"We all have our favorite books that we can (and do!) read over and over again. I can certainly name several: Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur; Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles; and Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar.
"And then there’s The Lurker at the Threshold, a big favorite of mine, which was widely credited to acclaimed horror writers H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. First published in the 1940s by Carroll & Graf, the book was, in reality, almost solely the work of Derleth, with barely a couple of thousand (if even that) of its approximately 50,000 words having been contributed by Lovecraft.
"The Lurker at the Threshold is a most intriguing book, to say the least. Although presented to the reader strictly as an entertaining work of fiction, it deals with certain issues that are central to many topics that crop up in the real world of Forteana, and with which I have crossed paths, time and again, during the course of my studies and writings of the paranormal kind."
And here's the rest of the post on this very curious saga...
Thanks for posting this - all very interesting stuff. I bought The Lurker at the Threshold 4 or 5 years ago, but it's been sitting on the shelf unread because I saw some rather poor reviews of it online. Now I will definitely put it top of my "to read" list! August Derleth certainly did the world a service by publicising the works of HPL after the latter's death, although his own fiction is variable in quality. Have you read any of his Solar Pons stories (Sherlock Holmes style pastiches set in the 1930s)? They're not really in the same league as Conan Doyle's originals, but still great fun to read!
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