‘The blood shone black as liquid night, as the River of the Underland. It tasted meat-thick, and salt, and sweet, familiar as wine or milk or oil. He gulped it down and down. And as he drank, every physical apparatus of his body shone within as if with cores of fire.’
Presenting twenty tales of vampire horror from acclaimed fantasy and horror writer Tanith Lee. Selected from Tanith’s incredible body of writing, the stories represent a journey through time into darkness from which you may not emerge unscathed.
From the Roman Empire to cursed Dukes; from sickly sisters to haunted Ladies; from the Parisian underground to a far-flung and unknowable future: Tanith Lee’s incredible imagination knows no bounds, and the horrors and visions revealed by her words will stay with you forever.
Including five stories original to this collection and 15 previously published works, this book represents Tanith Lee at the very height of her literary powers. Drink deep, and never forget …
With illustrations by Carolyn Edwards (except in the Nook e-book version).
‘A damn near perfect collection of stories, one in which every piece has something unique to offer, be it invention, beautiful prose, originality of thought, or characterisation that reflects back the reader’s own soul.’ Peter Tennant, Black Static
‘”Winter Flowers” reads like a classic from Weird Tales with prose like this: “The lamps had all gone out and the changeless fire was sunken low, livid hovering lizard tongues on the remnants of the wood like blackened bones.” There is, sometimes, more to reading than the story. Films can do a story, sometimes better than text but only prose can give you this special kind of pleasure and this book is full of it … She writes beautifully. Vampires have become somewhat stale through overuse and ill-use in the twilight of our soi-disant civilisation, but there are still a few excellent examples of how they should be done and this is one of the best. Recommended.’ Eamonn Murphy, SFCrowsNest
338pp. 6×9-format paperback collection.
ISBN: 978-1-84583-909-3
Published 25 March 2015
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tanith Lee was born in North London (UK) in 1947. Because her parents were professional dancers (ballroom, Latin American) and had to live where the work was, she attended a number of truly terrible schools, and didn’t learn to read – she was also dyslexic – until almost age 8. And then only because her father taught her. This opened the world of books to Lee, and by 9 she was writing. After much better education at a grammar school, Lee went on to work in a library. This was followed by various other jobs – shop assistant, waitress, clerk – plus a year at art college when she was 25-26. In 1974 this mosaic ended when DAW Books of America, under the leadership of Donald A Wollheim, bought and published Lee’s The Birthgrave, and thereafter 26 of her novels and collections.
Lee went on to write around 90 books, and approaching 300 short stories. Four of her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC; she also wrote two episodes (‘Sarcophagus’ and ‘Sand’) for the TV series Blake’s 7. Some of her stories regularly get read on Radio 7.
Lee wrote in many styles in and across many genres, including Horror, SF and Fantasy, Historical, Detective, Contemporary-Psychological, Children and Young Adult. Her preoccupation, though, was always people.
In 1992 she married the writer-artist-photographer John Kaiine, her companion since 1987. They lived on the Sussex Weald, near the sea, in a house full of books and plants, with two black and white overlords called cats.
Tanith Lee passed away on 24 May 2015.
David J. Howe –
From Peter Tennant, BLACK STATIC Magazine
‘I was reading BLOOD 20: TALES OF VAMPIRE HORROR with a feature on Tanith Lee’s work in mind when the sad news broke that the author had passed away. I could have asked for no finer demonstration of how much of value our genre lost on that day than this book.’
‘A damn near perfect collection of stories, one in which every piece has something unique to offer, be it invention, beautiful prose, originality of thought, or characterisation that reflects back the reader’s own soul.’
Eamonn Murphy –
https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/blood-20-tales-of-vampire-horror-by-tanith-lee-book-review/
“‘Winter Flowers’ reads like a classic from ‘Weird Tales’ with prose like this: ‘The lamps had all gone out and the changeless fire was sunken low, livid hovering lizard tongues on the remnants of the wood like blackened bones.’ There is, sometimes, more to reading than the story. Films can do a story, sometimes better than text but only prose can give you this special kind of pleasure and this book is full of it … She writes beautifully. Vampires have become somewhat stale through overuse and ill-use in the twilight of our soi-disant civilisation, but there are still a few excellent examples of how they should be done and this is one of the best. Recommended.”
Eamonn Murphy