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.


Contents:

- Foreword

Songs of a Dead Dreamer

Dreams for Sleepwalkers:
- The Frolic
- Les Fleurs
- Alice's Last Adventure
- Dream of a Manikin
- The Nyctalops Trilogy:
I. The Chymist
II. Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes
III. Eye of the Lynx
- Notes of the Writing if Horror: A Story

Dreams for Insomniacs:
- The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise
- The Lost Art of Twilight
- The Troubles of Dr. Thoss
- Masquerade of a Dead Sword: A Tragedie
- Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech
- Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror

Dreams for the Dead:
- 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

Grimscribe

The Voice of the Damned:
- The Last Feast of Harlequin
- The Spectacles in the Drawer
- Flowers of the Abyss
- Nethescurial

The Voice of the Demo:
- The Dreaming in Nortown
- The Mystics of Muelenburg
- In the Shadow of Another World
- The Cocoons

The Voice of the Dreamer:
- The Night School
- The Glamour

The Voice of the Child:
- The library of Byzantium
- Miss Plarr

The voice of our name:
- The Shadow at the Bottom of the World.