H. P. Lovecraft

Let your imagination sink deep into more than a dozen classic tales of dark horror by an early master of the genre. The stories of H. P. Lovecraft have been a source of fascination for readers since they were published in the early twentieth century, and legions of fans continue to reinvent his dark and fantastical world to this day. This collection of short stories by the master of the macabre contains more than twenty of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and "The Dunwich Horror." Each story will leave the reader feeling unsettled and uncertain, but also appreciative of the unique elements that Lovecraft introduced to the literary world.

PROWLING, predatory, ravenous, merciless, cunning, brutal viscous, savage, beastly. These words have been used to describe human beings nearly as frequently as they are used to describe the most violent carnivores that scour our wildernesses. Perhaps it only makes sense that at one point in human history, the metaphor was used far more literally: a man who went on a rampage, killing his parents and his wife and fleeing to the lawless protection of the forest was surely more monster than man. Surely, he had received a sort of summons from his vestigial animalistic nature - a summons that had overwhelmed the nobler, restrained instincts of humanity. Perhaps he was a werewolf. This book contains a variety of werewolves and shapeshifters. Not all are wolves, per se: some are panthers, some cats, some are simply beastly. Some of these stories are subtle, mystical, or poetic. Some are powerful, gothic, and indulgent. There are tales of campers disappearing into the woods, of women stopped on the forest road by wolf man, of degenerate family curses, of cannibalistic women, of men who lure children into the woods before both disappear forever, of were-cats and were-panthers, of men trapped in their wolf form by unfaithful wives, and wives killed in their animal form by unsuspecting husbands. They are tales of desire and hunger, power and violence, transformation and degeneration. They are tales of men. They are tales of wolves. And they are tales of the dark and shadowy territory that binds the two.

Designed specifically for students of literature and bibliophiles. We are pleased to bring you the complete and unabridged text of this classic book. Because this is the original work by the author, you may find slight differences in spellings and punctuation than those you

There's just something about cats. We own them, viralize them, buy sweaters and calendars and mugs with them on it. They are points of fascination and obsession. Even though the 21st century has rejected the superstitions of previous centuries, returning cats to the godhood of Ancient Egypt, we still recognize their power to suggest the dark side of nature. Outside cats leave their human's property at dusk and venture out into the darkness, returning in the morning with the corpses of birds and rodents. They step out of the comfort zones of most humans, plumb the hours of night when humans feel most alone and vulnerable, and they own that space. Cats have featured heavily in horror fiction since the Middle Ages, and have inspired masters of the genre from Poe and Stoker to Lovecraft and Bierce, from Le Fanu and Chambers to Blackwood and Saki. Cats' role in supernatural fiction, horror, and folklore is likely due to their perceived liminality: they seem to be able to access an alternate plane of experience that is just outside of humans' comfort zone. They venture into the murky, liminal spaces of life - the spaces where we are afraid to go alone, too big to fit, too high to climb, and to dark to see. Can a more fitting metaphor for the afterlife - for magic, for the spiritual, for the unknown - possibly be concocted? The stories contained in this book are among the most famous felines in literature. We will explore this side of the cat as well as its darker connotations. There are stories of ghost cats, battered felines getting gruesome revenge, speaking animals, messengers from the afterlife, feline royalty, shape-shifting were-cats, and much more. It's the purrrfect companion for a dark and windy night.

When a traveler in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprizing uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or in the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent. Sometimes it enters directly into the composition of the events, while sometimes it relates only to their fortuitous position among persons and places. The latter sort is splendidly exemplified by a case in the ancient city of Providence, where in the late forties Edgar Allan Poe used to sojourn often during his unsuccessful wooing of the gifted poetess, Mrs. Whitman. Poe generally stopped at the Mansion House in Benefit Street-the renamed Golden Ball Inn whose roof has sheltered Washington, Jefferson, and Lafayette-and his favorite walk led northward along the same street to Mrs. Whitman's home and the neighboring hillside churchyard of St. John's, whose hidden expanse of Eighteenth Century gravestones had for him a peculiar fascination.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things-in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too, intended to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.

Renowned writer H. P. Lovecraft gives us another unforgettable collection of classic and innovative sci-fi terror. From dimensions beyond space and time come strange beings that seek to overthrow our world from its place of honor.