Dark Stars, edited by John F.D. Taff, is a tribute to horror’s longstanding short fiction legacy, featuring 12 terrifying original stories from today’s most noteworthy authors. Within these pages you’ll find tales of dead men walking, an insidious secret summer fling, an island harboring unspeakable power, and a dark hallway that beckons. You’ll encounter terrible monsters―both human and supernatural―and be forever changed. The stories in Dark Stars run the gamut from traditional to modern, from dark fantasy to neo-noir, from explorations of beloved horror tropes to the unknown―possibly unknowable―threats. It’s all in here because it’s all out there, now, in horror. Dark Stars features all-new stories from the following award-winning authors and up-and-coming voices: Chesya Burke, Ramsey Campbell, Gemma Files, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, John Langan, Livia Llewellyn, Josh Malerman, Usman T. Malik, Priya Sharma, and John F.D. Taff. Created as an homage to the 1980 classic horror anthology Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley, Dark Stars also features an introduction by Josh Malerman and an afterword from original contributor Ramsey Campbell―a poignant finale to this bone-chilling collection. Cover art by Jeffrey Alan Love Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill
Authors
"Hard to put down. Not recommended reading after dark." — Stephen King "Makes the supernatural seem possible" — Publishers Weekly THE HUNGER: NPR 100 Favorite Horror Stories THE HUNGER: Nominated for the Stoker and Locus awards Author of THE DEEP, a reimagining of the sinking of the Titanic, and THE HUNGER, a reimagining of the Donner Party's tragic journey (Putnam); THE TAKER, THE RECKONING and THE DESCENT (Gallery Books). The Taker was selected by ALA/Booklist as one of the top ten debut novels of 2011.
I was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and spent my childhood in Tacoma, Washington. And now I live on the East Coast. I’m not quite sure how that happened…. By day I’m a secretary. I file papers, create spreadsheets, update calendars, sort papers—the usual secretarial things. At night, I write about lonely young girls who can speak to engines, Nikola Tesla’s secret journals, long-horned demons lost in Northwest suburbia, giant biomechanical insects, mothers who are good monsters, monsters who are good mothers, lots of consensual human-&-creature sex, and even more broken hearts. You can also find me on my website, where I talk a lot about ants (too many), coffee (too little), and cheese (never enough!).
Priya Sharma’s fiction has appeared venues such as Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Tor. “Fabulous Beasts” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. Priya is a Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award winner, and Locus Award finalist, for “All the Fabulous Beasts”, a collection of her some of her work, available from Undertow Publications. “Ormeshadow”, her first novella (available from Tor), won a Shirley Jackson Award and a British Fantasy Award. It was a 2022 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire finalist. Her stories have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Czech, and Polish.
Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani vagrant camped in Florida. He reads Sufi poetry, likes long walks, and occasionally strums naats on the guitar. His fiction has won the Bram Stoker Award and been nominated for the Nebula. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, The Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Tor.com, The Apex Book of World SF, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, and Black Static among other venues. He is a graduate of Clarion West. In Dec 2014, Usman led Pakistan’s first speculative fiction workshop in Lahore in conjunction with Desi Writers Lounge and Liberty Books.
Caroline Kepnes is the New York Times bestselling author of You, Hidden Bodies, Providence and... You Love Me. Publishing in the US on Aril 6, 2021 (You know You Netflix? That's based on my Joe Goldberg books! You can read You3 before Season 3) Her work has been translated into a multitude of languages and inspired a television series adaptation of You, currently on Netflix. Kepnes graduated from Brown University and then worked as a pop culture journalist for Entertainment Weekly and a TV writer for 7th Heaven and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She grew up on Cape Cod, and now lives in Los Angeles.
Josh Malerman is the New York Times best selling author of BIRD BOX, MALORIE, GOBLIN, PEARL, GHOUL n THE CAPE, and more. He's also one of two singer/songwriter for the rock band The High Strung.
