Herbert Gorman

The Place Called Dagon (Lovecraft's Library) Herbert Gorman First edition

Daniel Dreeme has come to the small Massachusetts town of Marlborough to pursue his medical practice; but he quickly discovers that there is more beneath the surface of this placid-seeming farming community than meets the eye. The mystery seems to center upon Jeffrey Westcott, a sardonic figure who has filled his house with strange books and speaks ominously of summoning up "old gods" at some region he terms "the place called Dagon." What role does his wife, the dark beauty Martha Westcott, play in this scenario? And is the saturnine preacher George Burroughs really as pious as he seems? When the Westcotts? hired man is killed in a particularly brutal fashion, Dreeme knows that he has become ineluctably enmeshed in a horror that may engulf both his body and his soul.

H. P. Lovecraft spoke highly of this novel in "Supernatural Horror in Literature," and for good reason. The Place Called Dagon (1927) uncannily reflects many of the themes in Lovecraft's own fiction, and probably influenced his tales "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and "The Dreams in the Witch House." This novel, whose very title is Lovecraftian, has waited too long to find a new generation of readers. As the latest in the the Lovecraft's Library series, it is now reprinted uncut and unabridged, with original artwork by Allen Koszowski, and contributions by noted Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi and Gorman expert Larry Creasy.