Ellen Datlow is one of horror's quintessential, bestselling, and most acclaimed editors. She has won multiple Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, and Shirley Jackson awards, and has received lifetime achievement awards from several organizations including the World Fantasy and World Horror Associations.She was the fiction editor of OMNI for nearly twenty years, and edited the magazines Event Horizon and Sci Fiction, and is currently a genre fiction editor at Tor.com. Her many anthologies include the long-running Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, the Best Horror of the Year series; Snow White, Blood Red; Lovecraft's Monsters; Naked City; The Monstrous; and Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror.

Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror edited by Ellen Datlow

Simon Bestwick, Annie Neugebauer, Josh Malerman, Dale Bailey, Steve Duffy, Margo Lanagan, Bracken MacLeod, Tim Nickels, Stewart O'Nan, Priya Sharma, John Patrick Higgins, Livia Llewellyn, Laird Barron, Theresa DeLucci, Sharon Gosling, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Cluley, Carole Johnstone, Hailey Piper, Charles Birkin, Stephen Graham Jones

Bestselling horror editor Ellen Datlow (Body Shocks) returns with her most eclectic anthology. Here are twenty-one stories of extreme psychological dread from horror icons such as Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Graham Jones, Priya Sharma, Simon Bestwick, and more. The unsettling tales explore the nature of fear as it stirs in dysfunctional families, toxic friendships, and mismatched lovers, and culminates in relentless stalkers, remorseless killers, and perpetrators of savage rituals.

Your grandfather confesses his heinous crime to you alone. You try to save a young girl from sexual assault, but she's not really a victim. Your child is sacrificed in compensation for your social misstep. You compete in a sick game to save your loved ones. Your mom is insane, your dad is dying, your brother is not your brother, and you're stuck in the same house until one or all of you are dead.

Far below the unlikeliness of the supernatural lives something worse: the depths of human depravity. We live in fear of the cruelties of respected leaders and of the despicable crimes of neighbors who seem normal. We live with anxiety about our innermost desires and the unforgivable things we might do in a moment of passion. Or, if we fail to curb our urges, we live with the terrible secrets of our unfettered resentments.

In this uniquely unsettling anthology, editor Ellen Datlow has unearthed twenty-one exemplary tales of what humanity fears most: People.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Ellen's the best. There's nothing else to say. And this trilogy of horror stories will scare the daylight out of you! – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "Fears is modern horror fiction at its finest."

    – Vogue Horror

  • "Ellen Datlow has long ago earned her place as the premier anthologist of fantasy and horror. Appearing in one of her unique volumes is recognized as a significant honor, and Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror is no different."

    – Joe R. Lansdale, author of In the Mad Mountains

  • "For decades, Ellen Datlow has set the bar. One of the most influential editors in the history of genre fiction, the gold standard of anthologists, and the ultimate tastemaker for Horror stories. Datlow's career and reputation are entirely unique—there's only one Ellen."

    – Christopher Golden, author of Ararat

  • "Datlow's latest themed anthology gathers 21 stories, all reprints that have previously appeared across the publishing landscape since 2000 (except for one, the penultimate story by the late Charles Birkin, which was originally published in 1964). Together, these tales illustrate the evolution of the psychological horror subgenre, moving these stories out of the hands of narrators with severe mental illness and into spaces where the fear can seep in from anywhere and anyone—a dinner party, your own family, random encounters, vacation. Things are clearly not as they seem, and the monsters are more human than anyone wants to admit. The anthology has plenty of big names to draw readers in, from Josh Malerman to Joyce Carol Oates to Stephen Graham Jones (whose previously out-of-print story, 'Teeth,' which closes the volume, is a worthy draw here in and of itself). But Datlow has racked up the awards because she is able to identify excellent stories from authors that readers may be less familiar with; here, she includes the intense, atmospheric unease of an overburdened caregiver in Priya Sharma's 'My Mother's Ghost,' the reality of a young girl's father terrifyingly unveiled by Hailey Piper in 'Unkindly Girls,' and the existentially unsettling 'Cavity' by Theresa DeLucci, which lists the 32 times the main character has met a murderer, including her own. This collection is not for the faint of heart, but there are legions of fans of both psychological suspense and horror, meaning there is a built-in audience that will be eager to get their hands on this book. It also pairs well with the Bram Stoker Award–nominated Dark Matter Presents Human Monsters (2022), edited by Sadie Hartmann and Ashley Sawyers, in which Malerman's story first appeared."

    – Booklist
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Introduction to FEARS: Tales of Psychological Horror

by Ellen Datlow

Fears, as its subtitle expresses, is an anthology of stories focused on psychological horror. There might be a slight supernatural aspect to a few of the included works, but if it does exist, it is not the main thrust of the story.

Some misguided connoisseurs of horror refuse to accept a story without supernatural elements as horror. This to me is short-sighted. The horror umbrella is large enough to encompass everything from science fictional horror such as John W. Campbell's great novella Who Goes There? And George Langelaan's "The Fly," and Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers. The conte cruel is generally considered a tale of gruesome horror that ends in a cruel twist of fate. Charles Birkin (with a story included herein), Edgar Allan Poe, and Roald Dahl are important practitioners of this usually not supernatural type of fiction. A subset of crime fiction-the deeply disturbed serial killers such as Hannibal Lector in Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs and Gretchen Lowell, the viciously, sadistic killer of Chelsea Cain's Heartsick series-create the same feeling in me as the best supernatural horror does-dread.

For me, it comes down to how the material makes me feel as I read it.

So where does "fear" come in? Well, as Bracken MacLeod has said: "I think of fear as the precursor to terror-an anticipation of emergent or imminent harm that can start small like an unseen virus that eventually spreads until it's taken over. Where terror, being the reaction to violence (let's say) witnessed or experienced in the present moment, always seems large. I think the two (along with horror and disgust) are related. Fear transforms into terror. Terror leaves us with lingering fear. But one's germinating while the other is cascading."

The stories included were all written between 1964 and 2022. They're about serial killers, hunters of murderers and the blowback this can cause in the hunter, about cruel traditions, horrific appetites, toxic friendships, dysfunctional intimate relationships, revenge for real and imagined slights. Hopefully, they will instill a frisson of fear in the reader.

*The ruminations by Bracken MacLeod came about from a conversation he and I had during Storyfest 2022.