October may be over, but the scares don’t have to end. Take a look at our top picks for new horror books in November 2021.
Vile Affections by Caitlin R. Kiernan
Type: Short story anthology
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Release date: Nov. 30
Den of Geek says: Kiernan’s bloody, sometimes erotic fiction sits on the lines between fantasy, horror and the Weird. The author’s background as a paleontologist and biologist informs the texture of their stories, which often feel like finding uncanny but beautiful taxidermy in a dusty back room.
Publisher’s summary: In Vile Affections, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s seventeenth short fiction collection, the boundaries of desire, fascination, passion, and dread collide. That which is beautiful may easily be profane. Those who love us may devour us alive. A shadow may shine like a supernova. The eye of the beholder is God. In these twenty-two stories, Kiernan’s trademark range is on display, taking us from submerged and monster-haunted dreamscapes to quiet bedroom conversation between lovers, from unexpected and uncanny roadkill to an object lesson on the perils of picking up hitchhikers on rainy Appalachian nights. Moving deftly between such disparate genres as cyberpunk, fairy tales, and Southern Gothic, this is Kiernan at their eerie best.
Buy Vile Affections by Caitlin R. Kiernan.
The Best Horror of the Year Volume Thirteen edited by Ellen Datlow
Type: Short story anthology
Publisher: Night Shade
Release date: Nov. 16
Den of Geek says: It’s right there on the tin. Want a great overview of this year’s horror? Studying to try to write your own? Today’s biggest names and scariest stories are all here.
Publisher’s summary: For more than four decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the thirteenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Laird Barron, Mira Grant, and many others.
With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.
The Best Horror of the Year Volume Thirteen edited by Ellen Datlow
Exposure by Louis Greenberg
Type: Novel
Publisher: Titan Books
Release date: Nov. 23
Den of Geek says: A spooky alternate world setting with a dash of Black Mirror and Sleep No More? This looks like a gristly ride for people who like when genre writers throw in the kitchen sink.
Publisher’s summary: In a Britain akin to this one, Vincent Rice falls off a ladder, literally at Petra Orff’s feet. They introduce themselves, and immigrant Petra senses a kindred spirit in Vincent’s complex sense of home. He offers to take her to Metamuse, an alternative theatre experience like no other that he won tickets to in a competition he doesn’t remember entering.
The first show leaves them besotted with each other; the second is far more disturbing. Inexplicable occurrences pile on top of one another, all connected to the mysterious Metamuse. Only Petra can see the web of sinister coincidences surrounding them both and, with injustices both past and present weighing on her mind, she begins to wonder if Metamuse is more than just a show…