The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012

Take a journey into darkness. Visit places where one might expect to find the dark — in a house where love was shared and lost, a milky-white pool in an Australian cave, the trenches of World War I, the deep woods. You would not be surprised to find the dark in a cheap apartment on the wrong side of town, down mean streets, under a gallows-tree, along dank passageways, trapped underground, in the near future, or among the mysteries of old New Orleans. Dunes, lakes, isolated cabins, old books, and Old West saloons — well, the darkness might easily be there. But we've also found locales you thought were safe from shadows — a rib joint with good blues playing, inside an old wardrobe, on a baseball diamond, the Beverly Wilshire Hotel... Travel into the best dark fantasy and horror from 2011 with more than five-hundred pages of tales from some of today's best-known writers of the fantastique as well as new talents — stories that will take you to a diverse assortment of dark places Contents Hair • (2011) • shortstory by Joan Aiken Rakshasi • (2011) • shortfiction by Kelley Armstrong Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin • (2011) • shortstory by Adam Callaway The Lake • (2011) • shortfiction by Tananarive Due Tell Me I'll See You Again • (2011) • shortstory by Dennis Etchison King Death • (2011) • shortfiction by Paul Finch The Last Triangle • (2011) • shortfiction by Jeffrey Ford Near Zennor • (2011) • novella by Elizabeth Hand Crossroads • (2011) • shortstory by Laura Anne Gilman After-Words • (2011) • novelette by Glen Hirshberg Rocket Man • (2011) • shortfiction by Stephen Graham Jones The Maltese Unicorn • (2011) • shortfiction by Caitlín R. Kiernan The Dune • (2011) • shortfiction by Stephen King Catastrophic Disruption of the Head • (2011) • shortfiction by Margo Lanagan The Bleeding Shadow • (2011) • shortfiction by Joe R. Lansdale Why Light? • (2011) • novelette by Tanith Lee Conservation of Shadows • (2011) • shortstory by Yoon Ha Lee A Tangle of Green Men • [Chronicles of the Borderlands] • (2011) • novella by Charles de Lint After the Apocalypse • (2012) • shortfiction by Maureen F. McHugh [as by Maureen McHugh ] Why Do You Linger? • (2011) • shortfiction by Sarah Monette Lord Dunsany's Teapot • (2011) • shortstory by Naomi Novik Mysteries of the Old Quarter • (2011) • novelette by Paul Park Vampire Lake • (2011) • shortfiction by Norman Partridge A Journey of Only Two Paces • (2011) • shortstory by Tim Powers Four Legs in the Morning • (2011) • shortfiction by Norman Prentiss The Fox Maiden • (2011) • shortfiction by Priya Sharma Time and Tide • (2011) • shortstory by Alan Ryan [as by Alan Peter Ryan ] Sun Falls • (2011) • shortstory by Angela Slatter Still • (2011) • shortfiction by Tia V. Travis Objects in Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear • (2011) • shortstory by Lisa Tuttle The Bread We Eat in Dreams • (2011) • shortstory by Catherynne M. Valente All You Can Do Is Breathe • (2011) • shortstory by Kaaron Warren Josh • (2011) • shortfiction by Gene Wolfe