Waking Up Screaming: Haunting Tales of Terror

By H.P. Lovecraft

Book Overview

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -H. P. LOVECRAFT Welcome to the world of H. P. Lovecraft, the undisputed master of terror. His work has inspired countless nightmares, and this collection of some of his most chilling stories is likely to inspire even more. Cool Air -An icy apartment hides secrets no man dares unlock. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward -Ward delves into the black arts and resurrects the darkest evil from beyond the grave. The Terrible Old Man -The intruders seek a fortune but find only death. Herbert West-Reanimator -Mad experiments yield hideous results in this bloodcurdling tale, the inspiration for the cult film Re-Animator . The Shadow Over Innsmouth -A small fishing town's population is obscenely corrupted by a race of fiendish undersea creatures. The Lurking Fear -An upstate New York clan degenerates into thunder-crazed mole like creatures with a taste for human flesh. PLUS TEN OTHER SPINE-TINGLING TALES

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 034545829X
• ISBN13: 9780345458292
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.3" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Review of Waking Up Screaming: Haunting Tales of Terror

What a GREAT book. Once you get used to the literary style of H.P.Lovecraft, he takes you away to a place where your imagination runs wild! I can't put the book down, and when I have to, I can't wait to get back to the story. And it's also good because it's short stories, so you don't get bogged down in a long story that goes on forever. I can't give this book a high enough review, it is great scary stuff.

First taste of the horror of Lovecraft...

This is a great set of some of Lovecraft's stories. Not the best, book good for what it is. This is my first book of Lovecraft stories, and has gotten me hooked onto all of works. This book contains sixteen stories. Not all are great, but none are bad. Some of the ones in here that I love is Herbert West - Reanimater, The Hound (scared the heck out of me!), The Outsider (the band Nile gets their debut album title from this book), Cool Air, The Lurking Fear, The Shadow Over Innsmouth (a Lovecraft classic), and others. If you're looking for any of the stories that are within the Cthulhu mythos, you won't find any here (though Shadow Over Innsmouth contains a brief reference to Cthulhu). You get sixteen stories, some awesome, some good, for a cheap price. If you want a collection with some of his best stories, then get The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and Macabre.

An excellent collection of Lovecraft's works

H.P. Lovecraft is an underappreciated horror writer. Though flawed in many ways, such as his habit of finding a handful of unusual adjectives and using them over and over and over again, he was an incredible storyteller. He created an entire universe of wonder and at the same time mind-blowing fear which became known as the Cthulhu Mythos, named for the behemoth god-like entity which has become iconic of his works.That said, there are a lot of great stories here to showcase Lovecraft's talent. Cool Air is a particularly creepy story inspired by the fledgling science of cryogenics which was first talked about in the early 20th century. From this first story, the reader is introduced to one of Lovecraft's signature techniques: using the last line of the story as the climax. Though he did not use it in every story, it proved devastatingly effective in so many of his works such as The Lurking Fear and Pickman's Model.Herbert West- Reanimator gave me chills the first time I read it. It really is quite a brilliant story, taking the concepts in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and putting a darker, more horrible bite to them. Written in chapters, each one but the last uses the previously stated technique. And each one is more bone-chilling than the last.The Shadow Over Innsmouth, one of the few stories in this book that officially contributes to the Cthulhu Mythos itself, has a few low points, but is overall a very creepy story with an ending that never ceases to entertain no matter how many times I read it. This is one of the stories I highly recommend to those new to Lovecraft and the Mythos, as it gives one a very good idea of what goes on in this universe of horrors beyond the stars.Lovecraft also wrote extensively of a world of dreams where the journeys of the mind were made manifest in a land so strange and exotic, it would be impossible to describe it all. The book includes several such stories such as Beyond the Wall of Sleep which introduces the reader to this dreamland. Sadly, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kaddath is not in here. Though a fairly long story, it was one of the best. I can understand it being left out for the sake of brevity however. The same with At the Mountains of Madness.The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is one of the best stories Lovecraft ever wrote in my opinion. I won't give anything away, suffice to say that it really showcases how well he could bring out the darkest depths of your fears. In Lovecraft's stories, there really are things that man was not meant to know.Anyway, there are a few low points to the book. Dagon, though a nice little story, wasn't really one of Lovecraft's best. Something just seemed to be missing. The Terrible Old Man is a similar case. Though creepy, it's not up to the writer's usual standards.I do have to say I'm a little irritated with the back cover. It totally gives away the plots and major dramatic points of several stories! The Lurking Fear is supposed to have a shocking ending when you realize wher

The Smallest Gems...

...oft shine the brightest.This is a gorgeous selection of H. P. Lovecraft's most often ignored gems, his short-short stories. His sole novel (albeit a short one), "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" - and one of his better long classics, The Shadow Over Innsmouth - are also included, along with some of the less frequently anthologized straight horror pieces of the author's body of work, such as "The Lurking Fear." But it's the inclusion of the horror master's best short-shorts that makes this collection really shine, never seen together under a single cover."The Hound" - perhaps the first of the famous Cthulhu Mythos, as the original story to feature the dreaded Necronomicon - finds a pair of foolhardy occult collectors using the black magic tome to track down and grave-rob a buried occult amulet, with disastrous results. "The Outsider" is the unforgettable tale of an imprisoned man coming to a soul-shattering self discovery. "The Unnamable" is what two idle philosophers, discussing the formless nature of fear, find themselves unexpectedly confronting in the flesh. "Herbert West: Reanimator" concocts a serum which reanimates dead flesh, only to have it start tracking him down. And a terrified refugee from a vanished scientist's house relates the man's horrible fate due to creatures "From Beyond."This is an excellent companion volume to Del Rey's "The Best of H. P. Lovecraft," essentially containing the complementary balance of stories missing from that collection. It's also a great Lovecraft primer - anyone unfamiliar with the author's work couldn't ask for a better first exposure to it. A very handsome and compact volume, Waking Up Screaming is sure to be a welcome addition to any collector of Lovecraftiana.Beware - for "That is not dead, which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons, even death may die..."

LOVECRAFT RISES AGAIN IN 2003!

Just when it looked like Mundania would steal our sanity, thankCthulhu H.P.Lovecraft's best short horror tales have been reissued by DelRey/Ballantine! This essential collection containsthe short novel HERBERT WEST:REANIMATOR and the full novel THECASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. Add in the classic Cthulhu Mythostale THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH and such gems as THE HOUND andTHE LURKING FEAR and you have the ultimate read for HPL fans in2003! ...