Strangely enough, INTO THE MUMMY’S TOMB is the book that got me back into serious reading. Long story short: I was a voracious reader until high school, when work, study and “other interests” changed all that. I averaged maybe one book a year through college, even less following graduation. Then at Christmas 2001, with a Barnes & Noble gift certificate to burn, I picked John Richard Stephens’ anthology up on a whim, simply because I was enjoying a slew of mummy movies at the time. Needless to say, I enjoyed the hell out of it, and the rest is history.
Given the number of mummy stories out there, a mummy-themed anthology is such an obvious idea, I’m surprised there wasn’t one sooner. And the lineup of authors is most impressive, with everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to Mark Twain.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle contributes “Lot No. 249,” one of his most famous non-Sherlock Holmes stories, and adapted into the first third of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE. A little pulpier are Fu Manchu creator Sax Rohmer’s “The Death-Ring of Sneferu” and Sir H. Rider Haggard’s “Smith and the Pharaohs.”
TOMB unearths some little-known gems, like “Lost in a Pyramid” by Louisa May Alcott. It’s certainly nothing like her other work. But Ray Bradbury’s entry is pure Bradbury; titled “Colonel Stonesteel’s Genuine Homemade Truly Egyptian Mummy” is a nostalgic piece of fiction as only he could do, and is one of the two stories of his that’s moved me to tears (the other, of course, being “Kaleidoscope”). And who knew H.P. Lovecraft ghost-wrote a story for magician Harry Houdini?
Bram Stoker’s THE JEWEL OF THE SEVEN STARS novel is abridged within, and from more recent times, the first chapter of Anne Rice’s THE MUMMY is excerpted. Throw in some mysteries from Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Peters, lesser-known works from Rudyard Kipling and Tennessee Williams, and a couple of non-fiction pieces regarding Egyptian curses, and you have a one-of-a-kind collection boasting a higher pedigree than most, in both names and shivers.
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Thank you for the wonderful comments on my book. I really enjoyed putting it together. It took me a lot of research to dig up some of those stories.
I think you might also enjoy two of my other books — “Vampires, Wine & Roses” and “Captured by Pirates”. The former is a similar collection of stories by famous authors, but this time on vampires. The latter is a collection of firsthand accounts written by people who were captured by pirates between 1500 and 1850 and lived to tell the tales. These often brutal true stories are as good as any horror fiction.
I’m really glad you enjoyed my book and that it got you back into reading.
By the way, it looks like “Into the Mummy’s Tomb” is about to be reprinted by a different publisher. You may see it as a hardcover value edition with a different cover by the end of the year.
Cheers,
John Richard Stephens
Author/Editor
You’re welcome, John. I’m really intrigued by CAPTURED BY PIRATES, but I see it’s out of print and commanding ridiculously high prices by secondhand sellers!