(illustration: Louise Reimer)

Don’t be afraid: eight authors and experts recommend their essential Canadian horror titles.

Gemma Files

AUTHOR, THE HEXSLINGER SERIES AND MORE

Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Bloodshift (Tor)
Anne Hébert, Children of the Black Sabbath (Crown Publishers)
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (Emblem Editions)

Sandra Kasturi

AUTHOR, EDITOR, CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS CO-PUBLISHER

Don Hutchison, Northern Frights series (Mosaic Press)
Susanna Moodie, Roughing It in the Bush (New Canadian Library)
Katherine Govier, The Immaculate Conception Photography Gallery (Vintage Canada)

Claude Lalumière

EDITOR, AUTHOR, OBJECTS OF WORSHIP, AND MORE

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, This Strange Way of Dying: Stories of Magic, Desire & the Fantastic (Exile Editions)
David Nickle, Monstrous Affections (ChiZine Publications)
Michael Kelly, ed., Chilling Tales anthologies (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing)

Derek Newman-Stille

HORROR EXPERT

Michael Rowe, Enter, Night (ChiZine)
Nick Cutter, The Deep (Simon & Schuster Canada)
Andrew Pyper, The Demonologist (S&S Canada)

Helen Marshall

AUTHOR, GIFTS FOR THE ONE WHO COMES AFTER AND MORE

Tony Burgess, Pontypool Changes Everything (ECW Press)
Gemma Files, the Hexslinger Series (ChiZine)
Simon Strantzas, Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (Hippocampus Press)

Susie Moloney

AUTHOR, THINGS WITHERED, BASTION FALLS, AND MORE

Kelley Armstrong, Bitten: Women of the Otherworld (Vintage Canada)
Michael Rowe, Enter, Night (ChiZine)

Andrew Pyper

AUTHOR, THE DAMNED, THE DEMONOLOGIST, AND MORE

Marian Engel, Bear (McClelland & Stewart)
The works of Alice Munro (M&S)
Nick Cutter, The Troop and The Deep (S&S Canada)

Michael Rowe

AUTHOR, ENTER, NIGHT, WILD FELL, AND MORE

Susie Moloney, Bastion Falls (Doubleday Canada)
Nick Cutter, The Troop (S&S Canada)
David Nickle, The ’Geisters (ChiZine)