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Table of Contents:

• Introduction - short fiction
• The Last Feast of Harlequin - (1990) - novelette
• The Spectacles in the Drawer - (1987) - short story
• Flowers of the Abyss - (1991) - short story
• Nethescurial - short story
• The Dreaming in Nortown - short story
• The Mystics of Muelenburg - (1987) - short story
• In the Shadow of Another World - short story
• The Cocoons - short story
• The Night School - short story
• The Glamour - short story
• The Library of Byzantium - (1988) - short story
• Miss Plarr - short story
• The Shadow at the Bottom of the World - (1990) - short story

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: In the Night, in the Dark - (1994) - essay
• Part One: Studies in Shadow (Noctuary) - (1994) - essay
• The Medusa - (1991) - novelette
• Conversations in a Dead Language - (1989) - short story
• The Prodigy of Dreams - (1986) - short story
• Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel - (1991) - short story
• Part Two: Discourse on Blackness (Noctuary) - (1994) - essay
• The Tsalal - (1994) - short story
• Mad Night of Atonement - (1989) - short story
• The Strange Design of Master Rignolo - (1989) - short story
• The Voice in the Bones - (1989) - short story
• Part Three: Notebook of the Night (Noctuary) - (1994) - essay
• The Master's Eyes Shining with Secrets - (1994) - short fiction
• Salvation by Doom - (1994) - short fiction
• New Faces in the City - (1994) - short fiction
• Autumnal - (1994) - short fiction
• One May Be Dreaming - (1994) - short fiction
• Death without End - (1994) - short fiction
• The Unfamiliar - (1994) - short fiction
• The Career of Nightmares - (1994) - short fiction
• The Physic - (1994) - short fiction
• The Demon Man - (1994) - short fiction
• The Puppet Masters - (1994) - short fiction
• The Spectral Estate - (1994) - short story
• Primordial Loathing - (1994) - short fiction
• The Nameless Horror - (1994) - short fiction
• Invocation to the Void - (1994) - short fiction
• The Mocking Mystery - (1994) - short fiction
• The Interminable Equation - (1994) - short fiction
• The Eternal Mirage - (1994) - short fiction
• The Order of Illusion - (1984) - short fiction

Two terrifying classics by "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction" (The Washington Post)

Thomas Ligotti's debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.

Ligotti's stories take on decaying cities and lurid dreamscapes in a style ranging from rich, ornamental prose to cold, clinical detachment. His raw and experimental work lays bare the unimportance of our world and the sickening madness of the human condition. Like the greatest writers of cosmic horror, Ligotti bends reality until it cracks, opening fissures through which he invites us to gaze on the unsettling darkness of the abyss below.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

This collection features tormented individuals who play out their doom in various odd little towns, as well as in dark sectors frequented by sinister and often blackly comical eccentrics. The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives.

These are selected examples of the forbidding array of persons and places that compose the mesmerizing fiction of Thomas Ligotti.

Contents:

• 1 - Purity - (2003) - shortstory
• 21 - The Town Manager - (2003) - shortstory
• 37 - Sideshow and Other Stories - (2003) - novelette
• 53 - The Clown Puppet - (1996) - shortstory
• 65 - The Red Tower - (1996) - shortstory
• 79 - My Case for Retributive Action - (2001) - novelette
• 97 - Our Temporary Supervisor - (2001) - shortstory
• 117 - His Shadow Shall Rise to a Higher House - (1997) - shortstory
• 125 - The Bells Will Sound Forever - (1997) - shortstory
• 135 - A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing - (1997) - shortstory
• 145 - When You Hear the Singing, You Will Know It Is Time - (1997) - shortstory
• 157 - Teatro Grottesco - (1996) - shortstory
• 179 - Gas Station Carnivals - (1996) - shortstory
• 199 - The Bungalow House - (1995) - novelette
• 225 - Severini - (1996) - shortstory
• 241 - The Shadow, The Darkness - (1999) - novelette
• 281 - Things They Will Never Tell You - poem
• 307 - This Degenerate Little Town - poem
• 329 - Envoi - poem

2010 Bram Stoker Award Nominee for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction. The Conspiracy against the Human Race is renowned horror writer Thomas Ligotti's first work of nonfiction. Through impressively wide-ranging discussions of and reflections on literary and philosophical works of a pessimistic bent, he shows that the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination. The worst and most plentiful horrors are instead to be found in reality. Mr. Ligotti's calm, but often bloodcurdling turns of phrase, evoke the dreadfulness of the human condition. Those who cannot bear the truth will pretend this is another work of fiction, but in doing so they perpetuate the conspiracy of the book's title. --David Benatar, author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence;Department of Philosophy, University of Cape Town, South Africa

The Conspiracy against the Human Race sets out what is perhaps the most sustained challenge yet to the intellectual blackmail that would oblige us to be eternally grateful for a gift we never invited. --From the Foreword by Ray Brassier

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1990. The story has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.
• The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2 (1991), edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsay Campbell
• The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 45th Anniversary Anthology (1994), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Edward L. Ferman
• Cthulhu 2000: A Lovecraftian Anthology (1995), edited by Jim Turner
• American Gothic Tales (1996), edited by Joyce Carol Oates
• American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's to Now (2009), edited by Peter Straub
• A Mountain Walked (2014), edited by S. T. Joshi

The story is included in the collections Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991), The Nightmare Factory (1996) and Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe (2015).

In the realm of the supernatural, Thomas Ligotti is the master of stylish, eerie writing of the highest quality. This new edition brings together his collected short stories with Teatro Grottesco, a sequence of new stories not published before.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword by Poppy Z. Brite
• Introduction: The Consolations of Horror
• Part 1: (from Songs of a Dead Dreamer)
  • The Frolic
  • Les Fleurs
  • Alice's Last Adventure
  • Dream of a Mannikin
  • The Chymist
  • Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes
  • Eye of the Lynx
  • The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise
  • The Lost Art of Twilight
  • The Troubles of Dr. Thoss
  • Masquerade of a Dead Sword
  • Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech
  • Dr. Locrian's Asylum
  • The Sect of the Idiot
  • The Greater Festival of Masks
  • The Music of the Moon
  • The Journal of J. P. Drapeau
  • Vastarien
• Part 2: Grimscribe
  • The Last Feast of Harlequin
  • The Spectacles in the Drawer
  • Flowers of the Abyss
  • Nethescurial
  • The Dreaming in Nortown
  • The Mystics of Muelenburg
  • In the Shadow of Another World
  • The Cocoons
  • The Night School
  • The Glamour
  • The Library of Byzantium
  • Miss Plarr
  • The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
• Part 3: (from Noctuary)
  • The Medusa
  • Conversations in a Dead Language
  • The Prodigy of Dreams
  • Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel
  • The Tsalal
  • Mad Night of Atonement
  • The Strange Designs of Master Rignolo
  • The Voice in the Bones
• Part 4: Teatro Grottesco and Other Tales
  • Teatro Grottesco
  • Severini
  • Gas Station Carnivals
  • The Bungalow House
  • The Clown Puppet
  • The Red Tower

Winner of the 1996 Stoker award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction, nominated for the 1997 BFA Best Short Fiction award.

This short story originally appeared in the collection The Nightmare Factory (1996). It has been subsequently republished several times.

Brings together some of the best works of master horror writer Thomas Ligotti. The title story The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is the tale of a small town that is gripped by a kind of existential darkness.

Often at the conclusion of an author interview, a question is posed, one that allows the subject to announce or promote forthcoming projects and publications. In the case of Thomas Ligotti, the response has invariably been to the effect that he never has any idea what he is going to produce in the future, if anything. Since he began publishing in the early 1980s, this answer has perhaps seemed somewhat disingenuous. Some may have thought that it was an affectation or diversionary tactic. After all, books under his name have since appeared on a somewhat regular, if not exactly prolific, schedule. But as the years went by, it became more and more apparent that Ligotti's output was at best haphazard. A chapbook here, a slim or full-fledged story collection there, a book of poetry or unclassifiable prose out of nowhere, and then at some point a quasi-academic statement of his philosophical ideas and attitudes. Such a scattered crop of writings is not unheard-of, but for one who toils in the genre of horror, whose practitioners are commonly hard at work on a daily basis, it does seem as paltry as it is directionless.

Accordingly, the present volume is another unexpected contribution to Ligotti's desultory offerings. And no one could be as surprised by its appearance as he was. As anyone knows who has followed his interviews and obsessions as they appear in his fiction, Ligotti must take his literary cues from a lifetime of, let us say, whimsical pathologies. Other authors may suffer writer's block. In the present case, the reason may be dubbed "existence block," one that persisted for some ten years. This is less than an ideal development for anyone, but for a word-monger it can spell the end. And yet the end did not arrive. During 2012, it seemed that it might in the form of a sudden collapse and subsequent hospitalization prefigured—one might speculate—by the abdominal crisis suffered by the character Grossvogel in Ligotti's story "The Shadow, The Darkness." Yet like the agony endured by the aforementioned figure, the one in question led only to a revitalization of creativity. This revitalization may not be exactly spectacular, but all the same here it is.

Throughout Ligotti's "career" as a horror writer, many of his stories have evolved from physical or emotional crises. And so it was with the surgical trauma that led to the stories in The Spectral Link, an event that is marginally mentioned in the first of these stories, "Metaphysica Morum." In the second story, "The Small People," Ligotti returns, although not precisely in the usual fashion, to his fixation with uncanny representations of the so-called human being. Having nearly ceased to exist as he lay on the surgeon's table, the imposing strangeness of the nature and vicissitudes of this life form once again arose in his imagination. So what project and publications are forthcoming from Thomas Ligotti? As ever, not even he knows.

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Metaphysica Morum
• The Small People

Songs of a Dreamer was Thomas Ligotti's first collection of supernatural horror stories. When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris's Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: "Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs."

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (Songs of a Dead Dreamer) - (1985) - essay by Ramsey Campbell
• 3 - The Frolic - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 19 - Les Fleurs - (1981) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 28 - Alice's Last Adventure - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 49 - Dream of a Mannikin - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 66 - The Chymist - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 1] - (1981) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 79 - Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 2] - (1982) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 90 - Eye of the Lynx - [The Nyctalops Trilogy - 3] - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 100 - Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story - (1985) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti
• 125 - The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise: A Tale of Possession in Old Grosse Pointe - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 135 - The Lost Art of Twilight - (1986) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 155 - The Troubles of Dr. Thoss - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 168 - Masquerade of a Dead Sword: A Tragedie - (1986) - novelette by Thomas Ligotti (variant of Masquerade of a Dead Sword)
• 191 - Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech - (1983) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 202 - Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 213 - Dr. Locrian's Asylum - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 224 - The Sect of the Idiot - [Azathoth] - (1988) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 236 - The Greater Festival of Masks - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 244 - The Music of the Moon - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 253 - The Journal of J. P. Drapeau - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• 260 - Vastarien - (1987) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti