A Box of Bloody Hearts...

...hit the doorstep today at Casa Partridge. I wasn't expecting it. Imagine my surprise when I knifed into a box from Penguin and encountered this marvelously gorific tableau:

Yep. There's a cover that doesn't whisper. Which is another way of saying that Penguin has done a fantastic job rebooting S. T. Joshi's American Supernatural Tales. Formerly part of the Penguin Classics imprint, now out from Penguin Horror with a new intro by Guillermo del Toro.

That means you've got great intro's times two in the new edition, as Joshi and del Toro are two of the brightest gents in the horror business. Plus tales by Poe, Hawthorne, Bierce, Lovecraft, Bloch, Bradbury, Jackson, King, etc. Nice to have made the cut here... though it does feel a little strange to be in a TOC populated by more dead writers than living.

Oh, well. Could be I'm just being morbid (who? me? really?)... but somehow it does stir visions of hitting an elevator button late one night at the World Horror Con and recognizing familiar faces as the doors slide open -- Eddie Poe with a raven perched on his shoulder, and Two-Gun Bob, and rail-thin HPL, and king-sized Karl Wagner red-eyed and red-bearded and ready to rumble one last time.

HPL says, "Room for one more, Norman."

I don't think so, guys... I'm taking the stairs.