August Publications

Necroscope fans will welcome Brian Lumley's Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes!, featuring three new stories about Keogh (who speaks to and brings comfort to the dead) plus five reprints: three tales of time-traveler Titus Crow and two dreamland adventures of David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer. All are vintage Lumley, full of flatfooted prose and endless yakking about the occult. (Tor, $24.95 320p ISBN 0-765-30847-9)

For those interested in J.R.R. Tolkien's sources comes Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy, edited by Douglas A. Anderson (The Annotated Hobbit), which collects 22 classic stories by such masters as George Macdonald, Andrew Lang, Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell. Arthur Machen aficionados will especially appreciate "The Coming of the Terror" (an abridgement of his short novel The Terror), hitherto unreprinted since its initial magazine appearance in 1917. (Del Rey, $26.95 432p ISBN 0-345-45854-0; $14.95 paper -45855-9)

The latest entry in Wesleyan's Early Classics of Science Fiction series is Sydney Fowler Wright's Deluge (1927), edited and introduced by British SF author and scholar Brian Stableford. Students of this landmark disaster novel, in which the whole world is flooded, will find here the definitive text. (Wesleyan Univ., $65 390p ISBN 0-8195-6659-4; $22.95 paper -6660-8)

The H.G. Wells Reader: A Complete Anthology from Science Fiction to Social Satire, edited by John Huntington, gathers early stories ("Aepornis Island"), extracts from novels (The Food of the Gods) and The History of Mr. Polly complete. In his introduction, Huntington argues for Wells's importance as a thinker today. (Taylor [National Book Network dist.], $19.95 paper 496p ISBN 0-87833-306-1)

Five Star rolls out three SF/fantasy story collections: Adam-Troy Castro's Tangled Strings, which gathers five novellas, including the Hugo and Nebula nominee "The Funeral March of the Marionettes" ($25.95 343p ISBN 0-7862-5342-8); Robert Sheckley's Uncanny Tales, which contains 17 short works of speculative fiction by the veteran author of Immortality, Inc.($25.95 252p ISBN -5341-X); and James Blish's In This World, or Another, which features 10 tales and a poem with an introduction by the late author's wife ($25.95 388p ISBN -5349-5).

The same publisher also offers an offbeat first horror novel/mystery, Surviving Frank, by David A. Page. Boston police officer Ryan teams up with fellow cop Frank, a werewolf with an attitude problem, to investigate both Frank and a serial killer who may be targeting the governor. ($25.95 273p ISBN -5634-6)