About the Book
The first three volumes of The Best Horror of the Year have been widely praised for their quality, variety, and comprehensiveness. Editor Ellen Datlow has now explored the entirety of the diverse horror market, distilling it into the fourth anthology in the series and providing an overview of the year in terror.
Fear is the oldest human emotion, the most primal. We like to think we're civilized. We tell ourselves we're not afraid. And every year, we skim our fingers across nightmares, desperately pitting our courage against shivering dread.
In one story, a paraplegic millionaire hires a priest to exorcise his pain; in another, a failing marriage is put to the ultimate test. In other stories hunters become the hunted as a small group of men ventures deep into a forest; a psychic struggles for her life on national television; a soldier strikes a grisly bargain with his sister's killer; ravens answer a child's wish for magic; two mercenaries accept a strangely simplistic assignment; and a desperate woman in an occupied land makes a terrible choice.
What scares you? Horror wears new faces in these carefully selected stories. The details may change, but the fear remains. With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four provides the petrifying horror fans of the genre have come to expect--and enjoy.
About the Author :
Ellen Datlow has been editing sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short fiction for more than thirty years. She was fiction editor of Omni magazine and Scifiction and has edited more than fifty anthologies. She won the Bram Stoker Award in 2020 and has won nine World Fantasy Awards, plus multiple Locus, Hugo, Stoker, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson Awards. She was the recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, and was honored with the Life Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career.
Ellen Datlow has been editing sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short fiction for more than thirty years. She was fiction editor of Omni magazine and Scifiction and has edited more than fifty anthologies. She won the Bram Stoker Award in 2020 and has won nine World Fantasy Awards, plus multiple Locus, Hugo, Stoker, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson Awards. She was the recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, and was honored with the Life Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career.
Ellen Datlow has been editing sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short fiction for more than thirty years. She was fiction editor of Omni magazine and Scifiction and has edited more than fifty anthologies. She won the Bram Stoker Award in 2020 and has won nine World Fantasy Awards, plus multiple Locus, Hugo, Stoker, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson Awards. She was the recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, and was honored with the Life Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career.
Stephen King is the author of more than thirty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King. Laird Barron is a writer of horror fiction. He has received three Shirley Jackson Awards for his collections The Imago Sequence, and Other Stories and Occultation, and Other Stories and for his novella Mysterium Tremendum. His other works include two novels, The Light Is the Darkness and The Croning, and a story collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. He lives in upstate New York.
Priya Sharma, a doctor who lives in the United Kingdom, is an author whose novella Ormshadow was a finalist for the This Is Horror Award. Her short stories have appeared in such magazines as Black Static, Interzone, Albedo One, and On Spec. Her stories have been included in two anthologyies, Paula Guran's Best Dark Fantasy and Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror Volume 4.
Margo Lanagan's story collection, Red Spikes, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book and a Horn Book Fanfare, and Black Juice was a Printz Honor Book. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
Brian Hodge is the award-winning author of ten novels of horror and crime/noir. He has also written over 100 short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and four full-length collections. A. C. Wise is a Canadian-born author currently living in the US. Her work has won the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, as well as twice more being a finalist for the award, twice being a finalist for the Nebula Award, and once a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In her spare time, among other things, she wrangles two corgis and one very opinionated tuxedo cat.
Livia Llewellyn is an award-nominated writer of horror, dark fantasy and erotica, whose fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Subterranean, Apex Magazine, Postscripts, Nightmare Magazine, as well as numerous anthologies. Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors received a 2011 Shirley Jackson Award nomination for Best Collection, "Omphalos" received a 2011 SJA for Best Novelette, and "Furnace" received a 2013 SJA nomination for Best Short Fiction. CHET WILLIAMSON's parents took him to see the film of Robert Bloch's Psycho when he was twelve, and he has been a reader and disciple of Bloch ever since. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, and many other magazines and anthologies. A collection of his stories received the International Horror Guild Award. He has twice been a final nominee for the World Fantasy Award, the MWA's Edgar Award, and six times for the HWA's Stoker Award. He has narrated over thirty audiobooks. Among his other novels are Defenders of the Faith, Ash Wednesday, Second Chance, Dreamthorp, Lowland Rider, Reign, and Soulstorm, as well as The Searchers trilogy, and two collections of stories, The Night Listener and Others and Figures in Rain. Glen Hirshberg received his BA from Columbia University, where he won the Bennett Cerf Prize for Best Fiction, and his MA and MFA from the University of Montana. His first novel, The Snowman's Children, was a Literary Guild Featured Selection. His collection, The Two Sams, won three International Horror Guild Awards and was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly. Hirshberg has won the Shirley Jackson Award and been a finalist for the World Fantasy and the Bram Stoker Awards.
John Langan is the author of two novels, The Fisherman and House of Windows, and two collections of stories, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. With Paul Tremblay, he coedited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters. He's one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, for which he served as a juror during its first three years. Currently, he reviews horror and dark fantasy for Locus magazine. Peter Straub (1943-2022) was the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. He has won the Bram Stoker Award for his two of his novels and a short story collection, 5 Stories; he has also won a World Fantasy Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He received a BA degree in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA from Columbia University.
Meredith Mitchell is an actress who has performed in such films as Mona Lisa Smile and The Reunion, on stage with Shakespeare & Company and the New Repertory Theatre, and on television on Good Morning America. She received her BA in psychology from Emory University and her MFA in acting from Brandeis University.
Rebecca Mitchell is a performance artist and classically trained vocalist, as well as a professional host, emcee, and personality. Her natural flair for the dramatic, coupled with her love of being in the studio, brought her to the world of narrating in 2013.
Michael Healy has appeared off Broadway and on national television, most notably on Saturday Night Live for three years, as well as in several national commercials. He continues to hone his craft in Rhode Island, where he has won awards for acting. His audiobook recordings include Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat, The Collector of Lost Things by Jeremy Page, and The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Stephen R. Thorne, winner of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration, is a professional actor and member of the resident acting company at Providence's esteemed Trinity Repertory Company, where he has played Hamlet, Henry V, and Tom Joad.
Charlie Thurston is an experienced audiobook narrator, actor, and playwright who has received numerous Earphones Awards for his work. He has appeared on Law and Order: SVU, and his voice can be heard in audiobooks such as The Oracle Year, Southernmost, The Terranauts, and The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone.
Lindy Nettleton is a professional actress and a registered nurse who was born in England and lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, Scotland, and various places in England before coming to the United States. Apart from acting and narrating audiobooks, she runs her own wellness business. She is now a US citizen and is happy to make Newport, Rhode Island, her home.
Charles Carroll is an actor and voice-over artist residing in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. He is an avid film buff and stays active in the local film community.
Shaun Grindell, actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator, was born and raised in Southampton, England. His training includes the Calland School of Speech and Drama and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in London. He has been seen on stage in London and Las Vegas.
Angela Brazil is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator and a professional actor who is proud to be a long-standing member of the Resident Acting Company at Trinity Repertory Company. She also teaches at the Brown/Trinity Conservatory.
Fred Sullivan is an actor and an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has played over one hundred roles as an award-winning resident actor at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. He is resident director at Gamm Theatre and teaches acting at the Rhode Island School of Design.
