The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

The Cypress House by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown and Company) is a fine supernatural suspense novel about a WWI veteran who sees death in the eyes of the living. This curse and gift provides the impetus for a detour he takes with a young companion en route to a job down in the Florida Keys. Instead, they end up at a boarding house in western Florida and become trapped by circumstance and evil doings of the county bossman.

A Killer’s Essence by Dave Zeltserman (Overlook Press) is a fast-moving crime novel about a disaffected New York City detective trying to solve an uncommonly brutal murder witnessed by a man who sees monsters rather than human faces.

Eutopia by David Nickle (ChiZine Press) is an excellent novel about a 1911 scheme by a naïve philanthropist and a mad doctor to build a utopian community in Idaho by means of eugenics. A boy who has been orphaned by a mysterious and deadly plague is brought to the community and with another outsider might be the only hope for the future. And there are monsters.

Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory (Del Rey) is a wonderful novel about a new-born discovered in a snowstorm after his mother has died. He’s dead. And then he opens his eyes — he’s a zombie. He’s named Stony by the family that takes him in and is hidden from the authorities, who will exterminate him. Despite all scientific reason, Stony grows up. And that’s where it gets even more interesting. This is a terrific new take on the zombie trope.

ALSO NOTED

This is not meant to be all inclusive but merely a sampling of dark fiction available in 2011.

11/22/63 by Stephen King (Scribner) is a time travel novel about a man who tries to prevent the Kennedy assassination. Ghosts Know by Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing) is a darkly humorous novel about a radio show host suspected of knowing more than he should about a missing girl. Gemma Files follows up her lauded A Book of Tongues with A Rope of the Thorns (ChiZine Publications), the second book in her Hexlinger series. Conrad Williams’ novel Loss of Separation (Solaris) hinges on the secrets of a small coastal village in England where the pilot protagonist and his girlfriend go to escape from the stress of a near-miss air crash that leaves him with nightmares. Alan M. Clark’s Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim (Lazy Fascist Press) is told from the point of view of the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper, Catherine Eddowes. The Burning Soul by John Connolly (Simon & Schuster) is his tenth Charlie Parker novel, a series that usually adds a dash of the supernatural to its mystery/suspense plots. My Soul to Take by Tananarive Due (Simon & Schuster/Washington Square Press) continues the author’s Immortal series. Vacation by Matthew Costello (St. Martin’s Press) is a post-apocalyptic horror novel in which some survivors become cannibals. Rotters by Daniel Kraus (Random House) is about a young boy who discovers that his father is a grave robber. Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem (Centipede Press) is where monsters of all kinds go on vacation.

Zombies: Diana Rowland’s My Life as a White Trash Zombie (DAW) is about a high school dropout who has to deal with her new life as a zombie. The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse by Steven C. Schlozman, MD (Grand Central) is a first novel about a neuroscientist investigating the medical causes of zombieism. The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan (Delacorte Books for Young Readers) is the third in her series of post-apocalypse novels begun with The Forest of Hands and Teeth. A Zombie’s History of the United States by Dr. Worm Miller (Ulysses Press) exposes the three hundred year cover-up that has expunged zombie participation in U. S. history. Zone One by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) is a post apocalyptic zombie novel during which a member of a civilian “sweeper” unit is sent to clean up some “stragglers” and while doing so recalls the horrors of the outbreak. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim by Mark Twain & Bill Czolgosz (Gallery) — subject matter self-evident. Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield (Luna) is about a young woman who wakes up in a field and realizes that she’s a zombie. Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit US) is the second in her sf/horror Newflesh series.