Why am I passionate about this?

I wouldn't call myself a cosmic horror expert, but I've read quite a few of the expected authors--Dunsany, Machen, Lovecraft, Blackwood, Howard, etc--and I've written novels and short fiction in the genre and have been asked to panel and talk about it for years at professional events. How can a fictional narrative contain villains so powerful that human beings have no way to understand, let alone resist them? I like exploring that impossibility in my own writing, and I feel compelled to subvert its historical legacy of colonialism and racism where I can. It is not a genre that needs reclaiming but rewriting, and it is rife with possibilities. 


I wrote

Beneath the Rising

By Premee Mohamed,

Book cover of Beneath the Rising

What is my book about?

Nick Prasad has always enjoyed a quiet life in the shadow of his best friend, child prodigy, and technological genius…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Hammers on Bone

Premee Mohamed Why did I love this book?

Khaw, known for their genre-spanning sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, does a terrific job flipping the script on many older cosmic horror tropes in this cosmic horror noir novella. In crisp, graceful prose we watch as the unknowable monsters threatening our hero (and his client) turn out to be human, and the powerful forces assisting them are the more traditional horrors. I love it when cosmic horror is presented in a way that lets imagination do the work, and Khaw delivers here--leaving mysteries intact, and letting the reader scare themselves.

By Cassandra Khaw,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Hammers on Bone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Cassandra Khaw bursts onto the scene with Hammers on Bone, a hard-boiled horror show that Charles Stross calls "possibly the most promising horror debut of 2016." A finalist for the British Fantasy award and the Locus Award for Best Novella!

John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.

He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and…


Book cover of The Ballad of Black Tom

Premee Mohamed Why did I love this book?

Older cosmic horror often contained misogyny, classism, ableism, and flat-out racism. The Ballad of Black Tom turns a spotlight right back onto that legacy, taking H.P. Lovecraft's story 'The Horror at Red Hook' and telling the story from the point of view of a Black man who resists getting pulled into a scheme involving evil magic and ancient gods. It does not flinch from the racism either of the story, or of the period in general, and in so doing, exposes the narrative flaws and the xenophobia of the source material. I found it a sharp, fresh presentation of a perfectly paced story.

By Victor LaValle,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Ballad of Black Tom as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic…


Book cover of Can You Sign My Tentacle?: Poems

Premee Mohamed Why did I love this book?

This book of poems is a truly unexpected combination of current pop culture, social commentary, and cosmic horror--and a hugely enjoyable read. It deals with the themes of sacrifice, thoughtless loyalty, collusion, survival, colonialism, and the very idea of the monstrous. How do we know when the forces around us are asking too much of us? How can we trust what we will get in return? How do our personal histories inform how we will respond to the void when it comes knocking? A lively, thoughtful read.  

By Brandon O'Brien,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Can You Sign My Tentacle? as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 New Release in Caribbean & Latin American Poetry
Cthulhu meets hip-hop in this book of horror poems that flips the eldritch genre upside down. Lovecraftian-inspired nightmares are reversed as O'Brien asks readers to see Blackness as radically significant. Can You Sign My Tentacle? explores the monsters we know and the ones that hide behind racism, sexism, and violence, resulting in poems that are both comic and cosmic.


Book cover of Winter Tide

Premee Mohamed Why did I love this book?

I was honoured to panel with Emrys at a con a few years ago, where it was clear that she was a cosmic horror expert and had done reams more reading on its context, legacy, influences, and analysis than the rest of us. What she writes with all that scholarship, though, is deeply human, affecting, and emotional. In focusing on the persecuted people of Innsmouth, this book becomes a study of family and connection, and answers in a very different way the traditional cosmic horror questions of 'What is a monster?' and 'How do we decide what should be called monstrous?'  

By Ruthanna Emrys,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Winter Tide as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Two decades ago the U.S. government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them to a desert prison, far from their ocean, their Deep One ancestors, and their sleeping god, Cthulhu. Only Aphra and Caleb Marsh survived the camps, emerging without a past or a future.

Now it's 1949, and the government that stole Aphra's life needs her help. FBI Agent Ron Spector believes that Communist spies have stolen dangerous magical secrets from Miskatonic University, secrets that could turn the Cold War hot in an instant and hasten the end of the human race.

Aphra must return to the…


Book cover of The Fisherman

Premee Mohamed Why did I love this book?

This book tells a small, human story of grief and loss, set in a cleverly nested series of reveals about the horror of the history of a particular area. What I loved most about this book was the grandness and scale of the eldritch creatures that the characters face (at different times, with different weapons, and with varied ideas of what on earth is going on)--this felt truly cosmic to me, a real look into the abyss. I also loved how the horrors were presented in the mind as well as the world, which constantly kept me on my toes.

By John Langan,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Fisherman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's…


Explore my book 😀

Beneath the Rising

By Premee Mohamed,

Book cover of Beneath the Rising

What is my book about?

Nick Prasad has always enjoyed a quiet life in the shadow of his best friend, child prodigy, and technological genius Joanna ‘Johnny’ Chambers. But all that is about to end. When Johnny invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity. From the oldest library in the world to the ruins of Nineveh, hunted at every turn, they will need to trust each other completely to survive…

Book cover of Hammers on Bone
Book cover of The Ballad of Black Tom
Book cover of Can You Sign My Tentacle?: Poems

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The Nightmarchers

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Book cover of The Nightmarchers

J. Lincoln Fenn Author Of The Nightmarchers

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Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.

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What is my book about?

In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.

Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…

The Nightmarchers

By J. Lincoln Fenn,

What is this book about?

From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.

In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?

It all seems like ancient family history to…


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