One of the most sumptuous contemporary horror stylists gathers his 39 favorite short stories and appropriately has Arkham House publish the collection. "Appropriately" because Campbell's first published book bore the Arkham imprint and featured as its lead story (a role reprised here) a Lovecraft imitation and because, after all, Lovecraft and his spawn are Arkham's meat and potatoes. Although he wisely and quickly forged a less crabbed, more fluent style than Lovecraftian, Campbell has never forsaken the pulp master's manner. His stories tend to proceed through careful accumulation of detail (he is probably the most meticulous descriptive horror writer since Arthur Machen) to a surprising, usually shocking ending. The eyebrow arches at Campbell's statement that he hopes "that in time the [horror] genre will return to the mainstream," but certainly his kind of style, if hardly his choice of subject, promotes that development (see, on an altogether higher aesthetic plane, the stories of Paul Bowles).