title: Clive Barker's books of blood: Volumes one, two and three
author: Clive Barker
description: Clive Barker is the most original and uniquely talented writer of horror and dark fantasy to appear on the scene in the past decade. His peers, the masters of the genre, agree. Barker has been hailed by the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Michael Moorcock, and James Herbert. 'He scares even me, says Stephen King. 'I have seen the future of horror...and it is named Clive Barker. Yes, Barker knows what scares you, and he's not afraid to make you look at it. In his masterful hands, words become living things, nightmares made flesh. Barker weaves together images that are by turns bloody, poetic, sexy, and repulsive. This Book-of-the-Month Club volume brings together three of Barker's early short story collections: Books of Blood, Volumes One, Two, and Three. Within these pages is a world where the boogeyman wears the fare of Mickey Mouse, a New York subway train's final stop is the very bowels of Hell, and a mythological monster comes to life in a farmer's field. In Barker's own words these stories are maps 'of that dark highway that leads out of life towards unknown destinations. So read. Read and learn. ft is best to be prepared for the worst, after all, and wise to learn to walk before breath runs out.
zlib_text:  
  
  CLIVE BARKER’S 
  BOOKS OF BLOOD 
  Volume I 
   
  CLIVE BARKER 
   
  Every body is a book of blood; 
  Wherever we’re opened, we’re red. 
  
  To my mother and father 
  
  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
   
  My thanks must go to a variety of people. To my English tutor in 
  Liverpool, Norman Russell, for his early encouragement; Pete 
  Atkins, Julie Blake, Doug Bradley and Oliver Parker for their good 
  advice; to Bill Henry, for his professional eye; to Ramsey Cambell 
  for his generosity and enthusiasm; to Mary Roscoe, for painstaking 
  translation from my hieroglyphics, and to Marie-Noelle Dada for the 
  same; to Vernon Conway and Bryn Newton for faith, Hope and 
  charity; and to Nanndu Sautoy and Barbara Boote at Sphere 
  Books. 
  
  CONTENTS 
   
  INTRODUCTION 
  By Ramsey Cambell 
   
  THE BOOK OF BLOOD 
   
  THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN 
   
  THE YATTERING AND JACK 
   
  PIG BLOOD AND STARSHINE 
   
  IN THE HILLS, THE CITIES 
  
  INTRODUCTION 
  by Ramsey Campbell 
   
   
   
  THE CREATURE HAD taken hold of his lip and pulled his 
  muscle off his bone, as 