Best New Horror 29 Read online

  Edited with an Introduction by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Great Supernatural Stories: 101 Horrifying Tales ran to more than 700 pages and featured classic fiction by H.P. Lovecraft, M.P. Shiel, William Hope Hodgson and many others. Dziemianowicz also edited the companion volume, Great Thrillers: 101 Suspenseful Tales.

  A 50th Anniversary reprint of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby came with a new Introduction by David Morrell.

  Playwright Erik Forrest Jackson’s Muppets Meet the Classics: The Phantom of the Opera was a mash-up of Gaston Leroux’s original and the puppet characters.

  The young protagonist thought her life was more mundane than most until she discovered an ancient machine that converted evil into energy, some talking mushrooms and that her grandfather had been friends with the Devil for more than 150 years in Michael Marshall Smith’s inventive young adult novel Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existance.

  Teen Frankenstein was the first volume in the “High School Horror” series by Chandler Baker. It was followed by Teen Hyde.

  Amy Ross’ Jek/Hyde was a contemporary reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, while A.G. Howard’s RoseBlood was inspired by Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera and Michelle Gagnon’s Unearthly Things was an updated version of Jane Eyre given a supernatural twist.

  A teenage girl was haunted by deadly powers in Jennifer Bosworth’s The Killing Jar, and a girl traded her heart to a demon in Emily Lloyd-Jones’ The Hearts We Sold.

  Another teenager was possessed by the spirit of a bear in Frances Hardinge’s YA historical horror A Skinful of Shadows, while Mary Downing Hahn’s ghost novel One for Sorrow was set during the 1918 influenza outbreak.

  A young Romany girl collected body parts from the four men who raped her and killed her friend so that she could bring him back to life again in Hilary Monahan’s The Hollow Girl.

  Jenna Black’s Night Magic was a sequel to Nightstruck, about a girl enjoying the dark magic of Philadelphia at night, and Hellfighters and Hellwalkers were the final two books in Alexander Gordon Smith’s “The Devil’s Engine trilogy”.

  Libba Bray’s Before the Devil Breaks You, the third volume in the “Spectral Diviners” series, was set in New York City during the Jazz Age.

  Jonathan Stroud’s “Lockwood & Co.” series came to a conclusion with the fifth and final volume, The Empty Grave, as the members of London’s smallest detective agency finally discovered the origin of the supernatural threats attacking the city.

  It was a busy year for R.L. Stine with the new “Fear Street” novels The Dead Boyfriend and Give Me a K-I-L-L, which were also packaged together in the omnibus Fear Street Super Thriller: Nightmares.

  Fear Street Saga: Cursed was an omnibus of three 1996 “Fear Street” novels by Stine: A New Fear, House of Whispers and Forbidden Secrets, while the Goosebumps 25th Anniversary Retro Set featured five of the author’s most popular books reissued in their original covers and packaged in a purple tin.

  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was the third volume in J.K. Rowling’s series given an artistic makeover by Jim Kay.

  British publisher Sanrio created an unlikely mash-up line of books, art prints and clothing that brought together the late Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men children’s characters and the BBC’s Doctor Who.

  In Laura Ellen Anderson’s Amelia Fang and the Barbaric Ball, the young vampire’s pet pumpkin “Squashy” was kidnapped by a spoilt prince.

  Sharon Gosling’s werewolf novel Fir from Stripes Publishing/Red Eye was described as a “chilling scandi noir YA horror”. It dealt with the Scandinavian version of the myth, the “Varulv”.

  A teenage boy found himself caught up in a war between good werewolves and evil witches in The Black Wolves of Boston, the first volume in a new series by Wen Spencer.

  Poe: Stories and Poems was aimed at the YA market and featured Gareth Hinds’ graphic adaptations of four stories and three poems by Edgar Allan Poe.

  The collection Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories was basically a “best of” Kim Newman, with seventeen reprint tales spanning a period of nearly thirty years, along with a short play and an excerpt from the author’s new novel Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters.

  Strange Weather collected four novellas (or “four short novels” as it claimed on the cover) by Joe Hill, while You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts was the first new collection of short fiction from M. John Harrison in fifteen years.

  Redder Than Blood collected nine fairy tale-inspired stories by the late Tanith Lee, three original.

  The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories included the contents of the 2009 collection A Touch of Dead plus five more recent stories by Charlaine Harris, who also supplied a new Introduction and story notes.

  The debut volume from Manchester’s Cōnfingō Publishing, a new imprint specialising in contemporary fiction and poetry, was Nicholas Royle’s Ornithology: Sixteen Short Stories. This collection of often dark and surreal tales was based around the theme of birds, and two of the stories were previously unpublished.

  Published by Penguin Random House’s Blumhouse Books/Anchor Books imprint, Haunted Nights: A Horror Writers Association Anthology was edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton and featured sixteen original Halloween-themed stories by HWA members Stephen Graham Jones, Garth Nix, Kelley Armstrong, Paul Kane, Pat Cadigan and John Langan, amongst others. Co-editor Morton also supplied an Introduction.

  Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, edited by a solo Datlow, featured eighteen stories and poems by Priya Sharma, Richard Bowes, Stephen Graham Jones, Jeffrey Ford, Angela Slatter and Jane Yolen, amongst others.

  Ellen Datlow also edited and introduced Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology for Pegasus Books. It contained fifteen stories (two reprints) and a poem by some of the same contributors, along with Nicholas Royle, Paul Tremblay, Joyce Carol Oates, Alison Littlewood, M. John Harrison and Pat Cadigan.

  Created by Stephen Jones, The Lovecraft Squad: Waiting was the first in a trilogy of “mosaic novels” from the same publisher, based around a super-secret worldwide organisation dedicated to battling the eldritch monstrosities given form in H.P. Lovecraft’s fevered imagination. It featured contributions from Angela Slatter, Brian Hodge, Reggie Oliver, Michael Marshall Smith, Steve Rasnic Tem, Peter Atkins, Richard Gavin, Jay Russell, Thana Niveau, Stephen Baxter and Kim Newman.

  The Lovecraft Squad: All Hallows Horror was a spin-off novel by John Llewellyn Probert that also tied in to Jones’ earlier Zombie Apocalypse! series.

  The first in a welcome new original anthology series edited and introduced by Mark Morris for Titan Books, New Fears: New Horror Stories by Masters of the Genre featured nineteen tales by a stellar line-up of writers that included Alison Littlewood, Stephen Gallagher, Angela Slatter, Chaz Brenchley, Ramsey Campbell, Adam L.G. Nevill, Muriel Gray, Conrad Williams, Kathryn Ptacek, Stephen Laws and Christopher Golden.

  For the same imprint, Golden edited and introduced Dark Cities, an original anthology of nineteen urban horror stories by Tim Lebbon, Helen Marshall, M.R. Carey, Amber Benson, Simon R. Green, Paul Tremblay, Nathan Ballingrud, Tanarive Due, Ramsey Campbell, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Nick Cutter and others, including the editor himself.

  Jonathan Maberry and the late George A. Romero were credited as co-editors of Nights of the Living Dead, yet another anthology set in Romero’s iconic zombieverse. It included stories by, amongst others, Maberry, Joe R. Lansdale, David J. Schow, Mike Carey, John Skipp, Brian Keene and Jay Bonansinga, along with original film-makers John A. Russo and Romero himself.

  Published to tie in with Worldcon 75, the first Finnish World Science Fiction Convention, Johanna Sinisalo and Toni Jerrman edited Giants at the End of the World: A Showcase of Finnish Weird. The give-away paperback contained eleven stories (two original) in English, with a Foreword by Sinisalo.

  Edited by the busy Ellen Datlow for Night Shade Books, The Best Horror of the Year Volume Nine
included twenty-one stories, along with the usual Summation of the previous year by the editor and Honorable Mentions, while The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2017 edited by Paula Guran for Prime Books included thirty-seven stories.

  Published by Canada’s Undertow Publications, Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume Four guest-edited by Helen Marshall and series editor Michael Kelly featured fifteen stories along with introductory material by the editors.

  The Datlow and Guran anthologies shared the same stories by Gemma Files and Livia Llewellyn, and different contributions by Brian Hodge and Steve Rasnic Tem. There was no overlap between the Datlow and Marshall/Kelly volumes, but both the Guran and Marshall/Kelly compilations included the same story by Jeffrey Ford.

  Best New Horror #27 edited by Stephen Jones appeared from PS Publishing and featured seventeen stories and novellas from 2015, along with the usual long Introduction and Necrology. It was available in both trade paperback and as a 100-copy signed and slipcased hardcover.

  Co-edited by Sean Wallace and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the monthly online magazine of The Dark featured “dark and strange” original fiction by Lisa L. Hannett and Kristi DeMeester, and reprints from Ray Cluley, Helen Marshall, Angela Slatter and Robert Shearman.

  Meanwhile, John Joseph Adams’ electronic Nightmare Magazine showcased new stories monthly from, amongst others, Carrie Vaughn, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Nick Mamatas, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Adam-Troy Castro (who also contributed a new quarterly book and media review column). There were also reprints by Lynda E. Rucker, Robert Shearman, Helen Marshall, Stephen Graham Jones, V.H. Leslie, Nalo Hopkinson, John Skipp, Brian Everson and Lisa Morton.

  Anya Martin, John Langan, Nathan Carson, Gemma Files, S.P. Miskowski and Kristi DeMeester contributed non-fiction pieces, and there were interviews with Seanan McGuire, Norman Prentiss, Stephen Graham Jones and Richard Kelly.

  As always, Jeani Rector’s electronic ’zine The Horror Show presented plenty of fine reading on a monthly basis, with contributions from Brent Monahan, Graham Masterton, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, Nancy Kilpatrick, P.D. Cacek, Simon Clark, Lisa Morton, Aaron J. French, Deborah LeBlanc, Piers Anthony and the editor herself, amongst many others.

  The “Doctor Who Bot” on Skype allowed users of the app to listen to new adventures of the Time Lord, voiced by Peter Capaldi, in “binaural sound”.

  The eleven-episode podcast Spooked from WNYC Studios/Snap Judgment featured short “real-life” supernatural experiences recounted by the people who experienced them.

  The seventh volume of editor Michael Kelly’s print-on-demand (PoD) anth-ology series, Shadows and Tall Trees, from Undertow Publications presented nineteen original stories from an impressive line-up of contributors that included Brian Everson, M. Rickert, V.H. Leslie, Rosalie Parker, Conrad Williams, Simon Strantzas, Steve Rasnic Tem, Robert Shearman, Alison Moore and Nicholas Royle. It was available in both trade paperback and hardcover formats, with variant cover artwork, as well as an e-book edition.

  I Will Surround You was a welcome collection from Undertow of fourteen stories (two original) by Conrad Williams, while from the same on-demand imprint, The Dream Operator collected eleven stories by Welsh writer Mike O’Driscoll, three of them original to the book.

  The third annual compedium of editor C.M. Muller’s Nightscript from Chthonic Matter featured twenty-three literary “strange and darksome tales” by, amongst others, Simon Strantzas, Daniel Braum, Clint Smith, Adam Golaski, Rebecca J. Allred and John Howard.

  Issued under the Electric Pentacle Press imprint, The Persistance of Geraniums and Other Worrying Tales collected ten linked Edwardian-styled strange stories (four original) and a novel extract by British author John Linwood Grant. Alan M. Clark supplied the Introduction and Paul Boswell contributed a number of black and white illustrations. Unfortunately, as with so many PoD books these days, this one had no idea what running heads are used for.

  Another volume that had the same problem was the otherwise solid anthology The Beauty of Death II: Death by Water, produced in English by Italian imprint Independent Legions Publishing. Co-edited by Alessandro Manzetti and Jodi Renée Lester, it contained thirty-nine stories (ten reprints) set around water by, amongst others, Lucy Taylor, Eric J. Guignard, Simon Bestwick, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Dennis Etchison, John Palisano, Edward Lee, Tim Waggoner, David J. Schow, Michael A. Arnzen, Adam L.G. Nevill, John Langan, Clive Barker and Lisa Morton, along with both editors.

  Eric J. Guignard was also the new editor of Horror Library Volume 6 for Cutting Block Books, taking over from R.J. Cavender. It featured twenty-seven stories by Tom Johnstone, Bentley Little, Jeffrey Ford, J.G. Faherty, Jay Caselberg and Carole Johnstone, amongst others.

  Edited by Doug Murano and D. Alexander Ward, Shadows Over Main Street Volume 2 contained seventeen small-town Mythos stories (two reprints) by Lucy A. Snyder, William Meikle, Erinn L. Kemper, Damien Angelica Walters, Joe R. Lansdale, Gary A. Braunbeck, Joyce Carol Oates and others. Laird Barron supplied the Introduction.

  Cutting Block Single Slices Volume 1 edited with a Foreword by Patrick Beltran was another on-demand anthology from Cutting Block Books, featuring nine novellas (three reprints). Contributors included Jason A. Wyckoff, Felice Picano, Tom Johnstone, Kristin Dearborn and John F.D. Taff.

  Edited with an Introduction by Vince A. Liaguno for on-demand imprint Evil Jester Press, Unspeakable Horror 2: Abominations of Desire was an attractive trade paperback anthology of twenty horror stories (three reprints) from the LGBT and horror communities. Contributors included Lisa Morton, Martel Sardina, Helen Marshall, David Nickle, Stephen Graham Jones, Norman Prentiss, Gemma Files and the editor himself.

  Edited by Steve J. Shaw for his own Black Shuck Books imprint, Great British Horror 2: Dark Satanic Mills was a print-on-demand hardcover contain-ing eleven original stories by Paul Finch, Cate Gardner, Angela Slatter, John Llewellyn Probert, Marie O’Regan, Gary Fry, Penny Jones, Gary McMahon and others.

  With an Introduction by Lynda E. Rucker and published by Black Shuck in a hardcover edition of just fifty copies, A Suggestion of Ghosts: Supernatural Fiction by Women 1854-1900 edited by J.A. (Johnny) Mains collected fifteen incredibly obscure stories from around the end of the 19th century which had never been anthologised since their original publication. Mains was able to attribute the correct authorship of ‘The Closed Cabinet’ a tale which has been continuously published under the byline “Anon” since its original appearance in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in January 1895 to Lady Gwendolyn Gascoyne-Cecil. The book was signed by the editor and cover artist Les Edwards.

  British horror and fantasy author Paul Kane added a middle initial “B.” to his byline for Nailbiters: Tales of Crime and Psychological Terror. The PoD paperback collected twenty-three stories (three original), along with an Introduction by Paul Finch.

  The Life Cycle, featuring a quartet of stories (one original) in Paul Kane’s series about his werewolf hero Neil, and Thana Niveau’s Unquiet Waters containing four new stories based around liquids, were both part of the “Black Shuck Shadows” series of inexpensive micro-collections, presenting the best of classic and modern horror.

  From Cycatrix Press, Disexistence collected twenty stories (six original) and a poem, along with story notes by author Paul Kane and an Introduction by Nancy Holder. The trade paperback included a trilogy of the author’s “Hooded Man” tales.

  Boasting a cover painting by Les Edwards and an Introduction by A.K. Benedict, Death was a PoD hardcover collection from Sinister Horror Company containing ten stories (two original) and a play script by the extremely productive Paul Kane.

  Lynn M. Cochrane took over the editing of Weird Ales: Last Orders, the final book in the anthology trilogy from Quantum Corsets and publisher Theresa Derwin. It featured eleven stories (two reprints) by James Newman, Josh Reynolds, Gav Thorpe and others, along with an Introduction by Charlotte Bond and an Afterword by Derwin.

  Under the Terror Tree Book
s imprint, editor Theresa Derwin’s Mummy Knows Best featured fifteen original stories about mummies from all over the world by Pauline E. Dungate, Christine Morgan, Rhys Hughes, Lyn M. Cochrane and others. The PoD paperback also featured an impressive cover illustration by Luke Spooner.

  A bookshop assistant’s best friend was pregnant with the Antichrist and being hunted by religious fanatics trying to prevent the End of Days in Anne Billson’s latest satirical novel, The Coming Thing, which was available as an on-demand paperback.

  The exemplary Valancourt Books imprint published Offbeat, which collected twelve stories by Richard Matheson with a new introduction by David J. Schow, along with reprints of Michael McDowell’s superb southern Gothic serial Blackwater for the first time in a single volume (with an Introduction by Nathan Ballingrud), The Travelling Grave and Other Stories by L.P. Hartley (with an Introduction by John Howard), The Happy Man by Eric C. Higgs (with a new Introduction by the author) and The Other Passenger by John Keir Cross (with a new Foreword by J.F. Norris).

  Originally published under the byline “Jessica Hamilton” in the 1970s, Valancourt also reissued the novels Elizabeth, Hell Hound (aka Baxter) and Childgrave by Ken Greenhall.

  The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories Volume Two edited by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle collected twelve obscure reprints by such Valancourt authors as Bernard Taylor, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Robert Westall, Russell Thorndike, Michael McDowell and Basil Copper, along with two previously unpublished ghost stories by Nevil Shute and Stephen Gregory.

  Edited with an Introduction by Allen Grove, The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume Two featured fifteen tales by a number of obscure Victorian authors, including three from the prolific “Anonymous”.

  Edited by S.T. Joshi and Martin Anderson for Hippocampus Press, The Ghost in the Corner and Other Stories was an important new volume of fiction by the Anglo-Irish author Lord Dunsany (1878-1957), based around an untitled collection the writer had assembled in 1956, but which was never published. The PoD volume contained the definitive texts of fifty stories, including ten previously unpublished tales discovered amongst manuscripts at Dunsany Castle in County Meath, Ireland.