In 2020, I read 30 novels, 32 novellas, and 219 short stories.
Instead of limiting my favourites to lists of ten or fifteen titles, I’ve included everything I liked. (As usual, not all of these were published in 2020.)
Favourite Novels
Worse Angels — Laird Barron
Even the Wicked — Lawrence Block
The Long Tomorrow — Leigh Brackett
Save Yourself — Kelly Braffet
Bone Dance — Emma Bull
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet — Becky Chambers
Ex-Heroes — Peter Clines
House of Leaves — Mark Z. Danielewski
Don’t Get Caught — Kurt Dinan
Sharp Objects — Gillian Flynn
We Sold Our Souls — Grady Hendrix
Angel’s Inferno — William Hjortsberg
The Absence of Sparrows — Kurt Kirchmeier
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane — Laird Koenig
I Wish I Was Like You — S.P. Miskowski
Knock Knock — S.P. Miskowski
Wilderness — Robert B. Parker
The Atrocity Archives — Charles Stross
Favourite Novellas and Novelettes
Trapper’s Valley — Ray Cluley
Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow — Ray Cluley
The Thyme Fiend — Jeffrey Ford
The Guardian — Philip Fracassi
The Floor of the Basement is the Roof of Hell — Stephen Graham Jones
The Life of Chuck — Stephen King
At Home in the House of the Devil — John Langan
Lost in the Dark — John Langan
Sefira — John Langan
Looking for Laika — Laura Mauro
The Pain-Eater’s Daughter — Laura Mauro
Astoria — S.P. Miskowski
Delphine Dodd — S.P. Miskowski
In the Light — S.P. Miskowski
Stag in Flight — S.P. Miskowski
Black Flowers Blossom — Vina Jie-Min Prasad
A Series of Steaks — Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Contact Sports — Eden Robinson
Notes from the Dog Walkers — Paul Tremblay
Sicko — Stephen Volk
Everything Is Beautiful and Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen Here — Michael Wehunt
Favourite Collections and Anthologies
Enough Rope — Lawrence Block
Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4 — edited by Ellen Datlow
Sefira & Other Betrayals — John Langan
Let the Old Dreams Die — John Ajvide Lindqvist
Sing Your Sadness Deep — Laura Mauro
Strange is the Night — S.P. Miskowski
The Secret of Ventriloquism — Jon Padgett
The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists — Norman Partridge
Traplines — Eden Robinson
Growing Things and Other Stories — Paul Tremblay
Favourite Short Stories
“The Hearts of All” — Gregory Norman Bossert
“We’ll Always Have Paris” — M.R. Carey
“The Castellmarch Man” — Ray Cluley
“In the Wake of My Father” — Ray Cluley
“Sideways” — Ray Cluley
“Steel Bodies” — Ray Cluley
“Turtledove” — Ray Cluley
“The Whalers Song” — Ray Cluley
“Elo Havel” — Brian Evenson
“The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell” — Brian Evenson
“Workday” — Kurt Fawver
“each thing I show you is a piece of my death” — Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer
“The Blameless” — Jeffrey Ford
“Blood Drive” — Jeffrey Ford
“Witch Hazel” — Jeffrey Ford
“Cleaver, Meat, and Block” — Maria Haskins
“The Nimble Men” — Glen Hirshberg
“You Become the Neighborhood” — Glen Hirshberg
“Roots and All” — Brian Hodge
“A Redress for Andromeda” — Caitlin R. Kiernan
“The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)” — Gwendolyn Kiste
“The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio” — Marc Laidlaw
“Bloom” — John Langan
“Yellow and Red” — Tanith Lee
“The Cloud Cartographer” — V.H. Leslie
“Lacunae” — V.H. Leslie
“Eternal/Love” — John Ajvide Lindqvist
“Let the Old Dreams Die” — John Ajvide Lindqvist
“One of These Nights” — Livia Llewellyn
“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” — Usman T. Malik
“Letters from Elodie” — Laura Mauro
“In the City of Bones” — Laura Mauro
“In the Marrow” — Laura Mauro
“When Charles Sleeps” — Laura Mauro
“With Graveyard Seeds and Wolfsbane Seeds” — Seanan McGuire
“A.G.A.” — S.P. Miskowski
“Death and Disbursement” — S.P. Miskowski
“This Many” — S.P. Miskowski
“The Infusorium” — Jon Padgett
“Murmurs of a Voice Foreknown” — Jon Padgett
“In the Porches of My Ears” — Norman Prentiss
“Diamond Saw” — Sarah Read
“Krazy Krax” — Naben Ruthnum
“The Show” — Priya Sharma
“Last Rites and Resurrections” — Martin Simpson
“No Good Deed” — Angela Slatter
“The Somnambulists” — Simon Strantzas
“Forwarded” — Steve Rasnic Tem
“The Ice Tower” — Paul Tremblay
“The Thirteenth Temple” — Paul Tremblay
“Replacements” — Lisa Tuttle
“We Didn’t Always Live in the Woods” — Jack Westlake
“And the Carnival Leaves Town” — A.C. Wise
“Final Girl Theory” — A.C. Wise
