History Literature / TheBordersJustBeyond

* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[spoiler:As part of his well-deserved LaserGuidedKarma, Lutzman gets eaten by the KindheartedCatLover's army of pet cats.]]

* AnAxeToGrind: [[spoiler:The monster plant in "The House on Stillcroft Street" is slain by Corvington taking an axe to its roots.]]

* "Long Hollow Swamp": Something terrible lurks in the nearby [[SwampsAreEvil Long Hollow Swamp]]. First published in ''Creator/AlfredHitchcock's Mystery Magazine'' in 1976.

* "The New Arrivals": Morgue attendant Grady Kellner goes to work at the local morgue, and finds out the hard way that sometimes dead things don't want to ''stay'' dead.

''The Borders Just Beyond'' is a 1985 book collecting several of Creator/JosephPayneBrennan's short stories from the 50s up through the 1970s. It was released as a limited edition hardcover with cover art and interior illustrations by Randy Broecker.

It contains the following stories:

* "Road to Granville": Henry Finden finds himself [[MyCarHatesMe broken down]] on the side of the road after his car overheats. Searching for water for his engine, he stumbles across the Orcutt family, who are perplexed to learn of the road's existence, and it soon becomes apparent to Finden that things [[RipVanWinkle aren't what they seem]].
* "Marianne": Marcellus pines for a lost woman named Marianne, who drowned in the sea.

* "Survival": Heart attack victim Paul Marks ends up switching bodies with another patient, James Conway.
* "Long Hollow Swamp": Something terrible lurks in the nearby [[SwampsAreEvil Long Hollow Swamp]].

* "The Jugular Man": Marliss tells his friend of the time he purchased an antique turtle bell, and was helped from beyond the grave when he was attacked by a throat-slashing SerialKiller known as "the jugular man."

* "Extermination": Sometime AfterTheEnd, the last vestiges of humanity fights for survival against hideous undead mutants and swarms of radioactive rats.

* "The Gulf of Night": Astronauts aboard a self-sufficient rocket ship travel to the end of the universe.
* "The House on Stillcroft Street": A [[ManEatingPlant carnivorous plant]] takes over [[TheHermit reclusive]] [[CollectorOfTheStrange collector]] Millward Frander's house.

* "Silver Death": Bill Frobinger's obsession with the first frost of the year leads to fatal consequences.

* "Election Incident": Mike Reardon uses drunks and hobos to commit election fraud... including a down on his luck author.
* "The King of Cubomba": A group of surveyors in Peru encounter GreatWhiteHunter Harry Temple, who is singlehandedly keeping the memory of the lost city of Cubomba alive.
* "Lottman's End": Father Sebastian Sota sits by the bedside of the terminally ill Charlie Lottman, and attempts to protect him from a demon who wants to claim his soul. Father Sota finds unexpected assistance in the form of the ghosts of dogs whom Lottman was kind to during his life.
* "The Business About Fred": The narrator regularly visits a bar called Casserman's Cafe, and becomes interested in another regular, Fred Amodius, who never speaks to anyone and who no one seems to know anything about.

* PoliceAreUseless: Unusually for Brennan, who in earlier stories such as "Literature/{{Slime}}" and "Literature/TheCorpseOfCharlieRull" made a point of writing competent, effective law enforcement characters.

* SwampsAreEvil: It wouldn't be a Joseph Payne Brennan collection without this trope! "Long Hollow Swamp" follows magnificently in the footsteps of the earlier "[[Literature/Slime1953 Slime]]", giving readers the titular locale, Long Hollow Swamp, which is desolate and devoid of any animal life except for the giant slugs.

* "The Hero": Private George J. Kelsey deserts during World War II and disappears.

* CreepyBasement / TortureCellar: Where Lutzman does all his "experiments" on cats in "Hobbies."

* DevouredByTheHorde: [[spoiuler:Mayne Cordiss in "Long Hollow Swamp" (slugs) and Lutzman in "Hobbies" (cats), as well as the remnants of humanity in "Extermination" (rats).]]

** In "Long Hollow Swamp," ''no'' animals will no into Long Hollow Swamp. Except the giant slugs who live there, of course.

* ShootingSuperman / IWillFightSomeMoreForever: Landriss in "The Other Things" continues shooting at the EldritchAbomination that attacks him long after it should've been clear to him that his rifle wasn't doing diddly.

* TheBadGuysAreCops: [[spoiler:It turns out the town constable involved with the cult in "The Barren Place."]]

* GodzillaThreshold: "Long Hollow Swamp." Despite some initial enthusiasm about penetrating the swamp, Sheriff Wester ultimately proves himself hesitant to [[PoliceAreUseless actually]] ''[[PoliceAreUseless do]]'' [[PoliceAreUseless anything]] about the killer slugs. [[spoiler:So the protagonist takes matters into his own hands and hires [[DemolitionsExpert explosives expert]] and [[AcePilot "devil-may-care" pilot]] Fred Malant to just blow the swamp up.]]

* DemolitionsExpert: AcePilot Fred Malant in "Long Hollow Swamp" has a few "[[DeadlyEuphemism devices]]" and "some kind of inflammable preparation about whose composition he remained cheerfully but determinedly vague." [[spoiler:He and the protagonist use this to blow the ever-loving crap out of Long Hollow Swamp, ending the threat of the giant slugs forever.]]

* DemolitionsExpert: AcePilot Fred Malant in "Long Hollow Swamp" has a few "[[DeadlyEuphemism devices]]" and "some kind of inflammable preparation about whose composition he remained cheerfully but determinedly vague." [[spoiler:He and the protagonist use this to blow the ever-loving snout out of Long Hollow Swamp, ending the threat of the giant slugs forever.]]

* DevouredByTheHorde: [[spoiler:Lutzman in "Hobbies."]]

* MostWritersAreWriters: Sannerton in "The Barren Place" is an author, continuing Brennan's tradition of protagonists who are writers.

* "The Barren Place": [[MostWritersAreWriters Sannerton]], seeking seclusion to write his latest book, ends up moving into the town of Seneca Center, which is inhabited primarily by descendants of the Iroquois tribe. He soon wishes that he hadn't, as a patch of barren land on his property turns out to have a particularly disturbing history.

'''''The Borders Just Beyond''''' is a 1985 book collecting several of Creator/JosephPayneBrennan's short stories from the 50s up through the 1970s. It was released as a limited edition hardcover with cover art and interior illustrations by Randy Broecker.

!!''The Borders Just Beyond'' contains examples of:

* YouNoTakeCandle: Charlie Whitebush in "The Other Things" talks this way.