Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Volume 4

By: Brian Hodge, Tim Waggoner, Annie Neugebauer, Ed Kurtz, doungjai gam, Alessandro Manzetti, Rebecca Rowland, Chad Lutzke, Randy Chandler, Cheryl Mullenax

Narrated by: D. Paul Faulkner

Red Room Press is extremely proud to present its fourth annual anthology featuring this year's hardcore corps of authors with the best extreme horror fiction of 2018 that breaks boundaries and trashes taboos.

First up is Vigil by Chad Lutzke. Chad takes us into a neighborhood where a steady stream of decayed corpses are exhumed from a neighbor’s cellar. Extreme olfactory horror at its best.

Deborah Sheldon went under the knife for the inspiration of Hair and Teeth, and the result is a tale of gynecological body horror likely to terrify women and make most men squeamish.

With Rut Season Brain Hodge makes a return to Year’s-best stories in a tale as chilling as it is heart-wrenching, inspired by a thousand-mile drive littered with roadkill and some personal tragedies.

Control by Jeff Parsons introduces us to a meth addict stalking potential victims in Central Park to get money for the next score.

Annie Neugebauer is back with Cilantro, a Neugebauerian yarn of culinary chaos sure to turn stomachs and cause nightmares.

Tim Waggoner likewise returns this year with Voices Like Barbwire, an exploratory dig into old wounds and painful memories.

Rebecca Rowland’s Bent wins the Most Cringe-worthy Story honor with her twisted tale of extreme body horror. Her well-drawn characters seem to come off the page but God forbid they do. Their idea of a pretzel party is truly twisted.

Scath Beorh takes Lovecraftian cosmic horror to its next level with Lord of the Mesa.

Sean Patrick Hazlett’s story The Godhead Grimoire possesses dangerous religious overtones and a forbidden bloodthirsty book.

Carnal Bodies by R.E. Hellinger is a shocking story of baroque horror and demonic necrophilia from Two Dead Queers Present: Guillozine. You’ll have to read this one to believe it.

In Crossroads of Opportunity Ed Kurtz and doungjai gam take you on a-deal-with-the-devil-at-the-crossroads trip with a son driving his dead mother to an uncertain destination. Trouble is, his mother is a bit of a backseat driver and she just won’t shut up.

Seras Nikita’s Dad’s Famous Preserves won’t do much for your appetite but it will show you a recipe for disaster when a jungle missionary’s foot infection blossoms into a stomach-churning nightmare.

The Bearded Woman, brought all the way from Rome, Italy, by the inimitable Alessandro Manzetti. His dystopian future tale takes us for a ride in the Bearded Woman’s circus trailer as she and her dwarf husband bring their marriage to a bloody end.

Sara Tantlinger’s The Devil’s Dreamland takes us inside the Murder Castle of the infamous H.H. Holmes with her brilliant narrative poem of macabre beauty.

Frank Oreto’s All God’s Creatures Got Reasons reveals that there are real monsters walking among us, monsters with a savage appetite for young flesh, but they are so skilled at covering their tracks, we never even know they’re there.

The Ugly by J.R. Park introduces us to a couple of sweet little kids who may have a good reason for torturing and eating cats. It’s a way to keep the ugly at bay. Or is it?

Doug Ford’s I Have a Confession takes a coldblooded plunge into sex with a ghost. But what if it’s not a ghost?

In When the Owls Call Lyman Graves takes us “stealth camping” in a Texas park after hours, where a strange and dangerous gathering is taking place. David Lynch might say, “The owls are not what they seem”. But are they?

Jeremy Thompson is back this year with his nefarious pal the Hallowfiend in Bloodletting and Intrigue on All Hallows’ Eve’. With a stylistic nod to Ray Bradbury, Jeremy delivers on our promise that something twisted this way comes.

Capping it all off, Alicia Hilton serves up Monkey See, Monkey Do as a tasty little nightcap (for those with hardcore tastes).

Salud!

Sleep well. If you can.

- Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax

©2019 Red Room Press (P)2019 Red Room Press

mixed bag

mostly good but some real losers as well...I feel like the ones with extensive backstories about writing workshops and blah blah are the worst. the winners have very few notes and don't need it! Overall still getting more in this collection!

A tough listen

I was given this audiobook for my honest review. I have left this voluntarily.

This book is a good collection of interesting short stories with horrifying ideas for the basis. I generally really like listening to these audiobooks, I like how many authors come up with really creative ideas for their stories.

However, I really couldn't finish this audiobook. The narration lacked a lot of inflection and it felt that it was rushed. The narrator needs to pick up on the different narrating styles and differences between the varying point of views. This is a horror book, there is a trick to timing, narrating pacing and letting listeners digest what's going on for more dramatic or moments that we need to "click" when we get it.

My recommendation going forward for D Paul Faulkner is to listen to other similar audiobooks in the genre. Really listen to what works and what doesn't.

Its key to have inflection, pacing and varying narration for different characters and scenes. I really want the Narrator to improve and get better!

Slow down and don't rush through the stories, believe me I know the headspace for these really long book jobs.

Regretfully, I cannot recommend this audiobook. I would recommend reading the kindle version instead.

Narrator ruined it for me

I'm not trying to come down on the guy too hard here. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but the narrator almost ruined this for me. Mis-pronounced words and editing errors are just the beginning. Some of the stories were essentially ruined due to the erratic pace of the narrators voice and sometimes bizarre inflection both robotic and at times theatrical and cheesy.

He also can't say the word "Frustrated" correctly. He says "Fustrated" and it drove me nuts.

As far as the stories go, I think this volume is a little less "extreme" than the previous, but I found a lot to love here. The quality of the writing and the presentation clash pretty wildly on this one, still looking forward to Volume 5 however.

Fell flat for me, your opinion may vary

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

The biggest problem with the Year's Best Hardcore Horror series in my opinion is that it shouldn't be a series - it should be split into two different yearly anthologies so readers have a clearer idea what they're getting. The three volumes I've consumed never really seem to come to a clear consensus on what 'hardcore' means and this one is probably the stongest example : The stories contained within exhibit the usual wild variety but many of them tend to trend towards the cheesecakey sort of horror that's predominant on the free horror podcast circuit and several days later I can't recall any of them. Again, your opinion may vary. If your horror tastes trend towards character development and slow implied horror that never really shows the entirety of its hand and leaves you pondering the implications of the situation, you'll probably want to give this one a pass.

On the bright side the few that don't fit into the aforementioned category are pretty good. All God’s Creatures Got Reasons is the standout piece. The narration is also well-done and has none of the strange editing or level-shifting issues that can ruin books before they begin.

Not hardcore at all

I am sorry to say that none of these stories were that scary. I read a lot of horror and thought I try listening to some for a change.
I understand that these were short stories but many of the stories ended rather abruptly as if they were trying not to go over a word limit. They contain some build up but fell flat. Decent campfire stories but not scary enough to be true horror. The narrator did an okay job but most of the time it felt like he was telling a story to the person standing next to him without trying to get too excited.

Pass on the audio and go straight to print

Not the best of the series so far. The narration for the audio wasn't for me and detracted from my enjoyment so much so that I had to switch to the ebook to finish it up. Unfortunately, it didn't get much better after that. Not that all of the stories were bad (because they weren't) but as a collection they seemed uneven and disjointed. Even my favorite stories seemed a wee tame for a collection of hardcore horror.

If this is the year's best, it was a bad year.

A couple of the stories were not too bad, but in general this collection was luke warm. I really found the narrator difficult to listen to. I will not buy another audio book narrated by D. Paul Falkner. Several stories I quit listening to and jumped to the next. Overall, I would not recommend this book.

Definitely not hardcore horror

None of the stories in this collection, in my opinion, would be considered horror, let alone hard core horror. There are a few odd stories but not anything that will keep you up at night or even bother you for a moment after you are finished listening to them. None of the stories in this collection caused me any unease or anxiety. If you are a sincerely a horror lover looking for an amazing horror collection, I would advise you to not purchase this book because you will be let down. The stories were what I consider very juvenile and simplistic horror. In addition to the stories not being what I expected, in my opinion, a better narrator could have been selected. After a while of listening the narrators voice became a droning to me and it made it difficult to continue listening. A narrator who can inflect the tone of fear or unease at crucial points in a story are key to setting a scene for me and the narrator in this book, to me, seems to never change his tone, regardless of the situation. True horror lovers looking for a scare or even a great collection of chilling stories, this is not the book for you.

Not horror

This book is not what I would consider hardcore horror by any stretch of the imagination. I received this book at my request and sorry I did. I am leaving my honest review here voluntarily.

Great collection

I’ve become a fan of many talented authors through this series
This felt less gory and more story driven then the previous three books witch should attract a larger horror crowd
The narrator was good but the odd background noise could be distracting
If your looking to get into more hardcore horror I highly recommend this series as a whole
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review