The Year's Best Horror Stories XXI 21 Horror Book Review

I’m a collector of horror fiction short-stories, and have most of the books in this series.  This one is better than average, there were quite a few stories that I loved, and some that moved and/or shocked me to the extreme!  Highlights of this volume 21 in my opinion were the stuff by Jeffrey Osier (The Shabbie People), W.M. Shockley (A Father’s Gift), Carrie Richerson (Apotheosis), and Yvonne Navarro (Feeding The Masses).  Those were my Top 4 favorites of the entire book.  The Ugly File by Ed Gorman also was amazing, and I swore I’ve read that short story in another anthology somewhere.  Like other volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories, this one has its duds:  Haunting Me Softly by H. Andrew Lynch, Sanctuary by Jeffrey Osier, and City in the Torrid Waste by t. Winter-Damon (I’m sorry, but anyone pretentious enough to not only use an initial for their first name but also make it lowercase AND a hyphenated last-name?!?!? just needs to get a life)  His/her story was impossible to plod through, definitely the worst of the whole volume.  Other than those few though, most of the stories in this book I really really enjoyed!  If you’re a fan of short horror fiction, you should pick this one up - I bet you’ll enjoy it too.