Ghouljaw and Other Stories

Over the past several years, Clint Smith has established himself as a powerfully imaginative writer of weird fiction. In this first collection of short stories, Smith demonstrates the multifaceted talents that will establish him as one of the notable weird writers of his generation. What distinguishes Smith’s work is both the originality of its weird conceptions and its careful delineation of human character. One of his earliest tales, “Benthos,” features both these qualities, telling a grim tale of alienated youth and drug-taking that veers into the grotesquely supernatural. In “The Tell-Tale Offal,” Smith cleverly updates Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” in a grisly story of physical horror. In “What Happens in Hell Stays in Hell,” Smith uses the war in Afghanistan as a chilling backdrop to unthinkable horrors unleashed in the parched sands of the Middle East.

About the Author

S.T. Joshi is a leading authority on H.P. Lovecraft, as well as other writers mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction. He is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012). His award-winning biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996) was later expanded as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010).

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