"Discover the roots of modern horror by reading the master's favorite stories, those which inspired, awed, and scared him! This is the only collection in print of stories selected by H. P. Lovecraft himself"--Book jacket.

14 spellbinding tales, including "The Sin Eater," by Fiona McLeod, "The Eye Above the Mantel," by Frank Belknap Long, as well as renowned works by R. H. Barlow and Lord Dunsany.

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.

From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon. The Weird is the winner of the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories: The CALL of CTHULHU The Thing on the Doorstep Pickman's Model Herbert west-reanimator Dagon The Dreams in the Witch House The Dunwich Horror The Cats of Ulthar A definitive collection of stories from the unrivaled master of twentieth-century horror. "I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." - Stephen King. Frequently imitated and widely influential, Howard Philips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe. S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft's preeminent interpreter, presents a selection of the master's fiction, from the early tales of nightmares and madness such as "The Outsider" to the overpowering cosmic terror of "The Call of Cthulhu." More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this volume reveals the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a canonical- and visionary-American writer. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. H. P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. Frequent illnesses in his youth disrupted his schooling, but Lovecraft gained a wide knowledge of many subjects through independent reading and study. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction. His relatively small corpus of fiction—three short novels and about sixty short stories—has nevertheless exercised a wide influence on subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. H. P. Lovecraft died in Providence in 1937.

H. P. Lovecraft was a voracious reader of supernatural and fantastic fiction, continually on the hunt for powerful and stimulating works in these genres. Many of the stories he read directly influenced his own writings. This first volume of H. P. Lovecraft's Favorite Stories presents 16 stories that Lovecraft found to be of particular merit. Among them are the beautiful poetic fantasy Idle Days on the Yann" by Lord Dunsany; Fiona Macleod's grimly evocative The Sin-Eater, which influenced The Rats In the Walls"; Arthur Machen's grisly novelette Novel of the White Powder, which Lovecraft adapted for Cool Air; and M. P. Shiel's The House of Sounds, which Lovecraft ranked among the greatest weird tales ever written. Also included are hard-to-find stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, E. F. Benson, Theophile Gautier, John Buchan and others, as well as two stories from the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales (Seabury Quinn's The Phantom Farmhouse" and Arthur J. Burks's Bells of Oceana). The volume contains an introduction by S. T. Joshi as well as notes on the individual stories, giving back ground on the authors as well as on Lovecraft's appreciation of the tales and their possible influence on his work.

The leading critic of supernatural literature here examines the roots of the "weird tale" (as Lovecraft called it) through detailed examinations of five "founding fathers" of the genre: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, and H.P. Lovecraft. The result is a thorough study of the art, craft, philosophy, and aesthetics of an enduring genre of fantastic literature.