Body horror is not just flesh melting it’s flesh stretching, oozing, twisting, and even transforming. It includes some classic body horror stories like Tananarive Due’s “The Lake” as well as Nathan Ballingrud’s “You Go Where It Takes You.” but it also includes some fresh and original takes on the genre. This collection is practically a must-have for any horror connoisseur or library that wants a sampling of all the different dimensions of body horror. Just be sure to pay up front, or it will cost more than a pound of flesh.

Or get some dinner ideas from a werewolf in Cassandra Khaw’s “The Truth That Lies Under Skin and Meat.” Want to skip dinner and experience a show? Come on down to a special kind of experience of the flesh in Simon Bestwick’s “Welcome to Mengele’s” where any fantasy of the flesh, thanks to the the doctor’s discoveries, is yours for the asking. Hannet’s “Sweet Subtleties,” which is about a woman’s ghost that has become quite a sea of delicacies. Consider yourself a gourmand? Belly up to the table and taste Lisa L. Speaking of crawling, if you’re not a fan of cockroaches, you might avoid the insectile insanity of Ray Cluey’s “Travelers Stay,” or check in and rest your antennas awhile. Ellen Datlow, well-known horror editor, has recently compiled the collection Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror, which has a bevy of stories sure to make the flesh crawl off your body.

Authors such as Nick Cutter and Gwendolyn Kiste have written works that explore body horror, but there are also a lot of great stories that use this kind of horror to generate fear. Body horror plays on humanity’s fear of mortality because the human body is a machine that is very prone to breaking down, whether due to malfunction, disease, or the simple wear and tear of time.

Tananarive due the lake