Scars, Rats and Cannibals: The Best Collections of Horror and Weird Fantasy

I love short stories. Short stories can get away with so much more than novels. Rationale or plots which would seem highly improbably or full of holes can work in a short story. They're the hit-and-runs of the literary world, the Ramones of reading.

And what I like best in short stories is horror. I don't have time to see the bullet coming.

Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks, Richard Christian Matheson

Short story collections don't come much better than Scars. Note that the author is Richard Christian Matheson, son of a champion short story writer himself, Richard Matheson. All of the stories in Scars are brilliant, intriguing and disturbing, the most so may be "Red", which takes a moment too horrible to contemplate and manages to do so. If you want to own Scars, be prepared to sacrifice; the book is out of print and even paperback copies are prized by collectors.

Night Shift, Stephen King

King has released many short story collections, but for my money, his best is his first. Night Shift contains a number of story premises which shouldn't work - a possessed industrial laundry folding machine, a man turned into a blob by a bad can of beer, trucks which suddenly become sentient and the boogeyman managing to so perfectly second-guess a potential victim's actions that he beats him to his own psychiatrist's office. But King makes them work. One of the most talked about is sad, non-supernatural tale about wasted lives and lost family called "The Last Rung On the Ladder", but the one which still chills me so much I am loath to read it at night is "Strawberry Spring", a serial killer story written with uncommon poetic compassion and regret.

Stalking the Nightmare, Harlan Ellison

No list of great short story collections can be without something by Master Ellison, who's produced so many outstanding volumes that it's hard to pick the best. But I think Stalking the Nightmare is my all-time favorite, both for its incredible plots and language and its black humor. Every one in the collection is a gem, but the best may be "Grail", an unusual account of the search for true love. I don't know how many times I have flashed on "Grail" in my life, and I can always see it in a slightly different light. How many TV shows can you say that about?