American Dread: A Horror Anthology

0/5 ( ratings)

On some deep level, all of the stories in American Dread evoke a sense of terror. It’s unlikely you can get through to the end without having a truly good skin-crawling-creep-up-the-neck feeling. This is an anthology of horror in the strictest sense: there are many kinds of horror, and many kinds of fear, and each of these stories explores just what it means to scare, and just what it means to be scary. Some of the following works are Fantasy, some are Science Fiction, some might best be described as Literary: but throughout them all is a current, sometimes strong and sometimes subtle, of dread.
We know, now, in the 21st century, that Dracula is a great work of horror. But we also know that Wuthering Heights is horror, too, and indeed so is Frankenstein, and perhaps that no story told in our lifetime is more frightening than Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. There doesn’t need to be blood and murder for a book to be good and truly scary. I think you’ll discover that in the following tales—although there’s plenty of blood to go around, too.
Out of the 16 stories this anthology is comprised of, I think that each is uniquely qualified and impressive in its own way. It was truly difficult to pick which could be called best, because all of them are the best at something. That's how they ended up here in American Dread, painstakingly pulled from a submission pile that had well over 1000 applicants. As Muddy Paw Press's first anthology, this book has a special place in our publishing team's heart. Please do enjoy it - and remember to turn out the light.