The Best of the Best Horror of the Year

Starred review from August 6, 2018
Datlow’s 10th-anniversary volume of horror shorts is a stunning and flawless collection that showcases the most terrifyingly beautiful writing of the genre. This anthology opens with its strongest title “Lowland Sea” by Suzy McKee Charnas, the story of an African woman quarantined with a wealthy white director and his friends on a compound in France after an outbreak of the Red Sweat, a disease as lethal as it is contagious. The woman is sent into the apocalyptic landscape to seek help, only to face the betrayal of these rich, white people upon her return. “Chapter Six” by Stephen Graham Jones, another outstanding piece, suspensefully details the plight of an academic to understand the anthropological transition from human to zombie and his subsequent gory demise. Datlow’s palate for the fearful and the chilling knows no genre constraint, encompassing the undead, the supernatural, and the cruelty perpetrated by ordinary humans. Exciting, literary, and utterly scary, this anthology is nothing short of exceptional.

Starred review from September 1, 2018
This anthology brings together a selection of stories from Datlow's acclaimed series of annual horror showcases, providing a survey of some of the best horror writing of the last decade. The horror on offer ranges widely in style and tone, from brief encounters with monsters or the supernatural to apocalypses of cosmic proportion to horrors invented out of the human heart. Highlights include Laird Barron's "In a Cavern, In a Canyon," about one woman's family history, told in a plaintive and deadly mystery voice; Livia Llewellyn's "Allochthon," in which a 1930s company wife experiences a horrifying transcendence in a barren landscape; Cody Goodfellow's "At the Riding School," concerning a school for young women that hides a strange and twisted tradition; Peter Straub's "The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine," where two longtime lovers are drawn into a mystery as deep as their desire; and Brian Hodge's "This Stagnant Breath of Change," about a town trapped forever in 1969 by the actions of its elders. This collection is highly recommended for anyone interested in contemporary horror and dark fantasy, as well as anyone looking for a collection of some of the best and most horrifying short fiction currently available.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)