TOC - "The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2013" edited by Paula Guran

The list of year’s best titles I follow increased constantly over the years. Not dramatically, but still there are quite a few such collections that I enjoy reading. They are a great source of excellent fiction and over the years I discovered some of the authors I became fond of with the help of the year’s best collections. The first such anthology to announce its 2013 line-up of stories is “The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror” edited by Paula Guran and published by Prime Books. Paula Guran’s collection is at its fourth volume, it gathers 35 stories this year and it will be released on June. Here is the table of contents, listed alphabetically by author:

“Hand of Glory” by Laird Barron (The Book of Cthulhu 2)

“Great-Grandmother in the Cellar” by Peter S. Beagle (Under My Hat)

“Glamour of Madness” by Peter Bell (The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows)

“Down in the Valley” by Joseph Bruchac  (Postscripts #28/29: Exotic Gothic 4)

“Bigfoot on Campus” by Jim Butcher (Hex Appeal)

“Iphigenia In Aulis” by Mike Carey (An Apple for the Creature)

“Nightside Eye” by Terry Dowling (Cemetery Dance #66)

“The Bird Country” by K. M. Ferebee (Shimmer #15)

“The Natural History of Autumn” by Jeffrey Ford (F&SF, July/August 2012)

“The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” by Neil Gaiman (The Shadow Show)

“England Under the White Witch” by Theodora Goss (Clarkesworld, Issue 73)

“Game” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Subterranean, Fall 2012)

“Escena de un Asesinato” by Robert Hood (Postscripts #28/29: Exotic Gothic 4)

“Welcome to the Reptile House” by Stephen Graham Jones (Strange Aeons #9)

“Fake Plastic Trees” by  Caitlín R Kiernan (After)

“The Education of a Witch” by Ellen Klages (Under My Hat)

“Forget You” by Marc Laidlaw (Lightspeed, June 2012)

“Renfrew’s Course” by John Langan (Lightspeed, April 2012)

“The Tall Grass” by Joe R. Lansdale (Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations)

“Slaughterhouse Blues” by Tim Lebbon (Nothing As It Seems)

“The Eyes of Water” by Alison Littlewood (The Eyes of Water)

“Good Hunting” by Ken Liu (Strange Horizons, October 2012)

“No Ghosts In London” by Helen Marshall (Hair Side, Flesh Side)

“Blue Lace Agate” by Sarah Monette (Lightspeed, January 2012)

“End of White” by Ekaterina Sedia (Shotguns v Cthulhu)

“Pearls” by Priya Sharma (Bourbon Penn 04)

“Bedtime Stories for Yasmin” by Robert Shearman (Shadows & Tall Trees 4)

“When Death Wakes Me to Myself” by John Shirley (Black Wings II)

“Sinking Among Lilies” by Cory Skerry (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #92)

“Go Home Again” by Simon Strantzas (Fungi)

“The Sea of Trees” by Rachel Swirsky (The Future Is Japanese)

“Dahlias” by Melanie Tem (Black Wings II)

“Who is Arvid Pekon?” by Karin Tidbeck (Jagganath: Stories)

“Armless Maidens of the American West” by Genevieve Valentine (Apex, August 7, 2012)

“Everything Must Go” by Brooke Wonders (Clarkesworld, Issue 74)