story.

 

What’s left but poetry?

 

Notes from The Cat House collects 60 poems from Jack Ketchum.

 

Contents:

  • Introduction
  • Johnnie Mack Brown
  • Hoboe’s Memoir
  • When I Am A Boy
  • Arthur
  • KU
  • KU Two
  • 11/11/87
  • Announcement
  • Beast
  • Contact
  • Cats Hide Nothing
  • Sleeping Woman
  • Fireflies
  • Hearts
  • For Caity
  • Christmas Day, 1969
  • To Lance And Cathy’s Child On The Afternoon Of Her Birth, July 9th, 1970
  • Billy’s Dad
  • Bethel, New York, August 16, 1969
  • A Terrible Thing
  • Wings
  • Michou
  • An Honest Word
  • Dreams The Luna Moth
  • Mondo Cane
  • St. John
  • Greece
  • Sword and Sandal
  • Cats’ Haiku For Paula On The Road
  • Question
  • Second Virgin
  • Rehearsal, Marat/Sade, 1969
  • Poetic
  • TV Guide
  • Mathematics
  • Vinni
  • Tragedy
  • The Teacher, 1969
  • Crisis
  • For Cujo
  • M.D.
  • Walk
  • Bethel, New York, August 16, 1969
  • Janis
  • A Promise
  • Morning Star
  • Imperatives
  • On “The Gates”, NYC
  • Catskill Morning Observation
  • The Letter
  • Clocking
  • Imperatives Two
  • Note
  • For Abbie Hoffman
  • For Julius Hoffman
  • KU You
  • For K.
  • Rituals
  • That Moment
  • For Philip H. Schreyer, 1924-2005
  • Old Age
  • Suicide Note #1
  • Empathy

The Girl Next Door

Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages or a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons – and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.

 

This edition also features the stories Do You Love Your Wife? and Returns.

 

Contents:

  • The Girl Next Door
  • Do You Love Your Wife?
  • Returns

What They Wrote

What They Wrote is a collection of introductions, reviews, and essays on books.

 

Contents:

  • Author’s Foreword
  • Edward Lee’s Quest for Sex, Truth and Reality, Introduction
  • On The Haunting of Hill House, Essay
  • Mysteries of the Word – by Stanley Wiater, Introduction
  • The Midnight Tour by Richard Laymon, Review
  • Judas Eyes – by Barry Hoffman, Introduction
  • Monochrome Love – The Alchemy of Love by Elisabeth Engstrom & Alan M. Clark, Introduction
  • The Painter Next Door – On Neal McPheeters, for an Unpublished Collection Introduction
  • Midlisters – by Kealan Patrick Burke, Introduction
  • Tessier and the Wolf – The Nightwalkers by Thomas Tessier, Introduction
  • In the Spirit by P.D. Cacek, Introduction
  • Bag of Bones by Stephen King, Review
  • On Chas. Balun: An Opinion of an Opinion, Introduction
  • “It’s the Dog Scene That Gets Me”, On John Carpenter’s The Thing
  • On Header, Needlepoint, and the Journal of American Medicine, Header by Edward Lee, Introduction
  • Fatal Journeys – by Lucy Taylor, Introduction
  • White and Other Tales of Ruin – by Tim Lebbon, Introduction
  • Dark Arts – Thomas F. Monteleone, Introduction
  • On I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, Article
  • Robert E. Howard’s Typewriter, SHIFTERS by Edward Lee & John Pelan, Introduction
  • Some Seeds Take – Strange Seed by T.M. Wright, Introduction
  • ‘What Rio Sees’ – All That I See – by Rio Youers, Introduction
  • From A Buick 8 by Stephen King, Review
  • A Short Peter Straub Companion, Written for the 2016 World Horror Convention Program Book

A Little Emerald Book of Ephemera

The fifth volume of the the second series of the popular “Little Books” collection from Borderlands Press collects essays, opinions, reflections, and even a few poems!

 

Contents:

  • NECON Fantasy #1
  • A Week in the Work-Life of a Non-Essential Author
  • Barflies
  • Remembering Charlie
  • Afterword to Tales from a Darker State
  • On Writing The Girl Next Door
  • Afterword to the Movie Tie-In Edition of The Girl Next Door
  • Introduction to the Film Script of The Girl Next Door
  • On The Lost
  • Foreword to Cover
  • Afterword to Hide and Seek
  • Afterword to Old Flames
  • On Writing Joyride
  • Afterword to Only Child aka Stranglehold
  • Afterword to The Unexpurgated Off Season
  • On Writing Offspring
  • Introduction to The Crossings
  • Afterword to Sleep Disorder
  • Elvis Ku
  • The I’m Not Sam Blogs
  • On John Carpenter’s The Thing

Ladies’ Night

Ladies’ Night is a non-stop rollercoaster ride of sheer nerve-rattling terror, deemed too violent for mass-market publication. In this modern tale of the ages-old battle of the sexes carried to the extreme, Jack Ketchum again provides readers with an excursion into horror as relentless as a John Woo film.

 

A word of caution, this book contains scenes of extreme violence, and is definitely not for the faint of heart.

The Crossings

It’s the Arizona Territory, 1848 – the year the Mexican War ended. Fate and blazing pistols have just thrown together reporter and part-time drunk Marion T. Bell and the very nearly legendary mustang and scout John Charles Hart in the Little Fanny Saloon in the town of Gable’s Ferry. A rough place in a lawless era.

 

Then one night Hart, Bell, and easygoing giant Mother Knuckles stumble upon Elena, a fierce, young, badly wounded Mexican woman, near the banks of the Colorado. She tells them about the torment she and her sister have endured at the hands of las hermanas de lupo, the deadly Valenzura Sisters and their henchman, Paddy Ryan, at the well-manned slave-camp across the river, aptly called Garanta el Diablo – Mouth of the Devil.

 

It’s just three hundred years since Cortez. Only three hundred years since the Old Gods of Mexico were in their full and fearsome flower. Tezcatlipoca, god of the moon and the night. Tlazolteotl, Eater of Filth. Xipe, Lord of the Flayed. Blood for rain. Blood for bounty. For many, like the Valenzura Sisters, they have never died.

 

And Elena’s sisters’s still there.

The Secret Life of Souls

A gripping family drama that brilliantly explores the relationship between a young girl and her dog—and the mysteries that lie within.

 

At the heart of this psychological suspense novel is the haunting depiction of a family’s fall and the extraordinary gifted dog, Caity, who knows the truth. As the drama unfolds Caity evolves from protector to savior, from scapegoat to prop, and eventually, from avenger to survivor. She is an unselfish soul in a selfish world—and she is written with depth and grace by authors Ketchum and Mckee, who display a profound understanding of a dog’s complex emotions. With her telling instincts and her capacity for joy and transformative love, Caity joins the pantheon of great dogs in contemporary literature.   

 

Eleven year old actress Delia Cross is beautiful, talented, charismatic. A true a star in the making. Her days are a blur of hard work on set, auditions and tutors. Her family—driven, pill­-popping stage mother Pat, wastrel dad Bart, and introverted twin brother Robbie—depends on her for their upscale lifestyle. Delia in turn depends on Caity, her beloved ginger Queensland Heeler—and loyal friend—for the calming private space they share. Delia is on the verge of a professional break through. But just as the contracts are about to be signed, there is a freak accident that puts Delia in the danger zone with only Caity to protect her.

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