Strange and Dark Stories

 

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff VanderMeer , Ann VanderMeer

From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won’t find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled.
The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon (goodreads exerpt)

From the publisher "The most comprehensive collection of its kind, THE WEIRD explores over a century of dark stories and includes some of the biggest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. With tales from old favorites (H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury) as well as recent New York Times bestsellers (Haruki Murakami, China Mieville, George R.R. Martin, Steven King), this is a collection that will appeal to readers across the board." 

I highly recommend this book to anybody that like stories about the unusual and strange. With the massive size of around 1192 pages it will keep you reading for days. I have seen varying prices around the web varying from $40-$22. In which this book is so worth the money. I am considering buying a copy for all of my friends. All of the weirdest short stories from the best authors of our time all in one place.  

About the authors: "Ann and Jeff VanderMeer are incredibly respected names in the science fiction and fantasy community. Their work has been covered by the New York Times, National Public Radio, Wired.com, and many others. Jeff is a World Fantasy Award-winning novelist and has reviewed genre fiction for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Amazon.com. Ann was the long-time, Hugo Award-winning editor of Weird Tales magazine, and her work has appeared in numerous “year’s best” anthologies. To supplement the anthology, they have created the website The Weird Fiction Review, which features essays about the authors included in the collection as well as an original web-comic, which explores the anthology’s strange landscapes." (from the publisher)