999 by Al Sarrantonio

Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology

"One of the best anthologies of horror and suspense of all time."—Rocky Mountain News

From award-winning author and “master anthologist”* Al Sarrantonio, 999: Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense is a specially curated collection of evocative fiction that probes the depth of human fears and frailties. From otherworldly entities stalking prey to psychological terrors borne of trauma, these stories exemplify the limitless possibilities inherent in the genre, revealing that darkness can be found anywhere the imagination dares to look for it.

• Young siblings uncover a disturbing history of their scandalized family—and encounter a creature of twisted malevolence—when they find themselves in “The Ruins of Contracocur” by Joyce Carol Oates.
• A man regrets his impulse purchase of a yard sale painting when the image continually shapeshifts into more and more violent depictions of its subject in pursuit of its new owner in Stephen King’s “The Road Virus Heads North.”
• In Neil Gaiman’s “Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story”, an ancient people’s legend haunts a wealthy and powerful man who pays the ultimate price to possess a happiness never meant to endure.
• Thomas Ligotti unleashes “The Shadow, The Darkness” on an unsuspecting commune of struggling artists who come to accept a damning realization of their misperceived identities and their true existence in the cosmos.
• And twenty-five more excursions over the course of 666 pages into horror’s unrelenting shadows by:

William Peter Blatty * Edward Bryant * P. D. Cacek * Ramsey Campbell * Nancy A. Collins * Thomas M. Disch * Ed Gorman * Rick Hautala * T. E. D. Klein * Joe R. Lansdale * Edward Lee * Bentley Little * Eric Van Lustbader * Dennis L. McKiernan * Thomas F. Monteleone * David Morrell * Kim Newman * Tim Powers * Al Sarrantonio * Peter Schneider * Michael Marshall Smith * Steven Spruill * Chet Williamson * F. Paul Wilson * Gene Wolfe

*Booklist