Table of Contents of the Best Horror of the Year volume Twelve-it’ll be out early fall.
Summation: 2019
Ice Cold Lemonade 25ȼ Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person by Paul Tremblay
A Song For Wounded Mouths by Kristi DeMeester
Birds of Passage by Gordon B. White
The Puppet Motel by Gemma Files
The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team by Joe R. Lansdale
The Night Nurse by Sarah Langan
They Are Us (1964): An Oral History by Jack Lothian
As Dark As Hunger by S. Qiouyi Lu
I Say (I Say, I Say) by Robert Shearman
The Pain-Eater’s Daughter by Laura Mauro
The Hope Chest by Sarah Read
Nor Cease You Never Now by Ren Warom
Playscape by Diana Peterfreund
Adrenaline Junkies by Ray Cluley
Watching by Tim Lees
Mr. And Mrs. Kett by Sam Hicks
Below by Simon Bestwick
My Name is Ellie by Sam Rebelein
Slipper by Catriona Ward
How To Stay Afloat When Drowning by Daniel Braum
This Was Always Going to Happen by Stephen Graham Jones
The Butcher’s Table by Nathan Ballingrud
Honorable Mentions
About the Authors
Acknowledgment of Copyright
About the Editor
Can’t wait to get my hands on a copy, and teach it next year. So exciting. Great TOC.
Seem to have just read at least FIVE of these stories in Volume Nine!!!!
The stories in volume 12 certainly are not the same in volume 9 LOL
Apologies..not in Volume Nine but definitely read them..the first five stories strangely enough,recently,in one of my other anthologies.SO annoying.Still ordered a copy..and Volume Ten and Volume thirteen.Quite like the series.
Just finished When things Go Dark…..
Two stories were from my anthology Echoes and two were in Twice Told. The others were each in different magazines/anthologies/collections. But obviously you might have come across some in your reading as they’re all reprints 🙂
I hope you will be amused,Ellen,the way Book Depository will be cancelling my order.Thecreason I’d read all these stories was that I had read them all in my copy of Volume Twelve…which was down the side of my chair.Obviously reading too much horror at the moment..losing my own plot!
Look forward to the many anthologies to come.🤭
Dark Fantasy, Cosmic Horror, Pulp stories are often times found in multiple media publications. This has been so since Blackwood, Howard, Lovecraft with the rest of the “Lovecraftian Circle of Mythos Cycle” authors. I have not found it necessary to get annoyed by the occasional redundancies of these short stories and novellas. In fact, sometimes when reading or hearing (Audible/Apple-Audiobook) these duplicate thrillers, I catch something I missed the first time through. I believe the creative and beautiful Miss Ellen gets far more criticism than she deserves! My wife and I love these publications and read them ferociously.
I read all of Caitlin R Kieran, John Langan, Laird Barron, Brian Lumley, Robert E Howard, Bentley, Cutter, Killborn/Karnath, and so many more anthologies that a representation of these stories are of course going to appear in “The Best Horror of the Year”, “Best Dark Fantasy of the Year” or any other anthology of worthy Dark Fantasy/Horror/Cosmic-Pulp. To go through and attempt to isolate all the stories that do not overlap for a first run Anthology of genuinely interesting, entertaining, compelling; truly fascinatingly chilling horror would be an epic undertaking. I mean seriously man…..
People’s expectations at times really miff me; as a guitarist and song writer, I get how challenging it is to find original material to play, record or much more, have recognized. These publications are worth every penny even though we may not like every entry into the releases. There is enough variety of everything in these to surly please most all horror enthusiasts. Verity does mean there will be, like Gumps box of Chocolate’s, cream filled, ones with nuts, dark chocolate- that some people don’t care for. Me, It’s the fruity cream filled chocolate’s that turn me a bit green?!!? But the coconut and truffles make up for them!
Thank you Miss Ellen, I know these publications are becoming more precariously challenging every year due to the “pool” shallowing too quickly with quality material and definitely appreciate what you do to make these come into fruition!
Papa Laughing Bear, So Lake Tahoe Ca.
Happy you enjoy my anthologies. But in fact the pool of material eligible for the Best Horror of the Year is growing wider all the time, and the quality material makes it ever more difficult to make choices-not because the pool is shallow, but because it’s so deep. We are in a golden age of short horror fiction
Reading the latest volume of Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror.Excellent as usual..a far cry from the splatter and done to death tropes of the early days.
PS Have Echoes and will look for Twice Told.
Pat.
That makes me happy. (Twice Told is not an anthology of mine).
Oh..not becoming a stalker just taking the opportunity.My journey through my tbr has included rereading Echoes.I loved it..again..and wondered if there was going to be a Volume Two?