Weird and Horrific Stories

Weird and Horrific Stories (2021) collects some of H. P. Lovecraft's finest early work. Although his reputation as one of the world's greatest writers of horror and weird fiction remains undisputed, much of his writing was published in such pulp literary magazines as Argosy, the United Amateur, and Weird Tales, making it difficult to find proper collections. Weird and Horrific Stories attempts to bridge this gap for modern readers, bringing them face to face with some of Lovecraft's most terrifying creations.

"The Alchemist," originally written in 1908 and published in 1916, is the story of Count Antoine, whose ancestors were cursed after killing a fearsome dark wizard named Michel Mauvais. Every generation since has seen the death of its male members at the age of thirty-two, an age fast approaching for Antoine. Lonely and terrified, he sets out to put an end to the cycle of death and suffering. "Dagon," which appeared in The Vagrant in 1919, is a story told by a morphine-addicted man who survived a terrible shipwreck during the First World War. In "The Cats of Ulthar," published in 1920, an unnamed narrator recounts the legal history of the town of Ulthar, which once was the home to a sadistic couple known for their obsession with torturing and killing housecats. Weird and Horrific Stories collects over thirty stories written at the height of Lovecraft's career.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of H. P. Lovecraft's Weird and Horrific Stories is a classic work of American horror reimagined for modern readers.

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola's work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus' full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.