Howard Phillips Lovecraft: which book should you start with?

Sorting through the papers of his great-uncle, who died suddenly, a man discovers strange notes, accounts of nightmares and a monstrous statuette. He gathers testimony from the four corners of the world, and follows the trail of a very ancient cult devoted to Cthulhu, a creature asleep at the bottom of the ocean. In this short tale, fear comes not from a monster you see, but from everything you sense. It is this story that created the Cthulhu myth, taken up since in games and novels. You can read it in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In Providence, in the United States, an old abandoned house has a sinister reputation: for more than a century, the people who have lived there have fallen ill and died one after another. The narrator and his uncle, an old doctor, search the town's archives. Then they decide to spend the night in the cellar, where a strange mould traces a human shape on the floor. Lovecraft set this short tale in a real street of his home town, and the fear grows little by little, from what you sense more than from what you see. You can read it in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In 1930, a scientific expedition sets out to explore Antarctica. Beyond mountains higher than the Himalayas, two men fly over a vast stone city, abandoned for millions of years. On its walls, carvings tell the story of its builders, who came from the stars long before mankind. The narrator is writing to stop a new expedition from leaving, and one question drives the whole story: what did they see out there? With the translation always in front of you, you can follow this expedition in the language you are learning.