Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 5

Book excerpt: 2019. The year certainly made its mark on the world—and more than its share of scars. It also made for a bounty of good horror stories of the extreme kind, the best of which the tales herein serve to illustrate. 2019 was the year Year's Best Hardcore Horror went global. Not by design but because the stories inside just happened to have been written by authors hailing from various parts of the globe. From Australia by way of South Africa, to Italy, Scotland, Norway, Taiwan, North America and India--the common denominator being that their tales come from darkest regions of imagination. TABLE OF CONTENTS GOING GLOBAL: INTRODUCTION by Randy Chandler & Cheryl Mullenax FEAST FOR SMALL PIECES by Hailey Piper GODDESS OF GALLOWS by Kristopher Triana LATE NIGHT INCIDENT AT THE WHITE TRASH MOTEL by Duane Bradley A NEW MOTHER’S GUIDE TO RAISING AN ABOMINATION by Gwendolyn Kiste UPPER CRUST by Michael Paul Gonzalez REDLESS by Annie Neugebauer A TOUCH OF MADNESS by Tim Waggoner PARADISUM VOLUPTATIS by Joanna Koch RADIX MALORUM by Sean Patrick Hazlett LACKERS by Leo X. Roberson WHY DO BIRDS SUDDENLY APPEAR? by Rajiv Moté DARJEELING by Syon Das MRSA ME by Alicia Hilton WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE CHILDREN? by David L Tamarin HAVE A HEART by Matthew V. Brockmeyer SWINGS AND SUSPENSIONS by D.A. Xiaolin Spires KIRTI by Alessandro Manzetti THE TEA AND SUGAR TRAIN by DEBORAH SHELDON SCREAMS FOR STARGIRL by Ben Pienaar QUEER WEATHER by Scáth Beorh