The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Corvus, £25)
In his "forweird", Michael Moorcock says that weird is "a term covering pretty much anything from absurdism to horror, even occasionally social realism". And in this vast anthology, weighing in at over 750,000 words and more than 100 stories, examples of every type of weird can be found, including fantasy, science fiction and mainstream with a slight twist of strange. It's at once a history of the horror story  with well-loved tales from Blackwood, Saki and MR James  and a treasury of stories from Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Poland, Belgium, Argentina, Benin, Guatemala, Iran  and the list goes on, to the credit of the editors, who have unearthed fine examples of "world weird". Also represented are contemporary genre writers who deserve a wider audience, with fine work by the likes of KJ Bishop, Margo Lanagan and Liz Williams. Unmissable.

To Indigo, by Tanith Lee (Immanion Press, £11.99)
Lee is the mistress of the psychological study, and her latest novel contains a pair of characters who will live with the reader long after the last page. Roy Phipps is a writer of mediocre crime novels who lives a safe, humdrum life in suburbia turning out undemanding hackwork to pay the bills. His orderly routine is overturned when he meets a young man who resembles a character in a fantasy novel he's been writing, on and off, for years. Joseph Taskul then insinuates himself into Phipps's life with creepy insistence, driving the writer to despair. Lee skillfully keeps the reader guessing as to the literary territory  horror, psychological thriller, mainstream realism?  until her wonderful dénouement reveals all. A fine achievement.

Mythanimus, by Storm Constantine (Immanion Press, £12.99)
Constantine's fifth collection gathers 15 stories, many of which, she states in her introduction, are rewritten early pieces or tales produced for themed anthologies that never came to pass, from which she then "filed off the serial numbers". This might suggest a mop-up collection, but if so it's nothing less than entertaining. As ever we have her trademark magic and mysticism imbuing stories that range from high fantasy through to science fiction, and examinations of the good and evil that come from entrenched belief systems. One of the strongest stories in the volume, "The Preservation", shows what happens when two conflicting ideologies, trenchantly held, collide. In "The Time She Became", a girl from beyond time gains substance in a far future mobile city, bringing with her the stuff of legend. As Constantine says in her introduction: "In the depths of our dreams... we are creatures of myth, capable of anything."

Cyber Circus, by Kim Lakin-Smith (NewCon Press, £9.99)
In a far future when biological plague has scoured the land and Earth is now named Sore Earth, mankind scratches an existence in scattered, failing townships. Travelling among these dregs of humanity is Herb and his floating cyber circus, a big-top dirigible crewed by a troupe of bio-morphed freaks and oddities. We're in steampunk territory  or, as Lakin-Smith has it, gas-punk. With a tip of the hat to Mad Max and the films of Caro and Jeunet, the author takes us on a fabulous picaresque tour of this blighted land as her heroes are pursued by the evil D'Angelo, pimp and sadist, intent on capturing the courtesan Desirous Nim from her circus haven. While the plot is neither original nor complex, Lakin-Smith's command of language, dense and graphic, brings this heart-warming story to vibrant life. Great fun.

 Eric Brown's The Kings of Eternity is published by Solaris.