“The Book of Witches” edited by Jonathan Strahan

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Jonathan Strahan is a veteran anthology editor, and he delivers another great one with The Book of Witches. The witches in this book have varied powers—some cast hexes, some craft constructs, some make potions, some change shape—but all have found a source of power that sets them apart from those around them. Sometimes this leads to them being respected and sometimes to them being feared and persecuted.

In two of the stories, we only meet the witches after their deaths. Cassandra Khaw’s “Met Swallow” features a recently deceased witch who asks a huli-jing (a fox spirit) to possess her body so as to hide the fact of her death from her family. At first, the family life to which the huli-jing returns seems idyllic, but then the cracks begin to show. In Andrea Stewart’s “Her Ravenous Waters,” a river goddess grants a murdered woman a new life as a witch. But here, too, the act of beneficence isn’t what it seems. I found both these stories interesting, because they deal with a redress of injustice, but the injustice in question isn’t the witch-burning you’d expect to see.

“Her Ravenous Waters” also shares a commonality with another story, Amal El-Mohtar’s “John Hollowback and the Witch.” In both cases, a witch’s power is fueled by anger—and, contrary to what one might expect, righteous anger. El-Mohtar’s tale at first seems to follow a typical folkloric structure, where a character with a problem must complete several tasks or rituals, each coupled to a significant object, in order to solve it. But each step of the solution reveals more about the title character and how he came to be in the situation he’s in. This was one of the most engaging stories in the book, to me.

“The Cost of Doing Business,” by Emily Y. Teng, is another story that stood out. Most of the witches in this anthology aren’t beholden to any kind of demonic figure (although, as in “Her Ravenous Waters,” they may owe their magic to some other kind of supernatural entity). The witch in “The Cost of Doing Business” has sold her soul to the Devil. The story also portrays Hell as a factory with unsafe working conditions, terrible bosses, and impenetrable bureaucracy.

Another story whose witch character is morally ambiguous is Angela Slatter’s “Through the Woods, Due West.” Two of the three human characters who draw the witch’s ire have done a terrible thing, though it’s not at all clear they knew what they were doing at the time. The third one is ultimately doomed by his loyalty to his friends, which would normally be a positive character trait. The story heavily implies that this loyalty is undeserved, but naivete isn’t the same as wrongdoing. The witch here shares something in common with some of the older portrayals of fairies, with different standards of right and wrong from those held by humans.

The stories in this anthology are a diverse bunch, and most of them are very good. Based on my enjoyment of Strahan’s previous offering, The Book of Dragons, I requested The Book of Witches from NetGalley as soon as I became aware of it. That was a good choice, and I’ll definitely pick up the next such anthology he puts out.

“When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson,” edited by Ellen Datlow

Shirley Jackson has rightly earned acclaim as a master of macabre fiction. Her work has inspired many other writers, and she even has a literary award named after her. Ellen Datlow, who’s been editing horror and dark fantasy for decades, is among her many admirers, and in 2021, she published When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson. In this anthology, eighteen authors present stories whose style, theme, or subject matter reflects Jackson’s influence.

Even in this generally excellent volume, three stories stand out: Kelly Link’s “Skinder’s Veil,” Laird Barron’s “Tiptoe,” and Elizabeth Hand’s “For Sale by Owner.” Link’s story concerns a young man who jumps at the chance to take on a housesitting job so he can get away from his annoying roommate. But there’s something unusual about the house and its owner. The story is full of the dreamlike ambiguity and layered storytelling Link is known for.

The main character in “Tiptoe” reflects on a game he and his father used to play when he was a child. The more he examines his memories, the stranger they seem to become, until a present-day encounter with his brother prompts a horrifying revelation. Many of Jackson’s stories focused on female characters, and particularly on the ways in which women’s lives are constrained by society, so many of the stories in this tribute anthology also naturally center women. I was curious what kind of Jackson-inspired story Barron would write, since he’s more known for his “tough guy” protagonists. Here, he focuses on another story element Jackson is known for, sometimes referred to as “weird ritual”—activities or actions taken by the characters that usually have social significance and would be perceived as eerie or unsettling by the reader. While a whole town participates in the titular lottery from Jackson’s famous short story, the weird ritual in “Tiptoe” is more of a family tradition. A lot of us probably remember games that were traditional to play in our families, whether they were ordinary board games like Scrabble, or something the kids made up out of whole cloth and that only half made sense. By twisting such familiar memories into something uncanny, Barron creates a story that’s truly Jacksonesque.

If Barron’s story evokes “The Lottery,” Hand’s is an homage to Shirley Jackson’s other famous work, The Haunting of Hill House. Three middle-aged women decide to have a sleepover in an uninhabited house at the end of a remote woodland trail in their town. What starts as a fun outing for the characters is marred by strange and ominous events. The entity that inhabits the house—or, perhaps, is the house—doesn’t seem to be a ghost in the traditional sense. It reminded me of a mid-2000s piece of web fiction called “The Dionaea House.” Whatever walks in the house of “For Sale by Owner,” it should have been left to walk alone.

There were a few stories in this anthology that fell a bit flat for me. Especially in horror and adjacent genres, I don’t think it’s always necessary for the author to explicitly explain the precise details of what’s going on. “Skinder’s Veil,” for example, does a masterful job of dropping hints that suggest possible explanations for the house and its owner without ever coming right out and saying, “This is exactly what’s happening.” But a story should feature some sort of resolution, whether that’s the closing of a character arc, the cessation of weird events (even if we never find out exactly what those events meant), etc. A couple of the stories here felt like they ended in the middle. The effect was less one of deliberate ambiguity on the part of the author and more as if some kind of ebook software error had cut off the last page or two. Overall, though, this was a delightful anthology that really did Shirley Jackson proud.

“Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology” edited by Richard Wells

Damnable Tales, an anthology of stories falling into the subgenre of folk horror, came into the world through a fairly unusual route. It was published by Unbound, a publisher that specializes in crowdfunding books. The stories to be included were selected by Richard Wells, a graphic designer who has made props for TV series such as Sherlock and Doctor Who. Wells also provided an illustration for each story. These are beautiful, black and white lino-cut prints. The production values on this book are honestly better than those of most traditionally published books.

The stories themselves are a good mix of classics and lesser-known works. I enjoyed rereading familiar stories like M.R. James’s “The Ash-Tree” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Summer People.” I had read Eleanor Scott’s “Randalls Round” in another anthology but didn’t remember most of the details. The gradually emerging memories and sense of déjà vu as I read felt thematically appropriate! In other cases, the book introduced me to “new” stories from authors whose other work I was familiar with. Robert Louis Stevenson, better known for writing Treasure Island, is included here with his sinister tale “Thrawn Janet.” The anthology closes with “Bind Your Hair” by Robert Aickman, whose catalog of “strange stories” like “The Hospice” and “The Swords” have earned him a place of renown in modern weird fiction.

Damnable Tales also offers what is, in my opinion, the greatest pleasure of anthologies: discovering writers whose works are entirely new to you. Fiona Macleod’s “The Sin-Eater” is an atmospheric story of a man consumed by old grudges. A.C. Benson’s “Out of the Sea” features a wrongdoer getting a supernatural comeuppance, but he builds tension and dread so masterfully that it doesn’t feel like a cliché. Baillie Reynolds’s “A Witch-Burning” and Margery Lawrence’s “How Pan Came to Little Ingleton” are interesting in that, while the main characters definitely feel fear, the objective of the stories isn’t to scare the reader. Yet they’re so replete with isolated communities, remote wildernesses, and ancient powers that they feel like a perfect fit for a folk horror anthology. Overall, this is a lovely collection, and well worth picking up in hardcover if you can.

“The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, edited by John Joseph Adams

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories captured the imaginations of readers to such a degree that they hounded Doyle when he wrote of Holmes’s supposed death at Reichenbach Falls. They have continued to inspire both readers and writers in the decades since. One of Holmes’s most defining traits is his unwavering devotion to logic. How, then, might he react if confronted with a case where logic seemed not to apply? The contributors to John Joseph Adams’s anthology The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes envision scenarios in which Holmes must live up to his own maxim: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

While the majority of the stories in this volume deal with phenomena that go beyond the laws of nature as they exist in the real world, some do prove to have mundane (if improbable) explanations. Interestingly, one such is written by Stephen King, who is far better known for his tales of supernatural horror. His contribution, “The Doctor’s Case,” is an excellent straight-up mystery story. Anne Perry’s “The Case of the Bloodless Sock” is also a well-constructed story in the vein of the original Holmes tales, penned by a modern luminary of the mystery genre.

A number of the writers had Holmes and Watson meeting real historical figures of their time. Anthony Burgess (of A Clockwork Orange fame) gives us “Murder to Music,” in which Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan makes a brief appearance. Stephen Baxter’s “The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor” (one of my favorite stories, with a masterful ending) includes H.G. Wells as a character. Tony Pi’s “Dynamics of a Hanging” features Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll. These appearances made for fun Easter eggs, as well as serving to ground their stories in the time and place where the original Holmes stories were set.

Other authors have Holmes and Watson meet fictional characters from their own era. Although I felt that the resolution to Bradley H. Sinor’s “The Adventure of the Other Detective” was accomplished too easily, I appreciated the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Having greatly enjoyed Barbara Roden’s short story collection Northwest Passages, I was eager to read her story in this anthology. “The Things That Shall Come Upon Them” didn’t disappoint, and I love the way she tied in the events of M.R. James’s “Casting the Runes.” Barbara Hambly’s “The Antiquarian’s Niece” references H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” and includes William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder as a character who assists Holmes in the case. Neil Gaiman’s World Fantasy Award-winning “A Study in Emerald” also crosses over Holmes with Lovecraft’s work, and does so with Gaiman’s trademark eerie sensibility and beautiful prose.

A number of the stories are noteworthy for other reasons. Geoffry A. Landis’s “The Singular Habits of Wasps” and Rob Rogers’s “The Adventure of the Pirates of Devil’s Cape” both center Holmes’s other skills—his physical strength, his ability at hand-to-hand combat, and his mastery of disguise—alongside his intellectual prowess. “Wasps” also has a great cosmic horror-ish ending: “I look at the stars now, and shudder. What else might be out there, waiting for us?” As for “Pirates,” many Holmes stories have titles formatted as “The Adventure of __________”, but this one really is a fun adventure, although the inexplicable element felt somewhat tacked-on at the end. As its title suggests, Dominic Green’s “The Adventure of the Lost World” draws on Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. This one has more humor in it that most Holmes stories. Tanith Lee’s “The Human Mystery” is a beautiful story, and it’s fitting that it’s dedicated to the late Jeremy Brett, who is widely considered to have given the definitive screen performance of the Sherlock Holmes character.

Overall, this is a brilliant anthology, and regardless of which aspects of Holmes stories it is that draws you to them, you should be able to find something here to enjoy.

“She Walks in Shadows”, edited by Paula R. Stiles and Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In recent years, a number of authors have written stories set in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos that center demographics Lovecraft himself either ignored or was actively hostile to. Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom retells “The Horror at Red Hook” from the perspective of a Black musician, while Kij Johnson’s The Dream-Quest of Vellit Boe tells the story of a professor at Ulthar Women’s University. She Walks in Shadows, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, collects a number of shorter stories written by women. In most cases, the main characters in these stories are female as well.

Some of the stories are direct retellings of Lovecraft’s stories. Nadia Bulkin’s “Violet is the Color of Your Energy” and Molly Tanzer’s “The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad” are takes on “The Color Out of Space” and “The Thing on the Doorstep,” respectively. Nadia Bulkin’s writing is always powerful, and she infuses her story—told from the POV of Abigail Gardner—with a strong sense of claustrophobia and desperation. Tanzer’s story combines a subject Lovecraft surely would have appreciated (the feeling of being an outsider) with one that he probably wouldn’t have (female friendship). And while Ephraim Waite’s occult antics are (hopefully) alien to most of us, anyone who’s been through high school can empathize with the sadness of growing apart from a friend who seems to have changed overnight.

Interestingly, several of the stories are direct sequels or prequels to Lovecraft’s work, exploring dimensions of his characters’ lives that he didn’t. Lavinia Whately is a mostly silent presence in “The Dunwich Horror,” but Angela Slatter’s “Lavinia’s Wood” gives us a deep look into her mind. We see how she felt about her father “Wizard” Whately, the other people of Dunwich, and the being with which she conceives Wilbur. Gemma Files’s “Hairwork” shows us events after “Medusa’s Coil,” a story Lovecraft wrote in collaboration with Zealia Bishop. Marceline’s African heritage is horrifying to the other characters, and presumably to Lovecraft as well (I don’t know much about Bishop so won’t make any claims on her behalf), but of course it isn’t horrifying at all to Marceline. As with “Lavinia’s Wood,” we get inside a female character’s head and see her through her own eyes rather than through those of the male characters in the canonical work. A similar dynamic exists in Arinn Dembo’s “Magna Mater,” with the “white ape” of “Facts About the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” representing a culture with its own history and traditions.

Still other stories play with the concepts and tropes of the Mythos without referencing any particular story or entity. Amelia Gorman’s “Bring the Moon to Me” is particularly interesting in the way it draws a correlation between knitting and computer coding, and thus between art and science. There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the continuing dearth of women in technological and hard science fields, and women have often been perceived as having less interest and/or aptitude in such fields. Gorman’s protagonist unites the supposedly feminine domain of textile crafts and the supposedly masculine one of coding, and in so doing, finds a source of eldritch power. “The Adventurer’s Wife” by Premee Mohamed uses the familiar title structure of “The Profession’s Female Relative,” which has been criticized as relegating female characters to merely the relative of a more important male character. Mohamed turns this on its head by having the titular adventurer’s wife be the center of the story—in fact, we only see the adventurer through her eyes.

Most of the stories in this book are quite short, to the point where I felt like a few of them would have been improved by giving them a bit more room to breathe. But overall, this was a great anthology, and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for modern Mythos stories.

“Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror” edited by John F.D. Taff

I received a copy of this anthology from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Kirby McCauley’s 1980 anthology Dark Forces was a landmark in the horror fiction landscape, featuring the original publication of Stephen King’s “The Mist,” as well as stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Manly Wade Wellman. John F.D. Taff put together Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror as a conscious tribute to Dark Forces, including pieces by prominent authors from all across the horror genre.

I’ve been a fan of Gemma Files’s writing for some time, so it was no surprise to me that her story, “The Sanguintalist,” was my favorite of the anthology. It’s a stellar entry in the “occult detective” subgenre. Main character Lala Mirwani’s ability to access thoughts and memories from samples of a person’s blood proves invaluable in solving a murder. But the murderer isn’t the only threat she faces: her life has been made more difficult by the fact that she’s a trans, non-white immigrant. Recent years have seen a number of books that use horror to examine various kinds of structural inequity, and “The Sanguintalist” is a shorter but still worthy addition to the trend.

Ramsey Campbell contributed a story to Dark Forces, so it’s great to see him in this successor anthology as well. His story, “A Life in Nightmares,” is full of creepy imagery supporting a truly inventive concept.

John Langan’s “Enough for Hunger and Enough for Hate” is a wonderful take on a classic monster. He pays tribute to two masters of the horror genre in this story while still making it his own. Readers who grew impatient with the “story within a story” aspect of his novel The Fisherman may find this piece off-putting for the same reason, but as someone who loves that kind of nested tale, I really enjoyed this.

Priya Sharma’s “Papa Eye” was one of the stories in this anthology I was most looking forward to reading, because of how much I loved her story “The Crow Palace” in Ellen Datlow’s Black Feathers. It turned out to be a gripping tale, although perhaps less frightening than I was expecting.

Stephen Graham Jones has been getting a lot of attention for his novels, but my favorite piece of his is the short story “The Night Cyclist,” so I was really happy to see that he’d written a short story for Dark Stars. That story, “All These Things He Called Memories,” was another one of my favorites. It has a wonderful atmosphere of creeping unease. There are no jump-scares or gore, but it made me side-eye the shadowy corners of the room.

There were a couple of stories that didn’t work for me. In Caroline Kepnes’s “The Attentionist,” it makes sense that some time needs to be spent building the relationship between the two main characters, as this is a very important part of the story. But this “establishing the relationship” section of the story dragged on too long. Nevertheless, this is a great anthology. Hopefully, it will do what the anthology that inspired it did: showcasing some of the brightest voices in horror and introducing readers to writers whose work they’ll love.

“Star Trek: The Next Generation–The Sky’s the Limit”, edited by Marco Palmieri

In 2007, as part of a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a short story collection called The Sky’s the Limit was published. Edited by Marco Palmieri, the book includes stories spanning the entire TNG continuity as it existed at that time, from shortly before “Encounter at Farpoint” all the way up through the aftermath of Nemesis.

My two favorite stories were Susan Shwartz’s “Turncoats” and David A. McIntee’s “On the Spot.” In “Turncoats,” an ensign who had previously defected to the Romulan Empire and then re-defected to the Federation (as seen in “Face of the Enemy”) finds himself in a position to reclaim his twice-lost honor. This story felt especially true to the spirit of Star Trek, since while there is a classic “technobabble” problem threatening the ship, that’s not what the story is really about. It’s about trust, betrayal, and redemption. In “On the Spot,” Worf finds himself taking care of Spot after Data’s death in Nemesis. There are some humorous moments in this entry, as when Worf solemnly proclaims “You are a good cat” after Spot demonstrates her hunting skills. But there are some touching moments too, like Worf pointing out that for all his desire to be human, Data met his death like a Klingon.

Of course, several of the stories feature Captain Jean-Luc Picard. In Keith R.A. DeCandido’s “Four Lights,” the Dominion War brings Picard into a new conflict with his former torturer, Gul Madred. “Chain of Command” was one of TNG’s most powerful episodes, and seeing Picard grapple with the aftereffects of it is powerful as well. In Geoff Trowbridge’s “Suicide Note,” Picard finally gets to deliver the letter Romulan admiral Jarok left for his family at the end of “The Defector.” There was a small moment in this story I really appreciated. Picard feels awkward visiting Jarok’s widow and daughter, not only because he’s bringing them what was essentially Jarok’s suicide note, but also because of the difference between Romulan and Federation cultures. The tension is broken when Jarok’s widow offers Picard a beverage made by filtering hot water through a type of leaf—essentially, Romulan tea. Again, this is a very “Star Trek” message: similarities between seemingly disparate cultures that can help them to understand each other.

I read this for the “comfort read” square on a Book Bingo challenge, and it really fit the bill. I loved TNG as a kid (and still do), and it was so nice to return to that universe. I think Trek fans will get a lot out of this book.

“The Book of Dragons” edited by Jonathan Strahan

From The Hobbit to A Song of Ice and Fire to the iconic TTRPG Dungeons and Dragons, dragons have been a cornerstone of the fantasy genre. In 2020, Jonathan Strahan put together an anthology of stories featuring this grandaddy of all mythical creatures. Enhanced by Rovina Cai’s lovely art, these stories were a joy to read.

Even in such a uniformly excellent collection, some pieces were standouts. I loved Ken Liu’s “A Whisper of Blue.” In this tale, the fire breathed by dragons powers the electrical grid, and so-called dragon whisperers keep the dragons calm and persuade them to provide this resource. The story has a lot to say about our energy economy and the boom-and-bust cycles that can occur when a valuable natural resource is discovered near a small community. K.J. Parker’s “Habitat” presents a unique take on dragons, and like Liu’s story, it’s full of social commentary—in this case, on war. “Lucky’s Dragon,” by Kelly Barnhill, is just plain heartwarming. A precocious young girl unexpectedly manifests a tiny dragon during a school science experiment, and the dragon soon begins to cause problems out of all proportion to its size. I loved Lucky, I loved her eccentric neighbor, and I loved the dragon. Peter S. Beagle, of The Last Unicorn fame, contributes “Except on Saturdays.” While Lucky is a child, the protagonist of this story is middle-aged verging on elderly. But meeting a dragon has a tendency to reignite childish wonder. This is also a heartwarming story in its own way.

In Western folklore, dragons breathe fire. But dragons have an important place in Asian mythology as well, and that mythos associates dragons with water. Brooke Bolander’s “Where the River Turns to Concrete” features a river dragon who ends up in human form. Bolander has created a protagonist you can really root for, and I would be happy to read more stories set in this world. Zen Cho’s “Hikayat Sri Bujang, or, The Tale of the Naga Sage” tells the story of a naga who has left his home in the ocean to seek enlightenment on an isolated mountain. Despite all the main characters being nagas, the complex family relationships will probably feel familiar to many readers. And J.Y. Yang’s “The Exile” puts a science-fictional twist on the water dragon, with a dragon and hir human priest being exiled to a remote planet.

The Book of Dragons is packed full of a wide range of interpretations of the titular creatures, so there’s likely to be something here for everyone. I really loved this book, and it introduced me to a couple of authors whose work I wasn’t familiar with.

“Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales,” edited by Ellen Datlow

As someone who loves both birds and horror fiction, Ellen Datlow’s anthology Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales is one I just had to read.

Because they feed on carrion, crows are often associated with war and death. In some cultures, they’ve also been considered psychopomps that guide newly dead souls to the underworld. So it’s not surprising that many of the stories in this book feature crows and their relatives. Priya Sharma’s “The Crow Palace” is a chilling tale of family secrets centered around a huge bird feeder-like structure frequented by crows. Seanan McGuire’s “The Mathematical Inevitability of Corvids” uses an old nursery rhyme to tell a story of an outcast young woman. Fans of her Wayward Children series will recognize her talent for writing about children and teens who don’t quite fit in with those around them. Livia Llewellyn’s “The Acid Test” presents a being that has some characteristics of a crow, though as is typical for Llewellyn’s fiction, it’s actually something quite a bit weirder.

Some of my favorite stories, though, focus on birds that don’t have quite as sinister a reputation. Joyce Carol Oates’s “Great Blue Heron” is a powerful story of a grieving widow who develops an emotional bond with the titular bird. Stephen Graham Jones perfectly captures the narrative voice of a teenager in “Pigeon from Hell” and turns what should be the most unthreatening bird on the planet into an ominous omen. A.C. Wise’s “The Secret of Flight” is another tale featuring passerines—starlings, in this case. It uses false forms, a storytelling style I love, to document the eerie disappearances and accidents surrounding a play. In Pat Cadigan’s “A Little Bird Told Me,” a parrot is the star. This is a particularly creative story, putting one type of bird into a narrative role usually reserved for another type.Black Feathers is one of Datlow’s lesser-known anthologies, and it deserves a wider audience. The stories here pack a punch, and some linger in the imagination long after being read.

“The Best of the Best Horror of the Year”, edited by Ellen Datlow

Ellen Datlow is probably the best-known editor of short speculative fiction and certainly the best-known in the horror genre. In addition to her many other projects, she’s the editor of the long-running Best Horror of the Year series. In this retrospective volume from 2018, she collects selected stories from the first ten years of that anthology. Some of the authors represented herein are heavyweights of the genre, like Peter Straub and Ramsey Campbell. Some have achieved renown in more recent years, like John Langan and Laird Barron. Still others, like Suzy McKee Charnas and Jane Jakeman, were unknown to me when I picked this book up. In bringing them together, Datlow has created a truly memorable horror anthology.

In her introduction, Datlow pushes back against the idea that the famous monsters of horror fiction—zombies, vampires, werewolves—are worn out. “There’s a reason these tropes/monsters don’t go away,” she says, and several of the stories collected here prove her right. I’m personally not a fan of zombie stories, but the zombie stories included in Best of the Best—Stephen Graham Jones’s “Chapter Six” and “Tender as Teeth” by Stephanie Crawford and Duane Swierczynski—were among my favorite stories in the book. The reason is simple: neither of those stories is really about the zombies. Similarly, Nathan Ballingrud’s “Wild Acre” is a lycanthrope story that isn’t really about the lycanthropes. Instead, these tales are about the relationships between living humans: the stress that financial hardship can put on families, the power dynamics between mentors and proteges, the way society moves on (or doesn’t) after a disaster, the human tendency to simplify other people into heroes or villains when they might really be both or neither.

Speculative fiction is at its best when it has something to say about the real world. Several of the stories in Best of the Best are standouts in this regard. Although the anthology was compiled in 2018, and the stories were written over a period of ten years prior to that, Suzy McKee Charnas’s “Lowland Sea” felt very timely, being a modern take on Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Cody Goodfellow’s “At the Riding School” deals with gender politics and coming to terms with dark secrets in one’s family history. Brian Hodge’s “This Stagnant Breath of Change” is another piece that feels highly relevant today, with its focus on a resistance to societal change by the wealthy and well-connected.

As one might expect from such an anthology, there were a number of other excellent stories. I had previously read Laird Barron’s “In a Cavern, In a Canyon” and was happy to read it again. I usually prefer supernatural horror, but Stephen Gallagher’s “Shepherds’ Business” was wonderful despite not including any spectral goings-on. Simon Bestwick’s “The Moraine” is a great creature horror story. Ramsey Campbell’s “The Callers” shows why he’s sometimes described as Britain’s answer to Stephen King. Finally, the book ends on a strong note with Carole Johnstone’s superb “Better You Believe,” which manages the impressive feat of making an old trope feel fresh. Overall, this is an exceptionally strong collection of horror short fiction, and it should be on every horror aficionado’s shelf.