The short story “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge” by Tananarive Due, published in Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology won the World Fantasy Award for short fiction.

This is a dark period piece set in Florida. Tananarive Due is really in her stride right now, so if you want to see what top notch writing in horror and dark fantasy is right now, read this story and her recent book The Reformatory, which won several awards over the summer.

A dystopian ecohorror retelling of Persephone (Proserpina) of Greek myth. It deals with deeply problematic family dynamics in that Greek mythology way.

Priya Sharma has really been coming into her own over the last five or six years, with several awards under her belt prior to this. She’s definitely one to watch.

C. S. E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Door is a “queer coming-of-age” novel which has been absolutely lauded. Take a look at the editorial reviews listed on the book’s Amazon page.

The sequel is set to release in April of next year, so it may be worth bumping this up if it’s on your reading list, if you hadn’t already.

Africa Risen also won the Locus award and was nominated for two others. Tananarive Due has a story in here (of course), as does my dear friend Maurice Broaddus. However, the majority of the names on the table of contents are completely unfamiliar to me, which is so exciting. I love an anthology that really exposes me to many new voices, and this one has more than thirty original stories from African and African diasporic writers.

Tim Lebbon is a prolific writer, perhaps most recognizable for several Alien and Star Wars franchise novels and for the novelizations of 30 Days of Night and The Cabin in the Woods. He is quite prolific (his Amazon author profile has fifteen pages of products). This is his tenth collection of short fiction.