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Abraham Grace Merritt (1884-1943) was an American writer who worked mainly in the genres of mystery, fantasy and mystery noir detective. Developing the literary tradition of dark romanticism, initiated by Edgar Poe and continued by the bizarre prose of Ambrose Bierce, Abraham Merritt was one of the most popular writers of this trend in the 20s and 30s of the last century. His work had a significant influence on many later iconic writers, such as Howard Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury and others.

An interesting fact in the creative biography of Abraham Merritt is the unusual experience of cooperation between prominent masters of bizarre prose, when he joined forces with Robert Howard, Howard Lovecraft, Catherine Moore and Frank Long to create the novel «Call from the Beyond». The work was written in a "chain", where each author continued the text of the previous one.

A researcher of folklore and the occult, an ardent supporter of dark literature, a singer of lost worlds, ancient gods and incredible adventures, Abraham Merritt skilfully intertwined his bizarre stories with no less fantastic ancient beliefs. In most of his stories, Abraham Merritt describes the collision of modern man's science and rational worldview with the sinister wonders of ancient times. As a student of archaeology and ethnography, Merritt knew that not everything in the world can be rationally explained, and that sometimes things happen that modern science is at a loss to explain, but which are well known to the science of antiquity, which in modern times is called magic and is classified as dark forbidden knowledge. Abraham Merritt usually talks about such things in his works, with his characteristic serious immersion in the subject of the story and his extraordinary talent as a master storyteller of stunning and mysterious stories.

This book contains two classic stories "Burn, Witch, Burn!" and "Crawl, Shadow, Crawl!"

"Burn, Witch, Burn! "is a rare example of a mystical noir detective story about a series of mysterious and sinister events in 1930s New York City, when the doctor and scientist Dr Lovell and the famous gangster Rikori confront the evil ancient spells that are spreading across the city, destroying all those who fall into their clutches. "The dark flame of sinister wisdom that thickened the shadows of the Stonehenge stones bent in thought; which later fed at the hands of Roman legionnaires; which, who knows why, was gaining strength in medieval Europe, and is still burning, still alive and powerful," Dr Lovell notes in his notes entitled "Madame Mendelip's Devil Dolls", and he is not mincing words here.

In the pages of Crawl, Shadow, Crawl, the ancient Breton legend of the lost and cursed city of Is, its king Gradlon, and his witch daughter, the blonde Dagut, who is controlled by shadows, comes to life. As the story spirals, the ancient city, with its dark magic, bloody rituals and service to the otherworldly gods, comes back to life to repeat all the bizarre twists and turns of the ancient legend.

Afterword by the writer, literary critic and translator Yevgeny Lear, in which he talks about the contexts of Abraham Merritt's work and his important place in the literature of the bizarre and the wonderful.