Women in Horror Month: Terrifying Short Fiction Collections

I have to open with Kay Chronister’s debut collection, Thin Places, because it is the epitome of everything I love in the horror genre. Her work is such aesthetic catnip for me. When this gorgeous cover from Undertow Publications first popped up on my Twitter feed I was intrigued because it definitely looks like a me thing. So I read the titular story “Thin Places”, which was published in The Dark magazine and is still available on their site, and loved it so much that I turned right around and ordered her collection. Gothic, monstrous, emotional and strange – this collection is everything.

Oh look Jessica’s talking about All the Fabulous Beasts again. But listen: I love this collection. It is breathtakingly gorgeous and I want to just crawl inside it and disappear. Priya Sharma’s collection is a powerhouse of imagery and tone. All 16 stories are a glorious blend of the monstrous and the beautiful, full of nature and humanity, life, death, and transformation. But my personal favorite was “Pearls”, a continuation more than a retelling of a Medusa myth, and a lushly emotional one too. I also loved “Fish Skins” about a man whose wife came from the sea, and “The Sunflower Seed Man”, a harrowing look at the nature of grief and how we survive.

Due’s collection Ghost Summer is well known and beloved in the genre for a reason. It’s a captivating selection of 15 short stories and an award winning novella that really showcases Due’s impressive range, from emotional realism to chilling horror. There’s a section of viral/contagion/zombie horror stories in this collection that will for real turn you into a hypochondriac. Due’s writing in this collection is as vivid and unforgettable as ever, and this is one of those books you’ll want to add to your permanent library so that you can revisit it again and again.

Kiernan, though a member of the Horror Writer’s Association, is not really – or at least entirely – a horror author. While many of their stories are rife with horror elements, Kiernan’s short fiction covers a broad range of subjects and genres, from science fiction to fantasy to the cosmic horror that they’ve become so well known for with their novella Agents of Dreamland. Their stories are strange, beautiful, and full of emotion, possessing the sort of staying power that makes them linger with you for months. Kiernan is also one of my favorite Lovecraftian authors, giving me all that eerie, sea-themed weirdness I need in my life without having to resort to actual Lovecraft who is, of course, Not Great.

DeMeester’s work is another perfect example of my favorite horror aesthetic, steeped in powerful, unsettling nature imagery, with the horrors coming from deep below the earth. It’s the gritty, earthy feel of folk horror meets the vast, unknowableness of cosmic horror, and I could eat it with a spoon. In her debut short story collection Everything That’s Underneath DeMeester pens 18 terrifying stories that drag her readers into the dark corners of the world and the human soul.