R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Unbidden

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Unbidden (Tandem, 1971: Pyramid, 1975)

Chris Achilleos

No One Lived There
Why Don’t You Wash? Said The Girl With £100,000 And No Relatives
Don’t Go Up Them Stairs
The Gatecrasher
A Family Welcome
Crowning Glory
The Devilet
Come To Me My Flower
The Playmate
Pussy Cat – Pussy Cat
A Penny For A Pound
The Head Of The Firm
The Treasure Hunt
The Death Of Me
Tomorrow Is Judgement Day
The House

Ralph Comer – The Mirror Of Dionysos

Ralph Comer – The Mirror Of Dionysos   (Tandem, 1969: USA as To Dream Of Evil, Award, 1969)

 

Blurb:
The flicker of moonlight in the mirror was hypnotic, and a sudden wave of nausea swept over him. The mirror changed to a kaleidoscope of whirling colours, swelled to a vortex into which he felt himself failing …..

He stood on the sand, and a faint moon lit the arena with a gloomy radiance. The beginnings of fear caressed the nape of his neck as he recognised the cause of the elongated shadow in the middle distance. With an infinitely painful and shuffling gait, the shadow — man or animal, he could not tell — ambled across the sand towards him. Every fibre of his body, every nerve and sinew, willed themselves to flee from the stumbling horror, which, as it closed on him, raised its mutilated head and called out a travesty of his name.

See also The Mirror Of Dionysos thread on Vault forum

Ralph Martin – The Man Who Haunted Himself

Ralph Martin – The Man Who Haunted Himself   (Tandem, 1970)

 

Blurb:
Popular and successful, happily married, all his ambitions achieved …
So why did his wife doubt his faithfulness?
Why was his best friend sure he had something to hide?
Why did his colleagues suspect him of double-dealing?
Who -or what -was trying to wreck his life?
Associated British Productions presents
Roger Moore in Michael Relph and Basil Dearden’s film
THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF
also starring Olga Georges-Picot
and introducing Hildegard Neil

See also The Man Who Haunted Himself thread on Vault forum

Charles Birkin – Dark Menace

Charles Birkin – Dark Menace (Tandem, 1968)

Dark Menace
Happy As Larry
S.O.S.
The Jungle
T-I-M
The Life Giver
‘Don’ t Ever Leave Me’
The Yellow Dressing Gown
Waiting for Trains
The Lord God Made Them All
The Accessory
Simple Simon
Siren Song

includes perhaps his grimmest war story after the nororious ‘A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts’, Waiting For Trains:  “Would the horror of this war, even in its aftermath, never end?”

Dresselberg. At the close of WWII, George Barrow, a reluctant railway transport officer in the occupying army, is powerless to prevent a train crossing the border into Soviet territory due, in part, to the indifference of his superiors who can’t be bothered to check one of the prisoner’s credentials for fear of causing a diplomatic incident. The cattle trucks are crammed with young Russian immigrants who’d been conscripted into the German army and are therefore “traitors”. When the train reaches Glenheisen they will be killed and buried in a mass grave, as have so many before them. Depressingly, this one is even bereft of the “relax – it’s only a story” get-out clause.

Catherine Arley – Dead Man’s Bay

Catherine Arley – Dead Man’s Bay (Tandem, 1970: originally Collins, 1959. Translated from the French by Jehanne-Marie Marchesi )

Blurb:
“Can be confidently recommended to those who enjoy this particular form of blood refrigeration” – Sunday Times
“As sharp as a broken bottle” – Daily Mail
“An agreeably horrible little tale” – Spectator

Two days alone in the cliff-top house, in the bleak isolation of the Breton coast. What could happen in only forty-eight hours to bring her to the brink of madness?
Small incidents; trivial – but so inexplicable.
Who had put the kettle to boil on the stove?
Why was the cuff-link on the floor?
How did the cat die so unaccountably, so grotesquely?
Was she responsible? Was she losing her memory, her reason?
Or was some human agency controlling this gradual crescendo of terror?

David Forrest – The Undertaker’s Dozen

David Forrest – The Undertaker’s Dozen (Tandem, 1974)

Terror can have such simple beginnings—a child’s letter to Father Christmas…a lovely girl glimpsed in a London street…a spin down the Brighton Road…a night spent in an empty mansion for a bet.

And the consequences can be so fearsome, as the unsleeping dead walk again, as strange emotions stir inanimate things to murderous life, as horrors beyond our imagining cross the threshold into everyday life; can anyone be sure that all is as it seems?

After you have read this book, can you?

The Cynic
The Ghostwriter
Shingle
Whoever You May Be …
Boys Will Be ….
The Pilgrimage
The Wrong Christmas Spirit
The Voyager
The Finger Man
Pillion Rider
The Blackamoor
The Undertaker’s Dozen
Spare Parts Inc.

Thanks to Mark Samuels for providing the blurb, cover scan and contents of this one. You can Mark’s plot-outlines on Vault’s Undertaker’s Dozen thread here.

Richard Davis – Tandem Horror 2

Richard Davis (ed) – Tandem Horror 2 (Tandem, 1968)

 

Angus James – Working for Miss Arethusa
Robin Smyth – The Dooley Street Centre Forward
J. Ramsey Campbell – Reply Guaranteed
Rosemary Timperley – Ice in Their Laughter
Julia Birley – Dead on His Feet
Walter Harris – The Forgiver
Simon Pilkington – The Inheritance
Elizabeth Fancett – I’m Not Mad Yet
D. E. Piper – From Our Special Correspondent
J. Ramsey Campbell – The Stocking
Richard Davis – The Lady by the Stream
Rosemary Timperley – Voices in the Night
Michel Parry – The Last Bus

Thanks to Steve and Charles Black for providing the cover scan and details for this one.

And thanks to D. F. Lewis for giving me his copy!

Richard Davis – Tandem Horror 3

Richard Davis (ed) – Tandem Horror 3: Haunting Tales Of Unseen Terrors (Tandem, 1969)

 

The raw material of horror is everyday life. Who would admit to being frightened by the age-old clanking of the fettered ghost — but what made the window curtains shiver on a windless night?
And the face in the mirror; you see it several times a day, and it smiles when you smile, and frowns when you frown — but if one day it remained expressionless, whose reflection would it be?
Here is a collection of spine-creeping tales to make you look warily over your shoulder.

Introduction – Richard Davis
Dennis Piper – The Snowman
John Burke – The Tourists
Rosemary Timperley – What Happened To Sally?
Richard Davis – The Sick Room
Ramsey Campbell – Cyril
Julia Birley – Sawdust Caeser
David Campton – Alderman Stratton’s Fancy
Audrey Johnson – Takeover Bid
Elizabeth M. Fancett – Museum Piece