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The first three volumes of The Best Horror of the Year have been widely praised for their quality, variety, and comprehensiveness. Editor Ellen Datlow has now explored the entirety of the diverse horror market, distilling it into the fourth anthology in the series and providing an overview of the year in terror.

Fear is the oldest human emotion, the most primal. We like to think we're civilized. We tell ourselves we're not afraid. And every year, we skim our fingers across nightmares, desperately pitting our courage against shivering dread.

In one story, a paraplegic millionaire hires a priest to exorcise his pain; in another, a failing marriage is put to the ultimate test. In other stories hunters become the hunted as a small group of men ventures deep into a forest; a psychic struggles for her life on national television; a soldier strikes a grisly bargain with his sister's killer; ravens answer a child's wish for magic; two mercenaries accept a strangely simplistic assignment; and a desperate woman in an occupied land makes a terrible choice.

What scares you? Horror wears new faces in these carefully selected stories. The details may change, but the fear remains. With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four provides the petrifying horror fans of the genre have come to expect-and enjoy.

Meredith Mitchell is an actress who has performed in such films as Mona Lisa Smile and The Reunion, on stage with Shakespeare & Company and the New Repertory Theatre, and on television on Good Morning America. She received her BA in psychology from Emory University and her MFA in acting from Brandeis University.

Fred Sullivan is an actor and an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has played over one hundred roles as an award-winning resident actor at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. He is resident director at Gamm Theatre and teaches acting at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Laird Barron is a writer of horror fiction. He has received three Shirley Jackson Awards for his collections The Imago Sequence, and Other Stories and Occultation, and Other Stories and for his novella Mysterium Tremendum. His other works include two novels, The Light Is the Darkness and The Croning, and a story collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. He lives in upstate New York.

Margo Lanagan's story collection, Red Spikes, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book and a Horn Book Fanfare, and Black Juice was a Printz Honor Book. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

Glen Hirshberg received his BA from Columbia University, where he won the Bennett Cerf Prize for Best Fiction, and his MA and MFA from the University of Montana. His first novel, The Snowman's Children, was a Literary Guild Featured Selection. His collection, The Two Sams, won three International Horror Guild Awards and was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly. Hirshberg has won the Shirley Jackson Award and been a finalist for the World Fantasy and the Bram Stoker Awards.

Peter Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. He has won the Bram Stoker Award for his two of his novels and a short story collection, 5 Stories; he has also won a World Fantasy Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He received a BA in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA from Columbia University.

Michael Healy has appeared off Broadway and on national television, most notably on Saturday Night Live for three years, as well as in several national commercials. He continues to hone his craft in Rhode Island, where he has won awards for acting. His audiobook recordings include Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat, The Collector of Lost Things by Jeremy Page, and The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Lindy Nettleton is a professional actress and a registered nurse who was born in England and lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, Scotland, and various places in England before coming to the United States. Apart from acting and narrating audiobooks, she runs her own wellness business. She is now a US citizen and is happy to make Newport, Rhode Island, her home.

Charles Carroll is an actor and voice-over artist residing in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. He is an avid film buff and stays active in the local film community.

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for over thirty-five years. She currently acquires short fiction for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited more than ninety anthologies, including The Best Horror of the Year series, Fearful Symmetries, The Doll Collection, The Monstrous, and Black Feathers. A multiple award winner for her work, Datlow is a recipient of the Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, and has been honored with Life Achievement Awards by both the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Convention. She lives in New York.

Stephen R. Thorne, winner of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration, is a professional actor and member of the resident acting company at Providence's esteemed Trinity Repertory Company, where he has played Hamlet, Henry V, and Tom Joad.

Shaun Grindell, actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator, was born and raised in Southampton, England. His training includes the Calland School of Speech and Drama and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in London. He has been seen on stage in London and Las Vegas.

Angela Brazil is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator and a professional actor who is proud to be a long-standing member of the Resident Acting Company at Trinity Repertory Company. She also teaches at the Brown/Trinity Conservatory.

Stephen King has written more than fifty books, many hitting the #1 spot on the New York Times bestsellers list. He has won the World Fantasy Award, several Bram Stoker Awards, and the O. Henry Award for his story The Man in the Black Suit. He is the 2003 recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2007 he received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Rebecca Mitchell is a performance artist and classically trained vocalist, as well as a professional host, emcee, and personality. Her natural flair for the dramatic, coupled with her love of being in the studio, brought her to the world of narrating in 2013.

Charlie Thurston is an actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator. He holds an MFA in acting from Brown University / Trinity Rep and has appeared on stages across the country with Trinity Repertory Company, Chautauqua Theater Company, Creede Rep, and at Riverside Theatre and Redmoon Theater, among others. His favorite roles include Edgar in The Completely Fictional-Utterly True-Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen in The Long Christmas Ride Home, Tuzenbach in The Three Sisters, and Tony in You Can't Take It with You.