BUNDLE - The S T JOSHI Collection [4 Hardcovers]

APOSTLES OF THE WEIRD [unsigned hardcover]

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 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.

HIS OWN MOST FANTASTIC CREATION [SIGNED hardcover]

H. 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.

SOMETHING FROM BELOW [SIGNED hardcover]

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 the process, Alison and her cohorts become enmeshed in an inconceivable horror that goes back a century or more and is somehow involved with the coal mine, now controlled by the remote and enigmatic Conrad Brashear. Beyond the possibility of danger or death to herself and her friends, Alison comes to realise that what is lurking in and below the mine poses a mortal threat to the safety of the planet.

In this compelling novella, veteran scholar of weird fiction S. T. Joshi has fashioned a novella of cosmic horror that draws upon the work of Lovecraft, Hodgson, and other classic writers, but that also etches the characters of his protagonists with clarity and sensitivity. The result is a distinctive fusion of weirdness and poignancy that will leave few readers unmoved.

RAMSEY CAMPBELL; MASTER OF WEIRD FICTION [unsigned hardcover]

n every way this monograph should be regarded as merely a preliminary study of Campbell. Because much of his work is not widely known to the general public, I have felt the need to provide fairly detailed synopses of his major novels and tales, and this has reduced the space available for analysis. While I have chosen tostudy Campbell’s work thematically, I am aware that many other perspectives could be employed.

CONTENTS

• Preface
• My Roots Exhumed, By Ramsey Campbell
• I. Biography And Overview
• II. The Lovecraftian Fiction
• III. The Demons By Daylight Period
• IV. The Transformation Of Supernaturalism
• V. Dreams And Reality
• VI. Horrors Of The City
• VII. Paranoia
• VIII. The Child As Victim And Villain
• IX. Miscellaneous Writings
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index