An injured, young dog trudges the city streets, trembling from cold, from fear, from lack of food. Battered by the howling wind, he searches desperately for his lost family, yet day after day, week after week, all he ever finds is heartbreaking loneliness. But then, one magical spring morning....

No good deed goes unpunished. Detroit is a hole where even a werewolf's sins can be buried. Or so Jake Brennan hopes. Hiding from his hunters, shooting heroin to negate the effect of the full moon, he is beginning to turn things around. And the day he is witness to a brutal attack on ER doctor Gwen Cheevey, Jake is forced to transform into something new: a hero. But when a clip of his good deed goes viral, Jake's days of hiding are over. To keep Gwen safe, Jake will need to embrace the beast within.

Thirteen-year-old Abby Hubble lives in an unhappy home in the Sierra Nevada foothills where her father makes life miserable for her and her mother, Mary. One day Abby witnesses a man dump a litter of puppies into the nearby river. Diving in to rescue all seven, she knows she won’t be able to bring them home. Afraid for their fate at the pound, she takes them to an abandoned cabin, where all she can offer is a promise that she’ll be back the next day.

A single mom learns that her chronically ill son can communicate with a very special dog - and the lessons this dog teaches can shape the future and transform their lives. And what Whistler inspires in Kate and Jasper may be his most important lesson of all.

Single mom Skye Mitchell has sunk her last dime into a dream, owning the venerable, if run-down, LakeView Hotel in the Berkshire Hills. It's here where she believes she'll give her 14-year-old daughter, Cody, a better life. But being an innkeeper is more challenging than she imagined, and Cody still manages to fall in with the wrong crowd. In addition, Cody is keeping an earth-shattering secret that she's terrified to reveal.

Thousands of cats and dogs have come through Barby Keel's English countryside animal sanctuary and, with the aid of Barby and her dedicated staff, found loving forever homes. But Gabby, a small terrier with solemn, terrified eyes, is like no case Barby has ever encountered before. Gabby has spent all eight years of her life indoors. She has no idea how to play with a toy or chew a treat. She has never dug in the dirt or rolled happily in the grass. Strangest of all, Gabby does not know how to bark.

Never knowing his parents, eleven-year-old Stewie Little and his brother have been raised on a farm by their older sister. Stewie steadfastly tends the chickens left by his beloved late grandmother. And every day Stewie goes door to door selling fresh eggs from his wagon—a routine with a surprise just around the corner. It’s his new customer, Marilyn. She’s prickly and guarded, yet comfortably familiar—she reminds the grieving Stewie so much of the grandmother he misses more than he can express.

Fourteen-year-old Angie and her mom are poised at the edge of homelessness...again. The problem is her little sister, Sophie. Sophie has an autism-like disorder and a tendency to shriek. No matter where they live, home never seems to last long. Until they move in with Aunt Vi, across the fence from a huge, black Great Dane who changes everything.

Ruby Heartwood has always lived a life on the move. As a traveling psychic, she makes her living working at carnivals and festivals and circuses around New England. It's a life Ruby has made peace with - settling in one place has never been for her. She needs no one, and no one needs her. Until one night, when she is camped by the side of the road in her trusty Volkswagon "Westie" van, a fierce thunder and lightning storm erupts.

Mike Wingate, abandoned by his father at four and raised in foster care, is finally living the life he always dreamed of - he's happily married with a precocious 8-year-old daughter, and his construction company is about to finish a "green" housing development that will secure a solid future for them all. But then something from his own past, a past he doesn't even remember, comes back to visit terror upon him and his family.

Left for dead in the fields of rural Oregon, a young woman defies all odds and survives - but she awakens with no idea who she is, or what happened to her. Refusing to answer to "Jane Doe" for another day, the woman renames herself "Water" for the tiny, hidden marking on her body - the only clue to her past. Taken in by old Ginny Fitzgerald, a crotchety but kind lady living on a nearby horse farm, Water slowly begins building a new life. But as she attempts to piece together the fleeting slivers of her memory, more questions emerge....

In The Lost, we'll discover just what it means to lose one's way... It was only meant to be a brief detour. But then Lauren finds herself trapped in a town called Lost on the edge of a desert, filled with things abandoned, broken and thrown away. And when she tries to escape, impassible dust storms and something unexplainable lead her back to Lost again and again. The residents she meets there tell her she's going to have to figure out just what she's missing - and what she's running from - before she can leave.

James Stevens was, at one time, a good man with a great life. After the tragic death of his wife and losing custody of his little girl, James is at the darkest crossroad of his life. Angry, desperate, and unable to hold down a steady job, he agrees to drive a box truck on a shady, one-time trip cross country for cash - no questions asked. When he discovers what he is delivering is actually a who, the questions in his mind begin haunting him mercilessly.

A series of unexplainable tragedies surround a family and their young daughter as they seek to determine whether they are possessed, paranoid, or collectively going insane. Meanwhile, forgotten clues from the father's past may indicate forces are at work in ways more ominous than any of them could have imagined.

Elizabeth was a young widow with two small children when she met Congressman Richard Baker. Handsome and wealthy, with a sparkling public image, Richard seemed like the perfect man to provide the security that Beth and her kids were craving. But when she uncovers a dangerous secret about her new husband, Beth realizes he will go to any lengths - even murder - to keep it. After barely escaping with her life, she and her children flee.

No good deed goes unpunished. Detroit is a hole where even a werewolf's sins can be buried. Or so Jake Brennan hopes. Hiding from his hunters, shooting heroin to negate the effect of the full moon, he is beginning to turn things around. And the day he is witness to a brutal attack on ER doctor Gwen Cheevey, Jake is forced to transform into something new: a hero. But when a clip of his good deed goes viral, Jake's days of hiding are over. To keep Gwen safe, Jake will need to embrace the beast within.

Sixteen-year-old Cheyenne Wilder is sleeping in the back of a car while her mom fills Cheyenne’s prescription for antibiotics. Before Cheyenne realizes what’s happening, their car is being stolen. Griffin hadn’t meant to kidnap Cheyenne, but once his dad finds out that Cheyenne’s father is the president of a powerful corporation, everything changes - now there’s a reason to keep her. How will Cheyenne survive this nightmare? Because she’s not only sick with pneumonia - she’s blind.

Clare Fergusson, St. Alban's new priest, fits like a square peg in the conservative Episcopal parish at Miller's Kill, New York. She is not just a "lady"; she's a tough ex-Army chopper pilot, and nobody's fool. Then a newborn infant left at the church door brings her together with the town's police chief, Russ Van Alstyne, who's also ex-Army and a cynical good shepherd for the stray sheep of his hometown.

Moving from Boston to remote Bearkill, Maine, isn't homicide cop Lizzie Snow's idea of a step up. But breaking away from tragedy and personal betrayal is at least a step in the right direction. Her dead sister's fate still torments her, as does her long-missing niece's disappearance. The town is full of people who see everything, say little, and know more than they'll share with an outsider.

Paige Williams slips into her hot tub in the blackness of night - and finds herself face to face with death. Alone, terrified, fleeing a dark past, Paige must make an unthinkable choice. In Violet Dawn, hurtling events and richly drawn characters collide in a breathless story of murder, the need to belong, and faith's first glimmer. One woman's secrets unleash an entire town's pursuit, and the truth proves as elusive as the killer in their midst.

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend, Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine - despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Benjamin Benjamin has lost virtually everything - his wife, his family, his home, his livelihood. With few options, Ben enrolls in a night class called The Fundamentals of Caregiving taught in the basement of a local church. There Ben is instructed in the art of inserting catheters and avoiding liability and how to keep physical and emotional distance between client and provider. But when Ben is assigned to 19-year-old Trev, he discovers that the endless mnemonics and service plan checklists have done little to prepare him.

One woman's story as she blogs about - and fights back against - the zombie apocalypse.

Allison Hewitt and her five colleagues at the Brooks and Peabody Bookstore are trapped together when the zombie outbreak hits. Allison reaches out for help through her blog, writing on her laptop. It may also be her only chance to reach her mother. But as the reality of their situation sinks in, Allison's blog becomes a harrowing account of her edge-of-the-seat adventures.

Evie and her uncle Jim have just moved to an isolated cabin in a remote beach town - a far cry from their hometown of Melbourne. But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle. Jim tells Evie she did something terrible back home, that he's hiding her to protect her. But Evie can't remember anything about that night - for all she knows, he's lying. As fragments of her memory return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her savior...or her captor.

Someone is knocking at the door to Grace Adams' house, and he won't stop. Grace thinks she knows who it is, but when she goes to her second floor window for a look she sees a woman she doesn't recognize. The woman isn't alone for long before a man emerges from the dark of the surrounding woods, stabs her, and leaves her for dead. Trying to help, Grace goes to the woman and is shocked to find that it's her mother Leanne - a woman who abandoned her 11 years before.

Crack CIA analyst Trista Gold is a whiz with the computer, but not so much with people. She hides behind her job, analyzing top-secret code and making recommendations on national security. CIA K-9 officer Sgt. Matt Connors suspects that beneath Trista's uptight appearance, there's a sexy woman itching to cut loose. But he doesn't dare act on his attraction. He's a loner and always will be. Keeping away from Trista is a must-do directive. Until he doesn't have a choice. During a routine assignment, Trista stumbles across a cryptic exchange. Then someone tries to murder her - twice.

Humanitarian aid worker Gia Andrews chases disasters around the globe for a living. It's the perfect lifestyle to keep her far away from her own personal ground zero. Sixteen years ago, Gia's father was imprisoned for brutally killing her stepmother. Now he's come home to die of cancer, and she's responsible for his care - and coming to terms with his guilt.

Among the Irish Travellers living in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, no one forgets and no one forgives. And as former Marine MP Brynn Callahan finds out when she returns home, it's hard to bury the past when bodies keep turning up....

Claire Hansen was a Keeper, a member of that select group that kept the universe in one piece. And now she'd been Summoned to the Elysian Fields Guesthouse, a rundown bed-and-breakfast that seemed to attract the most unusual clientele. And Claire was not happy about this latest assignment, not happy at all. Not when she'd been tricked into taking over here by a horrible little gnome of a man who'd abandoned his post before she'd even figured out who he really was. Not when room six held a resident who'd been sleeping there for so many years that she really needed a good dusting - except that it was far too dangerous for anyone to get that close to her.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.