Carcosa, the imprint founded by Karl Edward Wagner with partners David Drake and Jim Groce, came to be partially out of the concern that Arkham House would close shop after the death of August Derleth in 1971. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. But for me, the four Carcosa volumes are Arkham House books by extension. They are design-executed as traditional AH titles and are absolutely essential books in the macabre-fantasy genres.

In 1983, my first Carcosa purchase was Lonely Vigils, bought from the late Barry Levin, a high-end book dealer here in SoCal for the (then for me crazy expensive) price of $75 for a "subscriber's copy”. I own it still. And back then, before the internet made nothing rare, it took years to find a copy of Worse Things Waiting. None of the name dealers had one. My eventual copy came from Stuart David Schiff and was I ever grateful to have it. I’ve since had a few different copies and now own a very fine “subscribers copy” (sort of).

Although I’m sure I first encountered his work through Arkham House, I believe Worse Things Waiting was my first serious exposure to the creepy art of Lee Brown Coye. With Hugh B. Cave's Murgunstrumm and Others, Coye really cranked the grue up even more, clearly inspired by Cave's wonderfully ghoulish stories. It was during the course of working with Lee on the Carcosa books that Wagner heard the story from Coye which sparked the classic horror tale, “Sticks”.

Each book is a treasure, but over time I’ve come to feel that Far Lands, Other Days by E. Hoffmann Price may be the treasure among the treasures. The stories are filled with the exotic color of bygone days like few others. This book, along with Wellman's Lonely Vigils, was illustrated by George Evans, an artist mainly associated with EC Comics of the 1950s. His work is fantastic, capturing the period feel of those bygone days, like watching old Warner Bros. movies from the 1930s with their gritty, chiaroscuro quality. It was a brilliant coup by Wagner to enlist Evans. I just wish Evans would have illustrated more books.

Carcosa published only four books, spanning the years 1973 to 1981. Another Cave book was in the works, Death Stalks the Night, and I once read there was an additional Wellman book titled Don't Look Behind You planned, but they were not meant to be. The Cave book eventually saw print from Fedogan & Bremer, salvaging what Coye illustrations they could find, but without a Coye cover and formatted in the Fedogan “house” style, it wasn’t quite the same. But it was great to have regardless.

The Carcosa volumes can be found on the secondary market quite easily now, in our modern era where nothing is rare anymore. I don't know if that's such a good thing. Sometimes that long-suffering search made things more worthwhile.

Robert Barr is a life-long bibliophile. He founded Shadowridge Press in 2012 with the purpose of publishing the best in new and vintage macabre fiction—along with whatever else struck his fancy. Two of the books published by Shadowridge are affordable reprintings of the Carcosa editions of Worse Things Waiting and Lonely Vigils.