100 Best Horror Anthologies Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best horror anthologies books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
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Aaron Nagler@DustyEvely LOVE that book (Source)
In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard,"... more
Jack ZipesYes. Angela Carter played a very important role in my life because I was born in 1937, a few years before she was born, and although we didn’t grow up together, we both grew up in a world where sexism was out in the open. There was no critique of the type of sexism that I experienced when I grew up, and I think the same is true for her. And we both experienced what a lot of people called the... (Source)
I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe;...more
Brian Moran@BrittMichaelian One of my favorite authors! Have you read the Illustrated Man recently? The first story in the book is titled "The Veldt." It was written in 1950 but is ALL ABOUT technology we are talking about today (#AI, #VR). Every story in the book is great. (Source)
Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. He introduces each with a passage about its origins or his... more
By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.
How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?
I am legend --
Buried talents --
The near departed --
Prey --
Witch war --
Dance of the dead --
Dress of white silk --
Mad... more
Greg GarrettThe monsters in the book are more like vampires. But the interesting thing about I Am Legend is that it is an apocalyptic survival story. The main character thinks that he is the last human being left on earth. (Source)
Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years... more
Contents:
· Father’s Day · gs *
· The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill [adapted from “Weeds”, Cavalier May ’76] · gs *
· The Crate [Gallery, Jul ’79] · gs *
· Something to Tide You Over · gs *
· They’re Creeping Up On You · gs * less
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Four Past Midnight: four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity...
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Once Dante tastes Erin’s blood, he’s addicted forever and cannot live without it. He’s heartbroken when she demands that he leave and never return. But neither can live without the other now, which puts them both at risk.
As they struggle to understand the mysterious bond... more
The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the year each story was written.
The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple... more
Folklorist Alvin Schwartz offers up some of the most alarming tales of horror, dark revenge, and supernatural events of all time.
The paperback books in this box set feature Stephen Gammell's artwork from the original Scary Stories books. Read if you dare! less
A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. Flies settle and die on an old pair of sneakers in New York, and the Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile the legend of Castle Rock returns . . . and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? First there was Night Shift (1978), then Skeleton Crew (1985), and now Stephen King is back with a third collection of stories--a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume, with passages leading every which way to hell . . . and a few to glory.
The long reach of Stephen... more
The collection includes Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” which Stephen King calls “one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern... more
SEVENTEEN CHILLING STORIES, INCLUDING... more
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These nineteen classic stories confirm Rod Serling as one of the finest fantasy writers of our time. Serling's legendary television series The Twilight Zone consistently demonstrated his remarkable gift for storytelling. In the years that have followed, millions have experienced and remembered these timeless scenarios, now airing regularly on the Sci-Fi Channel.
These haunting stories by the fabled creator, producer, and series host were the basis for some of the most celebrated, eerie programs ever seen on the home screen. In this... more
Containing all the stories from Roald Dahl's world-famous books – Over to You, Someone Like you, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch – plus eight further tales of the unexpected, this is the definitive collection by one of the great masters of the short story. Macabre, unsettling and deliciously enjoyable, these stories make the perfect bedtime read – but be warned, once you've started reading you won't be able to stop . . less
Following the clues concealed within a centuries-old family legacy, Timmi Tobbson and his friends hope to save a dear friend. But only twenty-four hoursremain to unravel the legend of a long-lost pirate ship, buriedsomewhere deep beneath the city streets. Unbeknownst to them, theirsearch awakens a mystical dark power, sworn to protect what is hidden on board the once famous Star Runner.
Mysteries to Solve
The adventure is divided into 31 concise chapters, each of which ends... more
Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945....
Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town....
Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....
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CONTENTS
Introduction by Jessica Horsting
Rainy Season by Stephen King
Say Hello, Mister Quigley by J. Michael Straczynski
Sinus Fiction by Gil Lamont
Emerald City Blues by Steven R. Boyett
Cattletruck by Cliff Burns
Bad Guy Hats by David J. Schow
'I Want to Get Married!' Says the World's Smallest Man by John Shirley
Spike Jones and the Reverend Sister Claudine by Rex Miller
Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland by Joe R.... more
To a mortician, the preparation of a corpse is an art. The smooth, silent exchange of blood and embalming fluid is like a symphony to be orchestrated. The presentation of the deceased -- lying in a shining casket framed by flowers -- is an exquisitely composed tableau. And the burial itself is the magnificent climax to his craftsmanship. — Clive Barker also knows how to prepare a body for the grave.
He knows how to plunge his readers into unearthly depths, spiraling from dark horror to dizzying madness. He knows how... more
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What flavor is your nightmare?
Forty nine authors have come together to tell us theirs. Each story is unique in its horror but all should be read with the lights on and the shadows kept at bay, because some stories tend to stay with you even after the book is closed.
From established authors, to people putting pen to paper for the first time.
Books of Horror presents its inaugural Community Anthology.
Enter a shadowy realm where nothing—and no one—is as it appears. A place hidden from view, nestled in the darkest recesses of your mind, awaiting the perfect moment to reveal itself—only to scare you blind. In this collection of unforgettable horror stories, discover the terrifying truth as told by today’s greatest masters of the macabre—classic twisted tales that will reach out from the past and draw you into the depths of their darkness.
Prepare to enter a nightmarish reality in which seeing is disbelieving, your eyes can deceive... more
CONTENTS
'Introduction' -- Thomas F. Monteleone
"The Calling" -- David B.... more
Did Lovecraft believe in ghosts or paranormal phenomena? In what story does the narrator fear riding the Boston T?
A pathfinder in the literary territory of the macabre, H.P.... more
Joyland is a brand-new novel and has never previously been published. less
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17 horror Stories. One legendary music venue.
We all know the old cliché: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now, add demons, other dimensions, monsters, revenge, human sacrifice, and a dash of the truly inexplicable. This is the story of the (fictional) San Francisco music venue, The Shantyman.
In Welcome to the Show, seventeen of today's hottest writers of horror and dark fiction come together in devilish harmony to trace The Shantyman's history from its disturbing birth through its apocalyptic encore.
Featuring...
This is not that world.
Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.
In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her... more
In the early twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate... more
Discover what happens when:
- A wealthy industrialist awakens after ten years in suspended animation, and finds out that the horrors of the past can never be left behind.
- A lonely man realizes that he’s gradually vanishing from existence, into a nightmarish limbo of his own making.
- An author stumbles upon an incomplete manuscript by his deceased father, and makes... more
And every caress, no matter how innocent, has the power to open our lives to the dark mysteries of desire, the places where outrageous fantasies and fears are held in check.
Held in check, that is, until it occurs to such supremely talented manipulators of the macabre as Stephen King, Ruth Rendell, Clive Barker, or Patrick McGrath, to let them loose, turning our erotic anxieties into art. Here are gathered the best of their chilling, thrilling, upsetting, and unsettling experiments with our sexual psyches. And rest... more
Here are more than twenty of Matheson's most memorable tales of fear and paranoia, including:
"Duel," the nail-biting tale of man versus machines that inspired Steven Spielberg's first film;
"Prey," in which a terrified woman is stalked by a malevolent... more
A coming-of-age tale for young adults set in the trenches of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, this is the story of Perry, a Harlem teenager who volunteers for the service when his dream of attending college falls through. Sent to the front lines, Perry and his platoon come face-to-face with the Vietcong and the real horror of warfare. But violence and death aren't the only hardships. As Perry struggles to find... more
Don't have time to read the top Horror Anthologies books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story 'Sardonicus', considered by Stephen King to be 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written', to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill... more
It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone—for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and... more
Featured here is the graphic work "Wordsworth," from bestselling author Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean, who unlock an explicit way to violate innocence - one torturous puzzle at a time.... New York Times bestselling author Kelley... more
Vampires! Whether imagined by Bram Stoker or Anne Rice, they are part of the human lexicon and as old as blood itself. They are your neighbors, your friends, and they are always lurking. Now Otto Penzler—editor of the bestselling Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps—has compiled the darkest, the scariest, and by far the... more
Huyendo de los lugares comunes, pero enraizado en la tradición narrativa de H. P. Lovecraft, Lumley consigue que las cosas vuelvan a acechar en la oscuridad. El mal se mueve sutilmente en torno a los personajes y, página a página, va estrechando su cerco hasta atrapar al propio lector.
Prepárate para disfrutar con Brian Lumley de la cara más... more
Don't have time to read the top Horror Anthologies books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
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In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that... more
Fourteen horror authors share terrifying and twisted tales of summer vacation gone wrong in Worst Laid Plans: an Anthology of Vacation Horror.
This anthology includes stories by V. Castro, Hailey Piper, Patrick Lacey, Scott Cole, Laura Keating, Malcolm Mills, Jeremy Herbert, S. E. Howard, Chad Stroup, Kenzie Jennings, Waylon Jordan, Greg Sisco,... more
Tales of the Lost takes a dark look at the things we lose and the ghosts we struggle with. Featuring haunting... more
Shadows reach out with darkened claws. The floorboards creek as your greatest fears stalk the halls. And no matter how much you tell yourself it is just a dream, you know the truth. Evil hides in the darkness. And now, it has finally been unleashed…
Scare Street gathers volumes 1 to 3 of Terror in the Shadows in a single edition. Over thirty tales stalk the pages of this macabre collection. And just when you think you’ve experienced the most chilling horror of all, a new story unfolds within this massive tome of fear.
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But if you've got a taste for bone-chilling, gut-wrenching terror that brilliantly tests the limits of human endurance, then Joe R. Lansdale is your man. In his first collection of short stories, the gruseome and outrageous cult classic "The Drive-In" pilots a wildly thrilling, violent and vivid roller coaster ride to Hell and beyond...plumbing the eerie depths of his remarkable imagination to create horrors unique and unsettling - dark products of twisted genius that weave the grisly fabric of nightmares. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!... more
Ramsey CampbellMachen was one of the first great British writers of supernatural horror fiction. He was Welsh, and wrote in the 1890s and early 20th century. He conveyed a sense of spiritual dread in a way that nobody had before. I think his greatest story is “The White People”, which is mostly in the form of an adolescent girl’s diary. Nothing is directly shown. The surface of this story is absolutely... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Horror Anthologies books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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29 • Chattery Teeth • (1992) • novelette by Stephen King
61 • The Box • (1994) • short story by Jack Ketchum
73 • Haceldama • (1993) • novelette by Gary A. Braunbeck
109 • The Pig Man • (1993) • short story by Augustine Funnell
125 • Mobius • (1987) • short story by Richard Christian Matheson
129 • The Rendering Man • (1994) • short story by Douglas Clegg
147 • Weight • (1994) • short story by Dominick Cancilla
159 • Layover • (1991) • short story by Ed Gorman
169 • Johnny... more
A young man’s attempts at breaking parole end in a night of horror. A child realizes his Christmas gift might be more sinister than he originally thought. An editor accidentally uncovers his client’s sinister plan to cleanse the world of all evil...
Scare Street’s roster of authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Sara Clancy and A. I. Nasser come together to bring you 10 of the most terrifying tales meant to chill you to your core.
So head over to your favorite reading spot, make yourself comfortable, and... more
1 • Aphra • (1993) • short story by Nancy A. Collins [as by Nancy Collins]
18 • Eye of the Lynx • [The Nyctalops Trilogy • 3] • (1983) • short story by Thomas Ligotti
29 • Heavy Set • (1964) • short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of Heavy-Set)
40 • Mr. Wrong •... more
- The Barrens by F. Paul Wilson: In a tangled wilderness, unearthly lights lead the way to a world no human was meant to see.
- His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood by Poppy Z. Brite: Two dabblers in black magic encounter a maestro of evil enchantment.
- On the Slab by Harlan Ellison: The corpse of a one-eyed giant brings untold fortune--and unspeakable fear--to... more
Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as:
Neil Gaiman
Kim Stanley Robinson
Stephen King
Linda Nagata
Laird Barron
Margo Lanagan
And... more
Don't have time to read the top Horror Anthologies books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
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In Screaming for Pleasure, S.A. Bradley takes you on a wild journey exploring horror, where you'll discover what is so tantalizing about terror, including:
Rare insights about some of the greatest fright directors of all time, like David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro and John... more
This 416-page volume covers Hellboy's adventures from 1998 to 2005, reprinting Conqueror Worm, Strange Places, Into the Silent Sea, and "The Right Hand of Doom, "Box Full of Evil," and "Being Human" from The Right Hand of Doom and B.P.R.D. Being Human.
Hellboy loses faith in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense when they strap a bomb to one of his fellow not-quite-human agents. He gets answers about his... more
THE PLAIN OF SOUND by Ramsey Campbell: In the beginning they could find no source for the throbbing vibrations; in the end they could find no escape.
THE HORROR ON THE BEACH by Alan Dean Foster: Along the coast of Santa Barbara, the mighty... more
This book has been long anticipated by readers of H.P. Lovecraft... more
Don't have time to read the top Horror Anthologies books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
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The Late Shift by Dennis Etchison
The Enemy by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Dark Angel by Edward Bryant
The Crest of Thirty-six by Davis Grubb
Mark Ingestre: The Customer’s Tale by Robert Aickman
Where the Summer Ends by Karl Edward Wagner
The Bingo Master by Joyce Carol Oates
Children of the Kingdom by T. E. D. Klein
The Detective of Dreams by Gene Wolfe
Vengeance Is. By Theodore Sturgeon
The Brood by Ramsey Campbell
The Whistling Well by Clifford D. Simak
The Peculiar Demesne by Russell Kirk
Where the Stones Grow... more
Over the years, authors have often borrowed bits and pieces from these stories, grafting them onto their own writing, creating literature with both new meaning and age-old significance. In the last few decades or so, they’ve also intentionally retold and reinvented the tales in a variety... more
13 • Introduction: From Horror Angst to Zombies • essay by Karl Edward Wagner
17 • Kaddish • (1989) • short story by Jack Dann
30 • The Gravedigger's Tale • (1989) • short story by Simon Clark
40 • Meeting the Author • (1989) • short story by Ramsey Campbell
55 • Buckets • (1989) • novelette by F. Paul Wilson
76 • The Pit-Yakker • non-genre • (1989) • short story by Brian Lumley
99 • Mr. Sandman • (1989) • short story by Scott D. Yost
115 • Renaissance • (1989) • short story by Chico Kidd [as by A. F. Kidd]
135 • Lord of... more
Additional contributing authors:
Joe McKinney
Carrie Ryan
Kim Paffenroth
R.J. Sevin
Julia Sevin more
When Liz Phair was just starting out in the Wicker Park, Chicago, music scene in the early 1990s, she mostly encountered a**holes—mostly men, who didn't respect her and were determined not to see her fail, exactly, because they didn't care enough about her to wish failure on her—they just wanted her to get out of their space, to... more
* Introduction - Douglas E. Winter
* The Reploids - Stephen King
* Sneakers - Stephen King
* Dedication - Stephen King
* Metastasis - Dan Simmons
* Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell - Dan Simmons
* Iverson's Pits - Dan Simmons
* The Skin Trade - George R.R. Martin
[Some sources give Paul J. Mikol, the Dark Harvest... more
Don't have time to read the top Horror Anthologies books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.