---Word from Golden Gryphon:
Greetings from the Gryphon:---Better catch up on my Golden Gryphon orders!
THE EMPIRE OF ICE CREAM, by Jeffrey Ford, is now available!
In 2002, author Jeffrey Ford published his first short fiction collection, The
Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, to wide, critical acclaim. The
collection received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and was later selected for
PW’s “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2002” List. The Fantasy Writer’s
Assistant then went on to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Single-Author
Collection of the Year.
Now Golden Gryphon Press releases Ford’s second, long-awaited short
fiction collection, The Empire of Ice Cream. In the title story, winner of the
prestigious Nebula Award (and a finalist for the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy
Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award), a young musician perceives
another sensory world of sights and sounds and smells while consuming cup after
cup of coffee.
A faerie Twilmish chronicles his brief yet adventurous life in a sand castle,
during those few hours between the outgoing and incoming tide, in “The Annals of
Eelin-Ok.” Through a complex formula we can calculate “The Weight of Words,”
and thus determine their subliminal, and surreptitious, affect on the reader. In “A
Night in the Tropics,” we learn of a possibly demonic chess set, originally crafted in
1533 by Italian goldsmith Dario Foresso, in a New Jersey bar called The Tropics.
And in “Boatman’s Holiday,” Charon, the boatman of Hell, takes a hiatus from his
horrific day job to embark on a rather memorable vacation.
Also included is a new, previously unpublished novella (nearly 40,000
words), entitled “Botch Town,” in which a young Long Island boy comes of age in a
town peopled by family and neighbors, each trying to live a life, amidst both a real
and a perceived menace. Jeffrey Ford can take the mundane, the everyday, and,
with the skill of an adept, mold these into brilliantly realized visions, wondrous yet
elusive.
Tell your librarian that this goes in the Weird, Strange, and Great section. Feel free
to mention that this book received a starred Publishers Weekly review (which it did).
The Empire of Ice Cream, by Jeffrey Ford
Cover art by John Picacio
ISBN 1-930846-39-8 / $24.95 (Trade hardcover)
319 pages
---And word from Hippocampus:
Dear Bookseller,
Hippocampus Press is distributing the following UK-produced Audiobook, a spoken word CD of four Lovecraft tales read aloud by David Cade to musical accompaniment. The retail price is $15.00 and we are offering the CDs at a...short discount, but we must import these from UK. We are the sole distributor. Please advise quantities desired.
Best,
Derrick Hussey
Hippocampus Press
----------------------------------------
The Unnameable: Four Tales of Horror by H.P. Lovecraft - The Book, The Music of Erich Zann, The Cats of Ulthar, and The Unnameable. [Audiobook]
H.P. Lovecraft, David Cade (Narrator)
Audio CD - (November 11, 2005)
Reviews
Joyce Carol Oates, December 2005. Novelist and Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Princeton University, New Jersey; and winner of the Prix Femina Itranger 2005 and the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature 2003
"These classic tales, elegantly eerie, hypnotic and unsettling, are perfectly rendered here, in a manner that would have thrilled Lovecraft."
S.T. Joshi, January 2006. Specialist in literary horror and author of H. P. Lovecraft - A Life (1996) and A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft (1995).
"A superlative reading of some of Lovecraft's most intriguing shorter tales. Mr Cade's recitals bring out new beauties and terrors . . . "
Edward Gobbett, Lanham, Maryland. January, 2006.
"David Cade's extraordinary sensitivity to the source material sets this recording apart from the others."
EJ Stephenson, Philadelphia. February, 2006.
"Cade could read aloud an unabridged dictionary and make it gripping. He makes the listener imagine the unimaginable."
Book Description
The Unnameable:
Four Tales by H. P. Lovecraft, 1890 - 1937
Legendary Master of the Macabre
Read by David Cade
Synopsis
1. The Book. Fearful, confused, and deprived now of family and memories of the past, the narrator tells of his unfortunate discovery of an ancient worm-riddled book and an abhorrent formula therein . . . by which he becomes compelled to look upon the hideous core of the unknown cosmos. 2. The Music of Erich Zann. In Paris an impoverished music student finds lodgings amidst the peculiar tottering houses of the Rue d'Auseil . . . but now that street appears never to have existed! Gone too is the frantically written cry for help of its eccentric mute, Erich Zann. All is lost in a hair-raising night of delirious and demoniac pandemonium. 3. The Cats of Ulthar. Evenings resound with the screeching of cats, dying horrendously - but their owners can only grieve. No one dares challenge the old couple responsible. But then a caravan of exotic wandering folk enters the town . . . and the ancient immortal power of the cat is administered. 4. The Unnameable. Scholarly teacher Joel Manton believes all things mystical and supernatural are easily dismissed by science, logic, and reason. Little does he know that, once this night is over, he himself will declare that indeed there exist upon earth horrors that will remain for all time completely and frighteningly unnameable. Features four literary horror stories by H P Lovecraft, read by David Cade, with music composed by Roberto Barzini.
From the Publisher
Audio CD: Spoken Word / Talking Book
Recording Quality: DDD
Release Date: 11 November, 2005
Recording Dates: September - November, 2005
Location: "Studio Trawsallt", Wales.
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Tales of Orpheus
Production Number: 50X2-1
From the Inside Flap
"Howard Phillips Lovecraft is now acknowledged as the master of the literary tale of terror. His many fantastic and macabre stories have won a fiercely devout following across the globe and are today available in the collections of a number of different international publishing houses. Originally, however, they appeared only in simple American horror magazines. Lovecraft's excellence is in his subtle and suggestive generation of situations of alarming atmosphere which erupt into encounters with phenomena not only terrifying but possessing a remarkable degree of verisimilitude. Usually delivering his stories by way of interlocutors of powerful intellect, such as scientists or scholars, Lovecraft succeeded in elevating the frightening world of the macabre to a level of poetic beauty and profundity which few other writers in his particular fictional genre have been able to equal."
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