Local author Matt Ruff told us it was coming last month, but today it's official: HarperCollins will publish Ruff's next novel, Lovecraft Country. On his blog, Ruff explains:

It’s a supernatural historical drama set in the 1950s. The protagonist is Atticus Turner, an African-American soldier just back from the Korean War. He comes home to Chicago and takes a job as a researcher for The Safe Negro Travel Guide, which lists and reviews hotels and restaurants that accept black customers. Atticus is also a pulp-fiction fan, and the novel describes how he and the members of his extended family get drawn into a series of real-life weird tales. These individual episodes fit into a larger arc story about a white-supremacist secret society that wants to use Atticus in its scheming.

Lovecraft Country will be published in 2015 or very early 2016. Ruff read a rough draft of the work at the Hugo House a few years back, and it sounds like it'll be worth the wait.