Margins
Zombies book cover
Zombies
The Recent Dead
2010
First Published
3.66
Average Rating
473
Number of Pages

You can't kill the dead Like any good monster, the zombie has proven to be ever-evolving, monumentally mutable, and open to seemingly endless imaginative interpretations: the thralls of voodoo sorcerers, George Romero's living dead, societal symbols, dancing thrillers, viral victims, reanimated ramblers, video gaming targets, post-apocalyptic permutations, shuffling sidekicks, literary mash-ups, the comedic, and, yes, even the romantic. Evidently, we have an enduring hunger for this infinite onslaught of the ever-hungry dead. Hoards of readers are now devouring zombie fiction faster than armies of the undead could chow down their brains. It's a sick job, but somebody had to do it: explore the innumerable necrotic nightmares of the latest, greatest, most fervent devotion in the history of humankind and ferret out the best of new millenial zombie stories: Zombies: The Recent Dead. Contents ix • Preshamble • (2010) • essay by Paula Guran xii • The Meat of the Matter • (2004) • essay by David J. Schow xxii • Deaditorial Note • (2010) • essay by Paula Guran 29 • Twisted • (2009) • novelette by Kevin Veale 54 • The Things He Said • (2007) • shortstory by Michael Marshall Smith 64 • Naming of Parts • (2000) • novella by Tim Lebbon 128 • Dating Secrets of the Dead • (2002) • shortstory by David Prill 142 • Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed • (2007) • shortstory by Steve Duffy 171 • The Great Wall: A Story from the Zombie War • (2007) • shortstory by Max Brooks 178 • First Kisses from Beyond the Grave • (2006) • novelette by Nik Houser 218 • Zora and the Zombie • (2004) • novelette by Andy Duncan 239 • Obsequy • (2006) • novelette by David J. Schow 267 • Deadman's Road • [Reverend Jedidiah Mercer] • (2007) • novelette by Joe R. Lansdale 293 • Bitter Grounds • (2003) • novelette by Neil Gaiman 334 • Glorietta • (2009) • shortfiction by Gary A. Braunbeck 334 • Beautiful White Bodies • (2009) • novelette by Alice Sola Kim 342 • Farewell, My Zombie • (2009) • shortfiction by Francesca Lia Block 354 • Trinkets • (2001) • shortfiction by Tobias S. Buckell [as by Tobias Buckell ] 362 • Dead Man's Land • (2009) • shortfiction by David Wellington 378 • Disarmed and Dangerous • (2009) • novelette by Tim Waggoner 395 • The Zombie Prince • (2004) • shortstory by Kit Reed 409 • Three Scenes from the End of the World • (2009) • shortfiction by Brian Keene 420 • The Hortlak • (2003) • novelette by Kelly Link 445 • Dead to the World • (2009) • shortstory by Gary McMahon 458 • The Last Supper • (2003) • shortstory by Scott Edelman

Avg Rating
3.66
Number of Ratings
937
5 STARS
26%
4 STARS
28%
3 STARS
34%
2 STARS
10%
1 STARS
2%
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Authors

Tim Waggoner
Tim Waggoner
Author · 87 books
Tim Waggoner has published nearly fifty novels and seven short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal, among others. He's won the Bram Stoker Award and has been a finalist for both the Shirley Jackson Award and the Scribe Award. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. Visit him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.
David J. Schow
David J. Schow
Author · 32 books
David J. Schow is an American author of horror novels, short stories, and screenplays, associated with the "splatterpunk" movement of the late '80s and early '90s. Most recently he has moved into the crime genre.
Tim Lebbon
Tim Lebbon
Author · 98 books

I love writing, reading, triathlon, real ale, chocolate, good movies, occasional bad movies, and cake. I was born in London in 1969, lived in Devon until I was eight, and the next twenty years were spent in Newport. My wife Tracey and I then did a Good Thing and moved back to the country, and we now live in the little village of Goytre in Monmouthshire with our kids Ellie and Daniel. And our dog, Blu, who is the size of a donkey. I love the countryside ... I do a lot of running and cycling, and live in the best part of the world for that. I've had loads of books published in the UK, USA, and around the world, including novels, novellas, and collections. I write horror, fantasy, and now thrillers, and I've been writing as a living for over 8 years. I've won quite a few awards for my original fiction, and I've also written tie-in projects for Star Wars, Alien, Hellboy, The Cabin in the Woods, and 30 Days of Night. A movie's just been made of my short story Pay the Ghost, starring Nicolas Cage and Sarah Wayne Callies. There are other projects in development, too. I'd love to hear from you!

Tobias S. Buckell
Tobias S. Buckell
Author · 54 books
Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling author. His novels and over 50 short stories have been translated into 17 languages and he has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Ohio.
Gary A. Braunbeck
Gary A. Braunbeck
Author · 36 books

Gary A. Braunbeck is a prolific author who writes mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream literature. He is the author of 19 books; his fiction has been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Russian and German. Nearly 200 of his short stories have appeared in various publications. His fiction has received several awards, including the Bram Stoker Award in 2003 for "Duty" and in 2005 for "We Now Pause for Station Identification"; his book Destinations Unknown won a Stoker in 2006. His novella "Kiss of the Mudman" received the International Horror Guild Award in 2005."

Gary McMahon
Author · 45 books
Gary McMahon lives, works and writes in West Yorkshire but posseses a New York state of mind. He shares his life with a wife, a son, and the nagging stories that won’t give him any peace until he writes them.
Kelly Link
Kelly Link
Author · 44 books

Kelly Link is an American author best known for her short stories, which span a wide variety of genres - most notably magic realism, fantasy and horror. She is a graduate of Columbia University. Her stories have been collected in four books - Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and most recently, Get in Trouble. She has won several awards for her short stories, including the World Fantasy Award in 1999 for "The Specialist's Hat", and the Nebula Award both in 2001 and 2005 for "Louise's Ghost" and "Magic for Beginners". Link also works as an editor, and is the founder of independant publishing company, Small Beer Press, along with her husband, Gavin Grant.

Kit Reed
Kit Reed
Author · 30 books

Kit Reed was an American author of both speculative fiction and literary fiction, as well as psychological thrillers under the pseudonym Kit Craig. Her 2013 "best-of" collection, The Story Until Now, A Great Big Book of Stories was a 2013 Shirley Jackson Award nominee. A Guggenheim fellow, she was the first American recipient of an international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. She's had stories in, among others, The Yale Review, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature. Her books Weird Women, Wired Women and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse were finalists for the Tiptree Prize. A member of the board of the Authors League Fund, she served as Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.

Steve Duffy
Steve Duffy
Author · 8 books

Steve has written/coauthored four collections of weird short stories. TRAGIC LIFE STORIES, THE FIVE QUARTERS and THE NIGHT COMES ON are available from Ash-Tree Press. His latest collection, THE MOMENT OF PANIC, is out now from PS Publishing - buy it here: http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/the-mom... . Steve's work also appears in a number of anthologies published in the UK and the US. In 2016 he won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette 2015, with the story "Even Clean Hands Can Do Damage". He won the International Horror Guild's award for Best Short Story of the year 2000, and was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award in 2009, and again in 2012. Visit Steve's Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Steve-Duffy/e...

Joe Lansdale
Joe Lansdale
Author · 181 books

Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television. He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Kevin Veale
Author · 1 book

Storytelling fascinates me, and I'm very interested in the ways that different storytelling media shape the stories that are told through them. In terms of fiction, I have been writing since I was fourteen or so, all while doing the sensible thing of keeping myself off the streets through holding other positions. I've been lucky enough to have been published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine issues #25 (edited by Nicole Murphy), #29 (edited by Dirk Flinthart), and Weird Tales #354 (Fall 2009), together with a story in an anthology of fiction from Prime Books called Zombies: The Recent Dead edited by Paula Guran. Thank you for the interest! If you would be interested in joining me there, I have a Twitter account where I discuss writing, and undoubtedly assorted random things that interest me. Influences: Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, John Scalzi, Charles Stross, C.J. Cherryh, David Brin, Sherri S. Tepper, Jim Butcher, Steven Erikson, Nancy Kress, T. Campbell, Lois McMaster Bujold, Neal Stephenson, Ursula Vernon, Terry Pratchett, Tom Siddell, David Wong, Hunter S. Thompson, Nick Harkaway, and many others I can't bring to mind right now.

David Wellington
David Wellington
Author · 34 books

David Wellington is a contemporary American horror author, best known for his Zombie trilogy as well as his Vampire series and Werewolf series. His books have been translated into eleven langauges and are a global phenomenon. His career began in 2004 when he started serializing his horror fiction online, posting short chapters of a novel three times a week on a friend’s blog. Response to the project was so great that in 2004 Thunder’s Mouth Press approached David Wellington about publishing Monster Island as a print book. His novels have been featured in Rue Morgue, Fangoria, and the New York Times. He also made his debut as a comic book writer in 2009 with Marvel Zombies Return:Iron Man. Wellington attended Syracuse University and received an MFA in creative writing from Penn State. He also holds a masters degree in Library Science from Pratt Institute. He now lives in New York City with his dog Mary Shelley and wife Elisabeth who, in her wedding vows, promised to “kick serious zombie ass” for him.

Max Brooks
Max Brooks
Author · 24 books

Max Brooks is The New York Times bestselling author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. He has been called ”the Studs Terkel of zombie journalism.“ Brooks is the son of director Mel Brooks and the late actress Anne Bancroft. He is a 1994 graduate of Pitzer College. His wife, Michelle, is a screenwriter, and the couple have a son, Henry.

Brian Keene
Brian Keene
Author · 108 books

BRIAN KEENE writes novels, comic books, short fiction, and occasional journalism for money. He is the author of over forty books, mostly in the horror, crime, and dark fantasy genres. His 2003 novel, The Rising, is often credited (along with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later film) with inspiring pop culture’s current interest in zombies. Keene’s novels have been translated into German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French, Taiwanese, and many more. In addition to his own original work, Keene has written for media properties such as Doctor Who, Hellboy, Masters of the Universe, and Superman. Several of Keene’s novels have been developed for film, including Ghoul, The Ties That Bind, and Fast Zombies Suck. Several more are in-development or under option. Keene also serves as Executive Producer for the independent film studio Drunken Tentacle Productions. Keene also oversees Maelstrom, his own small press publishing imprint specializing in collectible limited editions, via Thunderstorm Books. Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Media Bistro, Fangoria Magazine, and Rue Morgue Magazine. He has won numerous awards and honors, including the World Horror 2014 Grand Master Award, two Bram Stoker Awards, and a recognition from Whiteman A.F.B. (home of the B-2 Stealth Bomber) for his outreach to U.S. troops serving both overseas and abroad. A prolific public speaker, Keene has delivered talks at conventions, college campuses, theaters, and inside Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, VA. The father of two sons, Keene lives in rural Pennsylvania.

Michael Marshall Smith
Michael Marshall Smith
Author · 30 books

Michael Marshall (Smith) is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. His first novel, ONLY FORWARD, won the August Derleth and Philip K. Dick awards. SPARES and ONE OF US were optioned for film by DreamWorks and Warner Brothers, and the Straw Men trilogy - THE STRAW MEN, THE LONELY DEAD and BLOOD OF ANGELS - were international bestsellers. His most recent novels are THE INTRUDERS, BAD THINGS and KILLER MOVE. He is a four-time winner of the BFS Award for short fiction, and his stories are collected in two volumes - WHAT YOU MAKE IT and MORE TOMORROW AND OTHER STORIES (which won the International Horror Guild Award). He lives in Santa Cruz, California with his wife and son.

Francesca Lia Block
Francesca Lia Block
Author · 59 books
Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly. She was named Writer-in-Residence at Pasadena City College in 2014. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, German Japanese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Portuguese. Francesca has also published stories, poems, essays and interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Review of Books, Spin, Nylon, Black Clock and Rattle among others. In addition to writing, she teaches creative writing at University of Redlands, UCLA Extension, Antioch University, and privately in Los Angeles where she was born, raised and currently still lives.
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