A nameless terror crossed the centuries... and engulfed the soul of Charles Dexter Ward, a brilliant New England antiquarian. Evil spirits, dark gods whose memory lived in half-understood legends and fear-stricken superstitious whispers lurked in the vile catacombs beneath the surface of the blighted land. It was these loathsome horrors whom Ward was driven to loose on a defenceless world—driven by the all-powerful shade of a dead ancestor who had mastered the blackest arts of magic. Now Ward too needed knowledge of these dark mysteries. To get it, he had to pay in blood. Human blood.

H.P. Lovecraft, the 20th Century's undisputed master of the horror story, wrote only one full-length novel. This is it.