This was everything I expected and wanted plus more. Jordan Peele is a lyrical genius and this was a masterpiece.

This collection of stories was absolutely a joy to read. I have new authors that I will be looking at what else they have written.

Definitely one for the bookshelf!!

#NetGalley #OutThereScreaming

Out There Screaming is probably the best horror anthology that I have read. The authors really knocked this out of the park. Every story was strong, unique, and scary as hell. I made the mistake of reading this before bed the first night and had some pretty wicked nightmares. Very disturbing stuff, I loved it.

3.5⭐️

This anthology has a little something for everyone, and is a great read if you’re looking for new horror authors! My personal favorites include:

Reckless Eyeballing
Invasion of the Baby Snatchers
The Other One
The Rider
Dark Home
The Norwood Trouble

I personally found it difficult to sit down and try to tackle this book in one go, and found it better to read one or two stories a week instead to better space them out. I discovered some new authors to watch out for and genres of horror/sci fi that I might not normally read!

This collection of short horror edited by Jordan Peele has a story for very mystery/horror fan. From magic to technology to just old fashioned human meanness, this collection covers multiple topics, and every contributor’s writing is detailed and immersive even in this short format. Readers who are in the mood to be scared shouldn’t look any further than this collection.

Like most anthologies some stories will hit it out of the park and some will fall a bit flat. For me, many of these stories are around a 3 or a 3.5. But the ones that were 5's bumped this up to a 4 star rating. Nice to see familiar authors in there and also great to be introduced to some talented new ones too!

Out There Screaming has a little bit of every type of horror: sci fi, gothic, folktale, as well as, psychological amongst others. The focus is on black authors writing terror filled stories surrounding the injustices that they have experienced.

I tended to really enjoy the scarier ones: A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree is a violent ghost story that lends itself to folk horror with its Cryptid reference. The Rider filled me with goosebumps: a bit of a historical
horror story set during the civil rights era. It was tense and terrifying. Lasirén is an utterly beautiful and devastating aquatic horror tale. Finally, Hide & Seek is filled with magic and monsters.

Like any anthology, there are highs and lows, but Out There Screaming tends to have more highs. The stories are really relevant, especially because of all the racial strife prevalent. Ultimately, in my mind, an anthology is successful if it has me seeking out the authors and their previous work to devour.

Jordan Peele is one of my absolute favorite directors and I think his horror films are some of the cleverest and most thoughtful contributions to the horror genre in recent years. So when I saw his name on an anthology of short horror fiction, I knew I needed to pick it up. Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, came out last month, right on the heels of another great horror anthology centering marginalized voices: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. Judging by the quality of tales in these two collections, this diversity of voices is definitely here to stay in the horror genre!

Out There Screaming starts with a quite short, yet thoughtful foreword by Jordan Peele in which he compares horror to both the Sunken Place from his 2017 film Get Out and a type of medieval torture dungeon known as an oubliette, which comes from the French word to forget. But contradictorily, as the authors air out their own fears and personal Sunken Places in these stories, the anthology functions as an anti-oubliette by making sure that they are not forgotten. Peele’s foreword is followed by nineteen tales by different authors, ranging from recognized titans of the horror genre like Tananarive Due and P. Djèlí Clark, to authors better known for their science fiction and fantasy such as N.K. Jemison, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nnedi Okorafor, and Tochi Onyebuchi. There were also quite a few newer authors that I was not familiar with. The stories themselves cover a broad range of the horror genre, many with strong sci-fi or fantasy elements in them. There were new takes on classic narratives like alien invasions, climate apocalypses, and zombie attacks, as well as stories unlike any horror I’ve read before. Many of the stories drew on specific elements from African cultures or the cultures of the African diaspora. Some were set in the near future, while others took place during pivotal moments of Black American history. But each story in the collection highlights some element of the experience of being Black in today’s world.

Two of my favorite stories in the collection were both rather bleak apocalypse tales. “Pressure” by Ezra Claytan Daniels is set in a near future where an increasingly erratic climate serves as a subtle backdrop to an intricate family drama up until the moment when it all explodes … or perhaps implodes? The story is written in the second person, which forces the reader to closely identify with the protagonist, a Black man who risks the flash storms and pressure pockets that are now daily hazards of air travel to reunite with his two white cousins. As has been a pattern since childhood, he butts heads with the golden child Andrew, whose arrogance and casual racism always seem to undermine the narrator’s bids for connection. The growing tension between the cousins is reflected in a very literal increase in air pressure which is innocuously hinted at throughout the story until it culminates in a terrifying moment at the end. “Flicker” by L.D. Lewis depicts another sort of apocalypse by slow degrees. In this story the world is plagued by total blackouts in which darkness engulfs the world for increasingly long periods of time. Along with the chaos, plane crashes, and rampant looting that naturally accompany them, the blackouts also coincide with other strange glitches in reality that seem to imply that life as we know it is a simulation which now appears to be degrading. Kam, a young woman who loses her brother in the first blackout and tries to flee to safety with her friends after the second, is forced to face the hopelessness and inevitability of the end of the world.

As terrifying as these apocalypses can be, I think the scariest stories in the anthology are “Reckless Eyeballing” by N.K Jemison and “Your Happy Place” by Terence Taylor. “Reckless Eyeballing” is the very first story and much of its horror comes from the fact that it is told from the point of view of a deeply corrupt traffic cop whose internal monologue contains self-justifications for all sorts of heinous behavior. But while Carl rationalizes away any guilt he might feel, it manifests instead as a strange phenomenon he mistakenly believes to be a new superpower: the headlights on certain cars appear to him as uncannily realistic human eyes. Carl targets the owners of these cars on increasingly flimsy pretexts, convinced that he is being given some secret insight into their guilt. He remains in denial about his own crimes right to the end of the story, which climaxes in a stomach-twisting scene of visceral body horror. Guilt is also a central theme in “Your Happy Place,” though Taylor’s protagonist is much more sympathetic. It’s hard to talk about this one without completely spoiling it, so I’ll just say that it uses the framework similar to the Matrix films to explore the ethical issues of the for-profit prison industrial complex and how a loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment allows prison labor to be exploited as a modern form of slavery.

If you love Jordan Peele’s horror films, you don’t want to miss out on this anthology of Black horror.

Jordan Peele edited this anthology and introduced the world to 19 Black authors of short stories. Overall, the stories were creepy and entertaining. There were a few that didn't grab my attention and some that seemed all over the place. Most were science fiction creepy rather than scary but I appreciate being introduced to some authors and I'll definitely check out their other works. My favorites included:

1. The Rider by Tananarive Due
2. Dark Home by Nnedi Okorafor
3. Your Happy Place by Terence Taylor
4. A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree by Nicole D. Sconiers

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC

Out There Screaming is an anthology of horror short stories written by black authors. Edited by renowned film director Jordan Peel, nineteen stories explore the wide and deep spectrum of horror. The appeal of this anthology is just how varied each story is in subject matter. While “horrors” of the black experience, ranging from “superficially” subtle to structural and up to overt and violent racial terror is a common theme, there is so much nuance to the subject matter. Hatred of others is like a monster in itself, making its targets feel helpless at being able to protect themselves or fight back, but some of the stories remind the reader that there are dark and unknown creatures in the world that are indifferent to the concerns of humanity.

The intersection of the historical and contemporary experiences of people of the Black Diaspora is explored richly and darkly. The variety of stories also shows that while the Diaspora share a Sub-Saharan black African ancestry, there is so much diversity in the individual cultures and experiences of its members. A few of the stories deal with folklore and legends, which is this reader's favorite kind of horror/scary genre. Lessons taught and passed down from one generation to the next aid the current generation in evading dark fates, and in some cases, creatures of myth awake to protect those of that heritage from the real life horrors of racist violence against their community. Science fiction horror is also well-represented in this collection. Some of the stories are quite opaque in meaning and very bizarre. Their subject matter is not easily categorized or explained in any way. Readers who enjoy the just plain weird --and value asking themselves, “What did I just read?”--will also find something appealing here.

Without calling out specific authors over others, there are some very talented writers in this collection, and each story is worth reading for the experience. Readers who consider themselves horror fans who enjoy quality, thoughtful writing, and in particular want to explore the black experience in their horror, should definitely check out this collection.

I have to say I am not a horror story fan as a rule but the Jordan Peele name brought me to the reading party. Disclaimer - I had to read them during the day!!

Recommended for short story readers who like edgy stories. Some are horror; some have gore. The best make you think about all of the reasons for the horror and the ones with gore - I closed one eye while reading.

I think that there could have been fewer stories and it would have been more impactful.

I loved that the authors are getting a voice in this book and am sure many of them will be heard from in the future.  

Thank you to Random House and Net Galley for this arc.

I don't typically read anthologies, so my review may be biased. Accustomed to reviewing single-author short story collections, I expected hits and misses in a diverse anthology of 19 stories.

So, I give it 3 stars.

Despite the intriguing author lineup and Jordan Peele's editing, the stories fell short of delivering the spine-chilling experience I anticipated. While interesting and with creepy elements, they lacked the fear factor I hoped for.

Overall, this collection, with its emphasis on quantity over quality (in my opinion), didn't resonate with me in terms of fright or engagement.

DNF'd this. Though some of the early stories were decent, the rest seemed forced...onto the reader. I went into this collection of stories with an open mind and just felt punished for not being a POC.

I received this book in exchange for a honest review from NetGalley.

I absolutely loved this anthology!! It has something for everyone, it has neo-futuristic horror, historical horror, modern horror, fantastical horror, monsters and more. All of these stories spoke to the black diaspora and black history in a beautiful, diverse and inspirational way. Heartily suggest this book to any horror fans!

This book is really hard to review so I’m going to keep it short(ish). As soon as I saw Jordan Peele on the cover, I knew I wanted to read it & was already anticipating a 4 star read (I rarely give anything 5 stars unless it’s a memoir, for the most part.) But these stories are not written by Jordan Peele so I should have lowered my expectations a bit. The thing is, I enjoyed every one of the stories and I liked that there were so many different topics among them. BUT, and this a big thing for me, every single story was left open-ended. They all left me thinking either ‘so, did that really bad thing happen?’ or ‘okay, the bad thing happened but then what? What were the consequences?’. I don’t usually read short stories, so maybe this is common, I’m not really sure.

All that being said, I’d read full-length novels from all of these authors, given the chance. They all have perspectives I’d like to hear/learn more about.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me an advanced copy of this book.

So I’ve been very excited to read this and ended up being slower to finish than I’d have liked. My issue was nothing related to the book, except that I generally just don’t like short stories that much. I always feel like a) it takes a while to invest in a new world, narrative style, and characters for me in general, so short stories always seem to end just when I’m settling in; and b) the short stories I end up loving are almost always too short, and I wish they were novellas or novels instead. There are exceptions, but that’s my general feeling about short stories. So I tried to fit some in here and there when reading other books, but I really wanted to read this simply because it’s amazing as a concept. We need more writers of color period, and ESPECIALLY in horror. Horror, to be honest, has basically been solely controlled by a handful of white men for decades - and most of them are getting up there in years. And while I don’t want to say anything about their writing given I do like that handful of white men for the most part, it’s a very sparse genre in terms of either diversity or honestly just anything new.

So in terms of reading this - some stories didn’t work, some were great, and most were just typical of my usual feelings: interesting enough but too short to really lock in on. As a collection, however, I am obviously strongly recommending it if for no other reason than to discover new writers. And if you like short stories, then the selection here is excellent. They range from historical and Gothic horror to sci-fi and body horror and everything in between.

Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this. I’m so glad this exists.

Jordan Peele is a horror master on the screen and NOW in print. His use of this platform for social commentary in white patriarchal society is frightening. This book is a wonderful mix of ALL the haunts of the world.. Its challenging to rate this type of book as you love some of the stories and other not so much.

Thank you Random House for the complimentary copy.

When given the opportunity to read an anthology of horror stories for the autumn and the editor is Jordan Peele….I couldn’t say yes fast enough! As expected Jordan Peele compiled an anthology that features the most prominent Black and Brown authors in the genre and brought the A team! This has been a fun book to dip in and out of throughout the spooky season. These authors are fantastic and Peele put together a themed anthology that showcases the experience of POC through these tales.
Highly recommend!
#OutThereScreaming #NetGalley #RandomHousePublishingGroup

Out There Screaming is a wonderful anthology. For me, it was the perfect way to discover new authors and explore all the facets of horror through the lens of the Black experience.

I really loved this anthology. Like any collection of short stories, some spoke to me more than others. My favorite was Dark Home by Nnedi Okorafor. In this story, a Nigerian American woman travels to Nigeria to bury her father and disrupts a ritual upsetting a secret society she didn't know he was a part of. Without giving too much away, the story is about the all encompassing horror of grief, but it accomplishes its goal in such a creative way.

I also enjoyed many of the other stories in the collection. Many of them focused on themes of racism and injustice, interwoven with supernatural horror. I'd recommend this book to any fan of horror, Jordan Peele, or advocate of anti-racism.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.