You might notice something a little “special” about the following table of contents for the 2012 Years’ Best Dark Fantasy and Horror collection from Prime Books. But you’ll have to look at the list to find out what it is: “Hair” by Joan Aiken (The Monkey’s Wedding & Other Stories / F&SFJuly/August) “Rakshashi” by Kelley Armstrong (The Monster’s Corner: Through Inhuman Eyes) “Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin” by Adam Callaway (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #73, July 14, 2011) “The Lake” by Tananarive Due (The Monster’s Corner: Through Inhuman Eyes) “Tell Me I’ll See You Again” by Dennis Etchison (A Book of Horrors) “King Death” Paul Finch (King Death) “The Last Triangle” by Jeffrey Ford (Supernatural Noir) Near Zennor by Elizabeth Hand (A Book of Horrors) “Crossroads” by Laura Anne Gilman (Fantasy, Aug 2011) “After-Words” by Glen Hirshberg (The Janus Tree and Other Stories) “Rocket Man” by Stephen Graham Jones (Stymie, Vol. 4. Issue 1, Spring & Summer 2011) “The Colliers’ Venus (1893)” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (Naked City: New Tales of Urban Fantasy) “Catastrophic Disruption of the Head” by Margo Lanagan (The Wilful Eye: Tales from the Tower, Vol. 1) “The Bleeding Shadow” by Joe R. Lansdale (Down These Strange Streets) “Why Light?” by Tanith Lee (Teeth) “Conservation of Shadows” by Yoon Ha Lee (Clarkesworld, August 2011) A Tangle of Green Men, Charles de Lint (Welcome to Bordertown) “After the Apocalypse” by Maureen McHugh (After the Apocalypse) “Lord Dunsany’s Teapot” Naomi Novak (The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities) “Mysteries of the Old Quarter” by Paul Park (Ghosts by Gaslight) Vampire Lake, by Norman Partridge (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2) “A Journey of Only Two Paces” by Tim Powers (The Bible Repairman and Other Stories) “Four Legs in the Morning” by Norman Prentiss (Four Legs in the Morning) “The Fox Maiden” by Priya Sharma (On Spec, Summer 2011) “Time and Tide” by Alan Peter Ryan (F&SF, Sept/Oct 2011) “Sun Falls” by Angela Slatter (Dead Red Heart) “Still” by Tia V. Travis (Portents) “Objects in Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear” by Lisa Tuttle (House of Fear) “The Bread We Eat in Dreams” by Catherynne M. Valente (Apex Magazine, Issue 30, November 2011) “All You Can Do Is Breathe” Kaaron Warren (Blood & Other Cravings) “Josh” by Gene Wolfe (Portents) Okay, so figuring out the special thing in the list shouldn’t be too hard, since I put it in bold and all… Congratulations to Adam both for his publication in BCS and his first anthologized “Best of” story! We’re sure his career will soon collapse under his mounting alcoholism… (we kid, of course — love you, Adam!) It might also interest folks to know that Maureen McHugh has a wonderful story in here, which is also in her collection of the same name from Small Beer Press (which I just finished and loved to death). And since I played a crucial role in getting Adam’s story published (yeah, I’m taking credit), that means this collection has not just one amazing story, but two. That alone is almost worth the entry price.
