The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

LAIRD BARRON is the author of two collections: The Imago Sequence, and Occultation. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. His novella, “The Light is the Darkness,” was recently published in a limited edition by Infernal House. His first novel, The Croning is being published June 2012. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in Upstate New York.

“Blackwood’s Baby” was originally published in Ghosts by Gaslight, edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers.

Born in Wolverhampton, SIMON BESTWICK escaped at the age of two and now lives in the wilds of Lancashire. So far he’s published two short story collections, A Hazy Shade of Winter and Pictures of The Dark, a chapbook, Angels of The Silences and two novels, Tide of Souls and The Faceless. Forthcoming are a chapbook,Cold Havens, from Spectral Press and a collection, The Condemned, from Gray Friar Press. In between working on his next novel and reams of new stories, novelettes and novellas, he tries in vain to have a life and catch up on his sleep.

“The Moraine,” the first of Bestwick’s two stories reprinted herein, was originally published in Terror Tales of the Lake District, edited by Paul Finch.

Simon Bestwick’s second story reprinted in this volume, “Dermot,” was originally published in Black Static #24.

LEAH BOBET drinks tea, wears feathers in her hair, and plants gardens in alleyways. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous venues including Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and several year’s best anthologies, and her first novel, Above, will be published by Arthur A. Levine Books in April 2012. For more, visit http://www.leahbobet.com.

“Stay,” was originally published in Chilling Tales, edited by Michael Kelly.

GLEN HIRSHBERG’s 2011 collection, The Janus Tree and Other Stories, includes both “You Become the Neighborhood” and the Shirley Jackson Award-Winning title novelette. Each of his previous collections, American Morons, and The Two Sams, won the International Horror Guild Award. He is also the author of two novels, The Snowman’s Children and The Book of Bunk. A new novel, Motherless Child, will be published in 2012. With Dennis Etchison and Peter Atkins, he co-founded the Rolling Darkness Revue, a traveling ghost story performance troupe that tours the west coast of the United States and elsewhere each October. His fiction has appeared frequently in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and The Best Horror of the Year.

BRIAN HODGE is the award-winning author of ten novels of horror and crime/noir, over 100 short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and four full-length collections. His most recent collection, Picking the Bones, became the first of his books to be honored with a Publishers Weekly starred review. His first collection, The Convulsion Factory, was listed by critic Stanley Wiater as one of the 113 best books of modern horror.

Works slated for 2012 include a collection of crime fiction, No Law Left Unbroken; a novella, Without Purpose, Without Pity; and hardcover editions of a couple of early novels.

He lives with his soulmate, Doli, in Boulder, Colorado, where he’s currently engaged in a locked-cage death match with his next novel. He also dabbles in music, sound design, and photography; loves everything about organic gardening except the thieving squirrels; and trains in Krav Maga and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which are of no use at all against the squirrels.

Connect through his web site (www.brianhodge.net) or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/brianhodgewriter), and follow his blog, Warrior Poet (www.warriorpoetblog.com).

“Roots and All” was originally published in A Book of Horror.

STEPHEN KING needs little introduction. Since the publication of his first novel, Carrie, in 1974, King has been entertaining readers with novels such as Salem’s Lot, The Dead Zone, The Stand, Cujo, The Dark Half, The Green Mile, Duma Key, Under the Dome, and most recently 11/22/63. The author’s short fiction and novellas have been collected in Night Shift, Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew, Four Past Midnight, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Hearts in Atlantis, Everything’s Eventual, The Secretary of Dreams (two volumes), Just After Sunset and Full Dark, No Stars. He has won numerous awards, including the O’Henry Award, the Horror Writers’ Association and World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Awards, and a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

“The Little Green God of Agony” was originally published in A Book of Horrors, edited by Stephen Jones.

TERRY LAMSLEY’s first collection, set in his then home-town, Buxton in Derbyshire, was nominated for three World Fantasy Awards and the title story “Under the Crust” won in the Best Novella category, 1994. Since then he has had numerous stories published in a wide range of collections, magazines and anthologies, most recently in The Very Best of Best New Horror and House of Fear. He no longer writes about Buxton and lives in Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

“In the Absence of Murdock” was originally published in House of Fear, edited by Jonathan Oliver.

MARGO LANAGAN has written four collections of short stories: White Time, Black Juice, Red Spikes and Yellowcake, and two dark fantasy novels, Tender Morsels and The Brides of Rollrock Island, which will be published in late 2012. She is a four-time World Fantasy Award winner, for Short Story, Collection, Novel and Novella. Lanagan lives in Sydney, and day-jobs as a contract technical writer. She was an instructor at Clarion South in 2005, 2007 and 2009, and taught at Clarion West in 2011.

“Mulberry Boys” was originally published in Blood and Other Cravings edited by Ellen Datlow.

JOHN LANGAN is author of the collections Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, Technicolor and Other Revelations, and of the novel House of Windows. His stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and in numerous anthologies, including Supernatural Noir, Blood and Other Cravings, and Ghosts by Gaslight. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, son, dog, cats, and several tanks full of fish.

“In Paris, In the Mouth of Kronos” was originally published in Supernatural Noir, edited by Ellen Datlow

ALISON LITTLEWOOD is a writer of dark fantasy and horror fiction. Her first novel, A Cold Season, is published by Jo Fletcher Books, a new imprint of Quercus. It was selected as a Richard and Judy Book Club read for spring 2012. Alison’s short stories have appeared in magazines including Black Static, Crimewave and Not One Of Us, as well as the British Fantasy Society’s Dark Horizons. She also contributed to the charity anthology Never Again as well as Read by Dawn Vol 3, Midnight Lullabies, and Festive Fear 2. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Guardian.

“Black Feathers” was originally published in Black Static #22.

Visit her at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

LIVIA LLEWELLYN is the author of the short story collection Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors, published by Lethe Press. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Subterranean, ChiZine, and Postscripts. She’s currently working on her first novel.

“Omphalos” was originally published in Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors.

DAVID NICKLE has been writing and publishing fiction for the past twenty years, with stories appearing in places like the Northern Frights anthology series, the Tesseracts and Queer Fear anthologies, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and magazines like Cemetery Dance and On Spec. He’s a past winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Canada’s Aurora Award for short fiction. Lately, he’s been publishing books with Toronto’s ChiZine Publications. His story collection Monstrous Affections received a Black Quill Readers’ Choice award in 2010. His historical horror novel Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism was released from CZP in 2011. In late spring of 2012, his novel of psychic spies, giant squid and outdoor sporting equipment, Rasputin’s Bastards, is set for release.

He lives and works as a journalist in Toronto, where he presides over the city hall press gallery, covering local politics for a chain of community newspapers.

“Looker” was originally published in Chilling Tales, edited by Michael Kelly.

PRIYA SHARMA is a medical doctor in the UK, where she spends as much free time as she can devouring books and writing speculative fiction. She has a computer but prefers a fountain pen and a notebook. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as Albedo One, On Spec, Alt Hist and Fantasy Magazine. More will appear in 2012 in Dark Tales, On Spec, and Bourbon Penn. She is currently working on a historical fantasy novel set in North Wales, not far from where she lives. More information can be found at www.priyasharmafiction.co.uk

“The Show” was originally published in Box of Delights, edited by John Kenny.

PETER STRAUB is the author of eighteen novels, including Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House, and his most recent A Dark Matter. He has also written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction. He edited Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists, Library of America’s H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, the LoA’s American Fantastic Tales and Poe’s Children. He has won the British Fantasy Award, nine Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and three World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. He has also won WFC’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Barnes & Noble Writers For Writers Award. The University of Wisconsin and Columbia University gave him Distinguished Alumnus Awards.

“The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” was originally published in Conjunctions 56.

ANNA TABORSKA was born in London, England. She studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and went on to gainful employment in public relations, journalism and advertising, before throwing everything over to become a filmmaker and horror writer.

Taborska has directed two short films (Ela and The Sin), two documentaries (My Uprising and A Fragment of Being) and a one-hour television drama (The Rain Has Stopped), which won two awards at the British Film Festival Los Angeles in 2009. She has also worked on seventeen other films, including Simon Magus and Number One Longing. Number Two Regret.

Taborska’s feature length screenplays include Chainsaw, The Camp, and Pizzaman. Her short stories have been published in 52 Stitches, Daily Flash, The Horror Zine, and in several volumes of The Black Book of Horror. “Little Pig” was originally published in The Eighth Black Book of Horror.

You can watch clips from Taborska’s films and view her full resume here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1245940/

CHET WILLIAMSON is the author of over twenty books, the latest of which are Defenders of the Faith and Hunters. Among his other published novels are Second Chance, The Story of Noichi the Blind, Ash Wednesday, Soulstorm, Lowland Rider, Reign, and McKain’s Dilemma. Most of his early work remains in print as e-books from Crossroad Press and Amazon’s Kindle store. Over a hundred of his short stories have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies. Figures in Rain, a collection of his short stories, was given the International Horror Guild Award for Outstanding Collection.

His work has also been adapted for television, radio, and recorded books. His New Yorker short story, “Gandhi at the Bat,” was made into a short film and has been shown in festivals worldwide.

“The Last Verse” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June issue.

A.C. WISE was born in Montreal and currently lives in the Philadelphia area with a spouse, two cats, and one very short dog. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Fantasy Magazine, among others. In addition to her writing, she co-edits the online ’zine of bug-related fiction, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology. You can find her online at www.acwise.net.

“Final Girl Theory” was originally published in Chizine #48.