Horror Mystery Fantasy

For more than 30 years, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the 11th volume of the series, Daltow's back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. This light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows.

A trolley car pulls into the station. Four minutes before, the inhabitants were seen boarding at the previous station. All are dead. And all of them are union. The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built airships that cross the seas. Guns that won the Great War. And above all, the city of Evesden. But something is rotten at the heart of Evesden. Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must find the truth behind the city before it kills him.

And the dead shall rise... Two hellish years. That's how long it's been since the hurricanes flooded the Gulf Coast, and the dead rose up from the ruins. The cities were quarantined; the infected, contained. Any unlucky survivors were left to fend for themselves. A feast for the dead. And the living shall gather... One boatload of refugees manages to make it out alive - but one passenger carries the virus. Within weeks, the zombie epidemic spreads across the globe.

Over 100 years ago, a group of witches made their way from New England to Whitewater, Wisconsin, known as Second Salem. Others also made their way to the city and, through their ignorance, unleashed an evil entity. Three sisters, the Willoughby Witches, created an incantation strong enough to ensnare the demon. Lord Henry McDermott, college professor, anthropologist, and archaeologist, has yearned to learn more about the legend of the Willoughby Witches. Taking the summer off to research the folklore, Henry discovers that there is more waiting for him in Whitewater than just a story.

Was it a living woman that stood by his side, or a dead body reanimated for the time or the occasion in some strange manner?

A neuroscientist walks out of her life and isolates herself in the woods, intending to blow the whistle on a pharmaceutical company and its creativity drug gone wrong. A recently orphaned graduate school dropout is hired as a "literary detective" to decode the work of a mysterious Internet poet who writes about disappearances and murders with an inexplicably precise knowledge of private details. And a virologist discovers her identity has been stolen by a conceptual artist in whose stories someone always goes missing.

Two roads lead into a dark forest. They meet at Greymist Fair, the village hidden in the trees, a place kept alive by the families that never leave. The people of Greymist Fair know the woods are a dangerous and magical place, and to set foot off the road is to invite trouble.

Best-selling author Robert Jackson Bennett has won widespread critical acclaim for his unique brand of darkly inventive fiction. In The Troupe, 16-year-old George Carole joins vaudeville in search of Heironomo Silenus, the man he believes to be his father. But what he discovers casts a dark pall over his world: Silenus' troupe hides a dangerous secret - one that invites death to all in its vicinity.

The series takes place in a world similar to our own but one where vampires, witches, werewolves and shape-shifters live among humans without their knowledge. These supernatural races make up a secret society known as the Night World, which enforces two fundamental laws to prevent discovery: 1) Never allow humans to gain knowledge of the Night World's existence and, 2) Never fall in love with one of them.

Yes, you should be afraid of the dark.... A powerful demon is hell-bent on revenge, and he knows paranormal investigator Ford Atticus Ford by name. As Ford wrestles with the uncertain nature of his future, a different kind of evil storms into his world, proving that not all demons are inhuman. Trailing in Lauren Coeburn's wake are some of the most elusive and terrifying paranormal entities in existence - the black-eyed children.

An underground classic, Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations. In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways", experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister then the last.

For one brief moment, it seems Lilly and her plague-weary band of survivors might just engineer a better tomorrow. Banding together with other small town settlements, they begin a massive project to refurbish the railroad between Woodbury and Atlanta. The safer travel will begin a new post-apocalyptic era of trade, progress, and democracy. Little do they know, however, that trouble is brewing back home.

Rick Yancey’s first gothic suspense tale, The Monstrumologist, earned him a prestigious Michael L. Printz Award. The second installment of this acclaimed series, Curse of the Wendigo, finds young Will Henry on the hunt for a supernatural beast plaguing New England in the late 1800s. Will and his mentor, the domineering Dr. Warthrop, are enlisted to help the doctor’s former fiancée. It seems her husband has been lost in the Canadian wilderness.

Aiden Anderson got off to a tough start in life. He had a small family to begin with, and they were all gone by the time he turned 16. He did his best to shake off his grief and go on to a successful life as a musician. He was talented, but just missed the big time. When Aiden dies in a car crash, he couldn't be more surprised to open his eyes in his grandmother's kitchen in 1961. He has a second chance at everything: family, friends, and fame. Even in Middle Falls, second chances don't always turn out right.

A ticking sound fills the air as Tim MacGregor enters The Daily Edition Café, hoping to meet his new girlfriend for coffee. Moments later, the café is transported 67 million years into the past, along with everyone inside.

Allie Hilts was still in high school when a fire at a top-secret research facility released an air-borne pathogen that quickly spread to every male on the planet, killing most. Allie witnessed every man she ever knew be consumed by fearsome symptoms: scorching fevers and internal bleeding, madness and uncontrollable violence. The world crumbled around her. No man was spared, and the few survivors were irrevocably changed. They became disturbingly strong, aggressive, and ferocious. Feral.

It’s been five years since Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, but when the town’s children start to disappear, the questions surrounding her brothers’ mysterious circumstances are brought back into the light. Attempting to flee her past, Wendy almost runs over an unconscious boy lying in the middle of the road....

Though she's the vampire queen, Betsy Taylor is much more like a princess. In MaryJanice Davidson's novels, this high-maintenance monarch is finally coming to terms with her new status.

They live among us. They are our neighbors, our mothers, our lovers. They change. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester's front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero. Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but he is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy.

Born with uncanny abilities, 19-year-old Adam could be a great help to people. Could be, if he wasn't such a slacker. Instead, he's obsessed with his nonexistent love life; trying to hook up and constantly striking out at the local watering hole. Marked when he was 12 by a powerful spirit, he encounters it again. It's been waiting for him to mature and now he's definitely ripe. Adam is revolted by the evil succubus. Even a wannabe Lothario has some standards! When he rejects the horrifying "offer", the enraged demon strikes back. Bodies start to pile up.