Cutting Edge

Literature & Fiction

Karl Edward Wagner

Peter Straub

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Les Daniels

Steve Rasnic Tem

William F. Nolan

George Clayton Johnson

Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Marc Laidlaw

Charles L. Grant

W.H. Pugmire

Richard Christian Matheson

Joe, Haldeman

Roberta Lannes

Contemporary

Futura

Sesqua Valley &amp; Other Haunts is a collection of horror and dark fantasy tales in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, set in the mysterious Sesqua Valley - a dark and sinister locale imagined by W.H. Pugmire. The reader will find carefully crafted tales of Lovecraftian horror and the Cthulhu Mythos artfully coloured with the lavish touches for which W.H. Pugmire is famous. His stories are not mere pastiche, but finely wrought stories that transport the reader into a foreboding and enticing realm of hororr and dark fantasy. 203 pp. 20 Lovecraftian and Cthulhu Mythos short stories and 1 sonnet cycle, set in Pugmire's Sesqua Valley. CONTENTS: O, Christmas Tree / The Ones Who Bow Before Me / Born in Strange Shadow / Another Flesh / Immortal Remains / Selene / The Darkest Star / The Songs of Sesqua Valley / The Heritage of Hunger / The Imp of Aether / The Million-Shadowed One / The Child of Dark Mania / The Hands That Reek and Smoke / The Host of Haunted Air / The Woven Offspring / The Place of Old Insanity / The Zanies of Sorrow / Beneath An Autumn Moon / The Balm of Nepenthe / The Phantom of Beguilement / A Vestige of Mirth. Full color cover &amp; 9 interior black &amp; white illustrations by Augie Wiedemann.

Sesqua Valley & Other Haunts

Genre Fiction

Mythos Books LLC

This anthology of dark, literary gifts, includes works by Donald R. Burleson, Mollie Burleson, Ramsey Campbell, Cody Goodfellow, T.E. Grau, Lois H. Gresh, Thomas Ligotti, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Horror for the Holidays

Lois H. Gresh

Cody Goodfellow

Thomas Ligotti

Robert M. Price

Joseph S. Pulver

Ramsey, Campbell

H.P.Lovecraft

Scott David Xntolowski

Miskatonic River Press

SYNOPSIS 
Weird fiction is an incredibly rich and varied genre, running the gamut from supernatural horror to imaginary-world fantasy to psychological terror. This anthology seeks to exhibit the wide range of themes, motifs, and imagery that weird fiction allows, as embodied in the work of some of the leading contemporary writers in the field. 
The ghost or revenant is a venerable motif, and stories by John Shirley, Lynda E. Rucker, and Reggie Oliver ring fascinating changes on it. Allied to the ghost is the haunted house, and stories by Gemma Files and Jason V Brock present highly ingenious variants on the idea. The resurrection of the dead is treated in strikingly different ways by Clint Smith, Jonathan Thomas, Michael Aronovitz, and W. H. Pugmire. 
Weird fiction has always exploited topographically remote areas of the world as a potent setting for horror. Here, tales by Cody Goodfellow, Lynne Jamneck, and Stephen Woodworth take us to unfamiliar realms where the weird can manifest itself. From a very different perspective, Richard Gavin and Darrell Schweitzer infuse their tales with elements of fantasy that allow for the maximum play of the imagination. 
Science fiction has always been allied to the weird, and in this volume Nancy Kilpatrick and George Edwards Murray take us to a post-apocalyptic environment where the preservation of our very humanity is brought into question. Psychological horror, as represented here by the work of Steve Rasnic Tem and Michael Washburn, focuses on the dread that stems from mental aberration. 
The eighteen stories making up Apostles of the Weird demonstrate that weird fiction is a multifaceted genre whose emphasis on fear does not preclude pathos, poignancy, and a brooding rumination on our place in this fragile world.

Apostles of the Weird

Gemma Files

John Shirley

Reggie Oliver

Clint Smith

Darrell Schweitzer

Jonathan Thomas

Richard Gavin

Jason V Brock

S.T. Joshi

Lynda E. Rucker

Michael Aronovitz

Lynne Jamneck

stephen-woodworth

PS Publishing

SYNOPSISH. P. Lovecraft (1890 1937), the pioneering writer of weird fiction, has himself become an icon in popular culture. Stories, novels, and other works featuring the gaunt, lantern-jawed gentleman from Providence, Rhode Island, have proliferated. These works have been triggered by the incredible amount of knowledge we have on the writer his family, his friends, his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities as found in his thousands of surviving letters. This anthology takes the figure of Lovecraft and enmeshes him in a series of bizarre and supernatural adventures. Darrell Schweitzer focuses on Lovecraft s childhood, when he was plagued with dreams of night-gaunts and was left bereft by the early death of his father. John Shirley depicts Lovecraft as a gawky teenager evolving his notions of cosmicism, while Scott Wiley emphasises Lovecraft s devotion to cats. Stephen Woodworth and Donald R. Burleson ring changes on the Lovecraftian theme of personality exchange. Lovecraft famously collaborated with Harry Houdini on a story. Donald Tyson and Jonathan Thomas write very different stories on the association of these two figures. Mark Samuels focuses on Lovecraft s creation of imaginary tomes of forbidden lore, while the stories by Richard Gavin, David Hambling, Jason V Brock, and S. T. Joshi supply broader ruminations on the origins of Lovecraft s revolutionary motifs. While eschewing Lovecraft himself as a character, the tales by W. H. Pugmire and Simon Strantzas exhibit figures who reveal strikingly Lovecraftian elements while probing the psyche of the man from Providence. H. P. Lovecraft s work has captured the imaginations of millions and now he himself has become no less fascinating. In every sense of the word he was, as Vincent Starrett said of him, his own most fantastic creation.

His Own Most Fantastic Creation: Stories about H. P. Lovecraft

Simon Strantzas

Donald Tyson

Donald R. Burleson

David Hambling

Scott Wiley

Harry Houdini

Mark Samuels

SYNOPSIS Lovecraft s masterpiece of age-spanning beings, a modern man s experience in their prehistoric realm and the soul-shattering revelation of humanity s true place in the cosmos. CONTENTS Introduction by S. T. Joshi The Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft The Vanity of Existence in The Shadow out of Time by Paul Montelone The Shadow out of Plastic by Pete Von Sholly The Shadow out of Time as Lovecraftian Horror by W. H. Pugmire

Lovecraft Illustrated Volume 4 - The Shadow Out of Time

Pete Von Sholly

Paul Montelone

The Great Old Ones, Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Yog Sothoth, and the rest, so vividly described by H. P. Lovecraft, have lurked in the dim places of the Earth since the beginning of time. That is not dead, wrote the mad poet Abdul Alhazred, which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die. You may reasonably wonder, then, why no one seemed to notice prior to the events in the Lovecraft stories. Was Cthulhu merely dreaming in sunken R lyeh all this time, or did the dreams he sent out to mankind subtly influence, or pervert, human history? Were the outbreak of the Dunwich Horror and the resurrection of Charles Dexter Ward s ancestor Joseph Curwen, both of which occurred in the 1920s, unique events, or have similarly dreadful things happened before? What were the Mi-Go of Yuggoth doing in the centuries before they were discovered in the Vermont hills by Henry Wentworth Akeley, as told in The Whisperer in Darkness ? This book proposes that such horrific events did occur down the centuries. They just have not been adequately chronicled until now. Esther Friesner proposes a unique explanation to the explosion of the island of Thera in the 2nd millennium B.C., which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase big bang. Keith Taylor illuminates what was up till now merely a sinister allusion, of how Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos appeared as a man in Egypt in the days of the pharaohs. Jay Lake and John Langan tell of very different encounters between ancient Romans and forces vaster and more ancient than any of the world s empires. Darrell Schweitzer tells how survivors of the disastrous Peasants Crusade made an even more hideous pilgrimage to the Plateau of Leng. Don Webb reveals the very circumstances under which the English scholar John Dee translated the dreaded Necronomicon into English in the early 17th century. S. T. Joshi, John R. Fultz, Harry Turtledove, Richard Lupoff, Will Murray. W.H. Pugmire, and Lois Gresh all explore the subtle and insidious ways Lovecraft s cosmic monsters have touched the lives of all of us. If our species still survives, it may be by sheer chance, and not for long, for the horrors are still there, still waiting for the day when the stars are right and they shall return to reclaim the Earth.

That Is Not Dead

JOHN LANGAN

Will Murray

Don Webb

keith-taylor

Jay Lake

SYNOPSIS This fourth instalment of S. T. Joshi s acclaimed Black Wings series features seventeen stories that continue to elaborate upon the conceptions, motifs, and imagery of H. P. Lovecraft, the most influential writer of weird fiction of the past hundred years. One of Lovecraft s favourite themes was the tale of archaeological horror, where venturesome explorers unearth hideous secrets of the ancient past that cast a baleful light on the fragility of our own existence. In this volume, a major new novella by the award-winning novelist and poet Fred Chappell, Artifact, treats this theme with his customary panache and subtlety, while other writers such as Richard Gavin, Lois H. Gresh, Ann K. Schwader, and Donald Tyson broach the same theme in their own distinctive and diverse ways. The cosmicism that was at the core of Lovecraft s vision finds vivid realisation in stories by Caitlín R. Kiernan, Cody Goodfellow, and Melanie Tem. John Pelan and Stephen Mark Rainey have co-written a vivid novelette fusing horror and science fiction, while Will Murray s tale of governmental espionage leads to a conclusion that bodes ill for the fate of the human race. Lovecraft was skilled at evoking the terrors inherent in the history and topography of his native New England, and several writers in this volume notably W. H. Pugmire and Jonathan Thomas do the same. Jason V Brock finds Lovecraftian terror in Prague, just as Gary Fry locates it in the British countryside. Lovecraft s patented motif of the forbidden book that reveals secrets too horrible to contemplate is the focus of Darrell Schweitzer s story of what can be found in an out-of-the-way bookstore, while stories by Simon Strantzas and Stephen Woodworth elaborate on the Lovecraftian themes of immortal gods and of dreams that reveal unwelcome truths about ourselves. The book s final contribution, by Charles Lovecraft, is nothing less than a recasting of Lovecraft s early tale The Lurking Fear in a cycle of twelve sonnets. Black Wings IV shows that H. P. Lovecraft continues to inspire some of today s leading writers of weird fiction.

Black Wings IV - More Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

Caitlin, R., Kiernan

Ann K. Schwader

Gary Fry

SYNOPSIS This fifth instalment of S. T. Joshi s critically acclaimed Black Wings series features twenty stories that use H. P. Lovecraft s mythos as the basis for imaginative ventures into the weird and terrifying. One of the central themes in Lovecraft s work is the problematical nature of science in human affairs, and in this volume we find stories by Caitlín R. Kiernan, Lynne Jamneck, and Donald R. Burleson where scientists come face to face with the appalling implications of their discoveries. Lovecraft was a master of the sense of place, inventing imaginary towns in New England with a rich and sinister history stretching back centuries. In this book, Jonathan Thomas, W. H. Pugmire, and Sunni K Brock bring Lovecraft s towns of Arkham, Kingsport, and Innsmouth to life. Sam Gafford, Darrell Schweitzer, and Stephen Woodworth evoke terror in other corners of the American continent, while British writers David Hambling and John Reppion find Lovecraftian horror in little-known towns in England. The world-building that led Lovecraft to fashion an entire universe set in the realm of dreams is duplicated in tales by Cody Goodfellow, Mark Howard Jones, and Donald Tyson. Madness is always an occupational hazard of the searchers after horror who populate Lovecraft s tales. In this volume, stories by Robert H. Waugh, Nicole Cushing, and Nancy Kilpatrick searingly display the psychological aberrations of characters as they encounter the bizarre. Lovecraft himself has become an iconic character, and his gaunt, lantern-jawed figure stalks the tales by Jason C. Eckhardt and Mollie L. Burleson. This volume concludes, as did its predecessor, with a long poem by Wade German, one of the most dynamic figures in a remarkable renaissance of weird poetry inspired by the work of Lovecraft and his colleagues. Black Wings V can take its place as a pioneering anthology that shows how the work of H. P. Lovecraft is inexhaustibly rich in the inspiration it can provide to contemporary writers of weird fiction.

Black Wings V - New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

Nancy Kilpatrick

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