Tales from the Miskatonic University Library

Edited by Darrell Schweitzer and John Ashmead. Cover art by J. K. Potter.

Miskatonic University, in fabled Arkham Massachusetts, has long been described in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his successors. Here in the library, under lock and key, are some of the world’s most dangerous books, most famously the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. There was a notably unpleasant incident in the late 1920s, when a certain Wilbur Whateley tried to steal that particular volume, and met a hideous fate. Fortunately, that time at least, the head librarian and his colleagues were able to save the Earth from the dreadful danger of the Dunwich Horror.

How safe are Miskatonic’s security precautions and what has perhaps disappeared from, or appeared in the collection since? What other creepy, maddening, extra-dimensional, or even sentient tomes reside on those forbidden shelves? What strange events have taken place among the stacks? Is there an inter-library loan system? Who, or what, comes after miscreants who fail to return books on time? In the modern, digital age, what would happen if some of the content escaped over the Internet? Are some of the books, or all of them, little more than slowly ticking time bombs? And what, dare we ask, can be found in the Cooking Section?

If you learn all the secrets of the Miskatonic University Library, will you go mad — or just wish you had?

A feast of bibliographical horrors by Don Webb, Adrian Cole, Dirk Flinthart, Harry Turtledove, P.D. Cacek, Will Murray, A.C. Wise, Marilyn Mattie Brahen, Douglas Wynne, Alex Shvartsman, James Van Pelt, Robert M. Price, and Darrell Schweitzer.

If you learn all the secrets of the Miskatonic University Library, will you go mad — or just wish you had?

Contents:

Introduction - John Ashmead
Another Introduction - Darrell Schweitzer
Slowly Ticking Time Bomb - Don Webb
The Third Movement - Adrian Cole
To Be in Ulthar on a Summer Afternoon - Dirk Flinthart
Interlibrary Loan - Harry Turtledove
A Trillion Young - Will Murray
The Paradox Collection - A.C. Wise
The Way to a Man’s Heart - Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen
The White Door - Douglas Wynne
One Small Change - P.D. Cacek
Recall Notice - Alex Shvartsman
The Children’s Collection - James Van Pelt
Not in the Card Catalog - Darrell Schweitzer
The Bonfire of the Blasphemies - Robert M. Price