Scared Stiff by Ramsey Campbell (2002) 1st Edition HB

Publishers Weekly calls Campbell "a horror writer's horror writer," adding, "His control of mood and atmosphere is unsurpassed." Doug Winter, the noted scholar and critic, says Campbell has written "some of the most original and compelling fiction of our time, [works that dare] the precipice of reason, the human dilemma of knowing and not knowing, believing and disbelieving."

The Cleveland Plain Dealer says his horror fiction is "of consistently high quality," and The Washington Post praises Campbell for continuing "to break new ground, advancing the style and thematic content of horror fiction far beyond the works of his contemporaries."

Indeed, with the original publication of Scared Stiff, Campbell almost single-handedly created the genre of erotic horror. Never had sex and death been so mesmerizingly entwined. Clive Barker, in his Introduction, says, "One of the delightfully unsettling things about these tales is the way Ramsey's brooding, utterly unique vision renders an act so familiar to us all so fretful, so strange, so chilling. Sex . . . is the perfect stuff for the horror writer, and there can be few artists working in the genre as capable of analyzing and dramatizing [this] as Campbell."