The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror--Ninth Annual Collection
A collection forty-six horror and fantasy fiction stories from the year 1995 from a wide selection of well-known genre authors

Acknowledgement --
Summation 1995: fantasy / Terry Windling --
Summation 1995: horror / Ellen Datlow --
Horror and fantasy in the media: 1995 / Edward Bryant --
Obituaries / James Frankel --
Home for Christmas / Nina Kiriki Hoffman --
Heartfires / Charles de Lint --
Screens / Terry Lamsley --
King of crows / Midori Snyder --
Professor Gottesman and the Indian rhinoceros / Peter S. Beagle --
The hunt of the unicorn / Ellen Kushner --
More tomorrow / Michael Marshall Smith --
Penguins for lunch / Scott Bradfield --
Ether OR / Ursula K. Le Guin --
Paper lantern / Stuart Dybek --
[Lunch at the Gotham café](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19781075W) / Stephen King --
Queen of knives (poem) / Neil Gaiman --
Dragon-rain / Eileen Kernaghan --
Llantos de la Llorona: warnings from the wailer (poem) / Pat Mora --
Too short a death / Peter Crowther --
The James Dean garage band / Rick Moody --
Because of dust / Christopher Kenworthy --
Loop / Douglas E. Winter --
La loma, la luna / Sue Kepros Hartman --
Women's stories (poem) / Jane Yolen --
Swan/princess (poem) / Jane Yolen --
Switch / Lucy Taylor --
Scaring the train / Terry Dowling --
Blood knot / Steve Rasnic Tem --
The girl who married the reindeer (poem) / Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin --
The otter woman (poem) / Mary O'Malley --
Resolve and resistance / S.N. Dyer --
La dame / Tanith Lee --
Circe's power (poem) / Louise Glück --
Dragon's fin soup / S.P. Somtow --
The granddaughter / Vivian Vande Velde --
Daphne and Laura and so forth (poem) / Margaret Atwood --
A lamia in the Cévennes / A.S. Byatt --
The guilty party / Susan Moody --
She's not there / Pat Cadigan --
The white road (poem) / Neil Gaiman --
Refrigerator heaven / David J. Schow --
After the elephant ballet / Gary A. Braunbeck --
Henry V, part 2 / Marcia Guthridge --
Mrs. Greasy / Robert Reed --
############## / Joyce Carol Oates --
The printer's daughter / Delia Sherman --
Prayer (poem) / Nancy Willard --
Jacob and the angel (poem) / Jane Yolen --
The lion and the lark / Patricia A. McKillip --
Honorable mentions.
horror, depression, nicotine, chef's knives, frying pans
Ellen Datlow, Terry Windling, Edward Bryant, James Frankel, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lamsley, Terry, Midori Snyder, Peter S. Beagle, Ellen Kushner, Michael Marshall Smith, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stuart Dybek, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Eileen Kernaghan, Pat Mora, Peter Crowther, Rick Moody, Christopher Kenworthy, Douglas E. Winter, Sue Kepros Hartman, Jane Yolen, Lucy Taylor, Steve Rasnic Tem, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Mary O'Malley, Sharon N. Farber, Tanith Lee, Louise Glück, S. P. Somtow, Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt, Susan Moody, Pat Cadigan, David J. Schow, Gary A. Braunbeck, Marcia Guthridge, Robert Reed, Delia Sherman, Nancy Willard, Patricia A. McKillip
Nina Kiriki Hoffman (born March 20, 1955 in San Gabriel, California) is an American fantasy, science fiction and horror writer.

**Source**: [Nina Kiriki Hoffman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Kiriki_Hoffman) on Wikipedia. || American writer || Ellen Kushner (born October 6, 1955) is an American writer of fantasy novels. From 1996 until 2010, she was the host of the radio program Sound & Spirit, produced by WGBH in Boston and distributed by Public Radio International. [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Kushner) || "As of 2010, Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-one novels, eleven volumes of short stories, three collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include a volume of poetry, Incredible Good Fortune, the novel Lavinia, and an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl. She lives in Portland, Oregon." - [source][1]


  [1]: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Biography-70Word.html || Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published 63 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature. He has been described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high standing in pop culture. || Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. || Pete worked for a time in computers, had a dalliance in music/arts journalism and ended his corporate working life (1995) as head of internal communication's for Leeds Permanent Building Society... just before it was gobbled up by the Halifax (though the two things were not linked). 

From 1995 he worked as a communications consultant with a specialist communications and design company in Leeds before becoming a full-time writer/editor/publisher in 2000. 

Born on the fourth of July, Pete developed an early love of all things American. That love affair has stayed with him through five full decades (plus a considerable slice of a sixth!) and it tends to feature heavily in his writing, particularly the short stories.

He's the author of the Forever Twilight series, co-author (with James Lovegrove) of Escardy Gap, and author of the 'Luddersedge', 'Land at the End of the Working Day' and 'Koko Tate' short story series. Several of his 100-plus stories have been optioned or adapted for both big and small screen. 

Pete shares his life with Nicky and an unfeasibly large collection of books, comics, magazines, records and CDs. || "Jane Hyatt Yolen (born February 11, 1939) is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction, and children's books. She is the author or editor of more than 280 books. Her  short story Sister Emily's Lightship won the Nebula Award." - Wikipedia || science fiction author || Tanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of over 90 novels and 300 short stories, a children's picture book (Animal Castle), and many poems. She also wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7. She was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel award (also known as the August Derleth Award), for her book Death's Master (1980).
Source: Wikipedia || Louise Elisabeth Glück (/ɡlɪk/ GLIK; born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". Her other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States. [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Gl%C3%BCck) || Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC is a Canadian writer. A prolific poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist and activist, she has received national and international recognition for her writing.

ATWOOD, whose work has been published in over forty countries, is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid's Tale, now a successful MGM-Hulu television series currently preparing its fourth season, her novels include Cat's Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize; The Penelopiad; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-seed; and The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, published in September, 2019. She lives in Toronto some of the time. || Dame Antonia Susan Duffy (née Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt, is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner, and won the 2017 Park Kyong-ni Prize. In 2008, *The Times* named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

**Source**: [A. S. Byatt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._S._Byatt) on Wikipedia. || Susan Moody is the principal pen name of Susan Elizabeth Horwood, an English novelist best known for her suspense novels.

In 1983, Moody published her first novel, A Distant Shore, and one other historical novel under the pen name Susannah James before she turned to the genre of crime and suspense literature. More recently, she has also used the pen name Susan Madison. || Patricia Oren Kearney Cadigan || Robert David Reed || Patricia Anne McKillip is an American author of fantasy and science fiction novels. She grew up in Oregon and England.  She received a BA in English in 1971 and an MA in 1973.  She is a past winner of the World Fantasy Award and Locus Award, and she lives in Oregon. 

McKillip's stories usually take place in a setting similar to the Middle Ages. There are forests, castles, and lords or kings, minstrels, tinkers and wizards. Her writing usually puts her characters in situations involving mysterious powers that they don't understand.