Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales

The thirty stories in this superior collection are remarkable for showing how harmoniously Kiernan’s own visionary weird fiction resonates with the best cosmic horror tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Some selections, such as “Pickman’s Other Model (1929),” are ingenious extensions of well-known Lovecraft works. Others, including “From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6” and “The Drowned Geologist (1898),” riff on the cosmic conspiracies rampant in Lovecraft’s mythos fiction. In a clutch of tales that includes “So Runs the World Away” and “Love Is Forbidden, We Croak & Howl,” Kiernan goes full gothic, elaborating a dark fantasy world populated by ghouls, vampires, and other eldritch beings. No matter how strange or outré the phenomena, Kiernan meticulously builds details into her stories that ground them in a believable reality, such as the paleontological data that evokes vast expanses of time in “A Mountain Walked” and the scientifically credible rendering of an extraterrestrial colony in the book’s one new story, “M Is for Mars.” This is a must-have for fans of Kiernan’s work or the Cthulhu Mythos. Agent: Merrilee Heifetz, Writers House. (Oct.)