The House in the Magnolias: The Collected Collaborations

August Derleth and Mark Schorer met as teenagers in Sauk City, Wisconsin. As early as 1926 they began a collaborative effort that would last for a decade and produce some of the most vivid weird fiction of the period. Although Derleth gathered many of these collaborations in Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People (1963), nearly a dozen stories were not included in that volume and are gathered here for the first time. They include striking tales of werewolves (“The Woman at Loon Point”), voodoo (“The House in the Magnolias,” “The Eyes of the Serpent”), and other classic weird motifs. A significant number of stories are elaborations upon the evolving pseudomythology of H. P. Lovecraft, including such tales as “The Horror from the Depths” and “The Lair of the Star-Spawn.” Both Derleth and Schorer went on to have distinguished literary careers, but these collaborations shed a distinctive light on their early literary interests and are rousingly entertaining stories to boot.