Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Imago Sequence and Other Stories | 2007 | Laird Barron | Buy |
| 2 | Occultation and Other Stories | 2010 | Laird Barron | Buy |
| 3 | The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All | 2013 | Laird Barron | Buy |
| 4 | A Little Brown Book of Burials | 2015 | Laird Barron | Buy |
| 5 | Swift to Chase | 2016 | Laird Barron | Buy |
| 6 | Not a Speck of Light | 2024 | Laird Barron | Buy |
Laird Barron’s reputation rests largely on his short story collections. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (2007), Occultation and Other Stories (2010), and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All (2013) form what Barron has called a loose trilogy of cosmic horror. The first collection won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection, and the three books together established him as one of the strongest horror writers of his generation.
Swift to Chase (2016) took a different approach, featuring interconnected stories centered on a recurring character named Jessica Mace who operates as a reluctant secret agent in increasingly strange situations. After an eight-year gap during which Barron focused on his Isaiah Coleridge crime novels, he returned to horror with Not a Speck of Light (2024), which was named one of the best horror books of the year by The New York Times, Esquire, NPR, and Paste. The collection features sixteen stories illustrated by Trevor Henderson. A Little Brown Book of Burials (2015) collects shorter, rarer pieces that fill in gaps between the major collections.