Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2015 Edition | 2015 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 2 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2010 Edition | 2010 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 3 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2011 Edition | 2011 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 4 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2012 Edition | 2012 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 5 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2016 Edition | 2016 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 6 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2017 Edition | 2017 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 7 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition | 2014 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 8 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2018 Edition | 2018 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 9 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2013 Edition | 2013 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 10 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2019 Edition | 2020 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 11 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 1 | 2020 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 12 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 2 | 2021 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 13 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Volume 3 | 2022 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 14 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 4 | 2023 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 15 | The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 5 | 2024 | Peter Straub | Buy |
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror has been one of the more consistent annual horror anthologies since its launch in 2010. Editor Paula Guran casts a wide net, including not just traditional horror but also dark fantasy, weird fiction, and supernatural stories that resist easy categorization. The series is useful both as a reading guide, pointing readers toward voices they may not have encountered, and as a yearly record of where short horror fiction has been heading.
Peter Straub appears in the series as a contributor, with his shorter fiction considered among the notable dark fiction of the years in which it appeared. The series also reflects the broader ecosystem of horror short fiction in which Straub was an active participant as both a writer and an anthologist, working in parallel with the annual Best Horror of the Year series edited by Ellen Datlow.
The series moved from a year-labeled format (2010 Edition, 2011 Edition) to a volume-numbered format after the 2019 edition, with Volume 1 arriving in 2020. Readers who want a broad cross-section of short horror fiction from any given year will find each installment a reliable place to start, covering more ground than any single-author collection could.