Suspense Horror Fiction

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.

On winter solstice, the birds disappeared, and the mist arrived. The inhabitants of Nebulah quickly learn not to venture out after dark. But it is hard to stay indoors: Cabin fever sets in, and the mist can be beguiling too. Eventually only six remain. Like the rest of the townspeople, Pete has nowhere else to go. After he rescues a stranded psychic from a terrible fate, he’s given a warning: He will be dead by solstice unless he leaves town - soon.

Midnight. Some call it the witching hour. Others call it the devil’s hour. Here in the graveyard, midnight is a very special time. It is a time when ghostly spirits are at their strongest, when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest. Legend has it, that while most of the world is asleep, the lack of prayers allow the spirits to communicate under the cover of darkness, among the headstones, their whispers rustling in the leaves of the old oak trees. But if you’re here in the graveyard, you can tell yourself it’s just the wind....

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

Twenty-something Harper Connelly has a gift. After being struck by lighting as a child, she discovered an eerie ability to locate the deceased. In Memphis, skeptical Professor Nunley wants her to demonstrate that skill at an ancient cemetery. There, Harper stands atop a grave and says there are two bodies entombed: one centuries old, but the other, a young girl named Tabitha.

A man and woman possessed of telekinetic powers. She is the doctor. He is the experiment. What comes between them is a terrifying secret history that could save them or destroy them.

In the 1990s, heavy metal band Durt Wurk was poised for breakout success - but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in obscurity. Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western - she's tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins to suspect that Terry sabotaged more than just the band.

A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.

Darren is going back to where it all started, back to where he was reborn as a child of the night. But like Darren, the town has changed a lot over the years. Back home, old enemies await. Scores must be settled. Destiny looks certain to destroy him, and the world is doomed to fall to the Ruler of the Night. Travel home with Darren in this, the penultimate book in the saga.

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda - a successful architect in a happy marriage - finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.

Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a keen eye for the paranormal, and he's carved out a unique, if only slightly lucrative, niche for himself in nonfiction; he writes travelogues of the country's most haunted places, after haunting them himself. When he convinces the owner of the infamous Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay on the premises for two weeks, he believes he's finally found the location that will bring him a best seller. Then things start going wrong: screams from upstairs, figures in the thresholds, and more than what should be in any basement.

Grave Sight draws listeners into the intriguing world of Harper Connelly, a woman with a unique gift: she can "see" the deceased and how they died. A teenage girl from a small Ozarks town is missing and feared dead. Hired by local police, Harper locates the girl's body in a nearby forest. But there's more than one corpse in those woods, and the second one raises questions no one wants to ask.

The Manipulator. I can manipulate the emotions of anyone who lets me. I will make you hurt, make you cry, make you laugh and sigh. But my words don't affect him. Especially not when I plead for him to leave. He's always there, watching and waiting. And I can never look away. Not when I want him to come closer. The Shadow. I didn't mean to fall in love. But now that I have, I can't stay away. I'm mesmerized by her smile, by her eyes, and the way she moves. I'll keep watching and waiting. Until I can make her mine. And once she is, I'll never let her go.

Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But for some reason, he is.

Bela and Lizzy, the dominant megalodon siblings from Angel's brood, have escaped the Tanaka Institute to roam the Salish Sea in British Columbia. While Jonas Taylor and his friend Mac attempt to either recapture or kill the "sisters," Jonas' son, David, embarks on his own adventure, motivated by revenge. Having witnessed his girlfriend's gruesome death, David has joined a Dubai prince's ocean expedition, tracking the 120-foot, hundred-ton Liopleurodon that escaped from the Panthalassa Sea.

After a tragic accident at work, all Grady Miller wanted was an escape. He finds it months later with two of his closest friends. Together, the three of them travel south to Prism Lake for the upcoming holiday, where they plan on spending the sunny weekend drinking, grilling, and relaxing. But when a series of monstrous blizzards cover the Eastern United States in feet of snow, knocking out communications and making the roads impossible to drive on, they realize their weekend of fun could turn into a lifetime of survival.

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists-Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds.

This anthology of horror and suspense features seven spine-tingling stories to entice your imagination, including Every Now and Then by George Zarr, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, How to Shed 180 Pounds by Pete Lutz, Personal Delivery by George Zarr, A Visitor from Egypt by Frank Belknap Long Jr, Dark Road to Nowhere by Joey Ouellette, and The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. Sound effects and music chillingly enhance each story.

Nic is so much more than The Devil. The night of the auction changes everything. I thought I knew who he was and what was going to happen next. I had no idea how wrong I was.

Okiku wants vengeance...and she gets it. Whenever there's a monster hurting a child - the same way she was hurt 300 years ago in Japan - her spirit is there to deliver punishment. But one American boy draws her like no other. The two are pulled into a world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from the American Midwest to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan. The boy is not a monster, but something evil writhes beneath his skin, trapped by a series of intricate tattoos.