Undead

As stated in her introduction to Inferno , Ellen Datlow asked her favorite authors for stories that would "provide the reader with a frisson of shock, or a moment of dread so powerful it might cause the reader outright physical discomfort; or a sensation of fear so palpable that the reader feels compelled to turn on the bright lights and play music or seek the company of others to dispel the fear." Mission accomplished. Datlow has produced a collection filled with some of the most powerful voices in the field: Pat Cadigan, Terry Dowling, Jeffrey Ford, Christopher Fowler, Glen Hirshberg, K. W. Jeter, Joyce Carol Oates, and Lucius Shepard, to name a few. Each author approaches fear in a different way, but all of the stories' characters toil within their own hell. An aptly titled anthology, Inferno will scare the pants off readers and further secure Ellen Datlow's standing as a preeminent editor of modern horror. At the publisher's request, this...

Multiple World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Award-winning editor Ellen Datlow presents twenty original tales of terror

Publishers Weekly

Datlow (The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror) makes a solid claim to being the premiere horror editor of her generation with this state-of-the-art anthology of 20 new stories by some of horror fiction's best and brightest. Several outstanding selections feature imperiled children and explore the horrific potential of childhood fears, among them Glen Hirshberg's "The Janus Tree," which gives a creepy supernatural spin to a poignant memoir of adolescent angst and alienation, and Stephen Gallagher's "Misadventure," in which a young man's near-death experience as a child endows him as an adult with consoling insight into the afterlife. The compilation's variety of approaches and moods is exemplary, ranging from the natural supernaturalism of Laird Barron's cosmic horror tale "The Forest," to the unsettling psychological horror of Lucius Shepard's "The Ease with Which We Freed the Beast"; the metaphysical terrors of Conrad Williams's "Perhaps the Last"; and the slapstick grotesquerie of K.W. Jeter's black comedy "Riding Bitch." If this book can be taken as a gauge of the vitality of imagination in contemporary horror fiction, then the genre is very healthy indeed. (Dec.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

An anthology of twenty original tales of horror and the macabre features contributions from such distinguished authors in the field as Joyce Carol Oates, Pat Cadigan, K.W. Jeter, Terry Dowling, Jeffrey Ford, and Lucius Shepard