Hugo Award winning editor and horror legend Ellen Datlow presents this chilling horror anthology of 19 original short stories from a world-class line-up of the masters of horror, delving into the histories and traditions of the spookiest season of the year.
Featuring stories by Josh Malerman, Stephen Graham Jones, Garth Nix and many more.
Halloween, Samhain, Día de los Muertos—festivals across the world where we can commune with those we have lost, when spirits can cross over, and when the boundary between the living and the dead is far, far too thin.
A young boy encounters a woman with an ancient and terrifying link to the holiday, a group of college students attend a Halloween party to die for, and a troubled girl exploits a local urban legend to try and turn her life around.
From America to New Zealand via the rural Romanian wilderness, this anthology explores our worldwide obsession with the spookiest season of the year, when the veil is lifted and the spirits come alive. Featuring 19 original stories from bestselling and award-winning masters of the genre, and from Hugo, World Fantasy, Locus, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson award-winning editor and horror legend Ellen Datlow, this anthology invites you to carve a pumpkin, light the lanterns and welcome in trick or treaters from across the world.
With stories by:
Josh Malerman
Lee Murray
Rich Larson
Clay McLeod Chapman
Livia Llewellyn
Michael Marshall Smith
Stephen Graham Jones
Linda D. Addison
Christopher Golden
Alma Katsu
Brian Evenson
Siobhan Carroll
Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ
Theresa DeLucci
Garth Nix
Jeffrey Ford
Richard Kadrey
Nathan Ballingrud
John Langan
Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited about one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year series, The Doll Collection, Mad Hatters and March Hares, Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, and Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles.
She's won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards. Datlow was recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for "outstanding contribution to the genre," was honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career, and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.
She lives in New York
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Ararat, Red Hands, Snowblind, Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, and Of Saints and Shadows. Golden co-created (with Mike Mignola) the comic book universe known as The Outerverse, featuring such characters as Baltimore, Joe Golem, and Lady Baltimore. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies Hex Life, Seize the Night, and The New Dead, among others, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, a BBC radio play, and the online animated series Ghosts of Albion (with Amber Benson). A frequent speaker at conferences, schools, and libraries, Golden is also co-host of the podcast Defenders Dialogue, and the founder of the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. The winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best novel in 2017 for Ararat, Golden has been nominated ten times in eight different categories, winning twice. He has also been nominated multiple times for the Shirley Jackson Award, sharing a win in 2020 with James A. Moore for the anthology The Twisted Book of Shadows.
Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com
BRIAN EVENSON is the author of ten books of fiction, including the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York's top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award.
Garth Nix's books include the Old Kingdom fantasy series, comprising Sabriel, Lirael; Abhorsen; Clariel and Goldenhand; SF novels Shade’s Children and A Confusion of Princes; and a Regency romance with magic, Newt’s Emerald. His novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence; The Keys to the Kingdom series and others. He has co-written several books with Sean Williams, including the Troubletwisters series; Spirit Animals Book Three: Blood Ties; Have Sword, Will Travel; and the forthcoming sequel Let Sleeping Dragons Lie. A contributor to many anthologies and magazines, Garth’s selected short fiction has been collected in Across the Wall and To Hold the Bridge. More than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world, they have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and USA Today and his work has been translated into 42 languages. His most recent book is Frogkisser! now being developed as a film by Twentieth Century Fox/Blue Sky Animation.
Michael Marshall-Smith is the author of several horror and science-fiction novels, including Only Forward.
