Through his collaborations with today's most talented and acclaimed practitioners of Lovecraftian fiction, editor S. T. Joshi has made the Black Wings of Cthulhu series essential for every library of horror and the macabre. Volume four offers up seventeen new masterpieces, each exploring the roots of fear employed so famously by the master himself, H. P. Lovecraft.

Sixteen all-new stories spring from the concepts of doomed exploration, remote terror, and cosmic horror. A who's-who lineup of authors instills new energy into the sub-genre that is Lovecraft, featuring authors who rarely contribute to a Lovecraftian anthology, including Greg Bear, Kevin J. Anderson, Alan Dean Foster, Jonathan Maberry, William F. Nolan (Logan's Run), and more. New foreword by Kim Newman and edited by S. T. Joshi.

This is a critical study of many of the leading writers of horror and supernatural fiction since World War II. The primary purpose is to establish a canon of weird literature, and to distinguish the genuinely meritorious writers of the past fifty years from those who have obtained merely transient popular renown. Accordingly, the author regards the complex, subtle work of Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Aickman, T.E.D. Klein, and Thomas Ligotti as considerably superior to the best...

As Stephen King will attest, the popularity of the occult in American literature has only grown since the days of Edgar Allan Poe. American Supernatural Tales celebrates the richness of this tradition with chilling contributions from some of the nation’s brightest literary lights, including Poe himself, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and—of course—Stephen King. By turns phantasmagoric, spectral, and demonic, this is a frighteningly good additi...

Volume 5 in the successful and critically acclaimed series of Lovecraftian horror anthologies by the most prominent acolytes of the horror master.H. P. Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror has long forced readers to an inexorable truth—there are powers in the universe whose immensity dwarfs petty human conflicts. Inspired by Lovecraft and brought together by editor S. T. Joshi, the stories in Black Wings of Cthulhu 5 explore the very essence of fear.Between the...

Leading critic S.T. Joshi reviews 13 mystery and crime writers:I. The Golden AgeDorothy L. Sayers: Lords and ServantsJohn Dickson Carr: PuzzlemeisterMargery Allingham: Murder, Gangs, and SpiesPhilip MacDonald: Expanding the “Cosy” MysteryII. The Hard-Boiled SchoolDashiell Hammett: Sam Spade and OthersRaymond Chandler: Mean StreetsRoss Macdonald: Family AffairsIII. The Psychological MysteryMargaret Millar: Sc...

Modern Masters of Terror The works of H. P. Lovecraft have inspired brilliant writers for decades, leading Stephen King to call him the "twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." S.T. Joshi-the twenty-first century's preeminent expert on all things Lovecraftian-gathers greatest modern acolytes, including Caitlin R. Kiernan, Ramsey Campbell, Michael Shea, Brian Stableford, Nicholas Royle, Darrell Schweitzer and W.H.Pugmire, each of whom serves up a new masterpie...

A much-awaited collection of prose and poetry from one of the great cosmic masters of the supernaturalNot just any fantasy, horror, and science fiction author could impress H. P. Lovecraft into calling him “unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living” or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis. Clark Ashton Smith—autodidact, prolific poet, amateur philosopher, bizarre sculptor, and unmatched storyteller—simply wrote like no one else, b...

In this second volume of his expansive history of atheism, S. T. Joshi examines the major trends in the last four centuries. The Scientific Revolution, culminating in the work of Galileo and Newton, expressed an increasing awareness of the natural functioning of the universe without the intervention of a god. In spite of the emergence of major religious figures in philosophy (Descartes, Spinioza) and literature (Pascal, Milton, Bunyan), the trend was toward secularism. This trend erupted i...

An exhaustive work covering the full range of topics relating to vampires, including literature, film and television, and folklore.Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend, and Popular Culture is a comprehensive encyclopedia relating to all phases of vampirism—in literature, film, and television; in folklore; and in world culture. Although previous encyclopedias have attempted to chart this terrain, no prior work contains the depth of i...

Baltimore native Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was an essayist, literary critic, magazine editor, novelist, and journalist. Starting as a reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald at the turn of the century, Mencken eventually became associated with the Baltimore Sun and his work for the newspaper spanned five decades.In H.L. Mencken: An Annotated Bibliography, S.T. Joshi provides the most exhaustive and comprehensive bibliography of the writings of H. ...

When 22-year-old Alison Mannering returns to her home in northeastern Pennsyl-vania after college, she finds a troubling situation. Her father, Guy Mannering, a longtime coal miner, has died recently under suspicious circumstances, and her mother refuses to provide any details of his passing. Alison feels she has no option but to investigate the matter herself, enlisting her high school sweetheart, Randy Kroeber, as well as Randy's twin sister, Andrea called Andy, to assist her.In t...