Shirley Jackson Award finalists

From the official site:

NOVEL

• Alive in Necropolis, Doug Dorst (Riverhead Hardcover)
• The Man on the Ceiling, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries)
• Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
• The Resurrectionist, Jack O’Connell (Algonquin Books)
• The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow)
• Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

NOVELLA

• Disquiet, Julia Leigh (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton)
• "Dormitory," Yoko Ogawa (The Diving Pool, Picador)
• Living With the Dead, Darrell Schweitzer (PS Publishing)
• The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, Stephen Graham Jones (Chiasmus Press)
• "N,", Stephen King (Just After Sunset, Scribner)

NOVELETTE

• "Hunger Moon," Deborah Noyes (The Ghosts of Kerfol, Candlewick Press)
• "The Lagerstatte," Laird Barron (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ballantine Books/Del Rey)
• "Penguins of the Apocalypse," William Browning Spencer (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, Subterranean Press)
• "Pride and Prometheus," John Kessel (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)
• The Situation, Jeff Vandermeer (PS Publishing)

SHORT STORY

• "68° 07’ 15"N, 31° 36’ 44"W," Conrad Williams (Fast Ships, Black Sails, Night Shade Books)
• "The Dinner Party," Joshua Ferris (The New Yorker, August 11, 2008)
• "Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account," M. Rickert (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2008)
• "The Inner City," Karen Heuler (Cemetery Dance #58, 2008)
• "Intertropical Convergence Zone," Nadia Bulkin (ChiZine, Issue 37, 2008)
• "The Pile," Michael Bishop (Subterranean Online, Winter 2008)

COLLECTION

• A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
• Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
• The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
• The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
• Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)
• Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

ANTHOLOGY

• Bound for Evil, edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press)
• Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo, edited by Danel Olson (Ash-Tree Press)
• Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Night Shade Books)
• The New Uncanny, edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page (Comma Press)
• Shades of Darkness, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)

This award, now in its second year, tends to be (along with the World Fantasy Awards, most of the time) closer to my preferred genre reading tastes than other spec fic awards. This is, I believe, a juried award (like the WFAs) so maybe that says something about me as well? Regardless, I have read three of the Best Novel finalists (Ford, Lanagan, and the Tems), will read the Gregory soon, should have bought the O'Connell but for some reason delayed, and will now look into the Dorst. Also, I have read Jeff VanderMeer's The Situation in the Novelette category, as well as Laird Barron's story there as well. Very pleased to see Etgar Keret's collection, The Girl on the Fridge (translated from Hebrew), be a finalist in the Collection category, while Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's original pirate-themed anthology, Fast Ships, Black Sails is the only one in the Anthology category that I've read to date.

What are your thoughts regarding these finalists?