All Hallows’ Eve: 13 Stories was an impressive collection of all-new tales by Edgar Award-winning author Vivian Vande Velde, each set on Halloween night and aimed at ages twelve and up.
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders contained twenty-seven previously uncollected stories and poems (one original) by Neil Gaiman. The contents of the US and UK editions differed slightly.
Collected Stories contained fifty-one previously published tales for adults by Roald Dahl.
From Serpent’s Tail, Mortality collected twenty short stories (one original and two only previously available electronically) by Nicholas Royle.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Strange Candy collected fourteen stories, including a new “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter” tale, while Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories contained eight stories (one original) by Elizabeth Hand, along with an Afterword by the author.
Twisted Tales presented fourteen original stories by Brandon Massey.
Alone on the Darkside: Echoes from the Shadows of Horror was the fourth in the series of original paperback anthologies edited by John Pelan. It featured sixteen all-new stories by Brian Hodge, Eddy C. Bertin, Mark Samuels, Glen Hirshberg, David Riley, Gerard Houarner, Lucy Taylor and Paul Finch, amongst others.
Edited by Iain Sinclair, London: City of Disappearances was a literary anthology that featured contributions from J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Will Self, Marina Warner and Nicholas Royle.
Ghosts in Baker Street edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower included ten supernatural mystery stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. There was also an Introduction by “Dr Watson” and non-fiction pieces from Barbara Roden, Loren D. Estleman and Caleb Carr.
Edited by Brandon Massey, Dark Dreams II: Voices from the Other Side was an original anthology of seventeen stories by black authors.
Despite any publisher and author’s profits being donated to the Save the Children Tsunami Relief Fund, Elemental, edited by Steven Savile and Alethea Kontis, was published almost a year-and-a-half after the tragedy in the Indian Ocean and appeared woefully redundant. Among those authors who donated their work for free were Brian Aldiss, David Drake, Joe Haldeman, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Larry Niven and Michael Marshall Smith.
Edited by P. N. Elrod, My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding contained nine stories by such writers as Charlene Harris, Jim Butcher, Esther Friesner, Sherrilyn Kenyon and the editor herself.
Mysteria presented four paranormal romances set in a demon-haunted town in Colorado by Maryjanice Davidson, Susan Grant, P. C. Cast and Gena Showalter. Hell With the Ladies collected three linked stories about the sons of Satan by Julie Kenner, Kathleen O’Reilly and Dee Davis.
Dates from Hell contained four otherworldly tales of paranormal trysts by Kim Harrison (Dawn Cook), Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong and Lori Handeland featuring werewolves, demon lovers and the romantically challenged undead. Yet another paranormal romance volume, Dark Dreamers featured a reprint “Carpathian” story by Christine Feehan and a new “Dirk & Steele” novella by Marjorie M. Liu.
Triptych of Terror included three gay horror stories by Michael Rowe, David Thomas Lord and John Michael Curlovich.
The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Nineteenth Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant contained thirty-five stories, five poems and various end-of-the-year essays by the two sets of editors, Edward Bryant, Charles Vess, Joan D. Vinge, Charles de Lint and James Frenkel.
Edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Seventeen contained twenty-two stories and novellas, along with the usual overview of the year, Necrology and list of Useful Addresses.
The two volumes overlapped with a number of authors but by just three stories, from Glen Hirshberg, Adam L. G. Nevill, and China Miéville, Emma Bircham and Max Schäfer.
2006 saw an explosion of “Year’s Best” anthologies, with the busy Jason Strahan editing two titles from Night Shade Books and another for The Science Fiction Book Club. There were also at least five different titles from Prime Books/Wildside Press. The latter’s output included Horror: The Best of the Year: 2006 Edition edited by John Gregory Betancourt and Sean Wallace. It contained fifteen stories and a short Introduction by the editors, along with contributions from Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Cady, Michael Marshall Smith, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Joe Hill, Jeff VanderMeer, Laird Barron, Holly Philips, M. Rickert and David Niall Wilson.
From Wildside’s new romance imprint, Juno Books, Best New Paranormal Romance edited by Paula Guran featured twelve stories by Jane Yolen, Elizabeth Hand, Elizabeth Bear and others.
Dark Corners was the first collection from scriptwriter Stephen Volk (TV’s Ghostwatch and Afterlife). Available through print-on-demand imprint Gray Friar Press, it contained fifteen stories (three new) and an original screenplay, along with an Introduction by Tim Lebbon and an Afterword by the author.
From the same publisher, John Llewellyn Probert’s linked collection The Faculty of Terror was a homage to the old Amicus anthology movies with an Introduction by Paul Finch and an interview with the author by Gary McMahon.
T. M. Wright’s short novel A Spider on My Tongue, a sequel to A Manhattan Ghost Story, was available as a print-on-demand volume from Nyx Books.
Midnight Library/Eibon Books’ Book of Legion by “Victor Heck” (David Nordhaus) was a print-on-demand novel about the eponymous body-hopping demon’s attempts to create a Hell on Earth.
When Darkness Falls from Midnight Library collected fourteen stories (one original) by J. F. Gonzalez with an Introduction and notes by the author. Ten original linked stories by Angeline Hawkes were collected in The Commandments, an on-demand trade paperback from Nocturne Press.
The Fungal Stain and Other Dreams from Hippocampus Press collected fifteen Lovecraftian stories (eight original) by W. H. Pugmire, while Straight to Darkness: Lairs of the Hidden Gods Volume Three from Kurodahan Press, was a Lovecraftian anthology of seven stories and one article edited by Ken Asamatsu and originally published in Japan in 2002. Robert M. Price supplied a new Introduction.
Time Intertwined released by Kerlak Publishing was an anthology of fourteen stories (one reprint) edited with a Forward [sic] by Mark Fitzgerald. From the same imprint, Dark Chances was the second book in Allan Gilbreath’s vampire “Galen Saga”.
Aegri Somnia was an on-demand anthology of twelve stories dealing with nightmares from Apex Publications. It was edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth and included contributions from Scott Nicholson, Christopher Rowe and Lavie Tidhar, amongst others.
Edited by Kevin L. Donihe, Bare Bone #9 from Raw Dog Screaming Press contained fiction and poetry by Gary Fry, Andrew Humphrey, Paul Finch, Tim Curran, C. J. Henderson, James S. Dorr, Amy Grech and others.
Although its quarterly schedule was reportedly cut in half by Cosmos Books/Wildside Press, the twelfth volume of Philip Harbottle’s Fantasy Adventures did finally appear with cover art by Sydney Jordan and new stories from veterans Sydney J. Bounds, Brian Ball, Eric Brown, John Glasby and Philip E. High. The remainder of the issue was filled out with John Russell Fearn’s “I Spy”, a short SF novel from 1954, and a reprint story by E. C. Tubb.