Another Halloween is just around the corner. Readers who need a little help getting into the holiday spirit can turn to The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 2 by Paula Guran. Something to enjoy about this upcoming release is that it’s an anthology – a collection of short stories – so it’s easy to pick up and put down without needing to get too invested in ongoing plots or character storylines. 

Read my review from last year’s release of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 1. 

I read and reviewed Volume 1 last year (see link above), and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the collection. All the authors featured in last year’s anthology are talented and offer a mix of creepy, eerie, dark, disturbing, surreal, and troublesome narratives. Guran takes it further with Volume 2 by including more LGBTQ+ characters as well as more culturally diverse environments.

While I enjoyed the increased representation in Volume 2, I liked Volume 1 better. I think some of the stories in last year’s edition were a bit more comforting to me, or that the endings were less open-ended. In The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 2, fewer stories feature resolved endings – but then again, short stories tend to follow that trend. Nevertheless, I was excited to have the opportunity to read another edition and was not disappointed once I dove in. 

The book has a total of 30 short stories (plus some recommendations by Guran). Here are my favorites among them (in order of appearance).

• “Recognition” by Victor LaValle
• “Odette” by Zen Cho
• “Das Gesicht” by Dale Bailey
• “The Sycamore and the Sybil” by Alix E. Harrow
• “Desiccant” by Craig Laurance Gidney
• “Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell
• “The Genetic Alchemist’s Daughter” by Elaine Cuyegkeng
• “Swanskin” by Alison Littlewood
• “The Dead Outside My Door” by Steve Rasnic Tem
• “Lusca” by Soleil Knowles
• “Nobody Lives Here” by H. Pueyo
• “On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera” by Elizabeth Bear
• “The Owl Count” by Elizabeth Hand
• “Color, Heat, and the Wreck of the Argo” by Catherynne M. Valente
• “Drunk Physics” by Kelley Armstrong
• “Call Them Children” by Wenmimareba Klobah Collins
• “Wait for Night” by Stephen Graham Jones
• “Where the Old Neighbors Go” by Thomas Ha
• “Dead Bright Star (July 1987)” by Caitlin R. Kiernan
• “And This is How to Stay Alive” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda
• “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Gods” by Maria Dahvana Headley
• “Monster” by Naomi Kritzer

Paula Guran returns to The Nerd Cantina Show podcast for a second Cantina Conversation, and she shares details about her selection process and her advice to those wanting to write great stories. Stay tuned for the interview in an upcoming episode (or listen to last year’s interview on Episode 112 on your favorite podcast player in the meantime) and pre-order The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 2, available October 19.