Dig this super-creepy cover! The little-known novel The Edge of Running Water was one of only two written by William Sloane, who was born on this day in 1906 (his other book, To Walk the Night, I featured here). It was chosen for Jones and Newman's Horror: Another 100 Best Books in 2005. The above edition is from Bantam Books, 1967. For an appreciation of Sloan, be sure to read this. The article's first paragraph is excellent:
Whenever a genre writer appears whose work even literary critics can't pretend they don't enjoy--someone like Raymond Chandler, Shirley Jackson, or Philip K. Dick--he or she is officially allowed to have "transcended the genre." There's something disingenuous and galling to the genre fan about this special dispensation, as though any work of crime, horror, or science fiction that's actually good must not, by definition, actually be crime or horror or science fiction.
Indeed.
1956 retitled Dell paperback
