Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 164 Pages I wouldn’t recognise the people behind Valancourt Books if I bumped into them in the street but I still owe them a hell of a lot. There’s a lot of horror from the seventies and eighties that I never saw (being too young to read for a chunk of it) and a whole load, before then, that I wasn’t aware of at all. Thanks to Valancourt Books, I’ve been able to revisit some of it without having to trawl through second-hand bookshops (not exactly a chore but you never know what, if anything you’ll find) or resign myself to being fleeced on eBay. Which brings me round to Robert Bloch. I’ve read a couple of Bloch’s short stories (and I posted about them, Here & Here ) but even though I’ve always meant to read more, I’ve never really known where to start. Thanks (again) to Valancourt Books, I got to do just that with Robert Bloch’s collection, ‘Midnight Pleasures’. And… Midnight Dreams (1987) collects some of Robert Bloch's best tales from later in his career, feat...

I'll be honest with you... I'm back at work tomorrow and I suspect there's going to be a lot to catch up with, there usually is after a week off work :o( With that in mind then, there'll be at least a couple of 'recycled reviews' on the blog as I get caught up with the day job. I'll make sure they're good ones though, promise! ;o)  All of which leads us to a post of mine, originally from 2013 , about Robert Bloch's 'Maternal Instinct' (the name of the story, not his actual... you know what I mean). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this short story is pretty much an essential read if you like zombie fiction (or if you just like well written short stories). I found 'Maternal Instinct' in the collection 'Zombies: A Compendium of the Living Dead', I couldn't tell you where else it may be found but that shouldn't stop you looking. With that said... 'And so it was Jill's dearest and most secret wish cam...