Body Shocks
Extreme Tales of Body Horror
*Nominated for 2022 Splatterpunk Awards*
Bestselling editor Ellen Datlow (Lovecraft’s Monsters) presents body horror at its most wide-ranging and shocking best. Discover twenty-nine intricate, twisted tales of the human body, soul, and psyche, as told by storytelling legends including Carmen Maria Machado, Richard Kadrey, Seanan McGuire, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Nathan Ballingrud, Tananarive Due, Cassandra Khaw, Christopher Fowler, and many more.
The most terrifying thing that you can possibly imagine is your own body in the hands of a monster.
Or worse, in the hands of another human being.
In this definitive anthology of body horror selected by a World Horror Grandmaster, you’ll find the unthinkable and the shocking: a couture designer preparing for an exquisitely grotesque runway show; a vengeful son seeking the parent who bred him as plasma donor; a celebrity-kink brothel that inflicts plastic surgery on sex workers; and organ-harvesting doctors who dissect a living man without anesthetic.
'Marked by a diverse table of contents and illustrations that enhance the conflicting emotions of unease and wonder that lie at the heart of the appeal of body horror...' — Booklist, starred review
'This authoritative collection is a must for any library, as an introduction to body and extreme horror for readers and librarians alike. Recommend to readers who love horror stories that make their skin crawl while they read about skin literally crawling.' — Library Journal, starred review
'Hugo Award-winning editor Datlow (Edited By) brings together 29 spine-tingling tales of body horror to terrify even the most seasoned horror reader.' — Publishers Weekly, starred review
Ellen Datlow is one of horror’s quintessential, bestselling, and most acclaimed editors. She has won multiple Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, and Shirley Jackson awards and has received lifetime achievement awards from several organisations including the World Fantasy and World Horror Associations.She was the fiction editor of OMNI for nearly twenty years, and edited the magazines Event Horizon and Sci Fiction, and is currently a genre fiction editor at Tor.com. Her many anthologies include the long-running Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, the Best Horror of the Year series; Snow White, Blood Red; Lovecraft’s Monsters; Naked City; The Monstrous; and Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror. Datlow lives in New York City.
