The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016

Edited Paula Guran.

Macabre meetings, sinister excursions, and deadly relationships; uncanny encounters; a classic ghost story featuring an American god; a historical murderer revived in a frightening new iteration; innovative Lovecraftian turns; shadowy fairy tales and weird myths; strange children, the unexpected, the supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real... tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows. This volume of 2015’s best dark fantasy and horror offers more than 500 pages of tales from some of today’s finest writers of the fantastique — sure to delight as well as disturb.

Contents:

• “The Door” by Kelley Armstrong (Led Astray: The Best of Kelley Armstrong, Tachyon)
• “Snow” by Dale Bailey (Nightmare, June 2015)
• “1Up” by Holly Black (Press Start to Play, ed. Adams, Vintage)
• “Seven Minutes in Heaven” by Nadia Bulkin (Aickman’s Heirs, ed. Strantzas, Undertow)
• “The Glad Hosts” by Rebecca Campbell (Lackington’s #7)
• “Hairwork” by Gemma Files (She Walks in Shadows, eds. Moreno-Garcia & Stiles, Innsmouth Free Press)
• “Black Dog” by Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, William Morrow)
• “A Shot of Salt Water” by Lisa L. Hannett (The Dark #8)
• “The Scavenger’s Nursery” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Shimmer # 24)
• “Daniel’s Theory About Dolls” by Stephen Graham Jones (The Doll Collection, ed. Datlow, Tor)
• “The Cripple and Starfish” by Caítlin R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #108)
• “The Absence of Words” by Swapna Kishore (Mythic Delirium #1.3)
• “Corpsemouth” by John Langan (The Monstrous, ed. Datlow, Tachyon)
• “Cassandra” by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld # 102)
• “Street of the Dead House” by Robert Lopresti (nEvermore, ed. Kilpatrick, EDGE)
• “Mary, Mary” by Kirstyn McDermott (Cranky Ladies of History, eds. Roberts & Wessely, Fablecroft)
• “There is No Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold” by Seanan McGuire, The Doll Collection, ed. Datlow, Tor)
• “Below the Falls” by Daniel Mills (Nightscript 1, ed. Muller, Chthonic Matter)
• “The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir (F&SF Jul-Aug)
• “The Greyness” by Kathryn Ptacek (Expiration Date, ed. Kilpatrick, EDGE)
• “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” by Kelly Robson (Clarkesworld # 101)
• “Those” by Sofia Samatar (Uncanny #3)
• “Fabulous Beasts” by Priya Sharma (Tor.com)
• “Windows Underwater” by John Shirley (Innsmouth Nightmares, ed. Gresh, PS Publishing)
• “Ripper” by Angela Slatter (Horrorology, ed. Jones, Quercus)
• “The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy #59)
• “Sing Me Your Scars” by Damien Angelica Walters (Sing Me Your Scars, Apex)
• “The Body Finder” by Kaaron Warren (Blurring the Line, ed. Young, Cohesion)
• “The Devil Under the Maison Blue” by Michael Wehunt (The Dark #10)
• “Kaiju maximus®: “So various, So Beautiful, So New” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Fantasy #59)