DICK BRIEFER’S FRANKENSTEIN, from IDW Publishing, is a comprehensive retrospective on an amazing artist whose illustrious career came to a sudden halt. Edited by Craig Yoe, the book reproduces classic FRANKENSTEIN issues from the 1940s, when the comics came into fruition, until the 1950s, when publication ceased.

Epistolary is the word used to describe a narrative as told through letters, documents, or journal entries. (Who says Fangoria ain’t educational?) The epistolary work holds more than a little romance for fans of horror literature. Many of the classics (Stoker’s DRACULA being the best example) have used this intimate format to grand, eerie effect. So it stands to reason that a new book collecting missives from scattered survivors of the zombie apocalypse should make for an interesting gnash, right?

ESPERANZA (Tor), by Trish J. MacGregor (pictured), is an effective romantic thriller about two ill-fated lovers lost in time. They must find each other in order to save a helpless town from losing a full-scale war against an invasion of ghosts.

Poetry is such a slippery slope as there is truly no middle ground. There’s literally good poets and bad poets, ones that know how to convey emotion using words as their paint and those who…well…end up dribbling out ersatz sentiment for Hallmark cards. And poetry gets a bad rap sometimes and is often misunderstood by the mainstream who label it and the men and women who produce it as pretentious. Sometimes it is and sometimes there’s nothing wrong with a little pretension…

Oh Max Brooks. What hast thou wrought? Back in 2003, Brooks—son of legendary filmmaker/comedian Mel Brooks—released a campy, ersatz instruction manual called THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, a mock instructional on how to evade being eaten by the living dead during a corpse revolt. The book was small, silly and fun and made some waves, putting Max on the map and moving units. Of course, the tome was simply a warm-up for his epic achievement WORLD WAR Z, but it was the first one that set the tone for the endless onslaught of quickie ghoul cash grabbing titles that followed.

What do one of history’s most infamous and influential occultists (pictured left) and a “game” found on toy-store shelves across the nation have in common? Author J. Edward Cornelius provides some answers in ALEISTER CROWLEY AND THE OUIJA BOARD, while still managing to provide the knowledge an ordinary individual needs to properly use the board to communicate with other worlds.

TWICE THE TERROR: THE HORROR ZINE Volume Two (from BearManor Media) contains a wide array of wicked short stories, stunning illustrations and lyrical poetry. This anthology, edited by Jeani Rector (pictured), is thick with great work from established authors like Graham Masterton, Bentley Little and Joe R. Lansdale, as well as up-and-comers.