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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.

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)

Collected Speculative Works

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.

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

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.

Vol. 2: The Diamond Lens and Others (1855-1858)

“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.

Vol. 3: What Was It? and Others (1858-1864)

“[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.

Hardback three-volume edition limited to 300 copies.

Cover art by Brian Coldrick
Selected and introduced by John P. Irish

Vol. 1: 978-1-78380-051-3 (hbk)
Vol. 2: 978-1-78380-052-0 (hbk)
Vol. 3: 978-1-78380-053-7 (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)

Treatises on Dust

“From the small bones of the middle ear can be fashioned a key.”

“For a while now,” Timothy J. Jarvis tells us in the first tale here, “I’ve been collecting texts that hint at strange tales.” He goes on to explain that these “Treatises on Dust” are not ghost stories in the traditional sense. Indeed none of the pieces in the collection could be said to be in the vein of traditional supernatural fiction. They are haunted, not by ghosts, but by an obscure volume of French decadent poetry, a seventeenth-century murder ballad, a bone antenna, and by places where “the membrane is thin”.

They cleave closer to what the literary hermit of Arthur Machen’s Hieroglyphics called “ecstasy”. Though perhaps an ecstasy found less in the “withdrawal from the common life and the common consciousness”, than one grubbed up from the murk of that very consciousness.

  • “To Have a Horse” was selected for Nicholas Royle’s Best British Short Stories 2024.
  • Treatises on Dust has been longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2024.

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

Cover art by øjeRum

ISBN: 978-1-78380-046-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-781-9 (pbk)

Uncertainties 6

“I am writing only for my shadow . . . I must make myself known to him.” – Sadegh Hedayat

“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 Ireland, France, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—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 . . .

  • Alison Moore’s “Where Are They Now?” was selected for Nicholas Royle’s Best British Short Stories 2024.

Hardback edition limited to 450 copies.
Signed or inscribed by the editor on request.

Cover art by David Tibet
Selected by Brian J. Showers

ISBN: 978-1-78380-045-2 (hbk)

Agents of Oblivion

“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. H. P. Lovecraft. They are known as “Agents of Oblivion”. And sometimes, in brighter light, as oblivious angels . . .

As host, as oracle, Iain Sinclair moves through this quartet of tales, through a spectral London that once was, or might never have been.

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

Cover art and illustrations by Dave McKean

ISBN: 978-1-78380-044-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-771-0 (pbk)

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