Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2022 - Horror After Lovecraft
- Sara M.
- Thursday, December 23, 2021
Collection
H.P. Lovecraft was a brilliant innovator who created a popular horror subgenre and influenced generations of writers. He was also xenophobic and racist, and his stories are full of prejudice. In the last few decades, many have wrestled with his legacy through transformative fiction - writing their own cosmic horror as a direct answer to the problems underlying Lovecraft's own work. If you liked the HBO series Lovecraft Country, these are great readalikes; if you're new to cosmic horror entirely, these are a great place to start!
Learn more about the Broader Bookshelf challenge and see more lists here.
Dreams from the Witch House
Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror
Published in 2018
Featuring authors Joyce Carol Oates, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Lois Gresh, Gemma Files, Nancy Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Bear, Storm Constantine and others accompanied by the lavish color artwork of Daniele Serra, Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror is a representation of some of the finest cosmic horror and weird fiction from female authors in the field today.
American Elsewhere
Published in 2013
Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. When ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico, she learns that the people of Wink are very, very different ...
Ring Shout, Or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the End Times
Published in 2020
"In this dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?"-- Publisher's description.
Winter Tide
Published in 2017
"Two decades ago the U.S. Government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them to a desert prison, far from their ocean, their Deep One ancestors, and their sleeping god, Cthulhu. Only Aphra and Caleb Marsh survived the camps, emerging without a past or a future. Now it's 1949, and the government that stole Aphra's life needs her help. FBI Agent Ron Spector believes that Communist spies have stolen dangerous magical secrets from Miskatonic University, secrets that could turn the Cold War hot in an instant and hasten the end of the human race. Aphra must return to the ruins of her home, gather the scraps of her stolen history, and assemble a new family to face the darkest of human politics and the wildest dangers of an uncaring universe"-- Provided by publisher.
Carter & Lovecraft
Published in 2015
"Daniel Carter used to be a homicide detective, but his last case -- the hunt for a serial killer -- went wrong in strange ways and soured the job for him. Now he's a private investigator trying to live a quiet life. Strangeness, however, has not finished with him. First he inherits a bookstore in Providence from someone he's never heard of, along with an indignant bookseller who doesn't want a new boss. She's Emily Lovecraft, the last known descendant of H.P. Lovecraft, the writer from Providence who told tales of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, creatures and entities beyond the understanding of man. Then people start dying in impossible ways, and while Carter doesn't want to be involved, but he's beginning to suspect that someone else wants him to be. As he reluctantly investigates, he discovers that Lovecraft's tales were more than just fiction, and he must accept another unexpected, and far more unwanted inheritance"-- Provided by publisher.
A Lush and Seething Hell
Two Tales of Cosmic Horror
Published in 2019
[The author] turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul. A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself. In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South -which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself. Breathtaking and haunting,-- Adapted from dust jacket.
The Dream-quest of Vellitt Boe
Published in 2016
Kij Johnson's haunting novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is both a commentary on a classic H.P. Lovecraft tale and a profound reflection on a woman's life. Vellitt's quest to find a former student who may be the only person who can save her community takes her through a world governed by a seemingly arbitrary dream logic in which she occasionally glimpses an underlying but mysterious order, a world ruled by capricious gods and populated by the creatures of dreams and nightmares. Those familiar with Lovecraft's work will travel through a fantasy landscape infused with Lovecraftian images viewed from another perspective, but even readers unfamiliar with his work will be enthralled by Vellitt's quest. A remarkable accomplishment that repays rereading.
Hammers on Bone
Published in 2016
"John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He's been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid's stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable. He's also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he's hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth. As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He's infected with an alien presence, and he's spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential"-- Provided by publisher.
The Drowning Girl
A Memoir
Published in 2012
Imp, a struggling schizophrenic, fights to determine whether or not the strange mythological creatures she meets are due to her condition or are from something else entirely in this new novel from the award-winning author of The Red Tree.
The Ballad of Black Tom
Published in 2016
"People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there. Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping. A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?"--Provided from Amazon.com.
I Am Providence
A Novel
Published in 2016
"For fans of legendary pulp author H.P. Lovecraft, there is nothing bigger than the annual Providence-based convention the Summer Tentacular. Horror writer Colleen Danzig doesn't know what to expect when she arrives, but is unsettled to find that among the hobnobbing between scholars and literary critics are a group of real freaks: book collectors looking for volumes bound in human skin, and true believers claiming the power to summon the Elder God Cthulhu, one of their idol's most horrific fictional creations, before the weekend is out. Colleen's trip spirals into a nightmare when her roommate for the weekend, an obnoxious novelist known as Panossian, turns up dead, his face neatly removed. What's more unsettling is that, in the aftermath of the murder, there is little concern among the convention goers. The Summer Tentacular continues uninterrupted, except by a few bumbling police. Everyone at the convention is a possible suspect, but only Colleen seems to show any interest in solving the murder. So she delves deep into the darkness, where occult truths have been lurking since the beginning of time. A darkness where Panossian is waiting, spending a lot of time thinking about Colleen, narrating a new Lovecraftian tale that could very well spell her doom."-- Provided by publisher.
Maplecroft
The Borden Dispatches
Published in 2014
The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence. My sister, Emma, and I moved to Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea. But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed and replaced by malevolent entities. This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.