Initially created by H. P. Lovecraft and a group of his amorphous contemporaries (the so-called "Lovecraft Circle"), The Cthulhu Mythos story cycle has taken on a convoluted, cyclopean life of its own. Some of the most prodigious writers of the 20th century, and some of the most astounding writers of the 21st century have planted their seeds in this fertile soil. The Book of Cthulhu harvests the weirdest and most corpulent crop of these modern mythos tales. From weird fiction masters to enigmatic rising stars, The Book of Cthulhu demonstrates how Mythos fiction has been a major cultural meme throughout the 20th century, and how this type of story is still salient, and terribly powerful today.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

    His extraordinary imagination spawned both the Elder God Cthulhu and his eldritch cohorts, and the strangely compelling town of Innsmouth, all of which feature within these pages. Stephen Jones, one of the world's foremost editors of dark fiction, will complete the Lovecraft story in his extensive afterword, and award-winning artist Les Edwards will provide numerous illustrations for this must-have collection.

    From the faculty to the students, the fascination with other-worldly legends and objects runs rampant. So, when Carter Weston’s professor Dr. Thayerson asks him to search a nearby village for a book that is believed to control the inhuman forces that rule the Earth, Incendium Maleficarum, The Inferno of the Witch, the student doesn’t hesitate to begin the quest.Weston’s journey takes an unexpected turn, however, when he ventures into a tavern in the small town of Anchorhead. Rather than passing the evening as a solitary patron, Weston joins four men who regale him with stories of their personal experiences with forces both preternatural and damned. Two stories hit close to home as they tie the tellers directly to Weston’s current mission.His unanticipated role as passive listener proves fortuitous, and Weston fulfills his goal. Bringing the book back to Miskatonic, though, proves to be a grave mistake. Quickly, Weston realizes he has played a role in potentially opening the gate between the netherworld and the world of Man. Reversing the course of events means forgetting all he thought he knew about Miskatonic and his professor and embracing an unknown beyond his wildest imagination.

    H. Pugmire continues his radical and obsessive reinterpretations of H. P. Lovecraft's brilliant fiction. Among the book's original pieces is the title story, "Gathered Dust," a sequel to J. Vernon Shea's "The Haunter of the Graveyard." Set in Arkham, this tale of utter strangeness concerns the legacy of Randolph Carter and a monstrous burying ground where the phantoms of the past linger so as to feed upon the living. In "Depths of Dreams and Madness" we journey to Pugmire's Sesqua Valley, wherein we find Lovecraft's artist, Richard Upton Pickman and Robert E. Howard's mad poet, Justin Geoffrey, tainted by the valley's supernatural lunacy. With "These Deities of Rarest Air," Pugmire continues his exploration of the prose-poem/vignette sequence, in a work that deliciously evokes the mystic aura of not only Lovecraft but Clark Ashton Smith as we ll. With artful decadence and a pen dipped into the dark fin-de-siècle poetry of Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire, Pugmire celebrates his beloved genre of fantastic fiction with works that only his cracked skull could conceive. Jeffrey Thomas has provided a provocative Introduction.Table of ContentsIntroduction by Jeffrey ThomasGathered DustYour Kiss of CorruptionYon Baleful GodTime of TwilightThese Deities of Rarest AirThe Boy with the Bloodstained MouthThe Woven OffspringThe Tangled MuseLet Us Wash This ThingBloom of SacrificeHe Who Made Me DreamCool MistDescent into Shadow and LightSerenade of StarlighGraffito FlowDepths of Dreams and MadnessHost of Haunted AirA Vestige of Mirth

    Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gamers. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history—written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread—remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. In the early twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction—bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters—eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

    Tierney and Dirk W. Mosig to penetrating studies by Robert M. Price, William Murray, Steven J. Mariconda, and others.

    This cyclopean collection features eight new stories, each filled to the brim with insanity-inducing, orgasm-producing goodness. Have you always wondered what one of those Cthulhu-cult orgies would look like from the inside? Do you crave intellectual tentacle porn? Have you always felt that the only thing Lovecraft was missing was a really, really good lay now and again? If so, this book was made for you. Don't deny your curiosity! Just beware: what one has seen (and been aroused by) cannot be unseen... Features stories from Peter Tupper, Angela Caperton, Alex Picchetti, Monique Poirier, Elizabeth Reeve, Bernie Mojzes, Annabeth Leong, and Kannan Feng.

    P. Lovecraft's most fascinating work came from a time in his life that he was forced, by economic survival, to ghostwrite, collaborate and revise the work of others in the field. Here Lovecraft Scholar S. T. Joshi collects the best of these revisions and collaborations in a two volume set to be published this year from Arcane Wisdom Press The Crawling Chaos and Others is the first of these two volumes. This edition is painstakingly annotated, and includes an introduction and bibliography by S. T. Joshi. The book is a must for the Lovecraft enthusiast and scholar alike.

    Special days of commemoration and celebration. Feasts and festivities. Remembrance and revelry. But what dark things lurk just out of sight, in the shadows of those celebrated days? Forces beyond our comprehension, yearning to burst into our warm and comforting world and tear asunder those things we hold most dear. As the wheel of the year turns and we embrace our favorite occasions, let us not forget that beyond the light is a darkness, and in that darkness something stirs. Some nameless thing that brings us Horror for the Holidays!

    Deep beneath London, the Laundry archives occupy several miles of disused subway tunnel. The shelves are crammed with documents and reports. Eyewitness statements, newspaper cuttings, court transcripts, the diaries of madmen, autopsies, scientific papers, archived material - from these, the Laundry works to piece together the shape of the world. A seemingly innocuous report may contain vital information when correlated with a dozen other files. Triangulate the doctor's report about an outbreak of strange dreams with seismic activity under the Pacific, and find the traces of the sleeping god. Match the suppressed play from Shakespeare to troop movements in Syria to plot the shape of impending doom. The Dossiers contain extracts from the murkier reaches of the Laundry's archives, a selection of unexplained encounters, unverified reports, uncorrelated data, loosely organised by whatever codeword seemed to fit. The truth exists in the unseen connections between them. The Mythos Dossiers contain dozens of reports, handouts, eyewitness accounts and deranged speculation about the horrors of the Mythos. Read them at your peril. 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 light into the peace and safety of a new dark age...