Read “Crossing the Border” by Barry N. Malzberg in his collection “Collecting Myself.” Story written for the Resnick anthology “Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.” More from both books as this report progresses.

Also from the Malzberg book read “Gotterdamerung” which appeared in “After The King.” That was a Tolkien tribute anthology that couldn’t use any of his characters or settings. Malzberg’s story goes to an earlier, similar source also involving a ring. A clever set up and a clever ending.

Malzberg’s “It Comes From Nothing” first appeared in “Weird Tales From Shakespeare,” which I read thirty years ago but I didn’t remember this one. A grim and tragic riff on “King Lear.”

Fourth in a row from “Collecting Myself.” Malzberg’s “These the Inheritors” from the Resnick anthology “Space Cadets.” Sci-fi, the Talmud and alien invaders in a grim horror story.

Read “In the Heart Of Kalikuata” by Tobias S. Bucknell in the Resnick anthology “Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.” Very Kipling-esque.

From the same anthology John Teehan’s “A Small Goddess” was well worth the time. It made me smile! (I looked up Teehan: he’s still around and does some scholarly writing and the occasional short story.)

And read “A Woman’s Touch” by Ralph Roberts” from same anthology. An interesting take on ending war with a deliberate reference to “Star Trek.”

Read Leigh Brackett’s “The Last Days Of Shandakor.” Brilliant.

Am bumming through some of C.L. Moore’s stories hoping to emulate her for a story I’m working on. Read some of the Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories. Started reading “Black God’s Kiss.”

Read a PDF of a fun urban fantasy/horror novel someone I know wrote. She’s busy editing and has a sequel done.

Celebrated Halloween early November First by reading “The Ballad Of the Flexible Bullet,” a Stephen King story I hadn’t read. It’s from 1984 and I saw some of King’s own admitted drug and alcohol abuse in the character. (He would sober up not long after the story was published. Glad he’s okay.) Scene with the typewriter, the piece of wallpaper and the typing was genuinely frightening.

The story has a gripping pace that increases toward the uncertainty of the last line…

Finally read J. Scott Coatsworth’s novella “Between the Lines.” Funny and sweet.

Also read the regular online offerings by Kaje Harper and E. H. Timms. Wouldn’t miss them!

I got Julian Hawthorne’s collection “David Poindexter’s Disappearance” and read the title story; a twisty tale set in the Eighteenth Century involving an inheritance. Read “My Friend Paton,” another crime story with maybe a ghost. Melodramatic but fun. The stories remind me of the books Mr. Foster in High School used to tell us about and make fun of. But Hawthorne’s are without the ridiculous improbabilities.

Stumbled across B. M. (Bithia Mary) Croker in an Oxford World Classics anthology “Late Victorian Gothic Tales.” I don’t think I’d heard of her before, but I realized I have several of her stories in a FlameTreePress 451 anthology “Indian Ghost Stories.” Her story in the Oxford book was “The Dak Bungalow at Dakor.” Variant on the travelers-stay-at-the-haunted-inn story but done very well. Irish-born Croker spent time in India accompanying her husband who was in the Scots Guard, and her writing was compared with Kipling. Unlike Kipling, her narrators here are outsiders not soldiers or natives.

Also from the Oxford anthology I read two stories by the French writer Jean Lorrain: “Magic Lantern,” and “The Spectral Hand.” Translated by Brian Stableford, Lorrain was something of a gossip columnist and his stories do a lot of name-dropping of real people and events. The first, just a catalog of impressions of people at a theater. The second about a man who has a ghostly premonition that comes true. Both stories had the ring of truth to them.

From the same anthology, I read “Pallinghurst Barrow” by Grant Allen. A tale of ancient prehistoric mounds in Britain and ghosts. I’d never read Allen before. He was better known for his scientific writings and is even referenced in H. G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine.

For Robert Arthur’s November 10^th birthday, I was going to re-read one of his stories but ended up just skimming through an issue of “Mysterious Traveler Magazine” and reading snippets of his story “Mystery Of the Three Blind Mice.”

Finally got around to reading in John Maddox Roberts’ historical mystery novel “The Temple Of the Muses,” which I actually started reading about twenty years ago and resumed reading this year. Wonderful descriptions of Alexandria and the surrounding area in the time of Julius Caesar.

And I skimmed through Oscar Wilde’s “Picture Of Dorian Grey,” looking for one scene.

I just noticed; I’ve been posting these Reading Reports on a monthly basis since Thanksgiving 2023! Not bad! It HAS improved my sitting around and reading, something I enjoy and something I had been slacking off on.

Wishing my readers all the best for the holidays with many wonderful things to read!

—–jeff baker