All Hallows' Eve Ellen Datlow 9781835415436

Hugo Award winning editor and horror legend Ellen Datlow presents this chilling horror anthology of 19 original short stories from a world-class line-up of the masters of horror, delving into the histories and traditions of the spookiest season of the year.

Featuring stories by Josh Malerman, Stephen Graham Jones, Garth Nix and many more.

Halloween, Samhain, Dia de los Muertos-festivals across the world where we can commune with those we have lost, when spirits can cross over, and when the boundary between the living and the dead is far, far too thin.

A young boy encounters a woman with an ancient and terrifying link to the holiday, a group of college students attend a Halloween party to die for, and a troubled girl exploits a local urban legend to try and turn her life around.

From America to New Zealand via the rural Romanian wilderness, this anthology explores our worldwide obsession with the spookiest season of the year, when the veil is lifted and the spirits come alive. Featuring 19 original stories from bestselling and award-winning masters of the genre, and from Hugo, World Fantasy, Locus, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson award-winning editor and horror legend Ellen Datlow, this anthology invites you to carve a pumpkin, light the lanterns and welcome in trick or treaters from across the world.

With stories by:
Josh Malerman
Lee Murray
Rich Larson
Clay McLeod Chapman
Livia Llewellyn
Michael Marshall Smith
Stephen Graham Jones
Linda D. Addison
Christopher Golden
Alma Katsu
Brian Evenson
Siobhan Carroll
Chikodili Emelumadu
Theresa DeLucci
Garth Nix
Jeffrey Ford
Richard Kadrey
Nathan Ballingrud
John Langan

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited about one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year series, The Doll Collection, Mad Hatters and March Hares, Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, and Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles.

She's won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards. Datlow was recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for "outstanding contribution to the genre," was honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career, and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.

She lives in New York

Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Ararat, Red Hands, Snowblind, Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, and Of Saints and Shadows. Golden co-created (with Mike Mignola) the comic book universe known as The Outerverse, featuring such characters as Baltimore, Joe Golem, and Lady Baltimore. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies Hex Life, Seize the Night, and The New Dead, among others, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, a BBC radio play, and the online animated series Ghosts of Albion (with Amber Benson). A frequent speaker at conferences, schools, and libraries, Golden is also co-host of the podcast Defenders Dialogue, and the founder of the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. The winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best novel in 2017 for Ararat, Golden has been nominated ten times in eight different categories, winning twice. He has also been nominated multiple times for the Shirley Jackson Award, sharing a win in 2020 with James A. Moore for the anthology The Twisted Book of Shadows.

Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com

BRIAN EVENSON is the author of ten books of fiction, including the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York's top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award.

Garth Nix's books include the Old Kingdom fantasy series, comprising Sabriel, Lirael; Abhorsen; Clariel and Goldenhand; SF novels Shade's Children and A Confusion of Princes; and a Regency romance with magic, Newt's Emerald. His novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence; The Keys to the Kingdom series and others. He has co-written several books with Sean Williams, including the Troubletwisters series; Spirit Animals Book Three: Blood Ties; Have Sword, Will Travel; and the forthcoming sequel Let Sleeping Dragons Lie. A contributor to many anthologies and magazines, Garth's selected short fiction has been collected in Across the Wall and To Hold the Bridge. More than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world, they have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and USA Today and his work has been translated into 42 languages. His most recent book is Frogkisser! now being developed as a film by Twentieth Century Fox/Blue Sky Animation.

Michael Marshall-Smith is the author of several horror and science-fiction novels, including Only Forward.

Josh Malerman is the author of the novel Bird Box and the lead singer in the band The High Strung.

Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts in 1970, but spent most of his life in the South. His short story collection, North American Lake Monsters, won the Shirley Jackson award, and his collection Wounds was adapted by Netflix. His work has been nominated for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker awards. Among other things, he has been a cook on oil rigs and barges, a waiter, and a bartender in New Orleans. He now lives in Asheville.

Jeffrey Ford

Richard Kadrey is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been nominated for both the Locus and BSFA awards. His novel Sandman Slim was included in Amazon's "100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime." Some of Kadrey's other books include King Bullet, The Everything Box, The Grand Dark, and Butcher Bird. He also writes for film, games, and comics such as Heavy Metal, Lucifer, and Hellblazer.

John Langan is the author of two novels, The Fisherman (Word Horde 2016) and House of Windows (Night Shade 2009), and two collections of stories, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus 2013) and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime 2008). With Paul Tremblay, he co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (Prime 2011). He's one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, for which he served as a juror during its first three years. Currently, he reviews horror and dark fantasy for Locus magazine.

Alma Katsu's books have been nominated for and won multiple prestigious awards including the Stoker, Goodreads Readers Choice, International Thriller Writers, Locus Magazine, the Western Heritage Awards, Spain's Celsius 232 festival, and appeared on numerous Best Books lists including NPR, the Observer, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Goodreads, and Amazon.

She has written two spy novels (RED WIDOW and RED LONDON), the logical marriage of her love of storytelling with her 30+ year career in intelligence. She also writes novels that combine historical fiction with supernatural and horror elements. THE HUNGER (2018), a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party, was named one of NPR's 100 favorite horror stories, was on numerous Best Books of the Year lists, sold rights in 17 languages, and continues to be honored as a new classic in horror. Her first book, THE TAKER (2011), was named one of the top ten debut novels of 2011 by Booklist.

Ms. Katsu is also a contributor to the Washington Post Book World, where she reviews thrillers. She has relocated from the Washington, DC area to the mountains of West Virginia, where she lives with her musician husband Bruce and their two dogs, Nick and Ash.

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of novels, collections, and novellas including Don't Fear the Reaper, Earthdivers, and The Only Good Indians. His essay "My Life with Conan the Barbarian" reveals his love for the character. He has won the Ray Bradbury Award, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction. Stephen lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.

Linda D. Addison is an award-winning author of five collections, including How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend, and the first African-American recipient of the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award (R). She has received the HWA Mentor of the Year Award and the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award and has over 350 poems, stories, articles in print. Linda received her fifth HWA Bram Stoker Award this year for The Place of Broken Things, written with Alessandro Manzetti. She's excited about the 2020 release of a film (inspired by her poem of same name) Mourning Meal by award-winning producer/director Jamal Hodge. She has fiction in three early landmark anthologies celebrating African-American speculative writers: the award-winning anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction (Warner Aspect), Dark Dreams I and II (Kensington), and Dark Thirst (Pocket Books). Her work has made frequent appearances over the years on the honorable mention list for Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and Year's Best Science Fiction. She has a BS in Mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University and currently lives in Arizona.

Livia Llewellyn

Chikodili Emelumadu is a British and Nigerian speculative fiction writer. In 2019, she won the inaugural Curtis Brown First Novel prize for her novel Dazzling. She has also participated as a judge in the 2020 Shirley Jackson Awards.

Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of "The Pumpkin Pie Show" and the author of Rest Area, Nothing Untoward, and The Tribe trilogy. He is the co-author, with Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, of the middle grade novel Wendell and Wild. In the world of comics, Chapman's work includes Lazaretto, Iron Fist: Phantom Limb, and Edge of Spiderverse. You can find him at claymcleodchapman.com.

Lee Murray

Rich Larson

Siobhan Carroll

Theresa DeLucci

Lisa Morton

Praise for Ellen Datlow:

A sterling collection... Ellen Datlow has - yet again - pulled in many of the very best writers in the field. I'm sure this is henceforth going to be the default stocking filler for any horror fan in your life.
-HorrorTree

Datlow, award-winning editor in speculative fiction, comes through once again ... the gut punch of Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones' stories ... cannot be missed.
-Booklist Starred Review

New works from some of the horror greats BookRiot

Certifiably creepy... undeniably diverse spanning oceans and continents ...[to] make the connection between the so-called happiest time of the year and all manner of sinister goings-on seem as natural as gingerbread and eggnog.
-Rue Morgue

Expertly crafted, adult-in-tone fairy tales set in or around the happiest time of the year'.... It's redolent with festive atmosphere, but it's got lots to say that may not always be comforting (as did Dickens, of course), and it offers a varied range of macabre interest, often of a sort you won't have encountered in Christmas fiction before, and yet all of which fits perfectly into the seasonal mold.
-Paul Finch

This compilation of stories that make the mundane seem terrifying is chilling and uncanny, offering tropes that will be familiar to readers of Jackson's work (witchy women, eerie suburbia) but with unique touches that could come only from these individuals authors.
-New York Public Library Best Books

Other stories are equally memorable, but for me, the outstanding one is Skinder's Veil, a breathtaking blend of fairytale, dream and reality by the incomparable Kelly Link.
-The Guardian

A joy for Jackson fans, but no Jackson knowledge is needed to enjoy this anthology. A gem in its own right.
-SFX

This anthology is the perfect example of how a vision in the right hands can produce amazing results. Every story captures the essence of what it feels like to read Shirley Jackson's work.
-LitReactor best of 2021

This is an absolute treat whether you're a Shirley Jackson nut or not.
-Den of Geek best of 2021

Perfect to dip in and out of as the nights draw in - Culturefly

18 outstanding, atmospheric horror shorts from some of the biggest names in the genre ... Any fan of Jackson's oeuvre will delight in this anthology.
-Publishers Weekly starred review

In short, another great anthology assembled by Ellen Datlow.
-Horror Tree

No one consistently delivers like Datlow does.
-Horror DNA

This anthology is classic horror in its appearance, but in the inside has modern sensitivities with standout prose. Shirley Jackson would've been proud - Last Sentence

Compiling a short story anthology that caters to a wide audience's taste is no small feat. Ellen Datlow has done a brilliant job ... Whether you prefer your creepiness level at one or eleven, with a good dose of blood and gore or just with a hint of psychological suspense, you will find a favourite which appeals to your taste in this collection.
-Crime Fiction Lover

Unsettling, disquieting, even disorienting... This collection is special. Somewhere, Shirley Jackson is peering over those glasses of hers, one eyebrow raised, a sly smile on her lips - Dave Writes and Draws

Even the most voracious of readers is sure to be swept away by the sheer magnitude of talent on display in When Things Get Dark.
-- Phantastiqa

Datlow did it again... every piece was entertaining - Happy Horror Writer

If you are looking for an overview of what the current literary horror world looks like, this is a fantastic example - California Reading

[A] successful endeavour that shows just how much of an influence Shirley Jackson had with her writing - Zachary Houle

A thrilling encounter with the uncanny courtesy of the some of the best contemporary horror writers.
-End of the Words

From haunting to eerie to downright terrifying, there is something for every reader - Mandy McHugh

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this anthology [..] so I have no hesitation in recommending it.
-Stephen Bacon

These stories really linger in the back of my mind - like they're creating a space of their own in my memory - Girl Who Reads