dictionary literature unabridged supernatural

books:

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

42 reviews
Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Penguin Classics, 1999

Free SF Reader
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. 4.5 out of 5

The White People and Other Stories: Vol. 2 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)

4 reviews
Arthur Machen

Chaosium Inc., 2003

Volume 2 of Arthur Machen's work
I was vary impressed by Chaosium's first collection of Machen's work, which was THE THREE IMPOSTERS AND OTHER STORIES. "The Three Imposters" was a narrative of interwoven tales describing a paranoid man's encounter with three people who are not who they seem. Each is an excellent story in its own right, but the whole is greater than the sum. Considering the success of the first volume, I ...

Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories (The Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James, Vol. 1)

5 reviews
M. R. James

Penguin Classics, 2005

Huge fan....
I am a massive fan of M. R. James and to come across a new printing last year of some of his eerie stories was a treat indeed. No one quite writes the ghost story like James. You should also check out Sheridan Le Fanu....my all time favourite. If you indeed want some grand mysterious edwardian ghost stories, this is the volume to start! So many of his works are hard to find and expensive so I ...

Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Classics)

8 reviews
Algernon Blackwood

Penguin Classics, 2002

The scariest of ghost story writers
Algernon Blackwood really is the most frightening to me of all horror story writers: he has a way of capturing mood and setting that outdoes any of his many followers (among whom H. P. Lovecraft was proudly one of the most preeminent). The three most famous stories in this book--the title story, "The Wendigo," and above all "The Willows"--emblematize his skill. The title story is set in an ...

The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft

26 reviews
S. T. Joshi, Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Dell, 1997

Worth it for every Lovecraft fan
Most reviewers have focused (understandably) on the annotations. However, this book is worth the price for the biographical introduction alone. I've been reading and rereading Lovecraft for probably 20 years, but those few pages gave me some important new insights into Lovecraft's perspective that made me anxious to read them again in a new light. The annotations, review of movies, and other ...

The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu ...

15 reviews
Arthur Machen

Chaosium Inc., 2007

Convinced to buy Vol. 2
As the title says, I found this collection so intriguing that I will be buying the next volume (The White People and other Tales). The only work that I had previously known by Arthur Machen was "The Great God Pan", which has shown up in so many anthologies that I am thoroughly sick of it, although it is a good read the first few times through. "The Inmost Light" was quite disturbing to me in ...

The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

9 reviews
Ambrose Bierce

University of Georgia Press, 2002

A Beautiful Mind
If truth is beauty, and beauty truth, this is one good looking book. As an aspiring cynic, finding this book was akin to Ahab finding the whale. (I have no idea what that means). I don't think this book could be written today. Most of Bierce's definitions have become accepted fact. The book belongs in the library of everyone who believes Political Correctness is the beginning of the end of the ...

In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales (Penguin Classics)

4 reviews
Lord Dunsany

Penguin Classics, 2004

Dunsany conjures worlds out of a hat
What a marvellous writer Lord Dunsany was! He influenced everyone, everyone who ever wrote fantasy: HP Lovecraft, Jack Vance, John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, Clark Ashton Smith, Roger Zelazny, the list goes on and on. He has the astonding ability to conjure believeable worlds and nail them down with unsurpassed beauty in 500 word, three page stories! Like Faberge Eggs, each tiny short ...

The Haunted Doll's House and Other Ghost Stories (The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James, Vol. 2)

2 reviews
M. R. James

Penguin Classics, 2006

Great Victorian Ghost Stories
If you like the style of Victorian ghost stories, in the best English tradition, you'll greatly enjoy this collection of stories by M.R. James, and it's companion volume, Vol. 1. In most of the stories the horror is oblique, but present and able to deliver delicious shivers on dark stormy nights (or on bright, sunny afternoons, for that matter). If you like Arthur Conan Doyle's ghost stories, ...

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Classics)

8 reviews
H. P. Lovecraft

Penguin Classics, 2001

Penguin's Second Lovecraft Book
If you enjoyed the first book of Lovecraft's work published by Penguin (The Call of Cthulhu) then you will undoubtedly appreciate this one. As before, it is a nice mix of the three areas of Lovecraft's work: the dream cycle, the Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones cycle, and the macabre tales cycle. In this book you will find what I consider to be one of the best Lovecraft's story: At The ...

The Dunwich Horror And Others

21 reviews
H. P. Lovecraft

Arkham House Publishers, 1984

About this edition . . . .
I will not try to write a complete review, since I see that there are already 17 reviews available here, several of fine quality. This edition is of great interest because it issues from Arkham House. Arkham House publishing was founded by August Derleth, a protege of H.P. Lovecraft who himself wrote a rather large volume of pastiche material using the Cthulhu mythos of Lovecraft. One motive ...

The Agnostic Reader

2 reviews

Prometheus Books, 2007

THE AGNOSTIC READER is an excellent recommendation.
Agnosticism is the argument that it's impossible to know whether god exist or not - and has been the point of view of many a thinker from the 19th century to modern times. This reader selects some prime discussions of agnosticism over the past two centuries, compiling them under one cover to make for an excellent survey recommended not only for spiritual libraries but for general-interest ...

H.L. Mencken on Religion

8 reviews
H. L. Mencken

Prometheus Books, 2002

A Jolt of Electricity
I've read numerous Mencken anthologies, and I think this one is the best. His commentaries on fundamentalist attacks on both evolution and the wall between church and state are as relevant now as they were when he wrote them in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, as anyone who's ever read Mencken can attest, the man was a brilliant stylist and frequently hysterically funny. Oh, how the man could ...

The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature

4 reviews
H. P. Lovecraft

Hippocampus, 2000

Another Lovecraft/Joshi must-have!
Finally, the long awaited annotated edition of HPL's essential essay of horror/weird fiction is here... The only flaw/drawback to this edition is the decision to keep all annotation notes in the back of the book unlike previous annotated Lovecraft works. Granted, having the annotations at the bottom of the revelant page did slow down a straight reading of only the text in the annotated story ...

H.P. Lovecraft: A Life

16 reviews
S. T. Joshi

Necronomicon Press, 1996

A great, but biased work on Lovecraft's life
Wow, this must have been quite a few hours of work for Joshi! The fonts are below even standard book-fonts, AND I hear it's an abridged version but still the book is almost 700 pages. But don't get me wrong, in many ways I wish it was longer. The book is a fine introduction to Lovecraft's life, and to most Lovecraft-readers, probably quite enough in itself. It chronicles on an annual basis, ...

American Supernatural Tales (Penguin Classics)

2 reviews

Penguin Classics, 2007

An Excellent Supernatural Fiction Anthology
S.T. Joshi has done the reader a great service, taking several of the most accomplished supernatural tales that the American fictional tradition has to offer, and placing them together in just one 477-page book. With the exception of Robert E. Howard's "Old Garfield's Heart" (a clunker that is so poorly written that it comes off as humorous), all the tales are either competent or good... But the ...

The Dreams in the Witch House: And Other Weird Stories (Penguin Classics)

2 reviews
H. P. Lovecraft

Penguin Classics, 2004

Third Collection
Having read the two previous collections it was a logical step to go on and get the third (and apparently final)one. So what to expect with this book? Some really good stuff and some really bad stuff (my opinion). Various kinds of stories are gathered here, as was the case with the previous publications by Penguin; that is, there are some "macabre tales", "dreams and fantasies tales" and some ...

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales

6 reviews
H. P. Lovecraft, T. E. Klein, ...

Arkham House Publishers, 1986

The Lovecraft Experience
In my humble opinion, there are two ways to read Lovecraft. The first, and best, is to get your hands on an original "Wierd Tales" or other pulp. There is something about the musty smell that adds to the tale. For true conisours, read them under the covers with a flashlight, late in the evening hours. Realizing that original pulps may be prohibitively expensive, the Arkham House Editions are ...

Atheism: A Reader

12 reviews

Prometheus Books, 2000

Kindred spirits
If you're an atheist, this book is a wonderful resource, full of good friends. The selection seems strong and many selections are 10 pages long or less, so you can get acquainted with many atheists. Most wrote during the last 3 centuries. Discussion with a theist about God seems a waste of time, so I am sympathetic to Joshi's introduction. Theists indeed do seem "incapable of comprehending ...

More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft

11 reviews
H. P. Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi, ...

Dell, 1999

Quality of stories far exceeds quality of annotations
While there are some rare nuggets of interesting information in the annotations, I find aspects of this collection to be disorganized, haphazard, and perplexing. The stories, 10 in all, represent a hodgepodge of Lovecraft's greater and lesser writings, arranged chronologically from 1920's "The Picture in the House" to 1935's "The Haunter of the Dark." The editors apparently want to show the ...

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