The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Horror Noir: Where Cinema’s Dark Sisters Meet by Paul Meehan (McFarland & Company) examines the historical and thematic relationships between two of the cinema’s most popular genres: horror and film noir and ranges from the 1930s to Shutter Island. The Voices of Serial Killers by Christopher Berry-Dee (Ulysses Press) features profiles and interviews with some of the world’s “most maniacal murderers,” conducted by an investigative criminologist. Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre — How We Dignify the Dead by Sarah Murray (St. Martin’s Press) is a personal exploration of the many ways around the world that we send off the dead. Shadow Play: Philosophy and Psychology of the Modern Horror Film by Willy Greer (Midnight Marquee) is a horror survey that according to its publisher “delves into the dark psychology of the modern horror film to scare up those terrifying images that still manage to make us afraid of things that go bump in the night.” Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares by John Wooley (Wiley) is a portrait of the American director. Stephen King: A Literary Companion by Rocky Wood (McFarland & Company) is an encyclopedic guide to King’s work, including a bibliography of the author’s fiction and poetry. Deformed and Destructive Beings: the Purpose of Horror Films by George Ochoa (McFarland & Company) offers the theory that the primary reason movie audiences like horror films is that “monsters satisfy the audience’s desire to know the extremities of being, in particular those beings too fantastic and dangerous to know in real life,” (which seems to me, awfully limiting). The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death by John Gray (Penguin). The first section probes the founding of the Society of Psychical Research in 1882 by a small group of scientists, scholars, and politicians. The second examines the beliefs of a band of Bolshevik intelligentsia that lead to the formation of The Immortalization Commission, intended to preserve Lenin’s corpse until his ultimate resurrection. The third section is devoted to exploring contemporary attempts to impose immortality on humankind. Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford (University of New Mexico) is an objective investigation in the existence of this recent addition to cryptozoology. Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend, and Popular Culture edited by S. T. Joshi (Greenwood) covers books, movies, television, folklore, and world mythology and is aimed at the library rather than the trade market.