The Best of Shadows

by Charles L. Grant (Editor)

Celebrating the tenth anniversary of the "Shadows" series, this fantasy anthology offers a retrospective featuring stories by Stephen King, David Morrell, Ramsey Campbell, Tanith Lee, Avram Davidison, and others

Genres: Horror, Anthologies

219 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Charles Lewis Grant was a novelist and short story writer specializing in what he called "dark fantasy" and "quiet horror." He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felicia Andrews, and Deborah Lewis.

Grant won a World Fantasy Award for his novella collection Nightmare Seasons, a Nebula Award in 1976 for his short story "A Crowd of Shadows", and another Nebula Award in 1978 for his novella "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye," the latter telling of an actor's dilemma in a post-literate future. Grant also edited the award winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991. Contributors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem. Grant was a former Executive Secretary and Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and president of the Horror Writers Association.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shadows was a long-running series of anthologies edited by Grant that contained original short horror stories. Grant preferred quiet, moody, cerebral horror to splatter-punk pyrotechnics, and his editorial choices reflected that. This book contains his picks for the best of the first ten volumes of the series, with at least one story from each volume, a nice introduction explaining his difficulty in making the choices, and a pair of appendices listing the full series cross referenced by volume and author. There are no bad stories in the book... my favorites were by Tanith Lee, Lisa Tuttle, and some guy named Stephen King.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paperbacks from Hell encouraged me to peek into this anthology series of quiet horror, and this seemed the best place to start. I was not disappointed, as the stories generally range from solid to great.

“The Gorgon” by Tanith Lee felt like the horror version of Tiptree’s “The Women Men Don’t See”. “Jamie's Grave” delivered the unsettling that I have come to expect from Lisa Tuttle. “At the Bureau” by Steve Rasnic Tem was a bit of delightful office wage slave nihilism. “Following the Way” by Alan Ryan surprised me with its twist, even if it never made it to unsettling for me.

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories. Some of them were really good, others never hooked me at all.

2.9

[Ali K · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked about 3 of the stories. The rest were annoyingly simple. I was expecting more from the “best of”. I was expecting more from “quiet horror”.