BODY SHOCKS

edited by Ellen Datlow

ISBN: Print ISBN: 9781616963606; Digital ISBN: 9781616963613

Published: October 2021

Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Digital

Bestselling editor Ellen Datlow (Lovecraft’s Monsters) presents body horror at its most wide-ranging and shocking best. Discover twenty-nine intricate, twisted tales of the human body, soul, and psyche, as told by storytelling legends including Carmen Maria Machado, Richard Kadrey, Seanan McGuire, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Nathan Ballingrud, Tananarive Due, Cassandra Khaw, Christopher Fowler, and many more.

Superstar editor Datlow makes no missteps.

—Publishers Weekly

The most terrifying thing that you can possibly imagine is your own body in the hands of a monster. Or worse, in the hands of another human being.

In these 29 tales of body horror selected by World Horror Grandmaster Ellen Datlow, you’ll find the unthinkable, the shocking, and more: a couture designer preparing for an exquisitely grotesque runway show; a vengeful son seeking the parent who bred him as plasma donor; a celebrity-kink brothel that inflicts plastic surgery on sex workers; and organ-harvesting doctors who dissect a living man without anesthetic.

I have a short list of editors that I will buy an anthology of, regardless of whether or not I have even heard of the writers it contains, and Ellen Datlow is at the top of that list.

—Horror Talk

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• The Travellers Stay by Ray Cluley
• Toother by Terry Dowling
• Painlessness by Kirstyn McDermott
• You Go Where It Takes You by Nathan Ballingrud
• A Positive by Kaaron Warren
• La Beauté sans verte by Genevieve Valentine
• Subsumption by Lucy Taylor
• Spar by Kij Johnson
• It Was the Heat by Pat Cadigan
• Atwater by Cody Goodfellow
• The Transfer by Edward Bryant
• Welcome to Mengele’s by Simon Bestwick
• Black Neurology: A Love Story by Richard Kadrey
• Cuckoo by Angela Slatter
• Cinereous by Livia Llewellyn
• The Truth That Lies Under Skin and Meat by Cassandra Khaw
• Natural Skin by Alyssa Wong
• The Lake by Tananarive Due
• I’m Always Here by Richard Christian Matheson
• The Look by Christopher Fowler
• The Old Women Who Were Skinned by Carmen Maria Machado
• Spores by Seanan McGuire
• Sweet Subtleties by Lisa L. Hannett
• Elegy For a Suicide by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Skin City by Gemma Files
• A True Friend by Brian Evenson
• What I Found in the Shed by Tom Johnstone
• Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma
• Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report by Michael Blumlein