Out There Screaming

Starred review from September 25, 2023
For this electrifying anthology, horror movie director Peele (Get Out: The Annotated Screenplay) brings together 19 Black authors to “give us their Sunken Places.” The cars have eyes in N.K. Jemisin’s “Reckless Eyeballing,” about a corrupt police officer named Carl who gets his comeuppance for wrongfully pulling people over. “Wandering Devil” by Cadwell Turnbull follows Freddy, a man driven by wanderlust and a fear of commitment, who finally finds a place—and a person—he wants to call his home, only to encounter a terrible apparition that threatens him if he stays still too long. Other authors find horror in history: in Tananarive Due’s “The Rider,” two Freedom Riders on their way to Montgomery, Ala., in 1961, are joined on their bus by a strange being whose presence may spell their doom, while “The Norwood Trouble” by Maurice Broaddus concerns a Reconstruction-era community calling upon higher powers to bring bloody justice to a lynch mob of Night Riders. These tales are all both gruesomely imaginative and firmly rooted in the realities of anti-Black racism and brutality—and there isn’t a weak one in the bunch. This is essential reading for any horror fan.

October 1, 2023
Horror lovers everywhere can get into the Halloween spirit with a new, spooky anthology featuring an introduction by a master of horror, Jordan Peele. Presenting big names like N. K. Jemisin, Rebecca Roanhorse, Tananarive Due, P. Dj�l� Clark, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Nnedi Okorafor, every curated story packs enough creepiness to make readers turn on the lights at night and check behind their bathroom curtains. Out There Screaming includes everything from corrupt cops to vengeance-seeking ghosts, aliens impregnating unsuspecting women, morally depraved prisons, nightmarish sea creatures and monsters, and stranded freedom riders in Alabama. Although most of the terrors within are supernatural and otherworldly, they're still, at their core, scary enough to give audiences some food for thought. There's a hint of reality peppered into every nightmare, including racism, oppression, slavery, grief, and domestic abuse. Fans of the macabre will thoroughly enjoy this varied collection by well-known Black authors and promising new voices handpicked and edited by Peele, famous worldwide for his unsettling and innovative movies, Nope, Get Out, and Us.

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