Best Short Stories of 2013 (Somewhat Biased & Woefully Uncomprehensive)

This year, I've been keeping a log of the best short stories I read; I was initially going to only record those that were actually published this year, but I got slightly confusing with reprints and the like, so this list includes some stories pre-2013, but they're all comparatively recent.

To be eligible, the stories had to be ones I read for the first time at some point in 2013, and ones that impressed me enough to make a note of them. Then I reviewed the list prior to writing this blog post; any I couldn't really remember and that hadn't stuck with me were discarded.

In general, I've tried to avoid listing any author more than once, but I weakened a few times.

Nina Allen: The Phoeny War (NewCon Press Sampler)
Simon Bestwick: Lex Draconis (Tales Of The Nun & Dragon, Fox Spirit)
Simon Bestwick & Gary McMahon: Thin Men With Yellow Faces (This Is Horror chapbook)
Keith Brooke: Beside The Sea (Memesis, Infinity Plus)
Ramsey Campbell: Holes For Faces (Holes For Faces, Dark Regions Press)
Ramsey Campbell: The Long Way (Holes For Faces, Dark Regions Press)
Mark Chadbourn: Whisper Lane (The British Fantasy Society: A Celebration)
Ted Chiang: Story Of Your Life (Stories Of Your Life And Others)
MR Cosby: Unit 6 (Darker Times)
MR Cosby: In Transit (Darker Times)
Nicole Cushing: The Peculiar Salesgirl (Polluto #10)
Christian A. Dumais: Leave Me The Way I Was Found (Shock Totem #2)
Cate Gardner: Pretty Little Ghouls (Shock Totem #2)
Jessica George: New Town (Impossible Spaces, Hic Dragones)
John Greenwood: Puppyberries (No Monsters Allowed, Dog Horn Publishing)
Shaun Hamilton: The Shuttle (Ill At Ease II, PenMan Press)
Lauren James: Fences (The Side Effects Of The Medication)
Lauren James: The Side Effects Of The Medication (The Side Effects Of The Medication)
Hannah Kate: Great Rates, Central Location (Impossible Spaces, Hic Dragones)

Gary Kilworth: Filming The Making Of The Film Of The Making Of Fitzcarraldo (Infinity Plus Quintet)

BV Larson: Beside Still Waters (For When The Veil Drops, West Pigeon Press)
Amelia Mangan: Some Girls Wander By Mistake (No Monsters Allowed, Dog Horn Publishing)
Gary McMahon: Just Another Job (Urban Occult, Anachron Press)
Gary McMahon: The Grotto (NewCon Press Sampler)
Mark Mellon: Asshole Factory (Polluto #10)
Steve Mosby: Fruits (author's website)
Tony Rabig: The Other Iron River (The Other Iron River & Other Stories)
Iain Rowan: The Singing (Supernatural Tales #23)
Christina Scholz: The Lost City Of Emory Winters (The Big Click)
Steve Rasnic Tem: Wheatfield With Crows (Dark World, Tartarus Press)
Lisa Tuttle: Flying To Byzantium (Infinity Plus Quintet)
Stephen Volk: The Arselicker (Anatomy Of Death, Hersham Horror)
Mark West: The Bureau Of Lost Children (Ill At Ease II, PenMan Press)
Leslianne Wilder: Sweepers (Shock Totem #2)
Conrad Williams: The Fox (This Is Horror chapbook)
Jennifer Williams: Spider Daughter Spider (Urban Occult, Anachron Press)

Review: Black Flowers by Steve Mosby

I don’t read tons of crime fiction – I'm a dabbler. But Steve Mosby's name has been floating around the part of my mind devoted to the ever-present ‘what book to read next?’ question for some time, partly because of his excellent short stories in both Off The Record 1 & 2, and partly from seeing a recommendation for his book Black Flowers from Ramsey Campbell. 

So I was expecting this one to be a bit tasty. I wasn't wrong.

 

Black Flowers tells the story (and I use that word deliberately) of Neil Dawson, a young writer looking into the apparent suicide of his father, who was also a writer. His investigations dig up not just real life clues, but links to his father’s writing and that of another writer, who wrote a book called The Black Flower. Extracts from that book feature as a story within a story in Black Flowers.

Things get even stranger when a story that Neil wrote himself, expressing some of his temporary unease at the idea of becoming a father, seems to start to come true. And it wasn't a pleasant story; not at all. 

His partner is kidnapped, and the only way to save her appears to be to understand events buried in the past, and in the pages of The Black Flower. Side by side with this, the book also tells of Hannah Price, a police detective also finding out disturbing things about her own father and the stories he may have told her…

 

Black Flowers is obsessed with the way stories and narrative shape our lives – and not just stories in books, but those told to us by those we trust. The book presents two opposing, but equally disturbing ideas. Firstly that the stories we have based our beliefs and principles around might actually be false, and that one day we might find our world crumbling as we face up to that. But secondly, that stories have power over our lives regardless of whether they are true or false; that as well as fearing stories turning out to be false we should also fear stories that might start to become all too true.

 

Lots of books that use meta-fictional trickery do so in a playful way, but Black Flowers plays it straight off the bat and is as dark as hell. It’s this, over and above the horrifying specifics of the crimes featured in the story, that for me makes this book as much horror as a crime novel. I've blogged before about how I don't view horror as a genre as such, but as an ingredient that features in many books that aren't marketed as such. Mosby certainly seems to prove my point here, although the crime genre elements are equally strong and gripping.

The prose is tight, the setting vivid, the characters realistic (even the doubly-fictional ones in the book within a book). Most memorable for me is the imagery of the black flowers themselves, and what the reader comes to understand they represent...

So all in all, very strongly recommended. Dark, clever, and compelling. As I said, I knew it would be a bit tasty.