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What Was It?

“[When O’Brien] turned to science fiction and fantasy, he began to display the full force of his truly outstanding talents.” – Sam Moskowitz

What Was It? and Others (1858-1864) showcases O’Brien’s finest speculative fiction, reflecting his growth as a writer. This collection includes “What Was It?”, featuring an encounter with a strange invisible creature, “The Lost Room”, regarded as one of the greatest weird stories ever written, and “The Wondersmith”, where animated puppets are used for diabolical revenge. These stories cemented O’Brien’s legacy, demonstrating his mastery of the genre and his ability to craft unsettling, imaginative narratives that have endured through time.

This is volume three of a three-volume set of Fitz-James O’Brien’s fiction and poetry, the most comprehensive collection of his horror and supernatural writings to date. When taken together, the full set offers valuable introductions for readers of fantastical literature, featuring works never previously collected and some appearing for the first time outside their original publications.

Cover art by Brian Coldrick
Introduction by John P. Irish

ISBN: 978-1-78380-053-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-786-4 (pbk)

The Diamond Lens

“Fitz-James O’Brien is the most important figure after Poe and before Lovecraft in modern horror literature.” – Jessica Amanda Salmonson

The Diamond Lens and Others (1855-1858) collects O’Brien’s earliest speculative fiction written in America. This volume marks his initial exploration into what would become his signature genre—tales of the outré and macabre. Within its pages, readers will encounter tales and poems of fantastical spirits, monomania, nightmarish hallucinations, and dark fantasy. The collection culminates with “The Diamond Lens”, the story that catapulted O’Brien to national recognition. This volume captures the further development of his unique style and thematic preoccupations.

This is volume two of a three-volume set of Fitz-James O’Brien’s fiction and poetry, the most comprehensive collection of his horror and supernatural writings to date. When taken together, the full set offers valuable introductions for readers of fantastical literature, featuring works never previously collected and some appearing for the first time outside their original publications.

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

Cover art by Brian Coldrick
Introduction by John P. Irish

ISBN: 978-1-78380-052-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-785-7 (pbk)

An Arabian Night-mare

“O’Brien’s early death undoubtedly deprived us of some masterful tales of strangeness and terror.” – H. P. Lovecraft

An Arabian Night-mare and Others (1848-1854) gathers O’Brien’s earliest speculative fiction. The collection opens with the eerie poem “Forest Thoughts”, a meditation on dark Gothic themes, and concludes with the story “A Peep Behind the Scenes”, which explores the metaphorical theater of life. Between these bookends, readers will find poems, fragments, and stories that delve into liminal spaces, nightmares, wild fantasies, and the unsettling theme of mental deterioration. This collection showcases O’Brien’s early fascination with the blurred boundaries between reality and imagination.

This is volume one of a three-volume set of Fitz-James O’Brien’s fiction and poetry, the most comprehensive collection of his horror and supernatural writings to date. When taken together, the full set offers valuable introductions for readers of fantastical literature, featuring works never previously collected and some appearing for the first time outside their original publications.

Cover art by Brian Coldrick
Introduction by John P. Irish

ISBN: 978-1-78380-057-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-784-0 (pbk)

Strange South Seas

“There are places in the Pacific almost as far away as another star.”

In the magical and beautiful islands of the South Seas, belief in the supernatural can mean the difference between life and death. Beatrice Grimshaw, though born and raised in Ireland, lived and breathed the culture of the islands for most of her adult life. In these stories, she conjures the Pacific’s darker side, where sorcerers practice their ancient craft, where enchanting forests ensnare the unwary, where ghosts linger for thousands of years, and where beauty often casts a sinister shadow. Strange South Seas is the first collection gathering together a career-spanning selection of Grimshaw’s spectral and speculative tales depicting terrains at the edge of the world and beyond.

Please note: Some stories in this collection include colonial attitudes and racist language. The stories are reprinted as they originally appeared. 

Hardback edition limited to 350 copies.

Selected and introduced by Mike Ashley
Cover art by Brian Coldrick

ISBN: 978-1-78380-055-1 (hbk)

A Mind Turned in Upon Itself

“He stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.” – M. R. James

A major influence on M. R. James, considered by Henry James “ideal reading for the hours after midnight”, and thought to be one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker’s Dracula through his classic vampire tale “Carmilla”—Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ghost stories continue to loom large in the Gothic imagination.

This study considers Le Fanu’s troubled life, his haunting stories, and his continued influence on horror literature by exploring the richness of his imagination, and the finesse with which he expands upon and combines elements of Irish folklore, the mysticism of Swedenborg, and the nascent science of psychology. In this volume, Jim Rockhill goes beyond such classics as “Green Tea” and “Schalken the Painter” by examining the manifold avenues of terror offered throughout the work of Ireland’s master of supernatural terror.

  • More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Hardback edition limited to 350 copies.
Signed by the author.

Cover art by John Coulthart

ISBN: 978-1-78380-056-8 (hbk)

A Mystery of Remnant

“The death itself was not a bodily thing.”

A ghost is an absence defined by its presence, or else a presence defined by its absence. The work of Brian Catling is filled with such visions, intrusions on the threshold of our world and the next. The stories collected within are fragments of a singular imagination, portals into worlds populated by dog-headed giants and reanimated bog bodies, spirits both beastly and mundane. These are tales about visionaries and mystics, about the need to venture into blurry territories of sight in which angels, ghosts and memories merge and reform. Together they showcase the distinctive voice underlying the very best of Catling’s work.

  • Includes three postcards with photos by Iain Sinclair and texts by Alan Moore

Hardback edition limited to 500 copies.

Cover art by Eleanor Crook
Foreword by Jack Catling
Introduction by Victor Rees
Afterword by Iain Sinclair

ISBN: 978-1-78380-054-4 (hbk)

Uncertainties 7

“It came out of the dark, and into the dark it has gone again.” – E. F. Benson

“Ghost stories,” as Elizabeth Bowen observed, “are not easy to write—least easy now, for they involve more than they did.” But these eleven writers take up the challenge, each in their own way, with expert awareness of the genre’s limitless possibilities.

Uncertainties is an anthology series—featuring authors from Wales, England, Germany, Canada, and the United States—each exploring the concept 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, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .

Hardback edition limited to 425 copies.

Cover art by James F. Johnston
Selected by Carly Holmes

ISBN: 978-1-78380-050-6 (hbk)

Atmospheric Disturbances

“In its dim depths living things scurried and fluttered, but human voices were very rarely heard.” – The West Window

A glimpse of a grotesque illustration combined with the onset of fever instigate a descent into a hellish nightmare. In the wine cellar of an abandoned mansion, something alluring yet ominous is sealed inside a vintage bottle. At the end of a claustrophobically narrow alley lies a gilded façade opulent enough to tempt a thief. And forty miles out to sea, a naturalist on a lonely island hears voices through the radio telling stories of unimaginable disaster—and hope. In her second collection, award-winning author Helen Grant visits Flanders, Paris, and the remotest parts of Scotland, examining themes of transgression, repercussion, and revenge.

Hardback edition limited to 425 copies.
Signed by the author.

Cover art by John Coulthart

ISBN: 978-1-78380-049-0 (hbk)

Friends and Spectres

“If there is anything about which the present generation is bewilderingly well-informed it is the subject of spooks.” – “Seraphita”

Friends and Spectres is a companion volume to Ghosts of the Chit-Chat (2020), an anthology of ghost stories by authors who had been members of the Cambridge University Chit-Chat Club along with M. R. James. Here the associations with MRJ are less formal, but stronger and more enduring: for it is the bond of genuine friendship that ties these writers to him.

The majority of pieces here were originally published under pseudonyms, and over half appeared first in amateur magazines or local newspapers. All deal with the supernatural, and several of the stories are themselves spectres—or more properly “revenants”, only now re-emerging into the light after decades of oblivion. There are rediscoveries here of “lost” tales by Arthur Reed Ropes, E. G. Swain, and the enigmatic “B.”

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

Cover art by John Coulthart
Selected and introduced by Robert Lloyd Parry

ISBN: 978-1-78380-048-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-783-3 (pbk)

Lost Estates

“I am, and ever have been, a great reader . . . a library cormorant. I am deep in all out of the way books.” – S. T. Coleridge (1796)

The twelve stories in Lost Estates offer antiquarian mysteries, book-collecting adventures, and otherworldly encounters. Mark Valentine’s amiable scholars and wanderers explore lonely and mysterious landscapes, places of legend, and secret history. Though drawing on the traditions of English supernatural fiction, these stories also strike out into unusual terrain.

Mark Valentine’s short stories have been selected for the Ghosts & Scholars books edited by Rosemary Pardoe, Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle, Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Books of Ghost Stories edited by Richard Dalby, and many other anthologies.

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

Cover art by Jason Zerrillo

ISBN: 978-1-78380-047-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-782-6 (pbk)

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