cover image The Best of Dark Terrors

The Best of Dark Terrors

Edited by Stephen Jones and David A. Sutton. Subterranean, $45 (496p) ISBN 978-1-64524-007-5

This excellent anthology collects 20 stories first published in Dark Terrors, a horror anthology series that ran between 1995 and 2002, to perfectly encapsulate the scrappy British horror scene of the late ’90s and the cultural fears of the time. In “(Melodrama)” by David J. Schow, a past-his-prime monster movie host is visited by the ghosts of his show business past. A serial killer’s nocturnal activities warp the fabric of reality itself in Poppy Z. Brite’s “Self-Made Man.” Gwyneth Jones’s “Destroyer of Worlds” proves that not all ghosts come from beyond the veil of death, while Lisa Tuttle’s “My Pathology” combines runaway mad science with pregnancy-as-body-horror. While the stories vary in quality, the common thread is the delightful tenor of dangerous unpredictability. These are stories with teeth and nails, and even when they miss, they leave a glancing mark. (Oct.)