Today’s bestsellers are tomorrow’s remainders and Forgotten Bestsellers will run for the next five weeks as a reminder that we were once all in a lather over books that people barely even remember anymore. Have we forgotten great works of literature? Or were these books never more than literary mayflies in the first place? What better time of year than the holiday season for us to remember that all flesh is dust and everything must die?

For years, I was more familiar with the striking colors on the cover of Peter Straub’s Koko than with its actual contents. Debuting on the New York Times Bestseller’s List in October, 1988, it stayed on the list for eight weeks, rising as high as number six, before disappearing in late November. It won the 1989 World Fantasy Award. In Donald Ringnalda’s Fighting and Writing the Vietnam War it’s called, “possibly the most intensive, complex exploration of the war’s imprint on the American psyche yet published,” and no less a horror personage than Laird Barron calls it “A black odyssey on par with Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.”

But there was something unsavory and sensual about that cover with its green, eyeless face, and red, kissable lips that kept me away until this past summer when I finally read the old mass market paperback copy of Koko I had lying around, and decided that I would write this series of Forgotten Bestseller columns for Tor specifically so I could talk about it. Because Koko is a masterpiece.

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