Tuesday, July 17, 2012

More Tor Horror Paperbacks of the 1980s

I said I'd have more Tor Horror paperbacks! Some of these I'd never seen till beginning my search. Such good stuff! The Devouring, from F.W. Armstrong - pseudonym of regular Tor author T.M. Wright - reveals the sordid yet utterly believable truth behind the Kutcher/Moore marriage. Don't know anything about Seth Pfefferle but you can read a decent review of Stickman at the PorPor Books Blog (source of the cover scan as well).

Abyssos is serious metal, while Kathryn Ptacek's works evoke monstrosities like the Dairy Queen and Twizzlers commercials of yore.

Love these covers for somebody named Lee Killough, got a real "Night Stalker for the '80s" vibe. Who is that guy with the gun, Robert Culp? I sure he's got Bill Cosby or at least William Katt for some midnight backup.

8 comments:

William Malmborg said...

Wow, these are fantastic. Those Kathryn Ptacek covers are so bizarre. Gotta love them. And I don't know what it is about that Stickman cover, but I really want to grab a copy of that. Time to go shopping again it looks like. I haven't even received the books from the last order I placed from your previous Tor post.

Anonymous said...

Great!

Doug said...

Do you think thry had to pay Straub and Grant for the blurbs?

Doug

bluerosekiller said...

Tor was very hit & miss with me. Maybe even more miss now that I think of it.
Their steady output was definitely appreciated, but IMO for every decent, readable book that they published, they put out two, maybe even three stinkers. But hey, they were prolific, so that meant that they still put out a good amount of cool stuff like the aforementioned Richard Laymon, Bloch, John Farris, TM Wright & many more.

Jim

Will Errickson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Will Errickson said...

Jim, I must agree - since I've been writing this blog I've begun reading several promising-looking Tor paperbacks, only to have them fizzle out barely a third of the way in. Those I don't even bother mentioning here, don't even go to the trouble of giving a poor review to (except in the case of Lisa Cantrell's The Manse, surely one of the weakest novels ever to win the Stoker Award). I think the publisher and editors were simply hungry for product on the shelves. Still, I tip my horror hat to Tor for their dedication to the art of the paperback cover!

bluerosekiller said...

Oh yeah, THE MANSE. UGH!
Actually, I think we discussed this before, back when you reviewed it.
I STILL can't believe that THAT was an award winning novel. Especially a Soker...
I remember really struggling to finish it.
The sequel? Never bothered even peeking at it. Nor any of her follow ups.

Jim

Padded Cell said...

The Devouring by T. M. Wright was really good. It's much faster than most of his other books.