Bestselling horror editor Ellen Datlow (Body Shocks) returns with her most eclectic anthology. Here are twenty-one stories of extreme psychological dread from horror icons such as Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Graham Jones, Priya Sharma, Simon Bestwick, and more. The unsettling tales explore the nature of fear as it stirs in dysfunctional families, toxic friendships, and mismatched lovers, and culminates in relentless stalkers, remorseless killers, and perpetrators of savage rituals.
Bestselling horror editor Ellen Datlow (Body Shocks) returns with her most eclectic anthology. Here are twenty-one stories of extreme psychological dread from horror icons such as Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Graham Jones, Priya Sharma, Simon Bestwick, and more. The unsettling tales explore the nature of fear as it stirs in dysfunctional families, toxic friendships, and mismatched lovers, and culminates in relentless stalkers, remorseless killers, and perpetrators of savage rituals.
Your grandfather confesses his heinous crime to you alone. You try to save a young girl from sexual assault, but she’s not really a victim. Your child is sacrificed in compensation for your social misstep. You compete in a sick game to save your loved ones. Your mom is insane, your dad is dying, your brother is not your brother, and you’re stuck in the same house until one or all of you are dead.
Far below the unlikeliness of the supernatural lives something worse: the depths of human depravity. We live in fear of the cruelties of respected leaders and of the despicable crimes of neighbors who seem normal. We live with anxiety about our innermost desires and the unforgivable things we might do in a moment of passion. Or, if we fail to curb our urges, we live with the terrible secrets of our unfettered resentments.
In this uniquely unsettling anthology, editor Ellen Datlow has unearthed twenty-one exemplary tales of what humanity fears most: People.
Praise for Ellen Datlow
“Ellen Datlow is the empress of the horror anthology—enviably well-read, eagle-eyed for talent, eager for originality, she’s one of the glories of the field.”
—Ramsey Campbell, author of The Searching Dead
“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
“Ellen Datlow is the tastemaker, the greatest, most respected, and most prolific horror anthologist who’s ever lived. Every Datlow anthology is a gift to the genre.”
—Christopher Golden, author of Ararat
Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years. She has edited more than one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including editing twenty years of the classic Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthologies; the ongoing Best Horror of the Year series; Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, The Doll Collection, The Devil and the Deep, Lovecraft’s Monsters, Edited By, Nightmares, and Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror. She was the fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and the editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION.
Datlow has won multiple World Fantasy, Locus, Hugo, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Best Foreign Editor. She received the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, was honored with the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.
Datlow lives in New York City. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com and co-hosts the monthly Fantastic Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar. She’s also owned by two cats.
More information can be found at www.datlow.com, on Facebook, and on X as @EllenDatlow.
“Bait” by Simon Bestwick
“The Pelt” by Annie Neugebauer
“A Sunny Disposition” by Josh Malerman
“The Donner Party” by Dale Bailey
“White Noise in a White Room” by Steve Duffy
“Singing My Sister Down” by Margo Lanagan
“Back Seat” by Bracken MacLeod
“England and Nowhere” by Tim Nickels
“Endless Summer” by Stewart O’Nan
“My Mother’s Ghosts” by Priya Sharma
“The Wink and the Gun” by John Patrick Higgins
“One of These Nights” by Livia Llewellyn
“LD50” by Laird Barron
“Cavity” by Theresa DeLucci
“Souvenirs” by Sharon Gosling
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
“The Wrong Shark” by Ray Cluley
“21 Brooklands: next to Old Western, opposite the burnt out Red Lion” by Carole Johnstone
“Unkindly Girls” by Hailey Piper
“A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” by Charles Birkin
“Teeth” by Stephen Graham Jones
Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror
Ellen Datlow, ed.
Bestselling horror editor Ellen Datlow (Body Shocks) returns with her most eclectic anthology. Here are twenty-one stories of extreme psychological dread from horror icons such as Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Graham Jones, Priya Sharma, Simon Bestwick, and more. The unsettling tales explore the nature of fear as it stirs in dysfunctional families, toxic friendships, and mismatched lovers, and culminates in relentless stalkers, remorseless killers, and perpetrators of savage rituals.
Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror
by Ellen Datlow, ed.
ISBN: 978-1-61696-422-1 (print); 978-1-61696-423-8 (digital)
Published:
Available Format(s): September 10, 2024
Bestselling horror editor Ellen Datlow (Body Shocks) returns with her most eclectic anthology. Here are twenty-one stories of extreme psychological dread from horror icons such as Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Graham Jones, Priya Sharma, Simon Bestwick, and more. The unsettling tales explore the nature of fear as it stirs in dysfunctional families, toxic friendships, and mismatched lovers, and culminates in relentless stalkers, remorseless killers, and perpetrators of savage rituals.
Your grandfather confesses his heinous crime to you alone. You try to save a young girl from sexual assault, but she’s not really a victim. Your child is sacrificed in compensation for your social misstep. You compete in a sick game to save your loved ones. Your mom is insane, your dad is dying, your brother is not your brother, and you’re stuck in the same house until one or all of you are dead.
Far below the unlikeliness of the supernatural lives something worse: the depths of human depravity. We live in fear of the cruelties of respected leaders and of the despicable crimes of neighbors who seem normal. We live with anxiety about our innermost desires and the unforgivable things we might do in a moment of passion. Or, if we fail to curb our urges, we live with the terrible secrets of our unfettered resentments.
In this uniquely unsettling anthology, editor Ellen Datlow has unearthed twenty-one exemplary tales of what humanity fears most: People.
Praise for Ellen Datlow
“Ellen Datlow is the empress of the horror anthology—enviably well-read, eagle-eyed for talent, eager for originality, she’s one of the glories of the field.”
—Ramsey Campbell, author of The Searching Dead
“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
“Ellen Datlow is the tastemaker, the greatest, most respected, and most prolific horror anthologist who’s ever lived. Every Datlow anthology is a gift to the genre.”
—Christopher Golden, author of Ararat
Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years. She has edited more than one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including editing twenty years of the classic Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthologies; the ongoing Best Horror of the Year series; Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, The Doll Collection, The Devil and the Deep, Lovecraft’s Monsters, Edited By, Nightmares, and Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror. She was the fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and the editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION.
Datlow has won multiple World Fantasy, Locus, Hugo, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Best Foreign Editor. She received the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, was honored with the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.
Datlow lives in New York City. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com and co-hosts the monthly Fantastic Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar. She’s also owned by two cats.
More information can be found at www.datlow.com, on Facebook, and on X as @EllenDatlow.
“Bait” by Simon Bestwick
“The Pelt” by Annie Neugebauer
“A Sunny Disposition” by Josh Malerman
“The Donner Party” by Dale Bailey
“White Noise in a White Room” by Steve Duffy
“Singing My Sister Down” by Margo Lanagan
“Back Seat” by Bracken MacLeod
“England and Nowhere” by Tim Nickels
“Endless Summer” by Stewart O’Nan
“My Mother’s Ghosts” by Priya Sharma
“The Wink and the Gun” by John Patrick Higgins
“One of These Nights” by Livia Llewellyn
“LD50” by Laird Barron
“Cavity” by Theresa DeLucci
“Souvenirs” by Sharon Gosling
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
“The Wrong Shark” by Ray Cluley
“21 Brooklands: next to Old Western, opposite the burnt out Red Lion” by Carole Johnstone
“Unkindly Girls” by Hailey Piper
“A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” by Charles Birkin
“Teeth” by Stephen Graham Jones