Included are: Introduction (The Second Cthulhu Mythos Megapack) • essay by Shawn Garrett Dreams of Yith • (1934) • poem by Duane W. Rimel and H. P. Lovecraft Out of the Aeons • short fiction by Hazel Heald and H. P. Lovecraft (variant of Out of the Eons 1935) Fishhead • (1913) • short story by Irvin S. Cobb When Chaugnar Wakes • (1932) • poem by Frank Belknap Long The Mound • (1940) • novella by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop The Thing on the Roof • (1932) • short story by Robert E. Howard The Isle of Dark Magic • (1934) • novelette by Hugh B. Cave The Secret in the Tomb • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch The Horror from the Hills • (1931) • novella by Frank Belknap Long The Terrible Parchment • (1937) • short story by Manly Wade Wellman The Shambler from the Stars • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch The Diary of Alonzo Typer • (1938) • short story by H. P. Lovecraft and William Lumley Hydra• (1939) • short story by Henry Kuttner The Suicide in the Study • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch Marmok • (1940) • poem by Emil Petaja The Intruder • (1940) • short story by Emil Petaja Out of the Jar • (1941) • short story by Charles R. Tanner [as by Charles A. Tanner] Skydrift • (1949) • short story by Emil Petaja Anonymous • (1951) • short story by George T. Wetzel Why Abdul Alhazred Went Mad • (1950) • short story by D. R. Smith (variant of Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad) Caer Sidhi • (1954) • short story by George T. Wetzel Dead of Night • (1988) • short story by Lin Carter Death of a Damned Good Man • (1991) • short story by Avram Davidson Medusa's Coil • short fiction by Zealia Bishop and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop] Perchance to Dream • (1988) • short story by Lin Carter The Winfield Heritence • short fiction by Lin Carter (variant of The Winfield Heritance 1981) The Challenge from Beyond • (1935) • short story by C. L. Moore and A. Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long The Last Horror Out of Arkham • (1977) • short story by Darrell Schweitzer If you enjoy this ebook, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see more of the 300+ volumes in this series, covering adventure, historical fiction, mysteries, westerns, ghost stories, science fiction -- and much, much more!

    Lovecraft, and his acknowledged masterpiece, At the Mountains of Madness, in which an expedition to the desolation of Antarctica discovers evidence of an ancient ruin built by horrific creatures at first thought long-dead, until death strikes the group. All but two of the stories are original to this edition, and those reprints are long-lost works by science fiction masters Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Silverberg.

    She is able to see the unbroken link of the macabre that ties Edgar Allan Poe to Anne Rice and to recognize the dark psychological bonds between Henry James and Stephen King. This remarkable anthology of gothic fiction, spanning two centuries of American writing, gives us an intriguing and entertaining look at how the gothic imagination makes for great literature in the works of forty-six exceptional writers. In showing us the gothic vision—a world askew where mankind’s forbidden impulses are set free from the repressions of the psyche, and nature turns malevolent and lawless—Joyce Carol Oates includes Henry James’s “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” Herman Melville’s horrific tale of factory women, “The Tartarus of Maids,” and Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” which are rarely collected and appear together here for the first time.Added to these stories of the past are new ones that explore the wounded worlds of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Raymond Carver, and more than twenty other wonderful contemporary writers. This impressive collection reveals the astonishing scope of the gothic writer’s subject matter, style, and incomparable genius for manipulating our emotions and penetrating our dreams. With Joyce Carol Oates’s superb introduction, American Gothic Tales is destined to become the standard one-volume edition of the genre that American writers, if they didn’t create it outright, have brought to its chilling zenith.rom Wieland, or The transformation / Charles Brockden Brown --The legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving --The man of adamant / Nathaniel Hawthorne --Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne --The Tartarus of maids / Herman Melville --The black cat / Edgar Allan Poe --The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --The romance of certain old clothes / Henry James --The damned thing / Ambrose Bierce --Afterward / Edith Wharton --The striding place / Gertrude Atherton --Death in the woods / Sherwood Anderson --The outsider / H.P. Lovecraft --A rose for Emily / William Faulkner --The lonesome place / August Derleth --The door / E.B. White --The lovely house / Shirley Jackson --Allal / Paul Bowles --The reencounter / Isaac Bashevis Singer --In the icebound hothouse / William Goyen --The enormous radio / John Cheever --The veldt / Ray Bradbury --The Dachau shoe / W.S. Merwin --The approved / W.S. Merwin --Spiders I have known / W.S. Merwin --Postcards from the Maginot Line / W.S. Merwin --Johnny Panic and the Bible of dreams / Sylvia Plath --In bed one night / Robert Coover --Schrödinger's cat / Ursula K. Le Guin --The waterworks / E.L. Doctorow --Shattered like a glass goblin / Harlan Ellison --Human moments in World War III / Don DeLillo --The anatomy of desire / John L'Heureux --Little things / Raymond Carver --The temple / Joyce Carol Oates --Freniere (from Interview with the Vampires) / Anne Rice --A short guide to the city / Peter Straub --In the penny arcade / Steven Millhauser --The reach / Stephen King --Exchange value / Charles Johnson --Snow / John Crowley --The last feast of Harlequin / Thomas Ligotti --Time and again / Breece D'J Pancake--Replacements / Lisa Tuttle --Spirit seizures / Melissa Pritchard --Cat in glass / Nancy Etchemendy --The girl who loved animals / Bruce McAllister --Ursus Triad, later / Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg --(from Geek Love) The nuclear family: his talk, her teeth / Katherine Dunn --Subsoil / Nicholson Baker

    Dick Award winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides.POWERS OF THE IMAGINATION! Twenty-one pulse-pounding, mind-bending tales of science fiction, twisted metaphysics, and supernatural wonder from the two-time World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides. A complete palette of storytelling colors from Powers, including acclaimed tale “The Bible Repairman,” in which a psychic handyman who supernaturally eliminates troublesome passages of the Bible for paying clients finds the remains of his own broken soul on the line. Time travel takes a savage twist in “Salvage and Demolition,” where the chance discovery of a long-lost manuscript throws a down-and-out book collector back in time to 1950s San Francisco where he must prevent an ancient Sumeric inscription from dooming millions in the future. And obsession and vengeance survive on the other side of death in “Down and Out in Purgatory,” where the soul of a man lusting for revenge attempts to eternally eliminate the killer who murdered the love of his life. Wide-ranging, wonder-inducing, mind-bending—these and other tales make up the complete shorter works of a modern-day master of science fiction and fantasy.  Praise for Down and Out in Purgatory: "Powers creates tales of dark, thought-provoking drama that are just frightening enough to make you keep the lights blazing but not enough to give you nightmares. . . . This is a treat for fans and newbies alike; hand it to readers who enjoy genre-blending authors as varied as Jim Butcher, Dean Koontz and China Mieville."—Booklist “Powers is a writer whose senses and soul are attuned to a cosmic symphony most of us would not hear without his deft channeling of the music.”—Paul di Filippo, Locus About Tim Powers: "Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card ". . .  immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World “Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford "On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . .  [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert “Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.” Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

    I envy those of you making your first acquaintance with this author.” – From the introduction by Matthew Carpenter Respected as one of today’s leading figures of weird fiction for his striking imagination, versatility, and deeply emotional stories, Jeffrey Thomas here offers up fourteen searing tales. Included are the haunting and surreal "Ghosts in Amber," in which a man is compelled to visit a mysterious derelict factory that harbors chilling secrets; "Jar of Mist," which focuses on a father who, in seeking to understand his daughter’s suicide, encounters a dream-like other realm; "Those Above," which imagines an alternate Victorian society controlled by vast monstrous entities from beyond; and the title novelette "The Endless Fall," which concerns an astronaut who crash-lands on an unknown forested world where time seems to work in an alien way, and where he finds he is unfortunately not alone. “With brutal elegance and chilling subtlety, Thomas pulls his readers into his dark visions immediately from every opening line.” – Paul Di Filippo, in ASIMOV’S “Jeffrey Thomas’ imagination is as twisted as it is relentless.” – F. Paul Wilson “In time he will, in this reviewer’s opinion, be listed alongside King, Barker, Koontz, and McCammon.” – Brian Keene

    1)Over 110,000 words.Includes Amazing Fiction by:WHC Grand Master Award Winner, Ray GartonNew York Times Best Seller, Jonathan MaberryBram Stoker Award Winner, Kealan Patrick BurkeBram Stoker Award Nominee, Jeff StrandEdgar Award, Bram Stoker Award Nominee, Bev VincentMicro Award Finalist, Robert SwartwoodEmmy Award Nominee, Harry ShannonBritish Fantasy Awards Nominee, Gary McmahonBram Stoker Award Winner, Kim PaffenrothAnd so much more…

    P. Lovecraft from authors who do not merely imitate, but reimagine, re-energize, and renew his concepts in ways relevant to today's readers. Fresh new fiction that explores our modern fears and nightmares. From the depths of R'lyeh to the heights of the Mountains of Madness, some of today's best weird fiction writers -- both established award-winning authors and exciting new voices -- THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF CTHULHU collects tales of cosmic horror that traverse terrain created by Lovecraft and create new eldritch geographies to explore . . . With stories by: Laird Barron, Nadia Bulkin, Amanda Downum, Ruthanna Emrys, Richard Gavin, Lois H. Gresh, Lisa L. Hannett, Brian Hodge, CaitlíR. Kiernan, John Langan, Yoon Ha Lee, Usman T. Malik, Helen Marshall, Silvia Moreno, Norman Partridge, W. H. Pugmire, Veronica Schanoes, Michael Shea, John Shirley, Simon Strantzas, Sandra McDonald, Damien Angelica Walters, Don Webb, Michael Wehunt, and A.C. Wise

    They unlock opportunities for wealth and travel, but also create incredible chaos--uprooting populations and blighting landscapes. Work on or around the rails leads to unwelcome discoveries and, in light of the Mythos, dire implications in the spread of the rail system as a whole. A certain path to uncovering unwelcome truths about the universe is to venture beyond our own "placid island of ignorance" and encounter foreign cultures. The Orient Express serves as the perfect vehicle for such excursions, designed as a bridge between West and East. Movement into mystery forms the central action for many stories in this volume. The only limitation placed upon writers for this collection was that their works somehow involve the Orient Express and the Mythos. The last warning whistle has blown, and we are getting underway. Have your tickets at the ready and settle in for a journey across unexpected landscapes to a destination that--well, we'll just let you see for yourself when you arrive. We promise this though: murder will be the least of your problems on this trip aboard the Orient Express!

    What if the prophecies of Revelation hit today? What sort of craziness and evil would ensue? With this list of excellent authors contributing, it’s sure to be a Hell of a read! Wrath James White Sam West The Sisters of Slaughter Jeff Strand K Trap Jones C Derick Miller Christine Morgan Patrick C. Harrison III John Wayne Comunale Hyäne Sawbones Delphine Quinn James Watts Wile E. Young Chris Miller Mark Deloy Richard Raven

    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.

    Lovecraft. Although "Shadows Over Innsmouth" includes the said novella, the book is a collection of Innsmouth-related stories by a number of later authors and not a single story or novel. You might also consider moving your personal rating and/or review to the appropriate page if you have read only the novella. SEVENTEEN CHILLING STORIES, INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL MASTERPIECE OF HORROR: “THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH” by H. P. LovecraftInspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s classic, today’s masters of horror take up their pens and turn once more to that decayed, forsaken New England fishing village with its sparkling treasure, loathsome denizens, and unspeakable evil. “ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD AGAIN” by Neil Gaiman: The community of Innsmouth performs a blood sacrifice–with shocking, terrifying results.“THE CHURCH IN HIGH STREET” by Ramsey Campbell: In the crypt of a derelict church, a sensible young man meets a bestial, unthinkable fate. “INNSMOUTH GOLD” by David Sutton: An adventurer searches for buried treasure–and discovers a slithering hell on earth.“THE BIG FISH” by Jack Yeovil: A few months after Pearl Harbor, a mobster and his floating casino lie under water, teeming with the stuff of nightmares.AND THIRTEEN MORE TERRIFYING TALES!

    They are the building blocks of our lives. They are our memories. They are how we come to know our history. They are our escapism and entertainment. Some fact, some fiction, and some are a clever little mix. These stories… these stories are fiction. Short and scary. Delivered to you in small, terrifying bursts, much the way you'd experience each individual room in a haunted house attraction. They were specifically written to be enjoyed by both the not-too-young and old alike. Inside, you'll see some names you know and some names you don't. You'll find horror, drama, and even a few laughs... and zombies. Zombies by the ton. Gnawing, gnashing, stumbling, and staring... Right. At. You. Waiting... for a bite-sized offering. Enjoy!

    Tinged with a taste of terror!"Collector's Items:" A lot of people want to get Augie Kolodney, the fattest, toughest racketeer in America; but no one wants to get and keep him the way Dr. Glendon, connoisseur of precious "one-of-a-kinds," does..."The Messiah on Mott Street:" As his grandfather lies dying, a little boy searches the ghetto for a miracle maker and finds a black mailman who is the true Messiah - or the Angel of Death..."The Different Ones:" Poor Victor, born helpless and deformed, tormented by children and adults alike... until he finds peace on a horror-filled planet."Lindemann's Catch:" The hardest fishing captain out of Boston ran his ship and his men with an iron hand; right up until the day he netted a monster..."Suggestion:" Harvey Hemple always wanted to be the life of the party - until he became the death of it...Tune in to more great tales of terror on Rod Serling's Night Gallery!

    The first volume of this extraordinary new annual anthology series of fantastic literature explodes on the scene with works that sidestep expectations in beautiful and unsettling ways, that surprise with their settings and startle with the manner in which they cross genre boundaries, that aren't afraid to experiment with storytelling techniques, and yet seamlessly blend form with meaningful function. The delectable offerings found within these pages come from some of today's most distinguished contemporary fantasists and brilliant rising newcomers.Whether it's a touch of literary erudition, playful whimsy, extravagant style, or mind-blowing philosophical speculation and insight, the reader will be led into unfamiliar territory, there to find shock and delight.Introducing CLOCKWORK PHOENIX.

    The star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale.The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which includes ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness. Collins is one of the great storytellers. He excels in presenting narratives that both disturb and engross the reader, as this fine collection demonstrates.