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Seventeen Stories

“The general effect was a bizarrerie of half-weird sheen and gloom.” – M. P. Shiel

Mark Valentine’s stories have been described by critic Rick Kleffel as “consistently amazing and inexplicably beautiful”. He has been called “A superb writer, among the leading practitioners of classic supernatural fiction” by Michael Dirda of The Washington Post, and his work is regularly chosen for year’s best and other anthologies.

This new selection offers previously uncollected or hard to find tales in the finest traditions of the strange and fantastic. As well as tributes to the masters of the field, Valentine provides his own original and otherworldly visions, with what Supernatural Tales has called “the author’s trademark erudition” in “unusual byways of history, folklore and general scholarship”. Opening a book will never seem quite the same again after encountering this curious volume of Seventeen Stories . . .

  • “The Axholme Toll” and “The Fall of the King of Babylon” were both selected for Stephen Jones’s Best New Horror.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Jason Zerrillo

ISBN: 978-0-95665-879-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-743-7 (pbk)

Here with the Shadows

“Far better to choose an absence than to have an absence forced upon you.”

These stories by award-winning author Steve Rasnic Tem drag from the darkness ghosts that haunt us all. Between these covers lurk the spectres of grief, loss, and loneliness: a man discovers he is far from alone in his empty home, a forlorn wife is gifted with an unusual child, a contractor contemplates the sad message left by a grieving father, a blind woman discovers a spiritual manifestation at the edge of a forest, a spectral presence appears in a lonesome Colorado wheat field . . . Here with the Shadows is a volume of supernatural impressions and quiet vacancies, and in each story Tem reminds us that sometimes only a whisper separates us from the eternal.

  • “The Still, Cold Air” was selected for Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015

Hardback edition limited to 400 copies.

Cover art by Jason Zerrillo

ISBN: 978-1-78380-000-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-773-4 (pbk)

The Dark Return of Time

“I was searching for The Dark Return of Time on the ‘net. It’s odd, but there isn’t a copy for sale anywhere, and it doesn’t turn up on the British Library catalogue, the Library of Congress website, or the Bibliothèque Nationale.”

The past doesn’t always stay where it should. It is as though somebody, or something, is forever trying to bring it painfully into the present.

Flavian Bennett is trying to leave his past behind when he goes to work in his father’s bookshop in Paris. But a curious customer, Reginald Hopper, is desperate to resurrect his own murky origins. Hopper believes that a rare and mysterious book, The Dark Return of Time, may be the key to what happened before he arrived in Paris. In this quiet thriller by R. B. Russell, the futures—and pasts—of these two men will soon cross.

Hardback edition limited to 400 copies.

Cover art by Jason Zerrillo

ISBN: 978-1-78380-001-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-774-1 (pbk)

The Silver Voices

“I found the white cities just as they were in my dreams.” – Joseph Roth

Transylvania: the country beyond the forest and land of the seven fortress towns. In The Silver Voices we encounter the previously unknown eighth town: Sternbergstadt. Now known as Steaua de Munte, it’s one of those places where past and present continually meet, with no-one being entirely sure which has the upper hand. In Steaua de Munte history can never be said to be dead and buried; it plays too many tricks on the present and future for that.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Meggan Kehrli

ISBN: 978-1-78380-002-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-763-5 (pbk)

Dreams of Shadow and Smoke

“Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, and clothed in human flesh.” – Uncle Silas

With Henry James, Elizabeth Bowen, and James Joyce among his admirers, the ghost stories and novels of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) cast a long shadow on the literary landscape. Dreams of Shadow and Smoke features ten new tales of the fantastic and macabre written in celebration of the bicentenary of Dublin’s “Invisible Prince”. Revisit a world in which certain elixirs remain capable of awakening the mind to the presence of unknown forces; where the monuments, portraits, and other legacies of history lay traps for the unwary; and the logic of finance butts up against the unyielding rules of folklore. We would like to think that should Le Fanu be handed this book, he would smile at the results and deem it worthy of his consideration.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Jason Zerrillo
Introduction by Jim Rockhill & Brian J. Showers

ISBN: 978-1-78380-003-2 (hbk)

The Satyr

“It was the straying that found the path direct.” – Austin Osman Spare

In the final throes of the Blitz, Austin Osman Spare is the only salvation for Marlene, an artist escaping a traumatic past. Wandering Southwark’s ruins she encounters Paddy Hughes, a fugitive of another kind. Falling under Marlene’s spell Hughes agrees to seek out her lost mentor, the man she calls The Satyr. Yet Marlene’s past will not rest as the mysterious Doctor Charnock pursues them, trying to capture the patient she’d once caged. The Satyr is a tale inspired by the life and ethos of sorcerer and artist Austin Osman Spare.

Another three novellas of occult enchantment follow: a bookseller discovers that his late wife knew the Devil, in the Carpathian Mountains refugees shelter in a museum devoted to a forgotten author, and in Prague a portraitist must paint a countess whose appearance is never the same twice.

This omnibus is comprised of The Satyr (2010) and The Bestiary of Communion (2011); newly illustrated, expanded, and revised.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Stephen J. Clark

ISBN: 978-1-78380-007-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-741-3 (pbk)

The Anniversary of Never

“It was like a black and white film, or someone else’s memory.”

Joel Lane’s award-winning stories have been widely praised, notably by other masters of weird fiction such as M. John Harrison, Graham Joyce, and Ramsey Campbell. His tales also regularly appeared in the “best of” annual anthologies of Ellen Datlow, Karl Edward Wagner, and Stephen Jones. With this posthumous collection, Lane continues his unflinching exploration of the human condition.

“The Anniversary of Never is a group of tales concerned with the theme of the afterlife,” observed Lane, “and the idea that we may enter the afterlife before death, or find parts of it in our world.” These stories of love and death will burrow deep into the reader’s mind and impregnate it with a vision often as bleak as the night is black.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Polly Rose Morris
Introduction by Nicholas Royle

ISBN: 978-1-78380-008-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-749-9 (pbk)

Uncertainties 2

“Omnia exeunt in mysterium.” – Arthur Machen

“We think we know the world we live in, but we don’t—we very much don’t—and stories of the supernatural and strange, of the weird and the uncanny serve as a reminder of that.” – from the Foreword by Brian J. Showers

Uncertainties is an anthology of new writing—featuring contributions from Irish, British, and American authors—each exploring the idea of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as ‘winter’s tales’. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, and when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .

  • Steve Duffy’s “The Ice Beneath Us” and Gary McMahon’s “What’s Out There?” were chosen for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 2016.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Chris Priestly
Selected and edited by Brian J. Showers
Foreword by Brian J. Showers

ISBN: 978-1-78380-015-5 (hbk)

Uncertainties 1

“Turn and face the strange.” – David Bowie

“It may be my own imagining, or perhaps the cumulative effect of reading the entire book over a couple of evenings, but the contents appeared to grow darker as the pages turned.” – from the Foreword by John Connolly

Uncertainties is an anthology of new writing—featuring contributions from Irish, British, and American authors—each exploring the idea of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as ‘winter’s tales’. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, and when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .

  • Maura McHugh’s “The Light at the Centre” was selected for Stephen Jones’s Best New Horror #28

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Chris Priestly
Selected and edited by Brian J. Showers
Foreword by John Connolly

ISBN: 978-1-78380-014-8 (hbk)

You’ll Know When You Get There

“Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?” – Shirley Jackson

A woman returns home to revisit an encounter with the numinous; couples take up residence in houses full of sinister secrets; a man fleeing a failed marriage discovers something ancient and unknowable in rural Ireland . . .

In her introduction, Lisa Tuttle observes that “certain places are doomed, dangerous in some inexplicable, metaphysical way”, and the characters in these stories all seem drawn in their own ways to just such places, whether trying to return home or endeavouring to get as far from life as possible. These nine stories by Shirley Jackson Award winner Lynda E. Rucker tell tales of those lost and searching, often for something they cannot name, and encountering along the way the uncanny embedded in the everyday world.

  • “Who Is This Who Is Coming?” was selected for Stephen Jones’s Best New Horror #28.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Tobia Makover
Introduction by Lisa Tuttle

ISBN: 978-1-78380-013-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-755-0 (pbk)

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