Best Books 2011 | Publishers Weekly - SF/Fantasy/Horror : Publishers Weekly

After the Apocalypse

Maureen McHugh (Small Beer)

Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising, McHugh's second collection confronts near-future life with an ironic and particular eye. Her characters live with zombies, struggle to make ends meet on the Arizona–Mexico border, and cope with China's descent into capitalism in stories that stretch the boundaries of imagination.

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Zoo City

Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)

Beukes's smashing second novel is set in a near future where perpetrators of terrible crimes acquire strange powers and magical animal companions. The seamless inversion of one of fantasy's best-loved tropes is perfectly suited to the gritty Johannesburg setting and haunted, compelling heroine.

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Triptych

J.M. Frey (Dragon Moon)

Debut author Frey knocks it out of the park with a remarkable tale of alien refugees, time travel, intrigue, the pervasive madness of grief, and love that transcends culture, gender, and species. Classic science fiction elements are smoothly updated for a modern audience.

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Unpossible

Daryl Gregory (Fairwood)

The knockout debut collection for fabulist Gregory, whose novels are often unjustly overlooked, proves that short stories make equally good homes for his quiet prose and twisted imagination, as well as the strange notions and subtle terrors he mines from the deepest crannies of the human psyche.

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Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan, Vol. 1

Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean)

This hefty, astonishing collection showcases the best of Kiernan's consistently excellent and relentlessly unclassifiable short fiction, and makes many accessible to those unfortunate readers who haven't been following Kiernan's career from the beginning.

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Erekos

A.M. Tuomala (Candlemark & Gleam)

When a witch turns her beloved dead sister into a zombi[sic], the local king insists that she raise him an army of the undead. This deeply moral story of love and war boasts ominous, deliberate pacing and richly poetic prose.

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