Following the successful run of his Comedy Central series “Key & Peele,” Jordan Peele made a well-received pivot to the psychological horror genre, starting with his 2017 feature “Get Out” starring Daniel Kaluuya followed by 2019’s “Us” with and 2022’s “Nope.” His current catalog of thrillers center on themes of Blackness in America, pitting the sometimes horrifying reality of these experiences against the classic supernatural tropes of scary movies.
Now, the actor, writer and director is releasing a new book, “Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror,” a hard-cover curation of some of the best horror stories from 19 Black writers. Peele edited the anthology and wrote the foreword for the book, which is already a No. 1 new-release on Amazon.
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Inside the cover, Cop’s begin pulling over cars with blinking eyes in N.K Jemisin’s “Reckless Eyeballing;” freedom riders in 1961 Alabama are confronted by strange beings in Tananarive Due’s “The Rider;” “Wandering Devil” by Cadwell Turnbull follows a man who overcomes a fear of commitment only to face a haunting new fright; and in Maurice Broaddus’s “The Norwood Trouble,” one man summons a higher power to violently destroy a band of night riders.
“[It’s] a master class in horror, and — like his spine-chilling films — its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world…and redefine what it means to be afraid,” said Penguin Random House, the book’s publisher.
“Out There Screaming” compiles the work of Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor and Cadwell Turnbull.
Peele’s book will be available on Oct. 3.
