Books

Gorilla in My Room

Jack Ketchum is back with a brand new short story collection, full of the horror and terror we’ve come to love and expect from the author Stephen King has called, “one of the best in the business.”

 

What Ketchum has crafted in these stories are portrayals of the starkest, darkest aspects of the human condition. These stories are enthralling, expertly constructed, and very very powerful. Some will put a lump in your throat. Some will have you squirming. Some might be so intense and disturbing that they leave you no choice but to put it aside for awhile, catch your breath, and finish when you’ve worked up the guts.

 

This is fiction that does far more than “entertain,” and it goes far beyond what we expect when we read “horror.” No haunted houses here, no pitchfork-wielding devils with horns on their heads. The only monsters are the very worst kind: humans.

 

Contents:

  • Gorilla Intro (by Edward Lee)
  • Gorilla in My Room
  • The Western Dead
  • Bully
  • Listen
  • Polaroids
  • Squarely Shirley (with Lucky McKee)
  • Group of Thirty
  • Winter Child
  • Cow (with Lucky McKee)
  • The Transformed Mouse
  • The Right Thing
  • Awake
  • That Moment
  • Oldies
  • Seconds

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.

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

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

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: Collector’s Edition Screenplay

The Girl Next Door Collector’s Edition Screenplay is  screenplay adaptation of the novel  The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. The book is loosely based on true events surrounding the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens by Gertrude Baniszewski during the summer of 1965. Set in 1958, the screenplay follows the story of two adolescent girls, Meg and Susan who, upon losing their parents in an accident, are sent to live with their Aunt Ruth Chandler, a sadistic psychopath, and their three cousins. The screenplay was written by Daniel Farrands and Philip Nutman.

Turning Japanese: Articles, 1997 to 2007, for Asian Cult Cinema

Turning Japanese offers an insight into films that “pushed the edge of the envelope” as reviewed by Jack Ketchum in Asian Cult Cinema Magazine. Several films by Katsuya Matsumura, Yahuharu Hasebe, Ran Masaki, and Takashi Miike are covered. Among the titles reviewed are: the All Night Long series, Assault! Jack the Ripper, Snake and Whip, Audition, Visitor Q, and the Flower and Snake films.

I’m Not Sam

Now I’m way beyond confusion.

 

Now I’m scared.

 

I’ve slid down the rabbit-hole and what’s down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she’s having. She’s changed, somehow overnight. I don’t know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you’d thread a belt through the loops of your jeans.

 

And now I’m shivering too.

 

In some fundamental way she’s changed…

 

Contents:

  • I’m Not Sam
  • Who’s Lily?

Triptych: Three Short Plays

This short collection compiles three plays.  The first, Kill: A Confession for the Stage – is the final stage play Ketchum ever wrote…inspired by the Boston Strangler Case – it is powerful, and eerie.  Also included in this are Drive-In Movie – which Ketchum also penned for theathre, and a short piece titled Olivia: A Monologue.

The Woman

The Woman is the powerful story of the last survivor of a feral tribe of cannibals who have terrorized the east coast from Maine into Canada for years now. Badly wounded in a battle with police, she takes refuge in a cave overlooking the sea. Christopher Cleek is a slick, amoral — and unstable — country lawyer who, out hunting one day, sees her bathing in a stream. Fascinated, he follows her to her cave. Cleek has many dark secrets and to these he’ll add another. He will capture her, lock in his fruit cellar, and tame her, civilize her. To this end he’ll enlist his long-suffering wife Belle, his teenage son and daughter Brian and Peg, and even his little girl Darlin’, to aid him. So the question becomes, who is more savage? The hunter or the game?

Old Flames

Burned again. Men never treated Dora well. This latest cheated on her and dumped her. The last decent guy she knew was her old high school boyfriend, Jim. He’d said that he loved her. Maybe he did. So with the help of the Flame Finders, Dora’s found him again. Turns out he’s married with two kids. But Dora isn’t about to let that stand in her way…

 

Also contains the novella Right to Life.

 

Contents:

  • Old Flames
  • Right to Life

Book of Souls

Where does inspiration come from? What secrets lie at the heart of an author’s stories and novels? What is written on the invisible ink between the lines of dialogue and description? Most writers will never tell you, will leave you to guess at the connections between their fiction and their lives.

 

Jack Ketchum gives a rare and intimate look into his world and into some of the people who have influenced his life in this collection of essays. Idols and friends, lovers and strangers are revealed, examined, adored and lamented as only Jack Ketchum can.

 

Contents:

  • Henry Miller and the Push
  • The Dust of the Heavens
  • Risky Living: A Memoir
  • Us Again (with Carolyn Kessaratos Shea)

Closing Time and Other Stories

Closing Time and Other Stories is a  collection of 19 stories that have never been published together before. The book contains Closing Time (the Bram Stoker Award winning novella), hard-to-find recent stories and one original, previously unpublished story, Hotline.  To further enhance the collection, is an afterword for each story.

 

The lettered edition contains four poems that do not appear in the numbered edition.

 

Contents:

  • Returns
  • Damned If You Do
  • Station Two
  • Elusive
  • Papa
  • The Fountain
  • Do You Love Your Wife?
  • At Home With The VCR
  • Those Rockports Won’t Get You Into Heaven
  • Olivia: A Monologue
  • Brave Girl
  • Honor System
  • Lighten Up
  • Hotline
  • Monster
  • Consensual
  • Seascape
  • Snarl, Hiss, Spit, Stalk
  • Closing Time

Richard Laymon: Tributes

Jack has written several tributes to the late Richard Laymon. They are collected together here as an exclusive promotional chapbook from Gauntlet Press, to accompany their publication of Closing Time and Other Stories.

Olivia: A Monologue

A unique Jack Ketchum collectable, suitable for framing in your home or office.

 

Olivia, is a 500+ word monologue (that ties in with the novel The Lost), written by Jack Ketchum, and illustrated with a woodcut print.  It is a 13 x 20 inch Letterpress Broadside printed on Acid Free Cotton Somerset Velvet Cover, signed by by both Jack Ketchum and the artist, Katie Wynne.

 

Weed Species

WEED SPECIES: In ecology. An invasive species, also called an invasive exotic, is an organism that is intentionally or accidentally introduced to an area where it is not native, and where it successfully invades and disturbs natural ecosystems, displacing native species. The term is most often applied to, but not limited to, plants. See also kudzu, water hyacinth, zebra mussel, Burmese python, eco-tourism, sociopath.

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