book cover of Walls of Fear
 

Walls of Fear

(1990)
An anthology of stories edited by

 
 
Publisher's Weekly
A sequel and companion volume to the praised Architecture of Fear , this anthology of 16 previously unpublished stories should delight fans of contemporary horror. In her chatty, scholarly introduction, Cramer explains the unifying theme: horror stories in which a building plays a prominent role (she alludes to ''the metaphor of house as mind''). Featured structures include, as might be expected, an ancient familial castle (Chet Williamson's ''The Cairnwell Horror'') and an isolated house perched high above the raging sea (Susan Palwick's ''Erosion''). Ian Wilson's ''Happy Hour'' is set in an old British pub, while James Morrow's ''Tales From a New England Telephone Directory'' casts a malevolent telephone booth as its villain. Richard A. Lupoff's fact-based ''The House on Rue Chartres'' tells of a New Orleans meeting between classic horror authors H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price in a house of a bawdy sort. Perhaps most effective is Karl Edward Wagner's ''Cedar Lane,'' a painful tale about all the might-have-beens contained in each human life and the aftermath of civilization's most threatening horror of all.

Library Journal
A Scottish castle's dungeons hide a morbid legacy in Chet Williamson's ''The Cairnwell Horror,'' while a nondescript telephone booth conceals a curse of a different color in James Morrow's ''Tales from a New England Telephone Directory'' in this collection of 16 original stories which pay tribute to the haunted house in all its guises. Jonathan Carroll, Ian Watson, Gene Wolfe, Sharon Baker, and other sf, fantasy, and horror writers display a wide variety of styles in this uneven but intriguing companion to The Architecture of Fear ( LJ 10/15/87). For large libraries.

Genre: Horror

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