Novels

• The Shattered Goddess (1982)
• The White Isle (1990)
• The Mask of the Sorcerer (1995)

Short Story Collections

• We Are All Legends (1981)
• Tom O'Bedlam's Night Out, and Other Strange Excursions (1985)
• Transients and Other Disquieting Stories (1993)
• Refugees from an Imaginary Country (1999)
• Necromancies and Netherworlds (1999) with Jason Van Hollander
• Nightscapes: Tales of the Ominous and Magical (2000)
• The Great World and the Small: More Tales of the Ominous and Magical (2001) with Jason Van Hollander
• Sekenre: The Book of the Sorcerer (2004)
• Living with the Dead (2008)

Poetry Collections

• Non Compost Mentis: An Affrontery of Limericks and Other Eldritch Metrical Terrors (1995)
• Poetica Dementia: Being a Further Accumulation of Metrical Offenses (1997)
• They Never Found His Head: Poems of Sentiment & Reflection (2001)
• The Innsmouth Tabernacle Choir Hymnal (2004)
• Groping Towards the Light (2005)
• Ghosts of Past and Future (2008)

Anthologies

• Tales from the Spaceport Bar (1986) with George H. Scithers
• Another Round at the Spaceport Bar (1989) with George H. Scithers

Nonfiction

• Lovecraft in the Cinema (1975)
• Essays Lovecraftian (1976)
• SF Voices (1976)
• The Dream Quest of H. P. Lovecraft (1978)
• On Writing Science Fiction (The Editors Strike Back!) (1981) with John M. Ford and George H. Scithers
• Discovering Modern Horror Fiction I (1985)
• Discovering Stephen King (1985)
• Exploring Fantasy Worlds (edited by) (1985)
• Discovering H. P. Lovecraft (1987) (a revised edition of Essays Lovecraftian correcting various errors and adding the essay Textual Problems in Lovecraft by S.T. Joshi). The Wildside Press edition (2001) adds a new introduction plus an additional essay, H.P. Lovecraft: The Books by Lin Carter, as updated by S.T. Joshi and Robert M. Price.
• Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II (1988)
• Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany (1989)
• Discovering Classic Horror Fiction I (1992)
• Lord Dunsany: A Bibliography (1993) with S. T. Joshi
• Speaking of Horror: Interviews with Writers of the Supernatural (1994)
• Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction (1997)
• Windows of the Imagination: Essays on Fantastic Literature (1998) [includes essays on H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, Richard Middleton, Lord Dunsany, Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe and many reviews.
• Speaking of the Fantastic (2002)
• The Thomas Ligotti Reader (2003)
• Speaking of the Fantastic II (2004)
• The Neil Gaiman Reader (2006)
• The Robert E. Howard Reader (2010)

Awards