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H. P. Lovecraft: Tales

The Call of Cthulhu • The Colour Out of Space • At the Mountains of Madness • The Shadow Over Innsmouth • The Shadow Out of Time • and 17 other stories More

Edited by Peter Straub

“The most important U.S. horror writer since Edgar Allan Poe.” — Publishers Weekly

“In its entire history of gleefully injecting pulp into the American literary canon, The Library of America has seldom been as giddy as it is in this selection of 22 Lovecraft tales by Peter Straub. One of the Library of America’s happiest and most perverse moments.” — The Buffalo News

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

A twentieth-century successor to Edgar Allan Poe as the master of “weird fiction,” Howard Phillips Lovecraft once wrote, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” In the novellas and stories he published in such pulp magazines as Weird Tales and Astounding Stories—and in the work that remained unpublished until after his death, including some of his best writing—H. P. Lovecraft adapted the conventions of horror stories and science fiction to express an intensely personal vision, cosmic in its ramifications and fearsome in its shuddering view of human destiny.

In this Library of America volume, the best-selling novelist Peter Straub brings together the very best of Lovecraft’s fiction in a treasury guaranteed to bring fright and delight both to longtime fans and to readers new to his work. Early stories such as “The Outsider,” “The Music of Erich Zann,” “Herbert West–Reanimator,” and “The Lurking Fear” demonstrate Lovecraft’s uncanny ability to blur the distinction between reality and nightmare, sanity and madness, the human and non-human. “The Horror at Red Hook” and “He” reveal the fascination and revulsion Lovecraft felt for New York City; “Pickman’s Model” uncovers the frightening secret behind an artist’s work; “The Rats in the Walls” is a terrifying descent into atavistic horror; and “The Colour Out of Space” explores the eerie impact of a meteorite on a remote Massachusetts valley.

In such later works as “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Whisperer in Darkness,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and “The Shadow Out of Time,” Lovecraft developed his own nightmarish mythology in which encounters with ancient, pitiless extraterrestrial intelligences wreak havoc on hapless humans who only gradually begin to glimpse “terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein.” Moving from old New England towns haunted by occult pasts to Antarctic wastes that disclose appalling secrets, Lovecraft’s tales continue to exert a dread fascination.

Peter Straub, volume editor, is the best-selling and award-winning author of more than a dozen novels, including Ghost Story, Floating Dragon, and In the Night Room, as well as two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House. He lives in New York City.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

H. P. Lovecraft: Tales is kept in print by a gift from Matthew Bacho to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Outsider
The Music of Erich Zann
Herbert West—Reanimator
The Lurking Fear
The Rats in the Walls
The Shunned House
The Horror at Red Hook
He
Cool Air
The Call of Cthulhu
Pickman’s Model
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Colour Out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Shadow Out of Time
The Haunter of the Dark

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ISBN: 978-1-93108272-3 838 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 155 Library of America Series

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