• Darkness surrounds us. We can find darkness anywhere: in a strange greenstone etched with mysterious symbols; at a small town's annual picnic; in aghostly house that is easy to enter but not so easy to leave; behind thedumpster in the alley where a harpy lives; in The Nowhere, a place where carkeys, toys, people disappear to; among Polar explorers; and, most definitely,within ourselves. Darkness flies from mysterious crates; surrounds childrenwhose nightlights have vanished; and flickers between us at the movie theater.Darkness crawls from the past and is waiting in our future; and there's always achance that Halloween really is a door opening directly into endless shadow.Welcome to the dark. You may never want to leave.
• This inaugural volume of the year's best dark fantasy and horror featuresmore than 500 pages of dark tales from some of today's finest writers of thefantastique. Chosen from a variety of sources, these stories are as eclectic andvaried as the genre itself.