The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012

Edited by Paula Guran.

Take a journey into darkness. Visit places where one might expect to find the dark - in a house where love was shared and lost, a milky-white pool in an Australian cave, the trenches of World War I, the deep woods. You would not be surprised to find the dark in a cheap apartment on the wrong side of town, down mean streets, under a gallows-tree, along dank passageways, trapped underground, in the near future, or among the mysteries of old New Orleans. Dunes, lakes, isolated cabins, old books, and Old West saloons - well, the darkness might easily be there. But we've also found locales you thought were safe from shadows - a rib joint with good blues playing, inside an old wardrobe, on a baseball diamond, the Beverly Wilshire Hotel... Travel into the best dark fantasy and horror from 2011 with more than five-hundred pages of tales from some of today's best-known writers of the fantastique as well as new talents - stories that will take you to a diverse assortment of dark places.

Contents:

• The Third Time May Be a Charm, But It's Not Nessarily Definitive by Paula Guran
• Objects in Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear by Lisa Tuttle
• After the Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh
• Sun Falls by Angela Slatter
• The Bleeding Shadow by Joe R. Lansdale
• Catastrophic Disruption of the Head by Margo Lanagan
• Tell Me I'll See You Again by Dennis Etchison
• The Maltese Unicorn by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• King Death by Paul Finch
• Why Light? by Tanith Lee
• Josh by Gene Wolfe
• Time and Tide by Alan Peter Ryan
• Rakshasi by Kelley Armstrong
• Why Do You Linger? by Sarah Monette
• Vampire Lake by Norman Partridge
• Lord Dunsany's Teapot by Naomi Novik
• The Dune by Stephen King
• The Fox Maiden by Priya Sharma
• Rocket Man by Stephen Graham Jones
• A Journey of Only Two Paces by Tim Powers
• Near Zennor by Elizabeth Hand
• Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee
• All You Can Do Is Breathe by Kaaron Warren
• Mysteries of the Old Quarter by Paul Park
• Still by Tia V. Travis
• Crossroads by Laura Anne Gilman
• The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Catherynne M. Valente
• Hair by Joan Aiken
• The Lake by Tananarive Due
• Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin by Adam Callaway
• The Last Triangle by Jeffrey Ford
• After-Words by Glen Hirshberg
• Four Legs in the Morning by Norman Prentiss
• A Tangle of Green Men by Charles de Lint
• About the Authors