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The annual Best New Horror anthology compiled by Stephen Jones has now reached volume twenty-one. First of all, ,the book continues to be the source of exhaustive and invaluable information about what has happened in the field of horror (books, magazines, movie etc.) during the previous year. On the other hand each volume ends with a massive Necrology section which, frankly, is of limited interest and is becoming exceedingly hefty (in the present volume 77 pages!) by mentioning the passing of any artist, writer, performer, composer, film director or technician even slightly or occasionally involved with horror.

Of course the core of each volume is represented by a number of horror stories considered by Jones the best of the year. The current anthology includes nineteen tales, a few of which overlap with the ones selected by the two other editors of Year's Best horror anthologies, Ellen Datlow and Paula Guran.

Compared with his two distinguished colleagues Jones appears to favor -- not surprisingly -- authors from the UK (58 percent) and to give less room to female authors (only 11 percent), but is more prone to select stories from single author collections (32 percent) ( Statistical figures courtesy of Peter Tennant).

So much for quantitative evaluations. As for the quality of the included material, this is generally quite good and occasionally excellent. In a fair amount of cases I do share Jones's choices from books I've read and reviewed while, predictably, in other instances, I don't feel that a particular story deserved to be pinpointed as the best from a certain collection. That's the rule of the game.

Among the various tales I'd like to mention, there is a very dark and enticing posthumous collaboration of Reggie Oliver with M.R. James ("The Game of Bear"), as well as a collaborative piece by Stephen King and son Joe Jill, the adrenaline-charged, breath-taking "Throttle."

Michael Kelly's chilling and atmospheric "The Woods" and the terrifying "Cold to the Touch" by Simon Strantzas provide cold shivers in every sense.

John Gasking's "Party Talk" and Nicholas Royle's "The Reunion" confirm the two authors extraordinary talent as a storytellers.

Veterans Ramsey Campbell ("Respects") and Brian Lumley ("The Nonesuch") contribute stories where the reality of everyday's life conceals more than what meets the eye while newcomers Rosalie Parker ("The Garden") and Simon Kurt Unsworth ("Mami Wata") manage to disquiet in a subtle, unassuming way.

In Barbara Roden's amazing "Out and Back" the ordinary report of a visit to an abandoned amusement park comes to a truly horrific ending while Stephen Volk's insightful "After the Ape" depicts the fate of the blonde girl actress after King Kong's death.

The variety and the quality of the included fiction certainly makes the book well worth reading.

Mario Guslandi lives in Milan, Italy, and is a long-time fan of dark fiction. His book reviews have appeared on a number of genre websites such as The Alien Online, Infinity Plus, Necropsy, The Agony Column and Horrorwold.