Blog Archives

“Shortly after crossing La Touche Bridge and proceeding south along Rathmines Road, you will notice a nondescript and ultimately dead end lane stretching to the west. This is tiny Blackberry Lane, as evidenced by a sign bolted to the adjacent terrace, and in days past it was literally neither here nor there. This east-west lane was once a narrow and much lengthier bohreen beat through the dense foliage between the Earl of Meath’s lands to the south and the old Farm of St. Sepulchre to the north. It should arouse no curiosity that neither estate claimed this stretch of ground, as for countless generations it was primarily utilised by the dead. Until 1850, the lane served as a corpse road–a path used not only by funeral processions, but also, according to belief, by souls of the deceased.”

• This story was collected in The Bleeding Horse (2008)

This limited edition chapbook is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Jeffrey C. Roche

ISBN: N/A

“No. 70 Merrion Square has been published in two volumes and is told in a classic supernatural-tales style. Psychologist Dr. Sean McCormack is visiting his old friend in Dublin, Andrew Hampton, ‘this millennium’s master of the macabre,’ who fears he’s going mad. His address, 70 Merrion Square, once belonged to the Victorian ghost-story writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and Hampton’s first book after purchasing the house was a commercial flop. Since then, he has failed to write another book.

“Is Hampton going mad, and can McCormack help him? Set on a rainy night shortly before Christmas in an old haunted mansion, No. 70 Merrion Square has all the trappings of a memorable ghost story and is enhanced by Spurlock’s atmospheric drawings.” – The Harrow

This limited edition chapbook is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Duane Spurlock

ISBN: N/A

“Anyone familiar with Brian J. Showers’ supernatural stories, presented in the delightful miniature chapbooks of Swan River Press, so tastefully illustrated by Duane Spurlock and Meggan Kehrli, will not be disappointed by his latest publication: No. 70 Merrion Square. Aficionados will recognise the address of the Dublin house where the great Sheridan Le Fanu wrote some of his finest tales and spent the last lonely decades of his life. Showers has cleverly engaged with the motif of Le Fanu by writing a story in which the protagonist, a horror author seeking renewed inspiration, settles in the house and encounters troubling experiences.

“Inter-textual references, to classic and contemporary supernatural writers, constantly inform the narrative, making it great fun for the connoisseur; and it is threaded with a vein of wry humour, tastefully and effectively juxtaposed against the horror, never an easy task. Throughout, the narrative displays the author’s lucid prose style and easy pace, a hallmark of all his previous work: in a phrase, Showers is a damned good story-teller, as well as a master of atmosphere and a shrewdly informed practitioner of the ghostly tale. Working closely within established genre conventions–haunted house, ghostly possession, numinous dreams, the angry dead, the inspiration and alienation of the artist, and the borderland between insanity and the supernatural– Showers has written a superb tribute to Victorian Gothic set within 21st Century Dublin. Few modern writers can be as versed in the supernatural heritage of that atmospheric city, with its strange mix of glitzy economic miracle and elegantly sombre past.” – Peter Bell

This limited edition chapbook is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Duane Spurlock

ISBN: N/A

A struggling writer travels to a remote cottage in western Ireland for the solitude and inspiration he needs to finish writing his first novel. But when the forgotten secrets of the desolate landscape want to be remembered, he learns a lesson in fear, one more terrifying than any tale he could ever write. In the tradition of M. R. James and J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Brian J. Showers’s Tigh an Bhreithimh is a tale that is sure to please fans of the traditional ghost story.

“I really enjoyed Tigh an Bhreithimh, which is a nicely written ghost story set in a small town in Ireland. The atmosphere—puzzle and horror—is very well handled, and the folkways are interesting. The story is conveyed in a small, attractive chapbook with good line illustrations by Duane Spurlock.” – E. F. Bleiler

This limited edition chapbook is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Duane Spurlock

ISBN: N/A

“Small but perfectly formed, The Snow Came Softly Down by Brian J. Showers is a delightfully-produced little chapbook with its own ribbon marker and simple but effective line drawings by Duane Spurlock, containing ‘A Tale Concerning Ghosts’. You would expect from this, and from the old-fashioned typeface, that it is set in a more innocent era, and so it proves. M. R. James would probably disapprove of the decidedly benign spooks, but the tale cannot be faulted for atmosphere–especially the protagonist’s scary walk through the freezing woods on Christmas Eve. If I call the tone of the story ‘Dickensian’ it is meant as a compliment, evoking as it does those semi-mythical White Yuletides depicted on a certain type of Christmas card… but with added creepiness. Wordsworth’s poem ‘Lucy Gray’, possibly an inspiration to the tale and certainly complementing it, rounds off this charming book.” – Chico Kidd, All Hallows

This limited edition chapbook is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Duane Spurlock

ISBN: N/A

“Here is a small treat from The Swan River Press in Dublin, Ireland: an old-fashioned ghost story in a hand-sewn binding with soft covers and its own ribbon marker. Brian J. Showers, an expatriate American writer living in Dublin, reveals an expert hand at deploying the shadows and portents, ironic disclosures, and gradual accumulation of detail, which still make the masters of supernatural fiction so chillingly entertaining to this day. His tale of a lonely old tailor eking out a miserable existence who discovers ‘there is still enough faith for dark things to walk the night’ is a delightful folkloric ghost story in a gently facetious and slightly antique tone reminiscent of Charles Dickens and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The text is complemented by Meggan Kehrli’s arabesque cover design, six full-page illustrations, and an equal number of spot illustrations, all of which add to the work’s eerie charm. This is perfect fare for solitary reading on blustery autumn evenings or a group gathered round the holiday fireplace in expectation of a Winter’s Tale.” – Jim Rockhill, All Hallows

• Reprinted in Acquainted with the Night (Ash Tree Press, 2004)

This limited edition chapbook is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Meggan Kehrli

ISBN: N/A