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A wide-ranging and friendly journey through H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of cosmic terror and wonder, Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales provides the ideal companion to the work of the twentieth century’s greatest American horrorist. 

Kenneth Hite turns his game designer’s eye on the structures and connections of Lovecraft’s stories, revealing the threads and themes running between them. Hite alternately ambles and careens through all of the Master’s horror tales in chronological order from “The Tomb” to “The Haunter of the Dark,” offering cheerful opinion, incisive literary criticism, playful speculation, and the occasional unhinged rant. It’s a response to Lovecraft, and to his occasionally humorless critics, that offers you Edmund Burke’s Gothic perspective on Cthulhu side-by-side with “The Haunter of the Dark” considered as Grail quest.

In this new edition, Hite expands his coverage to include Lovecraft’s collaborations and revisions, the sublime sonnet cycle Fungi From Yuggoth, and highlights of HPL’s nonfiction including “Something About Cats” and Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Praise for Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales!

“Kenneth Hite’s Tour de Lovecraft is indispensable. Thorough, insightful, and compellingly readable, it’s a perfect introduction for newcomers to Lovecraft and an endlessly fascinating review for long-time Lovecraft addicts. This is the companion-book to Lovecraft’s fiction—I read it entirely in one sitting, and I know I’m going to read it again many times over the coming years.”

— Tim Powers, author of Declare and Last Call

“Lovecraft can be terrifying for all the wrong reasons. Kenneth Hite’s charming and accessible Tour makes it much, much simpler. This is a sharp, engaging survey of Lovecraft’s most important stories, sure to bring inspiration to new fans and fresh epiphanies to longtime devotees. And I’d recommend it to any teacher looking for an introductory critical companion to the fiction itself.”

— Stephen H. Segal, editorial director, Weird Tales magazine

“The prospect of Ken turning his strange illumination upon Lovecraft’s corpus was too delightful to resist. My attention was rewarded, as will be yours, with his many insights, associations, and criticisms of these familiar tales.”

— John Scott Tynes, creator of Delta Green, from his Foreword

“Simply put, Ken Hite knows his stuff. If you have any interest in Lovecraft beyond Cthulhu kitsch, you owe it to yourself to read this.”

— Richard Dansky, author of Firefly Rain

“Tour de Lovecraft is an insightful and witty romp through the fiction of the twentieth century’s master of horror.”

— Daniel Harms, author of The Necronomicon Files and The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales, Expanded Edition is ©2021 by Kenneth Hite. All rights reserved. Please don’t pirate this book, or the Terrible Old Man will be Terribly Upset.