Stephen Jones

We all go a little mad sometimes ... Included among these twisted tales - of psychos, schizoids and serial killers, many with a supernatural twist - is Reggie Oliver's revival of Edgar Allan Poe's wily French detective, C. Auguste Dupin, a new 'Bryant & May' London mystery from Christopher Fowler, child-actor-turnedprivate-eye Marty Burns investigating a quirky Hollywood case by Jay Russell and internationally bestselling Michael Marshall revisiting The Straw Men conspiracy. Alongside one of Robert Bloch's most iconic stories, there's an original wraparound sequence in the style of the author by John Llewellyn Probert. With classic reprints by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Basil Copper and Dennis Etchison, original fiction by Peter Crowther, Brian Hodge, Richard Christian Matheson, Paul McAuley, Lisa Morton, Robert Shearman, Steve Rasnic Tem and others, you'd have to be out of your mind not to take a stab at these stories!

The zombie - a soulless corpse raised from the grave to do its master's bidding - may have had its factual basis in the voodoo ceremonies of the West Indies, but it is in fiction, movies, video games and comics that the walking dead have flourished. What makes a zombie? This Twentieth Anniversary Edition of one of the first and most influential zombie anthologies answers that question with 26 tales of rot and resurrection from classic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James and J. Sheridan Le Fanu, along with modern masters of the macabre Clive Barker, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Hugh B. Cave, Joe R. Lansdale, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, Lisa Tuttle, Karl Edward Wagner and many more. From Caribbean rituals to ancient magic, mesmerism to modern science, these terrifying tales depict a wide range of nefarious methods and questionable reasons for bringing the dead back to life again.

This long-awaited sequel to the bestselling Zombie Apocalypse! is once again a 'mosaic novel' which weaves together contributions from big-name horror writers in the form of essays, reports, letters, official documents and transcripts to create a coherent and compelling narrative. In volume one old-school, flesh-eating zombies spread 'The Death' around the world. Now, the fightback begins. Praise for Zombie Apocalypse:Clever, gruesome, poignant and pacy . . . it's hard to avoid this book's clutches - much like the shambling corpses that fill its pages. Financial Times.'An innovative, collaborative venture.' The Bookseller.'Moving, funny, terrifying and strikingly original.' SFX.

Don't turn out the lights . . . but open the cover, if you dare, and reveal the chilling delights that await you within the pages of A Book of Horrors. 'Stephen King, John Ajvide Linqvist, Lisa Tuttle and many more masters of the macabre issue a call to arms for the horror story in this collection of the very best in chiller fiction edited by Stephen Jones, one of the world's premier anthologists' - Crime TimeStephen Jones, Britain's most acclaimed horror editor, has gathered together masters of the macabre from across the world in this cornucopia of classic chills and modern menaces. Within these pages you will discover the most successful and exciting writers of horror and dark fantasy today, with a spine-chilling selection of stories displaying the full diversity of the genre, from classic pulp style to more contemporary psychological tales, to cutting-edge terror fiction that will leave you uneasily looking over your shoulder, or in the wardrobe, or under the bed . . . An original anthology of all-new horror and dark fantasy fiction, in all of its many and magnificent guises, by those devoted to the dark side. Including stories by Ramsey Campbell, Peter Crowther, Dennis Etchison, Elizabeth Hand, Brian Hodge, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Stephen King, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Richard Christian Matheson, Reggie Oliver, Robert Shearman, Angela Slatter, Michael Marshall Smith and Lisa Tuttle.

The living practice of Daoist ritual is still only a small part of Daoist studies. Most of this work focuses on the southeast, with the vast area of north China often assumed to be a tabula rasa for local lay liturgical traditions. This book, based on fieldwork, challenges this assumption. With case studies on parts of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces, Stephen Jones describes ritual sequences within funerals and temple fairs, offering details on occupational hereditary lay Daoists, temple-dwelling priests, and even amateur ritual groups. Stressing performance, Jones observes the changing ritual scene in this poor countryside, both since the 1980s and through all the tribulations of twentieth-century warfare and political campaigns. The whole vocabulary of north Chinese Daoists differs significantly from that of the southeast, which has so far dominated our image. Largely unstudied by scholars of religion, folk Daoist ritual in north China has been a constant theme of music scholars within China. Stephen Jones places lay Daoists within the wider context of folk religious practices - including those of lay Buddhists, sectarians, and spirit mediums. This book opens up a new field for scholars of religion, ritual, music, and modern Chinese society.

A new flesh-eating Zombies plague is unleashed!

How do you choose the appropriate statistical method for any given research task? What are the features that discern one statistical method from another, and for which research projects are they appropriate to use? Written specifically with the undergraduate psychology student in mind and for those who desire an explanation for the use of statistics in psychological research without the mathematics, this refreshing and much-needed introduction is invaluable for any psychology students who ‘don’t get numbers’. Breaking away from the traditional, numerical approaches, Jones delivers an engaging and insightful read into the rationale behind the use of statistics, drawing upon non-numerical examples and scenarios from both psychological literature and everyday life to explain key statistical concepts. Learn about the methods for testing populations and samples, standard errors, inferential and descriptive statistics as well as variables and participants. This is an ideal companion to core textbooks and will serve a clearer understanding of statistical methods in psychology. By reading this book students can hope to gain a better sense of what makes empirically valid research and learn to critically evaluate facts and figure in any presented research. The foundations of psychology’s claims are the empiricism of well-conducted and reliable data.

This second volume of Stephen Jones' work on ritual and musical life in north China, again with accompanying downloadable resources, gives an impression of music-making in daily life in the poor mountainous region of Shaanbei, northwest China. It conveys some of the diverse musical activities there around 2000, from the barrage of pop music blaring from speakers in the bustling county-towns to the life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies of poor mountain villages. Based on the practice of grass-roots music-making in daily life, not merely on official images, the main theme is the painful maintenance of ritual and its music under Maoism, its revival with the market reforms of the 1980s, and its modification under the assaults of TV, pop music, and migration since the 1990s. The text is in four parts. Part One gives background to the area and music-making in society. Parts Two and Three discuss the lives of bards and shawm bands respectively, describing modifications in their ceremonial activities through the twentieth century. Part Four acclimatizes us to the modern world with glimpses of various types of musical life in Yulin city, the regional capital, illustrating the contrast with the surrounding countryside. The 44-minute downloadable resources, with its informative commentary, is intended both to illuminate the text and to stand on its own. It shows bards performing at a temple fair and to bless a family in distress, and shawm bands performing at a wedding, at funerals, and a shop opening - including their pop repertory with the 'big band'. Also featuring as part of these events are opera troupes, geomancers, and performing beggars; by contrast, the film shows a glimpse of the official image of Shaanbei culture as presented by a state ensemble in the regional capital. The publication will appeal to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and all those interested in modern Chinese history and society.

After burning up the blacktop in New Mexico with The Fast Red Road and rewriting Indian history on the Great Plains with The Bird is Gone, Stephen Graham Jones now takes us to Montana. Set on a Blackfeet Indian reservation, the life of one Indian boy, Doby Saxon, is laid bare through the eyes of those who witness it: his near-death experience, his suicide attempts, his brief glimpse of victory, and the unnecessary death of one of his best friends. But through Doby there emerges a connection to the past, to an Indian Agent who served the United States Government over a century before. This revelation leads to another and another until it becomes clear that the decisions of this single Indian Agent have impacted the lives of generations of Blackfeet Indians. And the life of Doby Saxon, a boy standing in the middle of the road at night, his hands balled into fists, the reservation wheeling all around him like the whole of Blackfeet history hurtling towards him. Jones’s beautifully complex novel is a story of life, death, love, and the ties that bind us not only to what has been, but what will be: the power of one moment, the weight of one decision, the inevitability of one outcome, and the price of one life.

The rich local traditions of musical life in rural China are still little known. Music-making in village society is largely ceremonial, and shawm bands account for a significant part of such music. This is the first major ethnographic study of Chinese shawm bands in their ceremonial and social context. Based in a poor county in Shanxi province in northwestern China, Stephen Jones describes the painful maintenance of ceremonial and its music there under Maoism, its revival with the market reforms of the 1980s and its modification under the assault of pop music since the 1990s. Part One of the text explains the social and historical background by outlining the lives of shawm band musicians in modern times. Part Two looks at the main performing contexts of funerals and temple fairs, whilst Part Three discusses musical features such as instruments, scales, and repertories. The downloadable resources consist of a 47-minute film in two parts, showing excerpts from funerals and temple fairs (complementing Part Two of the text), while a separate section contains a magnificent 1992 funerary performance of a complete shawm-band suite. As a package, the book and downloadable resources illuminate the whole ceremonial context of music-making in rural China, illustrating the ritual-music experience of villagers, with lay Daoist priests, opera troupes, and beggars also making cameo appearances. While the modern stage repertories of urban professionals remain our main exposure to Chinese music, this publication is all the more valuable in showing the daily musical experiences of the majority of people in China. It will appeal to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists and all those interested in modern Chinese history and society.