4.0
The Dark
By Ellen Datlow & Jeffrey Ford &Publisher Description
This award-winning horror anthology is the “yardstick by which future ghost fiction will be measured”—featuring Tanith Lee, Joyce Carol Oates, and others (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Award-winning anthologist Ellen Datlow—praised by William Gibson as “the genre’s sharpest assembler of strange, dark fictions”—is determined to prove that ghost stories still possess the power to chill modern readers to the marrow. So she reached out to a list of varied and talented authors and invited them to scare the heck out of her.
The resulting anthology redefines the ghost story, venturing beyond the accustomed tropes and into horror’s true realm: the unknown. The Dark takes a nuanced and disquieting look at the tormented and unquiet dead; the darkness in us, the living; and the sometimes tenuous boundary between the two.
Under the covers of The Dark, you will find a gathering of sixteen unique ghost stories, deftly penned by authors versed in the argot of the damned, including Ramsey Campbell, Jeffrey Ford, Glen Hirshberg, Kelly Link, Sharyn McCrumb, Lucius Shepard, and Gahan Wilson. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.
Winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best Anthology of the Year
Award-winning anthologist Ellen Datlow—praised by William Gibson as “the genre’s sharpest assembler of strange, dark fictions”—is determined to prove that ghost stories still possess the power to chill modern readers to the marrow. So she reached out to a list of varied and talented authors and invited them to scare the heck out of her.
The resulting anthology redefines the ghost story, venturing beyond the accustomed tropes and into horror’s true realm: the unknown. The Dark takes a nuanced and disquieting look at the tormented and unquiet dead; the darkness in us, the living; and the sometimes tenuous boundary between the two.
Under the covers of The Dark, you will find a gathering of sixteen unique ghost stories, deftly penned by authors versed in the argot of the damned, including Ramsey Campbell, Jeffrey Ford, Glen Hirshberg, Kelly Link, Sharyn McCrumb, Lucius Shepard, and Gahan Wilson. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.
Winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best Anthology of the Year
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4.0
Danielle Hill
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“This was a good book of ghost stories. As the blurb on the back says, no two are alike. They take the reader in different directions. I like this anthology because it shows how versatile the the ghost story is. And what defines a ghost is in the eye of the beholder, and the storyteller. None of these stories would keep me up at night, but there is a lingering unease as I remember reading some of them. Various settings are used, and the imagination of the writers seems limitless to me. Read these stories if you want a fresh, different look at ghosts. I definitely think this volume has ghost stories for the millenium. Probably the most unique and arresting stories is by Lucius Shepherd. I cannot even begin to describe his story. It was like Bangsian (fantasy taking place after death) meets The Usual Suspects meets The Last Seduction. I will definitely try to read more by this author.”
About Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.
Other books by Ellen Datlow
Jeffrey Ford
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. Ford has published over one hundred short stories, which have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edgar Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and Japan’s Hayakawa’s SF Magazine Reader’s Award.
Ford’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Ford’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Other books by Jeffrey Ford
Tanith Lee
Tanith Lee (1947–2015) was born in the United Kingdom. Although she couldn’t read until she was eight, she began writing at nine and never stopped, producing more than ninety novels and three hundred short stories. She also wrote for the BBC television series Blake’s 7 and various BBC radio plays. After winning the 1980 British Fantasy Award for her novel Death’s Master, endless awards followed. She was named a World Horror Grand Master in 2009 and honored with the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2013. Lee was married to artist and writer John Kaiine.
Other books by Tanith Lee
Terry Dowling
Terry Dowling has been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine. TheYear’s Best Fantasy and Horror series featured more horror stories by Dowling in its twenty-one–year run than any other writer. Dowling is author of Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear (International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection, 2007), An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, Blackwater Days, and The Night Shop: Tales for the Lonely Hours. He can be found at www.terrydowling.com.
Other books by Terry Dowling
Mike O'Driscoll
Mike O’Driscoll’s fiction has appeared in Black Static, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Interzone, Crime Wave and anthologies including Best New Horror, and TheYear’s Best Fantasy and Horror. O’Driscoll has published several collections of stories, including Unbecoming, The Dream Operator, and Eyepennies, which was the first of a series of standalone novellas. His story, “Sounds Like,” was adapted by Brad Anderson for an episode of the mid-noughts horror anthology show, Masters of Horror.
Other books by Mike O'Driscoll
Gahan Wilson
Gahan Wilson’s cartoons may be what he was most famous for, but he was a master of macabre writing as well. His cartoons, which appeared primarily in Playboy and The New Yorker, were gathered in over twenty book collections through the years. He wrote and illustrated a number of children’s books, mystery novels, several anthologies, and a collection of his own short stories.
Wilson was honored with the Horror Writer’s Association’s Life Achievement Award in 1992 and the 2004 Life Achievement Award given by the World Fantasy Convention. He died in 2019.
Wilson was honored with the Horror Writer’s Association’s Life Achievement Award in 1992 and the 2004 Life Achievement Award given by the World Fantasy Convention. He died in 2019.
Other books by Gahan Wilson
Jack Cady
Jack Cady was an American author known mostly as an award-winning writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He published over ten novels and his short fiction was published in several collections. He won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. He died in 2004.
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of over seventy books encompassing novels, poetry, criticism, story collections, plays, and essays. Her novel Them won the National Book Award in Fiction in 1970. Oates has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for more than three decades and currently holds the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professorship at Princeton University.
Other books by Joyce Carol Oates
Stephen Gallagher
Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of the British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, Stephen Gallagher has built a career both as a novelist and as a creator of primetime miniseries and episodic television. His fourteen novels include Valley of Lights, Down River, The Spirit Box, Nightmare, With Angel, and The Authentic William James, which features Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy.
Other books by Stephen Gallagher
Daniel Abraham
Daniel Abraham is best known as the co-author and executive producer of the Hugo Award–winning series The Expanse under the pseudonym James S. A. Corey. He has also written novels under his own name and as M. L. N. Hanover.
Other books by Daniel Abraham
Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell is described by TheOxford Companion to English Literature as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer,” and the Washington Post names his work as “one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction.” The two volumes of Phantasmagorical Stories offer a sixty-year retrospective of his short fiction. The Village Killings collects his novellas, and Ramsey’s Rambles his film reviews. Campbell’s latest novel is The Lonely Lands.
Other books by Ramsey Campbell
Sharyn McCrumb
Sharyn McCrumb is an award-winning Southern writer, best known for her Appalachian “Ballad” novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley and The Ballad of Frankie Silver. Ghost Riders won the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature from the East Tennessee Historical Society and the Audie Award for Best Recorded Book.
Named a Virginia Woman of History by the Library of Virginia and a Woman of the Arts by the Daughters of the American Revolution, McCrumb was awarded a merit award by the West Virginia Library Association in 2017 and the Mary Hobson Prize for Arts & Letters in 2014. Her books have been named New York Times and Los Angeles Times Notable Books.
Named a Virginia Woman of History by the Library of Virginia and a Woman of the Arts by the Daughters of the American Revolution, McCrumb was awarded a merit award by the West Virginia Library Association in 2017 and the Mary Hobson Prize for Arts & Letters in 2014. Her books have been named New York Times and Los Angeles Times Notable Books.
Other books by Sharyn McCrumb
Charles L. Grant
New York Times–bestselling author Charles L. Grant published in many different genres: science fiction, historical romance, gothic, suspense, fantasy, and horror. However, he is primarily known for his dark fantasy novels and short stories, many of them set in his beloved New Jersey. Grant edited a number of anthologies, including the Shadows series, and also created Oxrun Station, a small and very spooky town in Connecticut. Grant died in 2006.
Kathe Koja
Kathe Koja is a writer and producer based in Detroit. Her work includes The Cipher, Skin, Under the Poppy, and Dark Factory.
Other books by Kathe Koja
Lucius Shepard
Lucius Shepard was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, grew up in Daytona, Florida, and lived the last years of his life in Portland, Oregon. His short fiction won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the National Magazine Award, the Locus Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He died in 2014.
Other books by Lucius Shepard
Kelly Link
Kelly Link is a MacArthur recipient and the author of five collections, most recently White Cat, Black Dog. She is the owner of the bookstore Book Moon in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and the cofounder, with her husband Gavin J. Grant, of Small Beer Press. Together they publish the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. You can find her on Twitter @haszombiesinit.
Other books by Kelly Link
Glen Hirshberg
Glen Hirshberg’s novels include The Snowman’s Children, Infinity Dreams, The Book of Bunk, and the Motherless Children trilogy. He is also the author of five widely praised story collections: The Two Sams, American Morons, The Janus Tree, The Ones Who Are Waving, and Tell Me When I Disappear. Hirshberg is a three-time International Horror Guild Award winner and five-time World Fantasy Award finalist. Hirshberg won the Shirley Jackson Award for the novelette, “The Janus Tree.” His Substack is at glenhirshberg.substack.com. He lives with his family and cats in the Pacific Northwest.
Other books by Glen Hirshberg
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