Fearsome Five: Top 5 Short Story Collections Not Written by Stephen King

"Blasphemy" says grumpy horrormeister

Stephen King has published a lot of short story collections, and they can be found right next to his novels, which have then been made into movies (the rest will probably be made into movies eventually). Stephen King has also done a great deal for the short story medium, simply by increasing its volume, but there are other authors who have their own contributions to the tradition of frightening short stories. 

5) The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is not always thought of as a horror writer, but she has delved deep into the horror genre with works like the future serial killer work Zombie and the Gothic-influenced novella Beasts. Even her literary fiction like We Were the Mulvaneys and Missing Mom discuss the effects of violence on the perpetrator, those on the receiving end, and those caught in its ripples. If she’s not a horror writer, her writing shows an understanding of the dark impulses that underpin horror. This short story collection beautifully demonstrates how Oates strikes a balance between literary flourish and evil impulses. The story “The Corn Maiden,” for example, shows how multiple people are caught in the maelstrom created by a girl’s kidnapping, and “Beersheba” shows a man whose innocent answering of a phone call from his past leads to a fight for survival. 

4) The Best of Joe Lansdale by Joe Lansdale

I had debated putting on this list either High Cotton or Bumper Crop, the two anthologies that introduced me to Lansdale’s folksy, insane, fantastical horror, but this collection has just about all of his best work. It has the great short stories “The Night They Missed the Horror Show” and “Steppin’ Out Summer ’69,” both nods to that trope of teenage ennui and frustrated libido, and it’s really a toss-up which is funnier, even though “Horror Show” is by far the more horrific. This collection also includes Bubba Hotep, one of my favorite stories, which dares to pit an older Elvis Presley, here a resident of a Texas retirement home, against a mummy with a penchant for wearing cowboy boots. 

3) Books of Blood by Clive Barker

The ‘80s was dominated by King, Koontz, and Straub. Then came the triple threat (writer, director, artist) that was Clive Barker, and this collection of short stories is what added him to the Mount Rushmore of Horror Fiction (just picture that a Mount Rushmore of Horror Fiction exists). Barker hailed from England, but his subjects and his prose were far from gentile. The man who gave the world Hellraiser and Pinhead added more sex and violence but delivered it in gorgeously wrought sentences that felt like poetry. “The Forbidden” gave the world his other famous creation Candyman but also an exploration on the care and feeding of urban legends while “The Madonna” looks at the differences between men and women in a disturbing way that is distinctly Clive Barker (note: as a writer, you know you’ve made it when you become an adjective). 

2) A Long December by Richard Chizmar

He co-wrote Gwendy’s Button Box with King, but Chizmar, a long-time editor of the horror publication Cemetery Dance, is a skilled horror author with his own unique style. For readers looking for their horror in small doses with a twist ending that hits like a Mike Tyson gut punch, look no further than Chizmar’s lean and mean style. Clive Barker’s fiction is like an intricate cocoon woven around your brain, but Chizmar’s minimalist approach, almost mechanical in its efficiency, is a bolt gun between the eyes. Using more realistic scenarios, Chizmar’s stories feature protagonists who are often caught off-guard by the snakepit that is human emotion, whether it’s the mother who doesn’t know her children in “The Box” or “A Long December,” where a man discovers his best friend is a serial killer. 

1) The Best of Richard Matheson by Richard Matheson

Stephen King has actually cited him as an inspiration, and it’s easy to see why. Many people are probably aware of Matheson’s stories, if not Matheson the author. They have probably seen the movie What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams, not realizing that he wrote the novel. From “Duel” to “Steel,” from “I Am Legend” to The Shrinking Man, Matheson has cemented his reputation as a giant in speculative fiction. This collection has stories like “Duel” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” as well as little-known gems like ”One for the Books,” a Twilight Zone-like horror tale about a man who literally becomes too smart for his own good and “A Visit to Santa Claus,” a slow burn of a story about a man who is what we’d today call multitasking: taking his kid to see Santa and executing a plan to murder his wife. If you like this collection, try He is Legend, where authors offer their own reinterpretation of Matheson’s stories.

Any suggestions? Write me at scarylibrarian43@gmail.com.