“The Crevasse”

Author: Bailey, Dale and Nathan Ballingrud
Type: Horror Short Story
Available in: Lovecraft Unbound
Editor: Ellen Datlow
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Horror Anthology
Page Count: 336pp.
Pub. Date: October 7, 2009
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

“The Crevasse” — Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story

The stories are legendary, the characters unforgettable, the world horrible and disturbing.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left behind after his death in 1935 have shaped modern horror more than any other author in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets of life and death at a terrible cost.

In Lovecraft Unbound, more than twenty of today’s most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Ellen Datlow
• The Crevasse by Dail Bailey and Nathan Ballingrad
• The Office of Doom by Richard Bowes
• Sincerely, Petrified by Anna Tambour
• The Din of Celestial Birds by Brian Evenson
• The Tenderness of Jackals by Amanda Downum
• Sight Unseen by Joel Lane
• Cold Water Survival by Holly Phillips
• Come Lurk with Me and Be My Love by William Browning Spencer
• Houses Under the Sea by Caitlin R. Kiernan
• Machines of Concrete Light and Dark by Michael Cisco
• Leng by Marc Laidlaw
• In the Black Mill by Michael Chabon
• One Day, Soon by Lavie Tidhar
• Commencement by Joyce Carol Oates
• Vernon, Driving by Simon Kurt Unsworth
• The Recruiter by Michael Shea
• Marya Nox by Gemma Files
• Mongoose by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
• Catch Hell by Laird Barron
• That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable by Nick Mamatas

“Faces”

Author: Bender, Aimee
Available in: The Paris Review
Format: Print Magazine
Type: Horror Short Story
Pub. Date: Issue 191, Winter 2009

“Faces” — Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story

No summary available.

“The Jacaranda Smile”

Author: Files, Gemma
Type: Horror Short Story
Available in: Apparitions
Editor: Michael Kelly
Cover Art: Erin S. Wells
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Horror Anthology
Page Count: 208pp.
Pub. Date: October 31, 2009
Publisher: Undertow Publications

“The Jacaranda Smile” — Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story

Experience the watery secrets of Venice’s black canals. Investigate the forests and hillocks of the untamed English countryside. Visit a Bulgarian resort that holds a dark secret. 13 tales of apparitions, phantoms, ghosts, and wraiths, from modern masters of the macabre.

Table of Contents:

• The Suicide Chairs by Simon Bestwick
• Coming Soon by Gary A. Braunbeck
• Behind the Black by Michael Colangelo
• A Certain Slant of Light by Christopher Conlon
• Certain Death For a Known Person by Steve Duffy
• Finishing the Dig by Patricia Esposito
• The Jacaranda Smile by Gemma Files
• Men of Old by Paul Finch
• High Water by Joel Lane
• Proof by Gary McMahon
• Incantation by Jessica Reisman
• There Stood the Dead by Iain Rowan
• Home on the Range by Barbara Roden

“The Pelican Bar”

Author: Fowler, Karen Joy
Type: Horror Short Story
Available in: Eclipse 3: New Science Fiction and Fantasy
Editor: Jonathan Strahan
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Horror Anthology
Page Count: 240pp.
Pub. Date: October 1, 2009
Publisher: Night Shade Books

“The Pelican Bar” — Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story

To observe an eclipse is to witness a rare and unusual event. Under darkened skies the sun becomes a negative image of itself, its corona transforming the landscape into a strange space where anything might happen, and any story may be true . . .

In the spirit of classic science fiction anthologies such as Universe, Orbit, and Starlight, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year) presents the non-themed genre anthology Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Here you will find stories where strange and wonderful things happen — where reality is eclipsed by something magical and new.

Continuing in the footsteps of the multiple-award-nominated anthologies Eclipse One and Eclipse Two, Eclipse Three delivers new fiction by some of the genre’s most celebrated authors, including Karen Joy Fowler’s story of a family’s desperation and a rebellious young woman’s strange incarceration; Ellen Klages’s fable of a practical girl, an unusual tortoise, and an ancient mathematical puzzle; Pat Cadigan’s story of a mysterious photograph and two friends’ journey through space and time in order to solve its riddle; Jeffrey Ford’s tale of a legendary sword imbued with the power to turn flesh to coral, and of the artist that wields it; Daniel Abraham’s story of divine providence, sacred oaths, and the omens that indicate whether a man is fit to be king; and Caitlin R. Kiernan’s chronicle of an astronaut whose memories of a lover lost to an alien intelligence haunt her.

Table of Contents:

• The Pelican Bar by Karen Joy Fowler
• A Practical Girl by Ellen Klages
• Don’t Mention Madagascar by Pat Cadigan
• On the Road by Nnedi Okorafor
• Swell by Elizabeth Bear
• Useless Things by Maureen F. McHugh
• The Coral Heart by Jeffrey Ford
• It Takes Two by Nicola Griffith
• Sleight of Hand by Peter S. Beagle
• The Pretender’s Tourney by Daniel Abraham
• Yes We Have No Bananas by Paul Di Filippo
• Mesopotamian Fire by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple
• The Visited Man by Molly Gloss
• Galapagos by Caitlin R. Kiernan
• Dolce Domum by Ellen Kushner

“Procedure in Plain Air”

Author: Lethem, Jonathan
Available in: The New Yorker
Format: Print Magazine
Type: Horror Short Story
Pub. Date: April 5, 2010

“Procedure in Plain Air” — Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story

No summary available.

“Strappado”

Author: Barron, Laird
Type: Horror Short Story
Available in: Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe
Editor: Datlow, Ellen
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Anthology
Page Count: 352pp.
Pub. Date: January 6, 2009
Publisher: Solaris

“Strappado” — Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story

Compiled by multi-award winning editor, Ellen Datlow, this collection commemorates the second centenary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth.

It features Poe — inspired tales by some of the finest talents in the field, including Kim Newman, Pat Cadigan, Sharyn McCrumb, Lucius Shepard, Laird Barron, Suzy McKee Charnas and others.

This all-star line-up has several Hugo, Edgar, Tiptree and British Fantasy Award winners

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Ellen Datlow
• Illimitable Domain by Kim Newman
• The Pickers by Melanie Tem
• Beyond Porch and Portal by E. Catherine Tobler
• The Final Act by Gregory Frost
• Strappado by Laird Barron
• The Mountain House by Sharyn McCrumb
• The Pikesville Buffalo by Glen Hirshberg
• The Brink of Eternity by Barbara Roden
• The Red Piano by Delia Sherman
• Sleeping with Angels by M. Rickert
• Shadow by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Truth and Bone by Pat Cadigan
• The Reunion by Nicholas Royle
• The Tell by Kaaron Warren
• The Heaven and Hell of Robert Flud by David Prill
• Flitting Away by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Kirikh’quru Krokundor by Lucius Shepard
• Lowland Sea by Suzy McKee Charnas
• Technicolor by John Langan