Charnel Glamour by Mark Samuels > Likes and Comments
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I have nominated and voted for this collection.Sadly, Mark Samuels is no longer with us as he passed away a couple of years ago.
Why did I choose this book? I read three of his collections, and enjoyed them enormously. As I wrote in one of my reviews, "Samuels continues with Lovecraftian perceptions albeit in modern urban settings. Weird fiction at its best, here it shows the true difference between modern horror, with its predisposition towards shocking the reader with gore and violence, and the metaphysical vistas of the weird and supernatural where cosmic horror of inevitability as well as human inadequacy and insignificance draws parallels to the traditions of strange fiction of Victorian and Edwardian eras. With an absurdly efficient economy of words in his writing Samuels nonetheless succeeds in creating a Lovecraftian atmosphere where serious questions are asked, where the central question, perhaps, is: what do we know of reality, and how do we differentiate what is real from what is not?"
See my short reviews here:
The White Hands and Other Weird Tales
The Age of Decayed Futurity: The Best of Mark Samuels
The Prozess Manifestations
Thank you, Romuald. You wrote a more positive introduction than I was able to. Sad to read of Samuels' death. I thought he had room for growth. But that's judging by his second collection. Maybe he did grow by his eighth, which we are reading.In reading further, I see that The White Hands and Other Weird Tales is usually called Samuels' first. Maybe. I was always under the impression Black Altars was because it has earlier material. Who knows?
wow sounds awesome! I inferred something lesser from the title somehow, shouldn't do that. And as always I am behind. still in the middle of Mushroomhead.
Ok, I finished the book, and as expected I loved it. I will be reading more of Samuels, definitely (even though some of his collections are not easy to find). Here's my review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I am glad to read this collection was so strong. That's a lot of 5-star stories. I don't think I've ever given any collection that many.April was a busy month for me, but June and July are not. I hope to return to make this part of my summer reading.
I tried. Read the first two but gave up half way through the third. This just did not work for me, it didnt draw me in or convince me. I found it a bit thin.
Just bought this as something about it intrigued me, and also because I have a collection that has the word "Charnel" in it (not weird fiction, supernatural horror). Anyway, I'm interested to check this one outDan wrote: "The weird fiction group read for the month of April 2026 is the short story collection by Mark Samuels titled Charnel Glamour. It is his eighth and most recent.
It..."
It is strange for me to be visiting a Samuels work again after all this time. The only one of his I have read previously (The White Hands and Other Weird Tales) I started before I began this group. I read most of it back when I was a member (and moderator) of the Literary Horror group. My review of his second story collection is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Based on that collection I have not been that eager to pick up or read any more of his work since then. But that may be unfair. I had no idea what weird fiction was when I started that collection. If I reread it, I might feel very differently about it today.
Mark Samuels, the man, is a somewhat odd bird. I remember that nine years ago when we began reading him there was a lot of concern in the group regarding his economic situation. I believe he was at that time (2017) homeless, destitute, and starving--that he had health problems too--and was completely unable to think about writing, despite the fact he was a well-respected and loved figure as a horror writer. But there were signs that he was getting help and that he was figuring out how to sustain himself so that he might turn his attention back to writing.
It looks like things may be going better for him this decade. I see he published his 7th and 8th story collections, and to my surprised even wrote his one and only novel which appeared in 2021: Witch-Cult Abbey. I had not known about this.
Will whoever nominated and/or voted for this work let us know what brought that about? Maybe someone could even do a more proper introduction to it rather than the idiosyncratic ramble I've just posted in order to get this topic started.