With 2005 drawing to a close, Horror Reader is proud to present our selections for the 10 best books of the year. Our choices were drawn from the combined reading of our staff; they are nothing more and nothing less than the collective opinion of six individual readers. To be considered, books must have been published within the calendar year of 2005. (For more information about our reviews, check out our review policy and submission address.) Feel free to leave a comment with your own favorites.

Now, onto our selections.

Novels

Terminal by Brian Keene. Keene breaks away from supernatural horror with a gripping story about a working-class family man whose life is shattered when he's diagnosed with terminal cancer. With no life insurance, desperation leaves him plotting a bank heist in order to save his wife and child from destitution after his death. What follows is proof positive that Keene is more than a mere genre writer. — 306 pages. Bantam Spectra Books. Buy this book.

Berserk by Tim Lebbon. A middle-aged office worker unearths madness and monsters while searching for the truth about his son's death ten years ago. Tragedy unfolds as his discovery attracts a professional killer whose only mission in life is to keep the past buried — at any cost. Lebbon creates the most contemporary vampire in years while telling an old-fashioned monster tale. — 337 pages. Leisure Books. (Originally published in limited edition by Necessary Evil Press.) Buy this book.

The Priest of Blood by Douglas Clegg. Clegg steps away from the mainstream horror of his earlier novels and into high fantasy with this historical saga about a new kind of vampire. In the distant past, peasant boy Aleric works his way to noble service thanks to a talent for training birds. His fortunes change, however, when he falls in love with the baron's daughter and is sent on a crusade to the Holy Land. There, he is transformed by a vampyress and told that the future of his new race may hinge on his actions. This first installment of a three-part series reinvents the stereotypical creature of the night against a rich, mythological background while enticing the reader with what is yet to come. — 320 pages. Ace Hardcover. Buy this book.

Like Death by Tim Waggoner. True-crime writer Scott Raymond witnessed the murder of his entire family as a child, but the memory and its mysteries elude his conscious mind. As an adult, he is sent to write about the strange disappearance of a child from Ash Creek, just as his own life threatens to fall apart under the strain of a nervous breakdown. Once there, he finds himself under the guidance of a mysterious local teenager who introduces him to a world beneath the world, a place of shadows, where nightmares are real. Throughout the book, Waggoner eschews genre cliches in the creation of a unique and complicated story. Like Death confirms him as a writer to watch. — 374 pages. Leisure Books. Buy this book.

Dispatch by Bentley Little. Long celebrated for his tales of surreal, satiric terror, Little here serves up the story of a young writer whose way with words produces letters of almost magical power. When his talent attracts the attention of a mysterious employer, he embarks on a wondrous and horrific education. Filled with unease and terror, Dispatch is a contender for one of the best horror novels Bentley Little has written, and thus a contender for one of the best horror novels of the year.— 686 pages. Signet Publishing. Buy this book.

November Mourns by Tom Piccirilli. Shed Jenkins is released from prison two years after assaulting the man who tried to rape his sister only to find that she's been murdered. His subsequent investigation leads him to his childhood home in the backwoods of Appalachia, a place where moonshine provides both the only industry and the only entertainment. Piccirilli pens a Southern Gothic whodunit that teases with its plot as it delights with its language. November Mourns is on par with his earlier novel A Choir of Ill Children, a fact which lends the highest possible praise. — 320 pages. Spectra. Buy this book.

Novellas

In the Midnight Museum by Gary Braunbeck. A botched suicide attempt leaves the hero of this novella in a mental institution, where he finds himself imbued with extraordinary powers of perception. Other worldly creatures surround him, and he must discover where they come from and what controls them. As in his novel Keepers, Braunbeck here wades through several genres with confidence and authority. The supernatural is presented as something both wonderful and terrifying in a memorable story that represents another bold step forward in his writing. — 128 pages. Necessary Evil Press. Buy this book.

Collections

The Shadow at the Bottom of the World by Thomas Ligotti. This best-of collection finds Ligotti in top form, with a solid presentation of the stories that have cemented his reputation as Lovecraft's most accomplished heir. While most, if not all, of these works have appeared elsewhere, their assembly in this volume creates the most definitive collection yet from the man who is arguably the greatest short story writer in the genre. — 256 pages. Cold Spring Press. Buy this book.

The Book of a Thousand Sins by Wrath James White. A professional fighter and trainer by trade, White continues to earn his reputation for violent, no-holds-barred horror with a collection that echoes the early work of Ed Lee and Jack Ketchum. The title novella, in particular, shows him maturing beyond shock into a writer with something more substantial to say. — 200 pages. Two Backed Books. Buy this book.

Anthologies

Outsiders by Nancy Holder and Nancy Kilpatrick, eds. This anthology bills itself as a collection of stories from the edge about misfits and outsiders. That it may be, but it is also a bonanza of big-name talent that includes too many gems to count. The best stories here stretch the boundaries of the genre as they affirm its literary and artistic possibilities. — 352 pages. Roc Trade. Buy this book.

(Assistant editors Daniel Robichaud, Steve Vernon, Louis Sytsma, Mark Justice, and David Wilbanks contributed to this article.)