Best New Horror: Volume 25 (Mammoth Book of Best New Horror) Read online

  A woman investigated her uncle’s death in his apparently haunted house in Simone St. James’ An Inquiry Into Love and Death, while a couple inherited a house with a dark secret in Ronald Malfi’s Cradle Lake.

  During the London Blitz, a brother and sister were evacuated to a house in the Lake District where the girl began to hear the voices of dead children in The Silence of Ghosts by Jonathan Aycliffe (aka Daniel Easterman). The author’s classic 1991 ghost story, Naomi’s Room, was reissued at the same time.

  A new governess discovered something was very wrong in John Boyne’s Victorian ghost story, This House is Haunted, and a woman searched for her missing parents who helped haunted souls find peace in John Searles’ Help for the Haunted.

  Dark secrets were revealed in the home of a taxidermist/puppeteer in House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill, and an amnesiac boy brought terror to a family home in The Orphan by Christopher Ransom.

  A boy was possessed by his father’s spirit in The Waking That Kills by Stephen Gregory, while Storm Demon was Gregory Lamberson’s fifth book featuring detective Jake Helman.

  Melvin Burgess’ Hunger was published under the Hammer imprint, as was Fire, the second volume in the “Engelsfors” trilogy by Sara Elfgren and Mats Strandberg. Sophie Hannah’s The Orphan Choir and Julie Myerson’s The Quickening were also both Hammer titles.

  A serial killer was inspired by fairy tales in Alison Littlewood’s Path of Needles, and a warlock was stalked by a monster from Russian folklore in Christopher Buehlman’s The Necromancer’s House.

  Girls were going missing on both sides of the Mexican–American border in Adam Mansbach’s supernatural thriller The Dead Run.

  In the near future, a Hollywood studio used bio-engineered monsters to attack the inhabitants of a rural town in Assault on Sunrise, a sequel to The Extra, by Michael Shea.

  James P. Blaylock’s steampunk romp The Aylesford Skull was set in 1883 and pitted eccentric scientist and explorer Professor Langdon St. Ives against his old nemesis, Dr. Ignacio Narbondo.

  The Romanov Cross by Robert Masello involved victims of the 1918 flu epidemic frozen in the Alaskan ice, while in Justin Richards’ alternate reality thriller The Suicide Exhibition: The Never War, in 1940 the German war machine awakened an ancient civilization, the alien Vril, whose involvement could result in the Nazi’s ultimate victory in the war for Europe.

  Weston Ochse’s Age of Blood was the second volume in the “Triple Six”/“SEAL Team 666” series, while James Swain’s Shadow People was a sequel to the author’s Dark Magic.

  Piper Maitland’s Hunting Daylight was a sequel to Acquainted with the Night, Chuck Palahniuk’s Doomed was a sequel to Damned, and The Last Grave was the second in the “Witch Hunt” series by Debbie Viguié.

  David Wong’s humorous This Book is Full of Spiders was a sequel to his John Dies at the End.

  Watcher of the Dark was the third book in the “Jeremiah Hunt” series by Joseph Nassise, and The Lost Soul was the third and final instalment in Gabriella Pierce’s packaged “666 Park Avenue” series and a tie-in to the TV series.

  Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Rawlik’s novel Reanimators was about the rivalry between Dr. Stuart Hartwell and Herbert West, and their attempts to conquer death itself, while Jeremy Robinson’s Island 731 involved the monstrous results of Japanese experiments during World War II and was inspired by H. G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau.

  With Blood Oranges, Caitlín R. Kiernan “writing as Kathleen Tierney” had some fun with the paranormal romance genre as her junkie monster-hunter protagonist became infected by both a werewolf and a vampire.

  Dead Ever After was the thirteenth and final “Sookie Stackhouse” novel from Charlaine Harris, as the series ended with Sookie’s friends uniting to battle her enemies in a final showdown. A 2,500-copy linen-bound signed edition ($125.00) was also available.

  Harris’ After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse was an alphabetically arranged nonfiction companion to the series.

  Fourteen years after the previous volume first appeared, Kim Newman’s long-awaited fourth book in his alternate world vampire series, Anno Dracula 1976–1991: Johnny Alucard, was finally published. It contained a number of loosely linked novellas and stories, several of which were original to the book.

  The vampire novel Blood of the Lamb by Sam Cabot (Carlos Dews and S. J. Rozan) involved the search for a secret document stolen from the Vatican.

  The Lair was a sequel to The Farm by Emily McKay, and Blood Bond was the ninth book in the “Anna Strong, Vampire” series by Jeanne C. Stein.

  Appalachian Overthrow was the tenth volume in E. E. Knight’s “The Vampire Earth” series and marked the beginning of a new story arc, while The Dog in the Dark was the eleventh volume in the “Noble Dead” vampire series by Barb Hendee and J. C. Hendee.

  The vampire Count Saint-Germain found a new companion in 13th-century Africa in Night Pilgrims, the twenty-sixth volume in the series by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

  Benjamin Percy’s epic werewolf/alternate history novel Red Moon, set in an alternate world where “lycans” co-existed amongst humans, was heavily promoted as belonging to the new “literary horror” movement – thus basically dismissing the rest of the genre as something less worthy.

  John Ringo’s Under a Graveyard Sky was set during the zombie apocalypse, as a family tried to find safe haven from an infected humanity. A limited, signed edition was also available from Baen Books.

  Jamie McGuire’s Red Hill was about a man-made zombie outbreak, while Joe McKinney’s The Savage Dead was about a zombie outbreak on a cruise ship.

  Rise Again: Below Zero, set in a small Californian mountain community during the zombie apocalypse, was Ben Tripp’s sequel to his 2010 novel.

  David Towsey’s debut novel Your Brother’s Blood was set after the zombie apocalypse and was the first volume in “The Walkin’” series.

  A meth addict and his friends found themselves facing a zombie outbreak in Peter Stenson’s first book, Fiend: A Novel, while in Seth Patrick’s debut novel The Reviver, the recently dead were brought back to testify to their own demise. It was the first in a trilogy.

  R. S. Belcher’s weird Western novel, The Six-Gun Tarot was set in the cursed cattle town of Golgotha, which was invaded by the undead, and a boy’s mother and sister disappeared during a storm in John Mantooth’s The Year of the Storm.

  Set in 1751 London, The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones by Jack Wolf was based on a fairy tale, while a teenager was transported back to 1888 and Jack the Ripper’s London in Shelly Dickson Carr’s debut novel Ripped.

  Guillermo del Toro “curated” and supplied new introductions to Penguin Horror’s stylish hardcover collector’s editions of Haunted Castles by Ray Russell, The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, American Supernatural Tales, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft.

  Edited with an Introduction by Roger Luckhurst for Oxford University Press, The Classic Horror Stories collected nine tales by Lovecraft, along with the author’s introduction to his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”.

  The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales from Barnes & Noble/Fall River Press, edited with an Introduction by S. T. Joshi, collected twenty-three stories and “revisions” by H. P. Lovecraft.

  Also from Barnes & Noble, Dracula and Other Horror Classics, collected Bram Stoker’s 1897 title novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911), along with the collection Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories (1914).

  A new edition of William Hope Hodgson’s 1912 novel The Night Land from HiLoBooks included notes by Erik Davis.

  Mike Ashley supplied the Introduction to Ten Minute Stories/Day and Night Stories, an omnibus reprinting of two previous collections by Algernon Blackwood from Stark House, which also included a previously uncollected ghost story.

  The Complete Tales of Doctor Satan from
Altus Press collected Paul Ernst’s series of eight stories about the eponymous super-villain from Weird Tales (1935–36) with an Introduction by John Pelan.

  From Haffner Press, The Complete John Thunstone collected all the stories about Manly Wade Wellman’s pulp hero, along with the novels What Dreams May Come (1983) and The School of Darkness (1985). Ramsey Campbell supplied the Introduction and George Evans the illustrations.

  Valancourt Books reissued Basil Copper’s novels The Great White Space and Necropolis as attractive print-on-demand paperbacks, along with a welcome reissue of R. Chetwynd-Hayes’ The Monster Club. All came with new Introductions by Stephen Jones.

  Other reissues from Valancourt included Nightshade and Damnations by Gerald Kersh, The Philosopher’s Stone by Colin Wilson and Bury Him Darkly by John Blackburn.

  Kim Newman’s already hefty 1991 novel about a cursed English village, Jago, was reissued in a new edition by Titan Books with three additional stories that featured characters and settings from the book.

  Tempting the Gods, a collection of twelve stories, was the first volume in “The Selected Stories of Tanith Lee” from Wildside Press and included a profile of the author by the late Donald A. Wolheim.

  Graham Masterton’s 2003 novel A Terrible Beauty was reissued as White Bones, while Phil Rickman’s 1993 novel Crybbe was republished under the title Curfew.

  Britain’s new Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate, Malorie Blackman, attacked “snobby attitudes” towards books in June, and defended the Twilight series against disparaging remarks made by Education Secretary Michael Gove. “The point is that they are reading,” said Ms Blackman.

  Harry Potter film director Chris Columbus collaborated with Ned Vizzini on the young adult novel House of Secrets, in which three siblings were banished by a witch to a mythical land where they had to track down a mysterious tome.

  A children’s game turned into something darker as three youngsters set out to bury a doll in the grave where it was supposed to be in Holly Black’s creepy Doll Bones, while childish games conjured up something nasty in the woods in The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe by Dan Poblocki.

  Having apparently killed her boyfriend in self-defence, a teenager was shipped off to boarding school where something monstrous awaited her in Megan Miranda’s Hysteria.

  A boy discovered that his new high school was haunted in The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee, and a girl haunted her school to discover why she supposedly committed suicide in Katie Williams’ Absent.

  A girl woke up in a hotel for the dead and had to solve her own murder in The Dead Girls Detective Agency, the first in a new series by Suzy Cox.

  The new girl in town found a boyfriend in the local graveyard in The Lost Boys by Lilian Carmine.

  Somebody in the town of Milton Lake was using a fabled Ghost Machine to call back the spirits of the dead in Haunted by William Hussey, while a young girl searching for her missing grandfather in a sleepy seaside village made friends with a mysterious local girl in Liz Kessler’s North of Nowhere.

  A sea voyage turned to hell in The Dead Men Stood Together by Chris Priestley.

  When Satan decided to retire, a group of teenagers had to undertake a series of deadly trials to decide who would become his replacement in The Devil’s Apprentice by Jan Siegel (Amanda Hemingway).

  Students discovered that their summer camp dorm used to be an asylum for the criminally insane in Madeleine Roux’s Asylum, and a girl’s school trip to Paris involved ghosts and murder in Katie Alender’s Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer.

  Shadowlands and Hereafter were the first two volumes in a new serial-killer trilogy by Kate Brian.

  Teenagers became involved with Victorian spiritualists in Sonia Gensler’s The Dark Between, and a plague of murderous ghosts in London caused chaos in Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood and Co.: The Screaming Staircase, the first in a new series.

  Something was making the inhabitants of a small Kansas town commit murder/suicide in The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman.

  Teenagers used witchcraft to get revenge in Mariah Fredericks’ Season of the Witch, while Rebecca Alexander’s The Secrets of Life and Death featured alchemist Edward Kelley and the infamous Countess Bathory.

  In Jon Skovron’s Man Made Boy, the son of the Frankenstein Monster and the Bride lived under Times Square in New York.

  When a teenager questioned the beliefs of a doomsday cult, she found her own life in danger in Amy Christine Parker’s psychological thriller, Gated.

  Dark City was the second book in the “Repairman Jack: The Early Years” series by F. Paul Wilson.

  The Madness Underneath was the second volume in the “Shades of London” series by Maureen Johnson, and Belladonna was the second in the “Secrets of the Eternal Rose” series by Fiona Paul.

  Monster High: Ghoulfriends Just Want to Have Fun by Gitty Daneshvari was the second novella based on a series of dolls, while Charles Gilman’s Tales from Lovecraft Middle School #2: The Slither Sisters, #3: Teacher’s Pest and #4: Substitute Creature were illustrated by Eugene Smith and came with lenticular covers.

  The Creeps was the third book in the “Samuel Johnson” series by John Connolly, in which the teen hero and his faithful dachshund investigated a mysterious toyshop and were menaced by Christmas elves.

  Andrew Hammond’s CRYPT: Blood Eagle Tortures was the fourth in the series featuring the Covert Response Youth Paranormal Team, while Witch & Wizard: The Kiss was the fourth in the series by James Patterson and Jill Dembowski.

  With All My Soul was the seventh and final volume in Rachel Vincent’s “Soul Screamers” series, and Lover at Last was the eleventh title in the “Black Dagger Brotherhood” series by J. R. Ward.

  As an American TV network once said – if you haven’t seen it before, then it’s new to you. This seems to be particularly true when it comes to young adult fiction these days:

  Mary Lindsey’s Ashes on the Waves was a “dark retelling” of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee”, while Dance of the Red Death was the second book in a post-apocalyptic series by Bethany Griffin, based on a story by Poe.

  The Ruining by Anna Collomore was inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Jane Nickerson’s Strands of Bronze and Gold was based on the “Bluebeard” story.

  Adam Gidwitz’s In a Glass Grimmly was a sequel to A Tale Dark and Grimm, based on the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and Black Spring by Alison Croggon was inspired by Wuthering Heights.

  A. E. Rought’s Broken and Tainted were inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mandy Hubbard’s Dangerous Boy was a contemporary YA reworking of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Madman’s Daughter was the first volume in a new trilogy by Megan Shepherd inspired by H. G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau.

  Holly Black’s second young adult novel of the year, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, was expanded from a short story of the same title by the author and involved a teenage girl trying to survive in a world infected with vampires.

  Although credited in big type to L. J. Smith, Aubrey Clark actually wrote The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation: Unspoken, the second book in the spinoff series.

  Department 19: The Rising and Department 19: Battle Lines were the second and third books in Will Hill’s series about a secret government agency that hunted vampires.

  Richelle Mead’s The Indigo Spell and The Fiery Heart were the third and fourth titles in the “Bloodlines” series, a spinoff from the “Vampire Academy” series.

  Christopher Pike returned to his “Last Vampire” series with Thirst No.5: The Sacred Veil.

  Blood Prophecy by Alyxandra Harvey included a bonus story and was the sixth and final book in the “Drake Chronicles” series, while Gates of Paradise was the seventh and final book in the “Blue Bloods” series by Melissa de la Cruz.

  Revealed was the eleventh title in the YA “House of Night” vampire series by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, while Neferet’s Curse was a novella set in the series.

  Fall of
Night was book fourteen in “The Morganville Vampires” series by Rachel Caine (Roxanne Longstreet Conrad). The series concluded with the next volume, Daylighters, which included a bonus novelette “for UK readers”.

  A trio of children dealt with an outbreak of the walking dead in their hometown in Paolo Bacigalupi’s humorous novel, Zombie Baseball Beatdown, which also featured zombie cows.

  Teens were trapped in their high school by a zombie epidemic in Tom Leveen’s Sick.

  Deadlands and Death of a Saint were the first two books in a teen series by Lily Herne (mother-and-daughter writing team Sarah and Savannah Lotz) set in a South Africa overrun by zombies, while Zombies Don’t Cry and Zombies Don’t Forgive were the first two titles in the “Living Dead Love Story” series by Rusty Fischer.

  Through the Zombie Glass was the second book in “The White Rabbit Chronicles” by Gena Showalter, and Monsters was the third and final book in the post-apocalyptic zombie “Ashes” series by Ilsa J. Bick.

  Zom-B Underground, Zom-B City, Zom-B Angels and Zom-B Baby were the second, third, fourth and fifth novellas in the YA series written by Darren Shan (Darren O’Shaughnessy) and illustrated by Warren Pleece.

  A group of young survivors had to cross a zombieinfected London to find a cure in The Fallen, the fifth in “The Enemy” series by Charlie Higson.

  Aubrey Clark’s The Secret Circle: The Temptation was a spinoff of the YA witchcraft series created by L. J. Smith.

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  Vampires in the Lemon Grove collected eight literary and surreal stories by Pulitzer Prize finalist Karen Russell, and Evil Eye collected four Gothic novellas by Joyce Carol Oates.

  The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and Other Stories was a hardcover collection from Skyhorse Publishing/Night Shade Books that contained nine stories (one original) by Laird Barron, with an Introduction by Norman Partridge.

  Published by Jo Fletcher Books in an edition illustrated by Alan Lee, Fearie Tales: Stories of the Grimm and Gruesome, edited and with an Introduction by Stephen Jones, featured fifteen original stories interspersed with the original Brothers Grimm tales that inspired them by Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Garth Nix, Robert Shearman, Michael Marshall Smith, Markus Heitz, Christopher Fowler, Brian Lumley, Reggie Oliver, Angela Slatter, Brian Hodge, Peter Crowther, Joanne Harris and John Ajvide Lindqvist.