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Out of Print – Hardback
Collected Speculative Works
Fitz-James O'Brien
Published: March 2025
This three-volume set of Fitz-James O’Brien’s fiction is the most comprehensive collection of his horror and supernatural writings to date. It offers valuable material for readers of fantastical literature, featuring works never previously collected and some appearing for the first time outside their original publications. More on Fitz-James O’Brien can be found in issues of The Green Book A Peep behind the scenes: “Publishing Fitz-James O’Brien” Read an interview with editor John P. Irish Vol. 1: An Arabian Night-mare and Others (1848-1854) “O’Brien’s early death undoubtedly deprived us of some masterful tales of strangeness and terror.” – H. P. Lovecraft …
Friends and Spectres
Robert Lloyd Parry (Editor)
Published: June 2024
“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 …
Lost Estates
Mark Valentine
Published: May 2024
“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 …
Agents of Oblivion
Iain Sinclair
Published: May 2023
“How long have things been coming apart in this way?” – The Lure of Silence “Generally speaking the dead do not return,” pronounced Antonin Artaud. But the dead are permitted to visit those who welcome them. Their spectral, machine-made voices echo in deep tunnels under London. Voices without hosts. Without agency. They make their oracular pronouncements even when nobody is listening on the vast empty platforms of the Elizabeth Line. They have their codes and their secret meanings. Four stories starting everywhere and finishing in madness. Four acknowledged guides. Four tricksters. Four inspirations. Algernon Blackwood. Arthur Machen. J. G. Ballard. …
Now It’s Dark
Lynda E. Rucker
Published: January 2023
“Have I not always loved terrible things?” – “The Seventh Wave” A student’s research into an obscure pulp writer takes on increasingly sinister tones; three friends reunite to fight an evil they thought they’d escaped decades earlier; a woman in a seemingly perfect marriage finds herself haunted by the mysterious absences in her memories of their life together. In her third collection, Lynda E. Rucker reminds us that mystery lurks even in the most banal settings—a British holiday park, a Moldovan tower block, a stretch of industrial wasteland—but as these ten stories reveal, there can also remain a dreadful beauty …
The Lure of the Unknown
Algernon Blackwood
Published: April 2022
“Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.” – William Blake The Lure of the Unknown is a collection of Algernon Blackwood’s essays, talks, reviews and anecdotes exploring encounters with the strange and unusual or, in Blackwood’s preferred word, the “odd”. They include his first attempts to investigate alleged haunted houses, his association with such luminaries as W. B. Yeats, “A.E.”, and Gurdjieff; his thoughts on telepathy, reincarnation, elemental spirits, other dimensions, and his beliefs in what lies beyond our normal perceptions. These writings reveal not only Blackwood’s diverse experiences, but his depth of reading and analysis …
A Vanished Hand
Clotilde Graves
Published: October 2021
“Only the dead are faithful to Love—because they are dead.” Clotilde Graves was known for challenging convention. In her early years, she was known as the dramatist “Clo Graves”, but became better known under her fiction-writing persona, “Richard Dehan”. She transgressed contemporary gender norms by dressing in male attire, wearing her hair short, and smoking in public. This border crossing can be seen also in her work, which encompasses a wide variety of forms and modes. And while she wrote relatively few fantastical stories, she was devoted to tales of lingering revenants, mysterious cryptids, and grotesque sciences—often laced with her …
Eyes of Terror
L. T. Meade
Published: September 2021
“I was in the dark and alone, yet not alone.” Despite her wide contributions to genre literature, Irish author L. T. Meade is now remembered, if at all, for her girls’ school stories. However, in 1898 the Strand Magazine, famous for its fictions of crime, detection, and the uncanny, proclaimed Meade one of its most popular writers for her contributions to its signature fare. Her stories, widely published in popular fin de siècle magazines, included classic tales of the supernatural, but her specialty was medical or scientific mysteries featuring doctors, scientists, occult detectives, criminal women with weird powers, unusual medical …
Uncertainties 5
Brian J. Showers (Editor)
Published: April 2021
“Surely all this is not without meaning.” – Herman Melville “Ghost stories,” as Elizabeth Bowen observed, “are not easy to write—least easy now, for they involve more than they did.” But these twelve 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 Canada, America, the United Kingdom, and the island of Ireland—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 …
The Fatal Move
Conall Cearnach
Published: April 2021
“I cannot endure these frequent fits of terror much longer.” Written in Belfast and Bangor during the partition of Ireland, the six strange stories comprising Conall Cearnach’s The Fatal Move are unusual documents of the time. “Cearnach” was the pseudonym of F. W. O’Connell, a peculiar Protestant divine, linguist and Irish language scholar, oddball essayist, and early national broadcaster. His sole fiction collection showcases a wide scope: the conte cruel, the ghost story, the locked-room mystery, and the science-fictional satire. What unifies the stories is O’Connell’s playful, outward-looking perspective, inspired by his love of the diverse cultures and languages of …
Ghosts of the Chit-Chat
Robert Lloyd Parry (Editor)
Published: December 2020
“Such things may have attached to them heaven knows what spooks and spirits.” On the evening of Saturday, 28 October 1893, Cambridge University’s Chit-Chat Club convened its 601st meeting. Ten members and one guest gathered in the rooms of Montague Rhodes James, the Junior Dean of King’s College, and listened—with increasing absorption one suspects—as their host read “Two Ghost Stories”. Ghosts of the Chit-Chat celebrates this momentous event in the history of supernatural literature, the earliest dated record we have of M. R. James reading his ghost stories out loud. And it revives the contributions that other members made to …
The Death Spancel
Katharine Tynan
Published: November 2020
“Come to me, a lonely ghost, / Out of the night and rain.” Katharine Tynan is not a name immediately associated with the supernatural. However, like many other writers of the early twentieth century, she made numerous forays into literature of the ghostly and macabre, and throughout her career produced verse and prose that conveys a remarkable variety of eerie themes, moods, and narrative forms. From her early, elegiac stories, inspired by legends from the West of Ireland, to pulpier efforts featuring grave-robbers and ravenous rats, Tynan displays an eye for weird detail, compelling atmosphere, and a talent for rendering …
Munky
B. Catling
Published: July 2020
“There hadn’t been monks at the abbey since 1600. Not living ones, that is.” When the puckish spirit of a monk begins haunting the storied village of Pulborough, known for its ancient abbey, Maud Garner, manager of the Coach and Horses Inn, arranges for the famous ghost hunter, Walter Prince, to come investigate. And from there, things spiral out of control. Peopled with richly drawn Dickensian grotesques and filled with bizarre and comical incident, Munky is as compelling as it is antic. Catling transports the reader to an interwar England in the throes of change. Part bizarre ghost story, part …
Lucifer and the Child
Ethel Mannin
Published: April 2020
“She did not want to be organised at all. She wanted to be solitary and free.” This is the story of Jenny Flower, London slum child, who one day, on an outing to the country, meets a Dark Stranger with horns on his head. It is the first day of August—Lammas—a witches’ sabbath. Jenny was born on Hallowe’en, and possibly descended from witches herself . . . Reminiscent of Machen’s, “The White People”, Lucifer and the Child is a tale of witchcraft—or is it? The author does not commit herself; merely stating that the story is open to natural explanation; …
Uncertainties 4
Timothy J. Jarvis (Editor)
Published: February 2020
“We live in Gothic times.” – Angela Carter The Gothic tale, disreputable as it is, can, more readily than the realist short story, provoke unease and jolt us from complacency. Uncertainties is an anthology series—featuring authors from Britain, America, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines—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 Far Tower
Mark Valentine (Editor)
Published: December 2019
“All Art that is not mere story-telling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic . . . ” – W. B. Yeats Stories of magic and myth, folklore and fairy traditions, the occult and the outré, inspired by the rich mystical world of Ireland’s greatest poet, W. B. Yeats. We invited ten contemporary writers to celebrate Yeats’s contributions to the history of the fantastic and supernatural in literature, drawing on his work for their own new and original tales. Each has chosen a phrase from his poems, plays, stories, or essays to herald their own explorations in the esoteric. Alongside their own …
Green Tea
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Published: October 2019
“The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal ruin.” – Swedenborg Published alongside “Carmilla” in the landmark collection In a Glass Darkly (1872), Le Fanu’s “Green Tea” was first serialised in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round in 1869. Since its first publication, Le Fanu’s tale has lost none of its potency. “Green Tea” tells of the good natured Reverend Jennings, who writes late at night on arcane topics abetted by a steady supply of green tea. Is he insane or have these nocturnal activities opened an “interior sight” that affords a …
“Number Ninety”
B. M. Croker
Published: August 2019
“Did you never have a dream that haunted you, and terrified you, and made you ill at ease?” The bestselling Irish author B. M. Croker enjoyed a highly successful literary career from 1880 until her death forty years later. Her novels were witty and fast moving, set mostly in India and her native Ireland. Titles such as Proper Pride (1882) and Diana Barrington (1888) found popularity for their mix of romantic drama and Anglo-Indian military life. And, like many late-Victorian authors, Croker also wrote ghost stories for magazines and Christmas annuals. From the colonial nightmares such as “The Dâk Bungalow …
Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time
Rosa Mulholland
Published: April 2019
“The lonely graveyard is far away, an’ the dead man is hard to raise—” In the late-nineteenth century Rosa Mulholland (1841-1921) achieved great popularity and acclaim for her many novels, written for both an adult audience and younger readers. Several of these novels chronicled the lives of the poor, often incorporating rural Irish settings and folklore. Earlier in her career, Mulholland became one of the select band of authors employed by Charles Dickens to write stories for his popular magazine All the Year Round, together with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and Amelia B. Edwards. Mulholland’s best …
Bending to Earth
Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers
Published: March 2019
“He called to it and said, ‘Tell me what you are?’” Irish women have long produced literature of the gothic, uncanny, and supernatural. Bending to Earth draws together twelve such tales. While none of the authors herein were considered primarily writers of fantastical fiction during their lifetimes, they each wandered at some point in their careers into more speculative realms—some only briefly, others for lengthier stays. Names such as Charlotte Riddell and Rosa Mulholland will already be familiar to aficionados of the eerie, while Katharine Tynan and Clotilde Graves are sure to gain new admirers. From a ghost story in …
The Dummy
Nicholas Royle
Published: July 2018
“An uncanny effect often arises when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred . . .” – Sigmund Freud Nicholas Royle’s stories are “immaculately sinister”, according to Olivia Laing in the Times Literary Supplement, while Phil Baker, in the Sunday Times, described Royle as “a real craftsman of disquiet”. In his third collection, The Dummy & Other Uncanny Stories, Royle focuses on archetypes and phenomena that, through their particular melding of the familiar and the unfamiliar, produce uneasy, or uncanny, effects. In these stories he writes about doppelgängers, ghosts, dummies, disconnected body parts, impaired vision, the dead and the …
The House on the Borderland
William Hope Hodgson
Published: April 2018
I am an old man. I live here in this ancient house, surrounded by huge, unkempt gardens.” An exiled recluse, an ancient abode in the remote west of Ireland, nightly attacks by malevolent swine-things from a nearby pit, and cosmic vistas beyond time and space. The House on the Borderland has been praised by China Miéville, Terry Pratchett, and Clark Ashton Smith, while H. P. Lovecraft wrote, “Few can equal [Hodgson] in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and significant details, or in conveying feelings of the spectral and abnormal.” “Almost from the …
Death Makes Strangers of Us All
R. B. Russell
Published: February 2018
“She loved to dream, although she knew that the experiences conjured by her unconscious mind were inherently unreliable.” At the edges of everyday life, on geographical boundaries and in the margins of society, certainties and realities can wear thin. And if we find ourselves in such occult and outland territory late at night, we might glimpse phenomena out of the corner of our eye that cannot possibly be there. At such times even the past, apparently fixed and unchanging in memories and dreams, cannot be relied upon. But what happens if we find ourselves passing beyond even these frayed perimeters …
The Scarlet Soul
Mark Valentine (Editor)
Published: December 2017
“Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile.” – Oscar Wilde Art, obsession, love, lust, sorcery—ten contemporary writers respond to the imperishable themes of Oscar Wilde’s great Decadent romance, The Picture of Dorian Gray. What happens when a face, a form, an uncanny force changes everything we thought we knew? What survives of us when we stray into a borderland of the mind, where our deepest urges seem to call up remorseless powers? Whether in fantastic imaginary realms or in the gritty noir of today, these new stories, all especially written for this anthology, …
Old Hoggen
Bram Stoker
Published: November 2017
“Old Hoggen had disappeared: and murder was naturally suspected.” At the time of his death in 1912, Bram Stoker was preparing for publication three volumes of stories. The first, Dracula’s Guest, saw print in 1914; the second and third never manifested. Old Hoggen and Other Adventures is a tantalising possibility of one of these unrealised selections, and the stories in this volume span the author’s entire career. In reading them, one thing becomes clear: adventure and mystery rival even the gothic in Stoker’s literary heart. And yet, one will find among these pages many of the same themes found in …
A Flutter of Wings
Mervyn Wall
Published: September 2017
“Strange,” he said to himself. “I had an idea that Pat’s Tommy was dead.” First collected in 1974, the stories in A Flutter of Wings span Mervyn Wall’s entire writing career, dating back as far as the 1940s. Told in an easy style, tales such as “They Also Serve . . . ” and “Adventure” offer the same satirical sensibilities found in Wall’s classic novel The Unfortunate Fursey; while darker tales such as “Cloonaturk” and “The Demon Angler” are not without a hint of the grimly sardonic. In addition to an introduction by Val Mulkerns and illustrations by Clare Brennan, …
Selected Poems
George William Russell
Published: April 2017
“Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might / Forget how we imagined light.” Published in September 1935, just two months after his death, A.E wrote of Selected Poems, “If I should be remembered I would like it to be for the verses in this book. They are my choice out of the poetry I have written.” A.E.’s life-long friend and sometimes rival, W. B. Yeats, observed that his poetry expresses “something that lies beyond the range of expression”, and that he has within him “the vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart.” To …
Uncertainties 2
Brian J. Showers (Editor)
Published: August 2016
“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 …
Uncertainties 1
Brian J. Showers (Editor)
Published: August 2016
“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’. …
The Pale Brown Thing
Fritz Leiber
Published: July 2016
“The ancient Egyptians only buried people in their pyramids. We are living in ours.” – Thibaut de Castries Serialised in 1977, The Pale Brown Thing is a shorter version of Fritz Leiber’s World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the supernatural, Our Lady of Darkness. Leiber maintained that the two texts “should be regarded as the same story told at different times”; thus this volume reprints The Pale Brown Thing for the first time in nearly forty years, with an introduction by the author’s friend, Californian poet Donald Sidney-Fryer. The novella stands as Leiber’s vision of 1970s San Francisco: a city imbued …
Earth-Bound
Dorothy Macardle
Published: May 2016
“‘Tis these places are haunted,” he said, “by the old Chieftains and Kings.” Originally published in 1924, the nine tales that comprise Earth-Bound were written by Dorothy Macardle while she was held a political prisoner in Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol and Mountjoy Prison. The stories incorporate themes that intrigued her throughout her life; themes out of the myths and legends of Ireland; ghostly interventions, dreams and premonitions, clairvoyance, and the Otherworld in parallel with this one. It is so easy to dismiss them, as some have, merely as part of the narrative of “Irish nationalism” of the time, but it is …
November Night Tales
Henry C. Mercer
Published: November 2015
“History fades into prehistoric darkness . . . ” Each story in November Night Tales is a differently colored gem whose many facets reflect the lively mind of the author. Henry C. Mercer’s life-long interest in world mythology, fairy tales, local legend, symbols, and artifacts form the fabric of his tales. Here, the reader will find vanishing castles, secret sects, biological weapons, sinister wilderness, lycanthropy, possessed dolls, and mythical lands. The characters in each story are driven to explore the unknown, face their fears, and perhaps discover something of themselves in the process. The compelling narratives, infused with intelligence and …
The Anniversary of Never
Joel Lane
Published: August 2015
“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 …
The Satyr
Stephen J. Clark
Published: July 2015
“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 …
The Unfortunate Fursey
Mervyn Wall
Published: March 2015
“In Ireland anything may happen to anyone anywhere and at any time, and it usually does.” The forces of evil have launched a determined offensive on the sanctified precincts of Clonmacnoise, and gain a bridgehead in the cell of Brother Fursey. But the hapless monk is so tongue-tied with fright that he cannot utter the necessary words of exorcism. When the other monks discover this, poor Fursey is expelled, and sets forth on the first stage of his travels accompanied by a fantastic procession of cacodemons, hippogriffs, imps, furies, and other dreadful creatures, not to mention the elegant gentleman in …
The Return of Fursey
Mervyn Wall
Published: March 2015
“Henceforth I will serve Evil. I’ll become a most depraved character. I’ll turn really wicked.” This worthy sequel to The Unfortunate Fursey follows the continued exploits of that reluctant sorcerer Fursey, now a middling grocer in the realm of King Ethelwulf. But when Fursey’s wife is seized by an Irish delegation led by her jilted fiancé, Fursey resolves to embrace evil, return to Ireland, and reclaim his wife. Readers will delight in the return of Fursey’s unhelpful familiar Albert and the Prince of Darkness; plus such memorable new characters as George the Vampire, Sigurd the Skull Splitter, and the wealthy …
Reminiscences of a Bachelor
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Published: December 2014
“I know there is a God—a dreadful God—and that retribution follows guilt.” For the first time in over 150 years, “The Watcher”, Le Fanu’s classic tale of supernatural menace, is reissued from the pages of the Dublin University Magazine along with its original companion piece “The Fatal Bride”, a brooding gothic novella not reprinted since its first publication in 1848. Like matched duelling pistols, Reminiscences of a Bachelor offers the most exquisite balance of craftsmanship, beauty, and peril. In these tales of Old Dublin, honour is ever at stake, the fate of lovers lies mired in the past, and something …
Dreams of Shadow and Smoke
Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers
Published: August 2014
“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 …
The Silver Voices
John Howard
Published: July 2014
“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. …
Seventeen Stories
Mark Valentine
Published: October 2013
“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 …
The Sea Change
Helen Grant
Published: February 2013
“Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” – T. S. Eliot In her first collection, award-winning author Helen Grant plumbs the depths of the uncanny: Ten fathoms down, where the light filtering through the salt water turns everything grey-green, something awaits unwary divers. A self-aggrandising art critic travelling in rural Slovakia finds love with a beauty half his age—and pays the price. In a small German town, a nocturnal visitor preys upon children; there is a way to keep it off—but the ritual must be perfect. A rock climber dares to scale a local crag with a diabolical reputation, …
Selected Stories
Mark Valentine
Published: November 2012
“Nothing lasts! The faun sleeps, / Smiling, mute, remorseless.” – Ludmila Jevsejeva, Aŭtuna Melodio In St. Petersburg, amidst an uneasy truce with the revolution, there exists a secret trade in looted ikons. But who are the dark strangers seeking for the Gate of the Archangel? In the small town of Tzern, news arrives of the death of the Emperor; meanwhile a postmaster, a priest, a prophet and a war-wearied soldier watch the dawn for signs of the future. Constantinople: A quest for the lost faiths of the former Ottoman Empire leads a French scholar to believe that the strangest may …
Longsword
Thomas Leland
Published: July 2012
“Death’s but a Path that must be trod, / If Man wou’d ever pass to God” – Thomas Parnell Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, by eighteenth century Dublin-born clergyman Thomas Leland, is a fast-paced historical romance of medieval menace and high excitement. Set in the early years of the thirteenth century, it features a blend of real and created characters in a mêlée of intrigue, corruption, lust, and revenge. In part a metaphor for the tug-of-war between the sexes, Longsword is the definitive precursor to the Gothic novel; both in trappings and in style, it provides vital elements of prototype for …
Strange Epiphanies
Peter Bell
Published: April 2012
“Man is made a mystery for mysteries and visions . . . ” – Arthur Machen A mentally disturbed woman is entrapped in Beltane rituals in the Cumbrian fells; a widower mourning his wife falls beneath the mystic allure of Iona; a quest to the Italian Apennines brings a lonely man to a dread Marian revelation; an alcoholic on a Scottish isle is haunted by a deceased chronicler of local legend; in a small German town a sinister doll discloses truths about a murky family tragedy; an unknown journal by a Victorian travel-writer sends a woman on a grim odyssey …
Ghosts
R. B. Russell
Published: February 2012
“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.” – Charles Baudelaire Ghosts contains R. B. Russell’s debut publications, Putting the Pieces in Place and Bloody Baudelaire. Enigmatic and enticing, they combine a respect for the great tradition of supernatural fiction, with a chilling contemporary European resonance. With original and compelling narratives, Russell’s stories offer the reader insights into the more hidden, often puzzling, impulses of human nature, with all its uncertainty and intrigue. There are few conventional shocks or horrors on display, but you are likely to come away with the feeling that …
Curfew
Lucy M. Boston
Published: September 2011
“His eye sockets were appallingly hollow, and he lifted his chin as the blind do when they seek.” Lucy M. Boston is best remembered today as the Carnegie Medal-winning author of a series of children’s novels set in Green Knowe, an ancient, haunted house based on Hemingford Grey Manor near Huntingdon, Cambridge. She began writing these chilling tales when she was already in her sixties, but they were not her first attempts at fiction. A handful of supernatural tales dating from the early 1930s exist among her papers, and these are here published together for the first time, along with …
The Old Knowledge
Rosalie Parker
Published: September 2010
“Make the reader think the evil, make him think it for himself . . .” – Henry James This first collection of tales by Rosalie Parker contains eight stories that explore the uncanny in the modern world. As Glen Cavaliero observes in his introduction, “like all good stories of the preternatural, these in The Old Knowledge have a subversive effect.” In them, “the world of logical, predictable reality is seen to be at risk from rejected modes of knowledge which can thwart the materialist and victimise those innocents who stumble into another order of reality.” In “The Rain”, Geraldine heads …