Crimes of Passion: The Hot Blood Series
by Jeff Gelb
from Pinnacle
This ninth installment in the Hot Blood series shows no sign of flagging imagination on the part of the contributors--not surprisingly, because the concept of erotic horror encompasses everything dark and sensual that can happen between two beings (human or otherwise). In fact, in a time when only a few original (or mostly original) anthologies are published each year, Jeff Gelb's and Michael Garrett's has become one to bank on. The 13 stories in Crimes of Passion include three reprints (all from relatively obscure publications such as The Ontario Review) and 11 original tales, by such authors as Ramsey Campbell, Greg Kihn, Lawrence Block, Brian Hodge, Brian Lumley, Tom Piccirilli, and Joyce Carol Oates. There's not a bad story in the bunch, and several are strikingly effective--such as Kihn's acid-tripping nightmare in late '60s San Francisco, Hodge's Bram-Stoker-nominated tale about a woman who dives so far into submissive prostitution she seems to break through into an alternate reality, and Oates's superb portrait of a promiscuous drifter on a mission from God. --Fiona Webster
Hot Blood X (Hot Blood)
by Jeff Gelb
from Pinnacle
This 10th annual edition of the Hot Blood series amply proves that erotic horror is no passing fad: the physical and psychological connections between bodies in lust and bodies in extremis appear to stimulate the imaginations of horror writers as few other themes can. And the behavior of people in sexual situations is always open to new turns of the screw. As Lawrence Block writes in the effective opening tale, "Three in the Side Pocket," "People always got more interesting when you handed them something they didn't expect. Especially if it wasn't what they wanted. Especially if it was painful, or frightening, or both."
The 17 original tales in Hot Blood X include a brilliant, shocking story about radical body-sculpting by the underrecognized Brian Hodge, an atmospheric Civil War piece by Stephen Gresham, a wry suspended-time tale by Graham Masterton (inspired by Peter Weir's film Picnic at Hanging Rock), and a fine tale about fire fetishism by Bentley Little. The other well-crafted stories are by Ramsey Campbell, Max Allan Collins (with Barbara Collins), O'Neil De Noux, Dawn Dunn, Nancy Holder, Greg Kihn, Marthayn Pelegrimas (with Robert J. Randisi), Melanie Tem, Judy Tracy, Graham Watkins, and each of the editors (Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett).
If you aren't yet collecting the Hot Blood series, start now, before the previous volumes go out of print. Nearly every year, a tale in this series is a finalist or winner of a Bram Stoker Award. --Fiona Webster
In this tenth edition of Hot Blood, the original award-winning erotic horror series, fear has never felt so X-citing, X-quisite, or X-traordinary. Join seventeen of today's top authors as they X-pose the evil side of human -- and not-so-human -- nature.
Take a seat in a bar where "three in the side pocket" has nothing to do with pool....Sexercise in a gym with a woman whose appetite for murder is insatiable....
Enter a body-piercing shop where betrayl and revenge are on the tip of the customer's tongue....Get seduced by a horror groupie with a body to undie for....
Join two amateur filmakers as their video camera captures the most gorgeous -- and deadly -- creature anyone has ever encountered.
Dark Passions: Hot Blood XIII
by Jeff Gelb
from Kensington
Thirteen can be a lucky number...if you know where to look. Sink into the depths of desire, where passion ignites the darkest corridors of fear and want in these sizzling, suspenseful tales by today's most sinister writers of erotic horror.
A woman with a wayward husband discovers a final way to nail him once and for all...An adventurous, amorous rogue quests for an infamous prize that can grant him immortality--and discovers he may not want to live to regret it...The term "love of your life" takes a macabre twist when a man learns his wife has turned into a zombie...And belly up to a disturbing tale of a barfly who gets a shocking glimpse inside the boozy heads of his fellow drinkers...
Why deny it? Take a peek inside--who knows, you may just get lucky...
Deadly After Dark (The Hot Blood Series)
from Pocket
The fourth sizzling collection in the Hot Blood series, no longer available in retail book stores. Here is terror and passion beyond the last taboo in an all-new collection of erotic horror from today's fright masters--Jack Ketchum, Graham Masterton, Lucy Taylor and more.
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