Bound for Evil: Curious Tales of Books Gone Bad edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press) is a hefty, entertaining anthology of sixty-five stories about nasty, demented, or overly influential books and the people who love or obsess over them. It's a good-looking limited edition hardcover tome of almost eight hundred pages, with half the stories original to the volume, and of those, at least eleven are notable. Illustrations by Allen Koszowski.

The Second Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories edited by Ian Alexander Martin (Humdrumming) is the follow-up to last year's promising anthology and it doesn't disappoint. All fifteen stories appear for the first time and some are quite good, particularly those by Christopher Fowler, Davin Ireland, Michael Kelly, Sarah Pinborough, Simon Strantzas, John Travis, and Conrad Williams.Unfortunately, the press ceased publishing.

Desolate Souls, the souvenir anthology of the World Horror Convention 2008 held in Salt Lake City, Utah, was edited by Mark Worthen and J. P. Edwards (Bones & Casket Press). Thematically related in its use of the desert and other desolate areas around SLC, the anthology includes reprints and originals. The best originals were by Scott Edelman, Linda Addison, and Cullen Bunn.

Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder (Dark Scribe Press) contains twenty-three stories featuring gay and lesbian characters, with many of the stories revealing the negative consequences of remaining in the sexual closet. There were very good stories by Lee Thomas, Sarah Langan, C. Michael Cook, and Livia Llewellyn.

The Undead: Headshot Quartet edited by Christina Bivins and Lane Adamson (Permuted Press) has four zombie novellas by John Sunseri, Ryan C. Thomas, David Dunwoody, and D. L. Snell. The most ambitious one is Snell's, about a man who awakes in a zombie-filled alley with no memory but the power to create objects out of nothing.