Out There Screaming, edited by film director Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, Nope) and subtitled An Anthology of New Black Horror, is a New York Times bestseller already, as well as winning numerous awards, and it’s easy to see why.
There are 19 short stories by authors both highly established and relatively new, with many writers more famous for fantasy and science fiction, such as P Djèlí Clark and Nnedi Okorafor, turning in fantastic and creepy tales.
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With such a diverse collection, there is a spread from ancient history to far future, and many of the stories have elements of fantasy or folklore driving their narratives, with body horror, apocalypse, zombies, aliens and much more thrown into the mix.
Amongst my many favourites was NK Jemisin’s story ‘Reckless Eyeballing’, narrated by a deeply racist and corrupt traffic cop, whose strange visions of cars with human eyeballs leads to a visceral and shocking climax. Original and gripping, this is horror writing of the first order.
Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele (Hutchison Picador, £11.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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