Horror: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition - Softcover

Wallace, Sean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809556480 ISBN 13: 9780809556489

Publisher: Prime Books, 2006

Synopsis

• The best stories of the year: here is a collection of the best horror prose written in 2005, by some of the genre's greatest authors, and selected by two of horror's most respected editors. In this volume you'll find stories by Joe Lansdale, Jack Cady, Holly Phillips, Nicholas Royle, Joe Hill, Caitlin Kiernan, M. Rickert, Richard Bowes, Barbara Roden, Clive Barker, Laird Barron, Jeff VanderMeer, Ramsey Campbell, Nick Mamatas, Michael Marshall Smith, Simon Owens and David Niall Wilson.

About this title

From Booklist

The 2006 Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, not out yet, could do worse than reprise half or more of this series-launching partial competitor's contents. Perhapsthe standout, among 17 stories in all, is Holly Phillips' "The Other Grace," about a teenager who instantaneously loses her personality, but Barbara Roden's spirit-of-the-woods creep-out, "Northwest Passage," and Michael Marshall Smith's Cockney thief's tale, "Fair Exchange," are strong runners-up. It's a toss-up as to which fantasy of flight herein--Joe Hill's "The Cape" or M. Rickert's "A Very Little Madness Goes a Long Way"--is more unsettling, though the sudden malevolence in Hill's story is hugely shocking because of its quiet, unforeseen arrival. Nicholas Royle's "Sitting Tenant" gives the haunted house story an icy fillip, Nick Mamatas' memoir with "one false claim" (he says) pokes delicious fun at radical youth, and until its unsatisfying ending, Caitlin R. Kiernan's "La Peau Verte" is impeccably written. For action, try Laird Barron's blood-curdling bounty-hunter caper, "Proboscis." Meanwhile, Ramsey Campbell's Poe-esque "Unblinking" shows him better at short stories than novels. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The 17 stories Betancourt and Wallace have assembled for the inaugural volume of horror fiction's third "best of" annual series make for a slimmer selection than either Stephen Jones's Best New Horror or Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror omnibuses, but they show that horror, when well written, is equally potent in small doses. Richard Bowes's "There's a Hole in the City," a haunting tale of the supernatural, captures the desolation and desperation of downtown Manhattan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Caitlín Kiernan's "Le Peau Verte" is, by contrast, a surreal absinthe dream about an encounter with an otherworldly race. A number of tales reside in the no-man's land between supernatural and psychological horror, including Joe Hill's "The Cape," in which wild talents push a sibling rivalry into psychopathology. Additional contributions by Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, Jeff VanderMeer, Michael Marshall Smith and Joe R. Lansdale help this book become less the new kid on the block than a contender among its competitors. (July)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Prime Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0809556480
• ISBN 13: 9780809556489
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Betancourt John Gregory, Wallace Sean