25 Must-Read Horror Collections and Anthologies

This World Fantasy Award-winning anthology contains 40 beloved fairy tales, twisted and retold by such celebrated writers as Francesca Lia Block, Brian Evenson, Karen Joy Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Hiromi Ito, Ilya Kaminsky, Kelly Link, and Gregory Maguire.

Sometimes bleak, sometimes gruesome, sometimes shocking, the 11 stories in Chesya Burke’s 2011 collection revolve around knowledge — specifically, how well we know ourselves and others. The stories here move between the past and present, and focus largely on Black characters, from an entrepreneurial woman living in Depression-era Harlem to a holdout determined to resist the zombie apocalypse that has taken over the rest of town. This is creeping, unsettling-to-the-bone horror at its finest.

The fairy tale-esque stories in Through the Woods have definitely come back to haunt me in the years since I first read Emily Carroll’s collection of graphic short fiction. From the viral popularity of “His Face All Red” to the don’t-look-over-your-shoulder chills of “The Nesting Place,” these horror stories pull back the skin of your house’s creaky walls and crawl among the maggots within.

Angela Carter’s prize-winning classic turns a feminist eye toward your favorite fairy tales. These aren’t the shining, singing, Disney-fied versions you know and love, however. (I mean, it’s called The Bloody Chamber for a reason.) Here, Carter remixes “Beauty and the Beast,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” and more. Best of all for horror aficionados, these fables are gruesome enough to make the Brothers Grimm proud.

From the author of The Queen of the Cicadas and Goddess of Filth comes this “short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desires, and visions of the Chicana experience.” V. Castro writes from the place where abject horror meets unbridled lust, making Mestiza Blood a must-read short-story collection for erotic-horror fans.

No list of must-read horror collections and anthologies could possibly be complete without The King in Yellow. Robert W. Chambers was one of Lovecraft’s primary influences, and nowhere does his weird fiction shine more brightly than in this novel-in-stories about a mysterious stageplay that drives readers to insanity and suicide.

The title novella in this collection is part of the Gracetown cycle: one of four groupings that range from two to five stories each. All three Gracetown stories take place in a tiny Florida town of the same name, the kind of place where folks retire and welcome grandchildren to visit each year. But all is not as it seems in Gracetown, and the Florida sunshine belies the horror that lurks around every bright corner.

I recommend the title story in this collection every chance I get. Harlan Ellison’s sci-fi horror story about a small group of human “survivors” trapped in a hellscape following the techno-apocalypse is the exact kind of pulpy, visceral horror that sticks in your craw long after you’ve closed the cover.

The recent past is full of bitter memories for those living in contemporary Argentina. The specter of unthinkable violence shadows many imaginations. It’s no surprise, then, that many of the characters in Mariana Enríquez’s Things We Lost in the Fire choose to inflict pain upon themselves rather than suffer another person’s cruelty. If you’re a fan of magical realism, make this your next horror read.

Brian Evenson’s 2019 collection contains more than 20 horror stories, many of them incredibly brief. Come for the faceless babies, stay for the spaceship interface that refuses to explain what you’re seeing between yourself and the bulkhead, and don’t leave until you know the all the secrets your favorite cult film is hiding.

You can’t attribute any of the scares in this anthology from Dark Matter Magazine to the supernatural or paranormal. The stories here are all about the real-life monsters — the kind of people you know well enough to know you never want to be left alone with.

Today, Gabino Iglesias is best known for his 2022 novel, The Devil Takes You Home, but please don’t overlook his 2018 novel-in-stories. Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection, Coyote Songs revolves around a cast of people living in the American Southwest, where old gods still dwell, and legends are very much alive.

No one quiet balances the gross-out with the macabre quite like Junji Ito. The nine stories in Shiver are Things You Can’t Unsee-levels of grotesque, but it’s the supernatural elements at work here that will really creep you out.

After the success of The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw, horror fans are stoked to see Stephen Graham Jones get the wider appreciation he deserves. Nominated for both the Stoker and the Shirley Jackson Award, After the People Lights Have Gone Off contains 15 short stories from the 21st-century horror master.

First published in 2021, the title novella in Erica LaRocca’s brand-new collection — about a pair of teens and their grisly internet romance — took home the 2022 Splatterpunk Award for Best Novella. It joins two new stories — “The Enchantment” and “You’ll Find It’s Like That All Over” — in this collection.

Edited by the authors of A Map to the Sun and Butcherbird, and billed as “an incredible range of stories and illustrations that celebrate the voices of those overlooked to show you the terrifying and exquisite scope of what horror can be,” Death in the Mouth collects the work of BIPOC artists and writers who are too often overlooked in the horror space.

What does it mean to fear “the other”? That’s the question at the heart of this anthology, which pulls together work from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors. Many of the writers featured on this list reappear here, including Linda D. Addison, Tananarive Due, Gabino Iglesias, and Stephen Graham Jones.

If “The Girl with the Green Ribbon” really freaked you out as a kid, you’re going to love the opening story of this National Book Award finalist. For fans of Law and Order: SVU, there’s “Especially Heinous”: a reimagining of Benson and Stabler as investigators working 12 gritty seasons’ worth of supernatural cases.

What kind of horror comes from the body? What kind can we inflict upon it? In each of the five stories that make up Asa Nonami’s Bødy, the central character fixates on their dissatisfaction with a particular body part, only to find themselves facing a monkey’s paw dilemma when their wish is granted.

In the title story in this gekiga collection, a subway worker whose job is to forcefully pack commuters into subway cars gets a taste of his own medicine when he’s mistaken for a rider. “The Push Man” is tame compared to many other tales in this collection, but perhaps the most horrifying is “Bedridden”: the story of a sexually abused woman and the men who force themselves on her.

With stories from some of the most famous Black writers working today, Sheree Renée Thomas’ Dark Matter: Reading the Bones anthology is a must-read for anyone looking for an introduction to Black speculative fiction. Its predecessor, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, is also well worth checking out.

Plenty of authors are still writing weird fiction today, but the VanderMeers have been instrumental in introducing the sub-genre to a whole new generation of readers. This 2008 anthology provides an excellent overview of contemporary weird fiction — from what it is to where it’s going. Although there are too many writers of the weird to fit into any single anthology, readers looking to dive into the sub-genre would do well to start here.