Best Selling Books by H.P. Lovecraft

This full collection of tales by the master of eldritch, H. P. Lovecraft himself, will take you through monsters, cosmic horrors, and ancient evil.

The Whisperer in Darkness is a 26,000-word novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written February–September 1930, it was first published in Weird Tales, August 1931. Similar to The Colour Out of Space (1927), it is a blend of horror and science fiction. Although it makes numerous references to the Cthulhu Mythos, the story is not a central part of the mythos, but reflects a shift in Lovecraft''s writing at this time towards science fiction. The story also introduces the Mi-go, an extraterrestrial race of fungoid creatures. The story is told by Albert N. Wilmarth, an instructor of literature at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. When local newspapers report strange things seen floating in rivers during a historic Vermont flood, Wilmarth becomes embroiled in a controversy regarding the reality and significance of the sightings. He sides with the skeptics, blaming old legends about monsters living in uninhabited hills that abduct people venturing too close to their territory. He receives a letter from Henry Wentworth Akeley, a man living in an isolated farmhouse near Townshend, Vermont, who claims to have proof that will convince Wilmarth he must stop questioning the creatures'' existence. The two exchange letters that include an account of the extraterrestrial race chanting with human agents in worship of several beings, including Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep, the latter of whom "shall put on the semblance of men, the waxen mask and the robe that hides"... Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dunwich Horror, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Other Gods, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, From Beyond, What the Moon Brings.

"The Horror at Red Hook" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, written on August 1–2, 1925. "Red Hook" is a transitional tale, situated between the author''s earlier work and the later Cthulhu Mythos. Although the story depicts a sinister cult, this cult offers a conventionally occult devil-worshipping threat, rather than the cosmic threat depicted in his later work. Living in poverty in the slum of Red Hook at the time of writing, Lovecraft was at this time urgently attempting to widen his markets in the pulp magazines. By having an unusually proactive Irish New York police detective as his protagonist, he hoped for a swift sale to a detective pulp, which would have opened up a new market other than his usual Weird Tales magazine. He did not get such a sale, and had to fall back on Weird Tales. "Red Hook" was thus first published in the January 1927 issue of Weird Tales. Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dunwich Horror, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Other Gods, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, From Beyond, What the Moon Brings.

"From Beyond" is a horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920 and was first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934. The story is told from the first-person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person''s pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality. Sharing the experience with Tillinghast, the narrator becomes cognizant of a translucent, alien environment that overlaps our own recognized reality. From this perspective, he witnesses hordes of strange and horrific creatures that defy description. Tillinghast reveals that he has used his machine to transport his house servants into the overlapping plane of reality. He also reveals that the effect works both ways, and allows the alien creature denizens of the alternate dimension to perceive humans. Tillinghast''s servants were attacked and killed by one such alien entity, and Tillinghast informs the narrator that it is right behind him. Terrified beyond measure, the narrator picks up a gun and shoots it at the machine, destroying it. Tillinghast dies immediately thereafter as a result of apoplexy. The police investigate the scene and it is placed on record that Tillinghast murdered the servants in spite of their remains never being found. Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dunwich Horror, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Other Gods, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, What the Moon Brings.

"The Haunter of the Dark" is a horror short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written between 5-9 November 1935 and published in the December 1936 edition of Weird Tales. It was the last-written of the author''s known works, and is part of the Cthulhu Mythos. The epigraph to the story is the second stanza of Lovecraft''s 1917 poem "Nemesis". In Providence, Rhode Island, Robert Blake, a young writer with an interest in the occult, becomes fascinated by a large disused church on Federal Hill which he can see from his lodgings on the city''s Upper East side. His researches reveal that the church has a sinister history involving a cult called the Church of Starry Wisdom and is dreaded by the local migrant inhabitants as being haunted by a primeval evil... Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Other Gods, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, What the Moon Brings.

"The Nameless City" is a horror story written by American writer H. P. Lovecraft in January 1921 and first published in the November 1921 issue of the amateur press journal The Wolverine. It is often considered the first Cthulhu Mythos story. The Nameless City of the story''s title is an ancient ruin located somewhere in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, and is older than any human civilization. In ancient times, the Nameless City was built and inhabited by an unnamed race of reptiles with a body shaped like a cross between a crocodile and a seal with a strange head common to neither, involving a protruding forehead, horns, lack of a nose, and an alligator-like jaw. These beings moved by crawling; thus, the architecture of the city has very low ceilings and some places are too low for a human being to stand upright. Their city was originally coastal, but, when the seas receded, it was left in the depths of a desert. This resulted in the decline and eventual ruin of the city. Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dunwich Horror, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Other Gods, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, From Beyond, What the Moon Brings.

H. P. Lovecraft was one of the greatest horror writers of all time. His seminal work appeared in the pages of legendary Weird Tales and has influenced countless writer of the macabre. This is one of those stories.

"The Hound" is a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft in September 1922 and published in the February 1924 issue of Weird Tales. It contains the first mention of Lovecraft''s fictional text the Necronomicon. The story focuses around the narrator and his friend, St. John, who have a deranged interest in robbing graves. They constantly defile crypts and often keep souvenirs of their nocturnal expeditions. Since they reside in the same house, they have the opportunity to set up a sort of morbid museum in their basement. Using the objects collected from the various graves they have robbed, the two men organize a private exhibition. The collection consists of headstones, preserved bodies, skulls, and several heads in different phases of decomposition. It also included statues, frightful paintings, and a locked portfolio bound in tanned human-skin. One day, they learn of a particular grave, which sparks a profound interest in them, an old grave in a Holland cemetery, which holds a legendary tomb raider within. One who is said to have stolen, many years ago, a "potent thing from an mighty sepulcher." One night, they travel into this old cemetery where the ancient “ghoul” was buried. The thought of exhuming the final resting place of a former grave robber is irresistibly appealing to them. That, and the fact that the body had been buried several centuries before, drives them to travel such long distances to reach the site. Upon reaching the old cemetery, they notice the distant baying of a giant hound. They ignore it and begin their excavation... Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dunwich Horror, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Other Gods, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, From Beyond, What the Moon Brings.

WIKIPEDIA says: ''H.P. Lovecraft''s reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers of the 20th century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though often indirect.'' His tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ''30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when they were first published. THE NECRONOMICON collects together the very best of Lovecraft''s tales of terror, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were originally published. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft''s fiction, as well as being a must-buy for those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive volume.

“[Lovecraft''s] dream fantasy works are as terrifying and haunting as his tales of horror and the macabre. A master craftsman, Lovecraft brings compelling visions of nightmarish fear, invisible worlds and the demons of the unconscious. If one author truly represents the very best in American literary horror, it is H. P. Lovecraft.”—John Carpenter, Director of At the Mouth of Madness, Halloween, and Christine This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H. P. Lovecraft, the master of twentieth-century horror, including some of his most fantastic tales: The Doom That Came to Sarnath—Hate, genocide, and a deadly curse consume the land of Mnar. The Statment of Randolph Carter—“You fool, Warren is DEAD!” The Nameless City—Death lies beneath the shifting sands, in a story linking the Dream Cycle with the legendary Cthulhu Mythos. The Cats of Ulthar—In Ulthar, no man may kill a cat...and woe unto any who tries. The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath—The epic nightmare adventure with tendrils stretching throughout the entire Dream Cycle. And twenty more tales of surreal terror!

"The Statement of Randolph Carter" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written December 1919, it was first published in The Vagrant, May 1920. It tells of a traumatic event in the life of Randolph Carter, a student of the occult loosely representing Lovecraft himself. It is the first story in which Carter appears and is part of Lovecraft''s Dream Cycle.

"The Picture in the House" is a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. It was written on December 12, 1920, and first published in the July issue of The National Amateur—which was published in the summer of 1921. While riding on his bicycle in the Miskatonic Valley of rural New England, a genealogist seeks shelter from an approaching storm in an apparently abandoned house, only to find that it is occupied by a "loathsome old, white-bearded, and ragged man," speaking in "an extreme form of Yankee dialect...thought long extinct." The narrator notices that the house is full of antique books, exotic artifacts, and furniture predating the American Revolution. The old man is apparently harmless and ignorant, but shows a disquieting fascination for an engraving in a rare old book, Regnum Congo, and admits to the narrator that it made him hunger for "victuals I couldn''t raise nor buy"- presumably human flesh. It is suggested that the old man in the house was murdering men who stumbled upon the shack to satisfy his "craving", and that the old man has extended his life preternaturally through cannibalism. The narrator realizes the old man has been alive for over a century. The old man denies that he ever acted on his desire, but then a red drop of blood falls from the ceiling, clearly coming from the floor above, and splashes a page in the book. The narrator then looks up to see a spreading red stain on the ceiling; this belies the old man''s statement. At that moment, a bolt of lightning destroys the house, bringing oblivion to the narrator. Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Outsider, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, What the Moon Brings.

"The Strange High House in the Mist" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written on November 9, 1926, it was first published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales. An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that the story may have been inspired by Lord Dunsany''s Chronicles of Rodriguez, in which strange sights can be seen from a wizard''s house on a crag.

"In the Vault'' is a short story by American horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, written on September 18, 1925 and first published in the November 1925 issue of the amateur press journal Tryout. George Birch, undertaker for the New England town of Peck Valley, finds himself trapped in the vault where coffins are stored during winter for burial in the spring. When Birch stacks the coffins to reach a transom window, his feet break through the lid of the top coffin, injuring his ankles and forcing him to crawl out of the vault. Later, Dr. Davis investigates the vault, and finds that the top coffin was one of inferior workmanship, which Birch used as a repository for Asaph Sawyer, a vindictive citizen whom Birch had disliked, even though the coffin had originally been built for the much shorter Matthew Fenner. Davis finds that Birch had cut off Sawyer''s feet in order to fit the body into the coffin, and the wounds in Birch''s ankles are actually teeth marks. Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dunwich Horror, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Other Gods, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, From Beyond, What the Moon Brings.

The essential literary collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s ten finest short stories, from the celebrated editor of the two-volume New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft. An indispensable collection of the best of one of literature’s “most critically fascinating and yet enigmatic figures” (Alan Moore), featuring H. P. Lovecraft’s most bone-chilling tales, including: “Dagon”, “The Outsider”, “The Music of Erich Zann”, “The Rats in the Walls”, “The Call of Cthulhu", “The Colour Out of Space”, “The Dunwich Horror”, “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, “The Shadow Out of Time” and “The Haunter of the Dark”. Though he died an unknown, dejected pulp-magazine writer in 1937, Howard Phillips Lovecraft is now considered the first great “genius of weird fiction” (Peter Straub). There is no better guide through the peculiarities of his universe than Leslie S. Klinger, whose work as annotator of the “exciting and definitive” (Danielle Trussoni, New York Times Book Review) New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft has proven him a leading Lovecraft scholar. Keenly aware of the author’s inspiration of “dozens—hundreds—of stories written by others playing in [his] galactic sandbox,” Klinger now presents this essential reader’s edition for both fanatics and newcomers to the canon. Equipped with explanatory annotations and sharp historical insight, this highly accessible?collection features Lovecraft’s ten most profound and unnerving short stories. From the early tale “Dagon” to the mature and sprawling “The Haunter of the Dark,” these expertly curated stories built a Lovecraftian sense of dread that has reverberated in the world of horror literature for generations: that all of us are “outsiders” in the universe.

"The Other Gods" is a fantasy short story written by American author H. P. Lovecraft, on August 14, 1921. It was first published in the November 1933 issue of The Fantasy Fan. Barzai the Wise, a high priest and prophet greatly learned in the lore of the "gods of earth", or Great Ones, attempts to scale the mountain of Hatheg-Kla in order to look upon their faces, accompanied by his young disciple Atal. Upon reaching the peak, Barzai at first seems overjoyed until he finds that the "gods of the earth" are not there alone, but rather are overseen by the "other gods, the gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!" Atal flees, and Barzai is never seen again. Famous works of the author Howard Phillips Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadows over Innsmouth, The Alchemist, Reanimator, Ex Oblivione, Azathoth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Cats of Ulthar, The Festival, The Silver Key, The Outsider, The Temple, The Picture in the House, The Shunned House, The Terrible Old Man, The Tomb, Dagon, What the Moon Brings.