Not Long for This World

The 22 tales which compose this collection are actually a kind of cross-section of Derleth's writing in the field up to 1948, the pick of twenty years of happy delving into the gruesome antics of creatures beyond the threshold of death. Here are such delicious spine-tinglers as the stories of a gibbet in the clouds, the man who returned to the scene of the crime (except that he had been the victim), the housewife who knew exactly what to do with a vampire, and (for gardeners) the strange effects of using human bodies as organic feeding matter. As well as many others too horrifying to describe . . .