Illusions of Presence: Lost Christmas Ghost Stories (ed. Johnny Mains)

 " ... an empty house is an admirable field for the operations of the imagination ..."

-- from "The Haunted Vicarage," by Emeric Hulme-Beaman

9780712355933

British Library, 2025

244 pp

hardcover

Ever since Valancourt Books put out its first book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, reading ghostly tales for the holidays has become a personal tradition.  Now, just in the nick of time—Saint or Old, your choice—for this  2025 Christmas season, I dove into the latest entry in the British Library’s Gilded Nightmares series, Illusions of Presence: Lost Christmas Ghost Stories, edited by Johnny Mains. Known for his knack for unearthing wonderfully obscure tales, Mains pulls from a wide range of old, forgotten sources here, and the result is pure reading pleasure. Rather than sticking to the familiar seasonal standbys (near and dear to my heart though they may be), this collection offers stories reprinted here for the first time, steeped in that irresistible combination of Christmas warmth and the quiet, uncanny sense of dread that I so enjoy. 

Before I get going here with my purely reader's thoughts, if you would care more for a professional review, there's one here by Tim Prasil, who also knows his way around obscure stories and ghostly tales. 

Every story in the collection comes with a short but highly-informative introduction to its author, complete with  context about where and how the tale first appeared.  This volume definitely passes my does-the-first-story-convey-the-tone-of-what's-to-come test, with "In Deadly Peril: A Strange Christmas Story of Mining Life," by John Pendleton (1853 - 1914).   From 1887, it's a fine opener -- dark, eerie, and claustrophobic all at once—offering an immediate plunge into the anthology’s unsettling atmosphere. A dramatist in search of a “strong situation” for his new play, ventures into a coal mine on Christmas Eve. He’s warned he’s chosen a “strange day” for such an expedition and told it’s “not too late to turn back.” Christmas Eve, it seems, is unlucky in this pit—but he laughs it off as mere “nonsense.” Yet as the mine’s shadows deepen and the cold seeps in, it becomes clear that some warnings are best heeded…  

From there,  we move indoors for the most part, inside of houses that have seen too much and where the past lingers in the corners but has a way of making itself known.   "The Ghost at the Red Farm" by Mabel Collins (1892)  first sends us into haunted house mode.   Young Lucy Fielding has grown up motherless at the Red Farm, sheltered from almost all human contact—especially men. So when her father suddenly asks her to prepare a room for an older male visitor, the request unsettles her in a way she can’t quite name. Her unease deepens as the guest stays longer than expected, and she notices the subtle shift in her father—his usual good nature replaced by a “manifestly uneasy” tension.  Despite the unease, Lucy finds herself drawn to him, caught in a mix of fear and “awestruck admiration.” Then comes the chilling proposal: he asks her to marry him. But her father’s warning, spoken on his deathbed, hangs over the tale like a dark shadow, and to quote something I recently heard on British TV, Bloody Norah!    The ending of this story is evidently unending, when all is said and done.  Just plain creepy this one,  as is “The Haunted Vicarage” (1903) by Emeric Hulme-Beaman (1864–1937).  The vicar at Walford  invites his old friend Marsden to visit his home. When the conversation turns to the house being less than ideal for a bride—despite its “recommendations for domestic comfort”—Marsden is initially taken aback.  That was, of course, before he witnessed firsthand (and not forewarned!) the eerie happenings that have troubled the vicar since his arrival.  

from Love to Know

Further hauntings plague the inhabitants of various houses in "Nights of Terror" (1913) by E.J. Thomas, "The Ghost of Moor Hall" (1925) by M.E. Murray and then there's "The Malignant Thing: A Christmas Eve Ghost Story" (1928) by Vincent Cornier which begins with three men sitting by a blazing fire discussing the "pet spook" that lives in the host's (Summerson's) house.   One of the men, Petersham, declares that he only requires “one proof” of the house being haunted, promising a donation to a charity of the host’s choice if it can be shown. Meanwhile, the third, a professor, pleads—“for the sake of two souls”—that their host refuse the offer altogether. It seems that whatever has been lingering unseen yet present in the house has caused an entire wing to be closed, and that this "malignant thing ... a thing of Hell, a demon, a spectre, a shadow..." has been terrorizing people for well over two hundred years.  But a bet is a bet.  Then it's the eerie“The Spectre Bridegroom” by Mrs. Gordon Smythies (1884), followed by Bessie May Tobin-Montague’s “A Christmas Ghost Story” (1901), set during a Christmas hunting party at an inherited country house complete with gargoyles and a bordering Black Swamp. Everything begins pleasantly enough—fires lit, guests assembled—until the hostess starts seeing and feeling things no one else can. Naturally, whispers follow, and both her guests and her husband begin to wonder whether the problem lies with the house…or with her mind. I found this one especially well done, its slightly off-kilter events setting it a bit apart from the rest of the collection.  Even darker is “The Lady of the Mistletoe: A Christmas Ghost Story” by Mary Hall (1902), told from the retrospective point of view of Tom Derston as he recalls a fateful Christmas house party hosted by himself and his wife, Ellice. Their country home—Derston Hall—once belonged to an elderly relative whose presence still seems to cling to the place. One thing missing from the holiday decorations is mistletoe, which (and I won't divulge why) they were told was a good thing.  Unfortunately, an invited guest is unable to attend and instead sends along “a mass” of the stuff. That gift is the beginning of a strange unraveling.   Rich in atmosphere, heavy with supernatural menace, and just a little unhinged, this tale was so much fun to read.  May Wynne's "The Ghost of Cheldon Court:  A Christmas Ghost Story," from 1924, starts two days before Christmas, and gambling man Jack's wife Mollie makes him swear that he'll be back to spend time with her and their children on Christmas Eve.   Jack has resolved to leave by eleven that night, but best laid plans and all that.  While he and the men he is with are trying to figure out something fun to do, one of them comes up with the idea of spending a night at Cheldon Court.   As one of Jack's cronies says, he'll "lay a thousand to eight against any man spending the night tonight in that haunted room."  Despite the horrific things he's told about people who've done it before, Jack decides he'll take the bet.  

from PropertyAuctions

Leaving the haunted houses behind, we have five more tales that move outside home and hearth.   "The Child Who Had Everything But: A Christmas Ghost Story" by John Kendrick Bangs (1911) is a very different sort of ghostly tale, very likely the most poignant of this anthology, "The Ghost of Appledore Pool or The Iron Chest at the Barnstaple Bar," by JYT (1893) is a fine yarn that begins with two siblings asking their grandmother to tell them a story -- "a real good one, a thorough Christmas story..." Evidently, grandma is a terrific storyteller, because one of the children hasn't been able to forget last's year's ghostly tale.  They ask for a "real true one," as well as a ghost story, so she obliges with a tale unsettling enough to satisfy them as well as anyone reading this little piece.  Storms, shipwrecks, a lighthouse and of course, ghosts -- who needs any more than that?  "That Terrible Dentist" (1880)  by an anonymous writer is downright demonic in its own way (hint hint), and while offsetting that experience, more than a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor finds its way into "Claus and Defect by William J. Koen (1927).   

Bringing the anthology to a chilling close is “The Shadows of Evil or The Fatal Dream,” another anonymously published tale from 1871—and easily one of my absolute favorites here. Once again, a grandmother is pressed into service at Christmas to provide a ghostly diversion, and the story she chooses is one that held a “great fascination” for her when she was a girl. It comes from a diary written by her father’s aunt, who, in turn, heard it from one of the very people involved. Certain it won’t “trouble the heads” of her grandchildren, she reads it to them, but it turns out to be one of the most disturbing pieces in the entire book, troubling my own head for a while.   I can’t help wishing I knew the identity of this anonymous author; I’d hunt down everything they ever wrote without hesitation. This story is truly that good.

While not everyone will love every story, for me the editor's selection of stories for this Christmas ghost-story volume is spot on, and I can only begin to imagine the time and care that went into tracking them down.  While they are perfectly suited to the season, they are also first-rate ghost stories that would feel entirely at home in any anthology of ghostly tales from yesteryear.  So, if you didn't manage to read this one over the holidays, don't fret-- these stories will rattle your nerves and raise your hackles at any time of year.  Very, very highly recommended, especially for those readers who delight in older, darker pleasures.

I loved this book. Absolutely. 

and we're back once again: Beware Us Flowers of the Devil, by Alexander Zelenyj

 First off, a huge thank you to everyone who emailed to check if I was still alive and okay—I can’t tell you how much that meant! This past year has been…well, weird, and not the kind of year I’ll be looking back on fondly. After my sweet spouse's major health scare (all good now, thankfully), my mental health took a severe nosedive for a few months. A much-needed summer trip to upstate South Carolina helped lift my spirits, and at the same time, we both fell in love with the place. We decided that with the Blue Ridge Mountains nearby it would be a perfect place to live, so now it’s been all about getting our house ready to sell. That’s meant sorting through every single thing we own, deciding what stays and what goes, enduring some noisy construction, and doing a bit of sprucing up to make the place basically turnkey. It’s a lot, but we’ll get there!  

On to the book now. 

9781913766405

Eibonvale, 2025

62 pp

hardcover

I positively lit up when I saw Alexander Zelenyj’s email about his new release, Beware Us Flowers of the Devil. It may be only 62 pages long, but he packs more feeling and vision into those pages than many writers are able to manage in full-length books. 

The author notes that his first story, The Boy and the Devil, is a “retelling of an old Norwegian folktale.” In both versions, the boy tricks the Devil into the inside of a nut—but the outcomes diverge in striking ways.    It’s a perfect way to kick off the collection, introducing a theme that threads through the other three stories while setting the tone for everything that follows.   It's raining fire in the following story,  "Joy in a World on Fire" which opens with a boy helping an old man getting rid of "unholy things" brought about by the strange orbs which have decimated life as it once was.  The "Plague of Fires" has left "utter devastation" in its wake, including the deaths of  the boy's parents.  He has a companion now, teaching him how to survive, but he is also troubled by questions that need answers. The old man may have the solution for him, but "it's a dangerous thing."  This story, which the author calls "one of the weirder apocalypic stories -- and one of the weirder family dramas" he's written, breaks into three parts, and I believe that's it as far as I'll take this brief synopsis.  Such a powerful story, so beautifully written.     

image from "The Lad and the Devil," at The Story Guy, youtube

Story number three, "There is Only One" is just downright eerie when you stop to consider its implications.   For the main character in this one, the confession to his girlfriend of the "really terrible thing (A glorious thing)" he's done is just the beginning, because his life will never be the same as he sets out in search of what he's lost.  This story is not only creepy, but is alive with palpable angst tinged with only the smallest sliver of hope.    Finally, "Gods and Devils and Those Caught Between" finds two school children preparing to take action against "the Adversary" in order to make him pay after an act of intense cruelty  lifts his "veil of artifice"  and reveals his true identity.  In less than three full pages of text, Zelenyj has crafted a chilling tale in which, as noted at Eibonvale's website, these two do what is needed to "remake the world into the paradise it used to be."  This story, in its own way and in my own head, also closes a sort of circle started with the first.

One of the quintessential hallmarks of Zelenyj's prose which I love is his focus on  broken people who are searching for meaning in a world which refuses to offer easy answers, landing his subjects in spaces where brutality and tenderness tend to coexist.  He has a quiet force to his writing, one that draws out emotion in ways that continue to stay under my skin long after the final page has been turned.  Beware Us Flowers of the Devil is another strong example of his unique, haunted imagination—a book that despite its darkness, radiates a strange and unsettling beauty. I read it twice, and I absolutely loved it.  

Very highly recommended, as is everything else I've ever read by this author.  Thanks, Alex, and a huge thanks to Eibonvale as well.  

Prisms of the Oneiroi, by Martin Locker

 

9789992033876

Mons Culturae Press, 2023

190 pp

paperback

(read in April) 

Taking its place on my favorite books of 2025 shelf, this collection of stories sits next to Snuggly's The Onyx Book of Occult Fiction, which is where I first read anything by its author, Martin Locker.  His contribution to that most excellent volume is a tale called "The Dreaming Plateau," which is so powerful that it kept me awake just thinking about the ramifications of the ending.  Anyway, in the back of The Onyx Book of Occult Fiction is a list of sources for the included stories, and that's where I discovered that "The Dreaming Plateau" had come from Locker's collection of stories Prisms of the Oneiroi.  I knew immediately that I had to have that book, so an email conversation with the author and a paypal transfer later, it was mine, along with another that I'll save for my upcoming vacation.   

 I'm not sure which of these stories I can label as a favorite since they were all extraordinary as well as reality blurring,  but quite a few of these have stayed with me since reading this book. Very briefly,   "The Dreaming Plateau" opens this collection, featuring an adventurer motivated by profit and glory who heads up a small expedition to Tibet's Plateau of T'Singah.  The titular plateau is a place where "over the ... centuries several visitors had made their way ... yet very few had returned."  Those who had managed to come back had been "pale and quite shaken," and had said nothing.  The same had also happened to a Tartar explorer on a mission from the Czar who had also made his way to that area, and who, in his report of that expedition was "similarly reticent."  The stories that our narrator and his crew had heard from a village elder about their destination were shaken off as "entertaining, antiquated and exotic ... but not anything which a modern enterprising band such as ourselves needed to fear."   Needless to say, he will pay for that arrogance.   This story is a solid preview of the strangeness that follows, beginning with "Corfdrager,"  which centers on Bruegel's drawing "The Beekeepers and the Birdnester" from 1568.  Our narrator, a scholar, feels that "Something was missing" in the many (and very similar) "interpretative observations" of this work, which he feels "failed to dig into the subject with any real depth" or justified why this particular scene was so "gripping, obscure and archaic."  So when an offer arises for a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where the drawing will be featured as a special exhibit, he jumps at the chance. His goal: to write something that would "tear the cobwebs from the dusty words of the art historians sitting overstuffed in studies and galleries across the academic world." Luckily he has family in the area, and thus begins his quest for the "the deeper meaning," not found "among the ivory towers."  This story was pitch  perfect,  one that I likely will not forget any time soon.       I have to say that while reading  "Sea Salt & Asphodel," I had the feeling of having been beamed directly onto the sands of the western Corsican coast and the village of Cargèse, alongside the "bent women" making the sign of the ochju "with two fingers."  Arrigu is a young man who dreams of creating a "perfume that fully left the world behind, which used the reference points of the hills and the sea but reached out into the myths of his ancestors."  One day he follows a crowd of people running toward something happening on the beach, to find a man who had slipped overboard from a boat during a storm and nearly drowned, but luckily survived.  Arrigu asks a single question of this man; the answer steers both reader and Arrigu down an unexpected path.  Another truly great inclusion here is "In Search of the Wild Staircase," offered in epistolary format, following a scholar's travels into  Lichtenstein and the rather unusual discoveries he's made.  Without giving anything at all away, this story is not only genius but also has a shocker of an ending that I never saw coming.   

from the British Museum © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Throughout this collection of stories, the reader is constantly reminded that certain types of knowledge can exact a steep price, especially that which has been forgotten or, in some cases, forbidden.   This idea floats throughout these stories, reflecting the tension between the fascination for and the hazards of uncovering what has remained hidden, imbuing them with added depths.   

In the Author's Preface section, Locker notes that this collection of stories is his "first formal foray into fiction," after years of focusing on "research-based publications," which is actually difficult to believe since this book is so damn good.   We are very lucky readers here --  he has used "geographical, folkloric and historical details" in these tales that "hold more than a little truth to them,"  making for not only great storytelling, but also for an eerie, intense and intelligent reading experience.  

Not only is this book highly recommended, but it is pretty much essential reading for those who enjoy their fiction on the darker, weirder side where answers aren't handed to you on a plate.   I can't stress enough just how very good it is, except to say that once I was in it, I never wanted it to end.  

Tales of the Coming War, by Eric Stener Carlson

 " ... we all search for meaning -- to give our life purpose." 

9781912586615

Tartarus Press, 2025

253 pp

hardcover

(read earlier in March)

If you find that recently you've been a bundle of nerves given world events, do yourself a favor and do not read this book before trying to go to sleep. I started out doing that, as is my regular practice, and discovered that far from settling me down enough to conk out, this book had the opposite effect -- I found my thoughts swirling and I was beyond unsettled.  I gave up after two nights, pushing this book into my daytime reading where somehow it felt mentally more safe.  

Tales From the Coming War is a collection of stories that is difficult to pigeonhole.  Set against the backdrop of war, there are shades of science fiction, the supernatural, the eerie, and it is especially dark.   The first thing I noticed is that there are scenes from but no explanation behind the conflict anywhere throughout this book, but in the long run it's really not needed.   These stories zoom in on the very human experiences of people caught up in the collapse of the world as they know it; although scattered here and there throughout different parts of the globe, Carlson's characters tend to question or confront particular moments in their lives, searching for meaning and seeing things most clearly at the time when all is about to be lost, their stories often offering them a measure of freedom.   

Very briefly, one of the best stories in this volume, "Roses," clearly illustrates this idea, and begins with an older man in Greece receiving a letter from someone he knew in the past.  The letter writer has had a highly successful career and life, but now he writes to beg and offer a substantial amount of money for the older man's secret as to the "immunity" from the "wraiths" that have been decimating the population, the fate of which somehow the older man has escaped.   In his response, the older man sets forth his theories, first his insights into the nature of these things according to modern scientific thinking, and then something more "metaphorical."  As he explains his beliefs, he refers to the story of the "two roses" he learned when younger that takes him back into his childhood when the two were supposedly friends, but the reality was something altogether different.   "Death is Like a Slotted Spoon" is another excellent tale, in which two soliders find themselves stopping for a short break in the darknesss with the enemy all around them.  As they share a drink from a flask, one is reminded of the "first night he got pissed" as a teenager, living "in the middle of nowhere" with his parents and his twin sister, for whom he was responsible. He had to "shadow" her all the time because of her strange behavior, which gave him no time to be alone or to do anything he wanted.  All of that changes one night when his parents had gone out and left the two siblings on their own ...  "The Zig-Zag Line" is another fine story that offers the reflections of a young man from Australia who, as a child, "used to feel that just around the next corner of my life I'd find something magical, mysterious ... that would explain everything. (Why we're here, What life's all about.)"  Then came the war, changing the focus to survival.  The narrator had done everything asked of him by his father, who had always tried to pave the way for him in life, but when summoned home during the war, refused.  Instead, he decides that it might be time to "see Machu Picchu," an obsession he'd had since childhood.   As he notes, "If the whole world was going mad, if they were going to commit collective suicide, then, before the end came, I was finally going to see Machu Picchu."  As he had once read, "we all search for meaning -- to give our life purpose," and in this case, it's all about the journey.   The remainder of the stories here are all powerful, each in its own way.  

Another fine volume from Tartarus, the front dustjacket blurb of Tales From the Coming War reveals that "the characters in this collection face the last war the world will ever know," and I eventually came to realize that it's not the horrors that these people face that had me on edge but rather the way in which the author plunges the reader front and center into each story, making you feel like you're the one who's living through these times.   That, my friends, is powerful and emotional storytelling.   Enough said. 

Definitely recommended.  

Graveside Gallery: Tales of Ghosts and Dark Matters, by Eric J. Guignard

 

9781949491609

Cemetery Dance, 2025

253 pp

paperback 

I'm hopefully done with sporadic posting now. The end of January through the end of February is one giant blur -- my poor husband had three surgeries (one completely unexpected immediately on the back of the second) during that time, and I was in no kind of mental shape to do much except sit in the hospital and drink way too much coffee.    Hopefully we won't be back there again.  

Moving on now, and playing serious catch up, I've finished reading A Graveside Gallery by Eric J. Guignard, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award in 2020 for Edited Anthology with his Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World  (Dark Moon Books, 2021) and the Bram Stoker Award in 2014 and 2019, as well as garnering many nominations and a few other wins for his work during his career.   This latest collection of his short stories has an official publication date of April of this year, with its subtitle, Tales of Ghosts and Dark Matters,  offering a ginormous and not-so-subtle clue as to what readers have to look forward to in this book.   

The author hits the ground running here with "Penny's Diner," setting the scene immediately with the "hypnotic line" of North Dakota highways at night.  The titular diner is where a truck driver stops after driving for a few hours.  He isn't exactly in his rig though; earlier that day he'd had an accident that sent him off the road and banged up his truck, so he's driving a loaner.  But he might have been okay with that, had not there been more to the story.   If you find yourself thinking that you may have read this one before so you know what's going to happen,  you haven't.   The real question is "WTF?" as you close out the story.   It's pretty twisty, and a good choice on this one as the opener, setting the tone of dark strangeness for all that follows.   The standout for me in this volume is "A Stroke of Death,"  which completely floored me with its mix of beautiful, tight writing and the sheer grotesque, "mortal carnage" the author envisions here.    Odile Thibodeau was once an artist of great renown, his paintings hanging in some of the finest galleries of Montmartre and elsewhere, but now he paints for only one person, a certain Monsieur Bourguignon.   Odile's paintings are unique; indeed, he has a talent that had  caught his patron's eye,  resulting in Odile painting exclusively for him.  Now Odile is an extremely wealthy man but caught in a dire situation, with nowhere to turn and no way out of his predicament, until Monsieur Bourguignon commissions a certain subject for the artist's next painting  that Odile absolutely does not want to paint.   To say any more would be a crime, but really, this story is next-level work on the author's part.  It is horrific and painful, but at the same time there is a strange beauty to it that I couldn't resist.  I would really love to see more stories like this one -- seriously incredible.   I have to also give high marks to the author for his "The Ascending Lights of Yu Lan," in which an Irish sailor roaming the streets of San Francisco in 1917 finally discovers why his mother was always warning him not to go out on "nights of August's full moon."   

from MacGame store

In Graveside Gallery, we discover that horror knows no bounds and has never been restricted by time or space. Geographically these pieces take the reader to several different locales including downtown L.A., the swampy backroads of  Florida, on to Route 66 and a god-awful desert tourist trap in New Mexico and other spots where the strange meets up with the mundane.    The author moves back in time and into present and future,  stopping once to add an unsettling and disturbing coda to events at Andersonville, as well as a new epilogue to Mary Shelley's epic Frankenstein and a rather bizarre addition to a familiar work by Beatrix Potter.  There is enough variation here to recommend this collection to any reader of horror and the strange, with solid writing that satisifies tougher audiences like myself.  

My thanks to the author for my copy of his book -- nicely done. 

This Haunted Heaven, by Reggie Oliver

 

9781912586608

Tartarus Press, 2024

240 pp

hardcover

It is not only a true pleasure to have a book published by Tartarus in my hands once again, but added to that is the joy of it being a book of collected stories by Reggie Oliver.  Long may they continue to be published -- I love his work. In This Haunted Heaven, as the blurb notes, the author "insinuates strangeness into the lives of his unwary protagonists and the results vary from a profound chill to outright horror."   Let me add that it's not just true about this book, but rather it is the case  in every single collection of his that I've read.   

My big test in any story collection is always whether or not the first one  makes me want to go on to the rest, and with "This Haunted Heaven," Oliver passes with flying colors.  Set on the Greek island of Skliros, within just a few lines of opening this tale, the author mentions the Mediterranean Sea as being "Wine-dark," as "the romantics will tell you, imagining they are quoting Homer," but it wasn't all that long into the story that my brain drifted to Robert Aickman.  If you consider the themes in that story, my brain wasn't too far off the mark, but this is clearly a Reggie Oliver creation.   In "This Haunted Heaven," a university don returns to the island to finish his book Middle Eastern Cults and Greco-Roman Culture," which he believes will be the "standard work on the subject," or else his "life has been wasted." In setting down "how it all began," he remembers the first time, as a young Classics student, he had gone to the island as part of an ongoing dig at a site which had been dedicated to the goddess Cybele.  I won't say any more, but I had to remind myself that this was just the beginning and I needed to buckle up if the remainder of the stories were going to be this disturbing.  Speaking of disturbing, I was thrown completely off guard by "Fell Creatures," which wins my award for most unsettling story in this book, and yet I read it not just the once but twice.  As this story opens, a retired, widowed history teacher wonders if having extreme wealth might "warp" the characters of the "very rich," and notes that there was one couple in particular who made him "ponder the question."  For some time, he had lived in a cottage in Norfolk next to Strellbrigg Hall, a "large, rambling, and ... rather run down" eighteenth-century farmhouse.  Its owner, Roger Mason-Fell, had sold the Hall to the Argents, a wealthy couple with "shedloads of cash" and three small children. Months later, the Hall has been redone and the woman in charge of the renovation has invited the narrator over to see the changes.  She has set aside some strange items left behind by the former owner: a dollhouse complete with "doll children," a book dating back to 1798 and a set of old portraits.  What happens once the family moves in I will not divulge, but when all is said and done, "Fell Creatures" left me utterly stunned.  This story alone is well worth what I paid for this book.  Holy crap.  I don't believe I will ever read something like this tale ever again, and if I do, it will more than likely come from the pen of Reggie Oliver.   Anyone who's read anything by this author knows that stage plays a role in a number of his stories, given the author's background as an actor, a director and a playwright, this is hardly surprising.  "South Riding" is one of these, which begins with the attempted suicide of Don, an actor who "had been out of work for months," with no money and no prospects for any other jobs.  In his mind, "he was an actor of nothing," and anything else was "meaningless" to him.   After a counseling session, he rings his agent and to his surprise, he learns about the need for a leading man  in "an old-fashioned summer rep company" in a town called Disston,  on the coast "in the South Riding of Yorkshire."     He's pretty positive there is no such place as South Riding, and he probably should have trusted his gut on that.  

title page, from my copy

The remainder of the stories in This Haunted Heaven are all excellent, although I have to say that I wasn't completely in love with The Cardinal's Ring  -- for me, it just didn't have the same oomph as the others, but that's just a personal taste thing.   Your mileage may vary.  What I love the most about his work is that he is not only a master of atmosphere, but also the way in which he brings together past and present,  creating a lingering sense of menace and danger.  As I usually find while reading his work, his writing is so good that while in the middle of one of these stories, the house could have caught fire and I would have waited to do anything about it until I finished reading.  There just aren't that many authors about whom I can honestly say that, especially modern writers, but it's true. The dustjacket blurb quotes Publishers Weekly about another of Oliver's collections, saying that his stories are for "Readers who like their horrors subtle but unsettling," and that description is right on the money.   He is and likely will remain one of my favorite writers ever.  

Very, VERY highly recommended!!! 

The Incubations, by Ramsey Campbell

 

"Your bombs were meant to cast down Hitler, but they raised his spirits." 

9781787589292

Flame Tree Press, 2024

245 pp

hardcover  

First, my many and grateful thanks to Flame Tree Press for my copy of this book.  A new novel by Ramsey Campbell -- definitely not an everyday occurrence, so when I was asked if I might want to read this book and post about it, I jumped at the chance.  I wasn't disappointed -- not at all.  

When Leo Palmer was a boy, his school had decided to celebrate the twinning of their town with the German town of Alphafen as a way to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II.  His teacher had assigned the class the task of writing letters to the children of that town, which like Leo's home town of Settlesham, had been bombed close to the end of the war.  While not all students were thrilled about the assignment,  Leo chose a girl named Hanna Weber and sent off his letter; they'd been penpals ever since.  Now Leo is grown, working for his parents in their family driving-instruction business, and as the novel opens, is not having such a great time of things.  He is in the car with a student who is ready to take her driving test. After a couple of minor incidents, they continue on their way,  but soon the student has had enough -- Leo's directions and conversation have become so convoluted that he's "talking rubbish" to her, and she wants to go home.  He isn't doing it on purpose to mock her dyslexia, as she accuses him of doing once she is back at her house; he has no idea what is happening.  But that's not all -- he soon suffers a bout of hysteria when he gets back behind the steering wheel and decides he can no longer drive, a serious problem when you make your living as a driving instructor.  After a visit to a psychologist, Leo is off on a scheduled trip to Alphafen to finally meet Hanna and her family in person.  And it's at this juncture that the book seriously takes off.

Leo is happy to finally be there and to meet Hanna, and the citizens of the town of Alphafen seem to welcome Leo on his arrival, honoring him with toasts, the singing of his national anthem at a restaurant and greetings from the mayor, etc.  He also experiences strange, inexplicable episodes that he tries to rationalize before moving on, as is his nature.  Things start to get even weirder when he meets a fellow countryman, Jerome Pugh, who has more than a slight interest in the connection between Hitler and Alphafen in a conversation that Leo finds distasteful and to which he takes offense.   And while I won't divulge much more about his time in Alphafen, I will reveal that Leo takes home more than simply memories of his visit when he returns to life in Settlesham. 

from MeteorologiaenRed

The Incubations sort of twins the reader's mind with Leo's in the sense that Campbell has structured his book so that as Leo's story unfolds, we too are also trying to figure out exactly what is causing all of this to happen, only to be horrified when connections are finally made and all is revealed.  What made this book such a page turner is that all along I sensed something not quite right running beneath the surface of Leo's conversations with the people in Alphafen, which seemed to take on a darker, more mysterious meaning than Leo comprehends.  Readers will latch on to the wrongness of things pretty quickly by reading slowly and carefully rather than buzzing through this book at top speed.  

I could not put this book down once I picked it up; Campbell has been writing horror for sixty years now (my favorite is still his Nazareth Hill)  and The Incubations shows that he is still going strong and hasn't missed a beat.  Not only are the dark moments in this book intensely creepy, but where it excels is in the more mundane moments that slowly morph into something much more sinister.  The themes he presents here are powerful and especially pertinent in our current world where technology aids in the rise of the dark forces that exist out there;   the issue for me is that it is difficult to say much about this book without ruining it for potential readers, and far be it from me to ruin anyone's reading experience.   What I can say is that fans of Ramsey Campbell will certainly not want to miss this one.  

 Highly recommended. 

Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator, by Alexander Zelenyj

 

"There are more men in the world who wreaked senseless havoc than men who preached for peace."

9781913766306

Eibonvale Press, 2024

406 pp

I would have done a happy dance when this new book by Alexander Zelenyj arrived at my door, but there were people here so I just did it inside my head.  I have had the very great fortune to have read several of this author's short story collections, and this  newest one is definitely cause for celebration.   

In Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator, Zelenyj cuts across and through genre in his stories to produce something entirely his own.  There are elements of horror, science fiction and fantasy at work throughout this book, but there are also any number of disorienting moments between these two covers that speak to a more surreal reading experience.  At the heart of these stories, and what gives them a resonating quality, is the keen attention he pays to his characters no matter the situation in which they find themselves, starting from the beginning.   In "Peacekeeper and the War-Mouth" a young boy from a Czech immigrant family is bullied by another boy at his school, and while he doesn't quite have the courage to kick his tormentor "square in the junk," he discovers another way to achieve the satisfaction brought by vengeance. In the next, "The Deathwish of Valerie Vulture," a popular comic-strip character, Valerie Vulture, who has been "everyone's sad little scavenger bird for over a century" comes to life, only to beg the cartoonist who has taken over the strip to finish her off.  She can no longer stand the "sick glee" of the many humans who've watched her suffer over that time, and can't bear being the "measuring stick" for people who have enjoyed her misery.  Unfortunately the cartoonist's boss won't allow that to happen because of the profits Valerie's brought in.  "Silver the Starfallen" in which the main character's deep sense of longing is brought to the fore, is set in the time after the defeat of the Danes by the Saxons.  A group of Northmen have been trying to keep out of the way of their enemy, their number including an "inexplicable" warrior by the name of Silver whose earliest memory is "falling like a star from the sky."  Evidently he is "not of this world," and misses the peace of the time "before man existed."  

Throughout this collection of tales, characters face the weight of the past, their own inner demons, and often crushing alone-ness, their experiences making for a beautifully rich collage of human emotions and especially their vulnerabilities.   This is most true in my favorite story, "Little Boys," which to me is one of the best stories this author has ever written, and I've certainly read enough of them to be able to say that.    On their mission to drop the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, the crew of the Enola Gay start their long flight without a hitch, but some three hours in, the pilot, Lt. Paul Tibbets, discovers a strange black flower stuck to the bulkhead.  No one knows where it came from, but eventually more crop up. However, that's not the strangest thing that happens during this flight,  but about the rest I will absolutely say nothing more.  I read this story twice, put the book down for a bit, and then when I picked it up to start again I read "Little Boys" a third time. The imagery is absolutely stunning, as is the intent in this tale, and the raw emotion just leaps out at the reader.  Oh my god -- someday (and soon!) someone should nominate the author for some kind of award, if for nothing else, this story alone.   Then there's another personal favorite, "Bright Sons of the Morning," that finds a military investigator who is tasked with tracking down an ancient evil in the desert of Iraq.  Mackey finds this mission more personal than most he's carried out over his very long career, beginning with a strange and powerful cult as well as a rogue officer.  I had the sense of Apocalypse Now mixed with sheer evil as I read through this one, most likely the most frightening story in this collection.    The remainder of the stories are also excellent, with not a bad one in the bunch, illuminating the weariness wrought by the fact that, as the titular character in "Silver the Starfallen" notes, there are "more men in the world who wreaked senseless havoc than men who preached for peace,"  a truth that is definitely at home in our present.  

Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator is this author's boldest story collection so far, and although I have truly loved his books that I've read in the past, this book goes well above and beyond those on so many levels.   Most highly, HIGHLY recommended.  

The Ghosthunter, by D.F. Lewis

 

"And so, life itself that one needs to live so as to write the stories that creates the life that created them in the first place, will be sure to prevail perhaps forever, whoever the one is whom one chooses to write them." 

9781069101624

ghosttruth/Montag, 2024

127 pp 

paperback

 Regular, long-time readers of strange/weird/ghostly/horror fictions (mainly small press but not always)  will have at least once crossed online paths with this author's sixteen-year run of  Real-Time Gestalt Reviews, where D.F. Lewis offers "episodic, brainstorming reviews" which are to him "very personal -- rough-shod and spontaneous." They are also extremely insightful, offering readers an ongoing commentary based on his own distinctive perceptions vis-a-vis connections, coincidences, and synchronicities, which I have never before experienced from anyone else who has ever written a book review.  His work is truly one of a kind; he is the ultimate scrier and although retired from reviewing now, his work will continue to live on.  

Lewis is also a published author, and his latest book is The Ghosthunter.  There are no EVP sessions, EMF meters or laser grids to be found here, nor are there garden-variety entities covered in shrouds or dragging clanking chains along with them.   It is an eerie and atmospheric collection of what the author calls "miniatures," which are very short, dark and uniquely-styled fictions.  In the telling, they are more than a bit fragmented, which leaves the reader to become a sort of scrier in his/her own right over the course of the book to seek out the meaning behind what the ghost hunter wants to reveal.   The Ghosthunter, because of the way it incorporates places, literary works, people and events over the central character's lifetime, has a rather semi-autobiographical feel, and the ghosts that inhabit this book are tied to the ghost hunter's life experiences via perception and memory.   The thing is that Lewis does not make it so easy for the reader to discern the exact moment when the realities begin to blur into something less tangible or when the ordinary slides into something less familiar, making the overall effect one of distortion and disorientation, as well as mystery and above all, uncertainty.  For me, this is the essence of the ghosts/memories   that this ghost hunter seeks -- they are elusive, often  shapeshifting, and even capable of haunting the ghost hunter himself from time to time. 

Lewis tackles, among others, themes of meaning and mortality in this rather enigmatic yet introspective book; in his distinctive (and admittedly at times daunting) prose, the author takes the reader along with this ghost hunter on his journey as he offers these rather haunting tales of "self and non-self," making it seem as if you are right there with him.  I especially loved the use of intertexuality in these stories, but even more,  that of mansions that runs throughout, since not only are they the perfect setting for literary ghost stories but also for spaces where memories reside, especially if you follow the idea of houses representing people (which, as a closet Jungian and huge fan of Elizabeth Bowen, I do).  In some of these mansions there are no rooms, and more importantly is his notion of "mansions without roofs," which early in the ghost writer's career (I don't know about the author's but I suspect so), was set as a sort of writing prompt from a member of the author's local writers' group that had been drawn from a tin.  There is also mention of a "mansion of life," which so stood out to me that I must repeat it here because it captures one of a number of poignant reflections that are found scattered throughout the book:

"These stories, it increasingly becomes clear, are separate floors in the mansion of life, till you reach the topmost attic of all, from which vantage point of near roofless exposure, you can gather, simply by looking down, that the whole crumbling exterior of the mansion badly needs repair." 

While reading this book,  I often had the feeling that I was trespassing into the ghost hunter's metaphysical space, which, I suppose I was meant to, but it felt so personal that I often felt like an intruder.   On the only negative I can think of, it does take a lot of time and patience to get through and even then, I'm not absolutely positive that I've truly understood all that Lewis has to say here.   If you’re looking for a fast-paced thriller or a typical ghost story, this one won't work for you.  However,   The Ghosthunter is something that runs much deeper, it is highly introspective, and it is a book that resonates emotionally. It is dark and can range into somber,  yet in its own way it is a most beautiful collection that will stay with me for a long time.   

The Universe as Performance Art, by Colby Smith

 

9781913766153

Eibonvale Press, 2024

143 pp

paperback

Crikey! It's been a long while since I've been here but things have been a bit on the chaotic side for a while.  There really just hasn't been much spare time to post my thoughts about what I've been reading, although I will say I have a stack of small-press gems sitting here waiting for my comments. 

 First up is one of  Eibonvale's latest releases,   The Universe As Performance Art  by author Colby Smith, a collection of short stories that above all will jolt its readers out of their complacency while making them do some serious thinking about what they've just encountered.   As described on the back-cover blurb by author Paul Cunningham, this book is "a disquieting, panoramic gallery exhibition obsessed with art's arranged marriage with Nature and the consequences of art itself," but to say that Smith's work is "disquieting" is an enormous understatement.  

I am so late in posting about this book which I should have done last month (had it not been for a two-week vacation and then a week of sleep recovery)  that I'm only going to offer three examples of stories that made a deep impact on my already-buzzing psyche.   "The Game Show Expats" did my head in and wins my personal award for most disturbing.    This story consists of three different scenarios focused on people who've won each a trip to the Florida Keys as a prize in a game show that "combined both the novelty-game and trivia formats."  The first two are out there, but it's the third one that made me do a very loud "WTF,"  but then again, I live in this state and honestly, nothing here fazes  me any more.   If you're talking about the question of what different people find to be important in life, this story answers it in suprising ways.   "All about yourself" indeed.    I can't speak highly enough about "Somnii Draconis," which begins as a young man is walking along the beach and runs into an older guy with a dowsing rod. Turns out the dowser is looking for "the sex of stones." Obviously, the younger man says, "there are no organs at all in rocks," but the old man definitely knows what he's talking about -- as the younger will soon discover.    As this part of story is unfolding, another thread running through this tale links current "black-market hype" (which I won't explain here)   to the  "classical Chinese medicinal canon," beginning with the "dragon bones"  (龍骨), fossils discovered by farmers as they plowed their fields, which then went to priests who ground and used them for their "supposed healing properties" against "metaphysical ailments."  While there is more than a bit of humor in this one,  the younger man's  unspoken"counterargument" toward the conclusion of this story deserves our full attention.    In a completely different vein is "Amaterasu Overthrown," which is without doubt brilliant, transplanting the Japanese myth about the sun goddess deep into the future and most fully into the realm of science fiction.   On the space station Takamagahara the light suddenly dies, "sucked away" by the goddess Amaterasu who has fled the station for a black hole after a prank "gone too far"  by her brother. The result is devastating for life forms on the station; thus a price must be paid.   Worth more than an honorable mention are "Aphorisms in Concrete," "The Bombed Zoo,"  and in a much quieter mode, "Fluora," all of which point to Smith as a serious talent. 

The majority of these stories center on art, integrating physical, mental and spiritual selves,  science and the natural world as well as other areas of existence, all written in  bold, vital language.  Connected to that are the consequences of the choices that are made by the people who inhabit these tales, which are also explored here.   What really struck me though in most cases was the intensity of emotion that seeps out via the author's characters, even in those stories I didn't particularly care for, which in actuality weren't all that many.  I will say that if you depend on trigger warnings, well, this probably isn't the book for you.  

 In the blurb on the back of the book, Cunningham also says that this book is "an indispensable contribution to the Neo-Decadent international art movement canon," and  I have to admit that my familiarity with the movement is pretty much nil (although after reading this one my curiosity is getting the better of me).  I found this article from Document (2023) which helped a bit,  and a brief explanation by Fergus Nm in The Aither as part of a review of Neo-Decadence Evangelion (Zagava, 2023; ed. Justin Isis) where he describes this group as a "loose confederation of writers, poets, and artists with an axe to grind against the imagination-starved tedium of much of what passes for 'contemporary culture.' "   Amen to that -- and here's to continuing to shake up the system.  There's more than enough to keep any reader of darker fiction on their toes here, and my many and hugely grateful thanks (along with an apology for taking forever)  to the very good people at Eibonvale for my copy.  I may not know the movement itself very well, but The Universe as Performance Art blew me right out of my comfort zone and made me want to read more from Mr. Colby Smith in the future.  And that's what matters. 

Malpertuis, by Jean Ray

 

9781939063702

Wakefield Press, 2021

originally published 1943

translated by Iain White

246 pp

paperback

Sometimes you just find that book that you know is not only unlike anything you've ever read but also makes you wonder just how in the hell you're going to find aything that ever tops it.   This past summer I had the great fortune to have read all four volumes of Belgian author Jean Ray's short-story collections published by Wakefield:  Whisky Tales, Cruise of Shadows: Haunted Stories of Land and Sea, Circles of Dread and The Great Nocturnal, and fell in love almost immediately into the first of these, but it is Malpertuis that's really won my soul as far as Ray's work goes.  

This post will not be a long one since the secret of what lies at the very core of the mystery of the house named Malpertuis should remain exactly that until discovered by the reader.    Divided into two main parts, the story begins with a short introduction written by a thief who had discovered pages of "yellowing, scribbled papers" in a pewter tube while pilfering a monastery.  As he sets out to "sift, to classify, to eliminate" the "work of colossal size,"  he also happened upon a "little notebook, in a neat scholarly hand,  bringing "the number of collaborators to four"  people responsible for the account as a whole. In putting it all together,  now, as he says, this thief-slash editor is "obliged" to add his name 

 "to the role of those Scribes who, without their knowledge (or almost without it),  have given Malpertuis a place in the history of human terror." 

After a brief introductory chapter detailing a shipwreck, the story begins in earnest with the narrative that "constitutes the kernel of the story, around which "the appalling destiny of Jean-Jacques Grandsire that the whole horror of Malpertuis revolves."   And now we're off and into Malpertuis itself, where Jean-Jacques' Uncle Cassave is quite literally on his deathbed with his family all around.  He is obviously a man of great wealth, but his family will not inherit any of it unless they all come to live in the house until their own deaths, and to sweeten the deal they will receive annual allowances.  They may not make any changes to Malpertuis, and there are a few other conditions as well, including that the last surviving inhabitant in the house will acquire Cassave's entire fortune.  

Notably, while this is Jean-Jacques' account, when the name of that house first arises, he becomes anxious:

"Malpertuis! For the first time the name has flowed in a turbid ink from my terrified pen! That house, placed by the most terrible of wills like a full stop at the end of so many human destinies -- I still thrust aside its image! I recoil, I procrastinate rather than bring it to the forefront of my memory!"

He continues:

"What is more, pressed no doubt by the brevity of their earthly term, human beings are less patient than the house; things remain after them, things -- like the stones of which accursed dwellings are made. Human beings are animated by the feverish haste of sleep tumbling through abbatoir gates -- they will not rest until they have taken their place under the great candlesnuffer that is Malpertuis."

There is obviously something terribly wrong about this house, but I had absolutely no clue as to just how wrong things were going to become.  After being plagued by bizarre visions, strange sounds and other occurrences, Jean-Jacques at one point comes to believe he's caught up in a "dream, a nightmare," begging "For the love of God, let me wake up!"  But this is no dream.    While it may sound as if this is prime haunted-house story material, perfect for relaxing curled up in your easy chair while reading,  for me that was definitely not the case -- it is so much more, well beyond your standard fare, with one character describing Malpertuis  as a "kind of 'fold in space...' " and an "abominable point of contact."  

As is the case with his short stories, Jean Ray writes here constructing layers upon interconnecting  layers as he gets closer to the heart of the tale of Malpertuis.   The result is an atmosphere of lingering dread, bleakness and full-on uncanny created by a blending of elements of the mystical, the mythical and the Gothic, leaving the reader with the feeling that perhaps you ought to mentally hold on to a ball of string or lay breadcrumbs as you navigate the labyrinth that is both this house and this story.   I realize that it may not be for everyone -- it does take a lot of patience and time spent thinking through this puzzle of a book and although I thought I'd sussed it a couple of times, what happens here went well beyond anything I could have possibly imagined.  The Wakefield edition has an excellent editor's afterword by Scott Nicolay that by all means should be left until after completing the novel unless, of course, you want to wreck things.  Malpertuis is a wild ride of a novel that I can most heartily recommend to readers of the strange.   I was completely entranced, off in another world altogether as I read it.   

Lost Estates, by Mark Valentine

 

"There would be tokens and talismans of the true country ..." 

--- from "The House of Flame"

9781783800476

Swan River Press, 2024

198 pp

hardcover

It's no secret that Mark Valentine is one of my favorite writers and now, with Swan River's publication of Lost Estates, I've added another gem of a book to my collection of his works.  If you haven't yet bought a copy, go to Swan River Press  and get one now. Seriously. 

In an insightful and informative conversation between this author and writer John Kenny, Valentine pleads "not guilty" to labeling the stories in this collection as "folk horror."  He would rather use the term "borderland" or "otherworld" stories, which he 

"came upon in contemporary 1923 reviews of Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair and Visible and Invisible by E.F. Benson,"

saying that these were "terms then in use and understood for occult and supernatural fiction."   In Valentine's opinion, "they do convey better the sense that can sometimes be felt in certain places of being close to a different realm."    I like it.  

It's not long into the first story before this notion of "being close to a different realm" makes itself known.  "A Chess Game at Michaelmas" finds our narrator leaving the train at Abbotsbury, where he has come at the invitation of a Mr. Winterbourne, with whom he had been corresponding about Winterbourne's "house and its particular custom" as part of his research.   The train was only the first part of the journey; he still has a five-mile walk to make, which he doesn't mind.  It is as "the grey chalk of dust" was being drawn across the day" that he felt not only a "change come over the country" through which he was traveling, but also a gradual sense of passing "into a different sort of space, a pause in the usual order of things."  The feeling lasts for only a moment, but "the impression lingered..."  He eventually makes his way via the hand-drawn map he was given to an old and somewhat shabby Georgian house where he and the owner discuss the unusual "rent" on the place.  It seems that that his family holds this place "from the King in return for a service or duty."   The narrator offers his opinions about the history of this particular sort of "custom," but what he doesn't realize is that before his visit ends, the rent is about to come due.  This story is absolutely fascinating, not just for the weird elements and the lore, but for me it's much more about the historical components and especially the yews.    "A Chess Game at Michaelmas" happens to be one of my favorite tales, but it's  another longer story at the end, "The Fifth Moon," that takes my number one spot,  pondering the lost treasure of King John.  As part of the Hambledon's Mysteries of History series that explores "historical mysteries" that also features the local landscape, a writer takes on the disappearance of  the wagons and carts ("the baggage train") carrying treasures belonging to King John in 1612 that were traveling through The Wash, an estuary in the marshy area along the West Norfolk coast of the North Sea.  The story goes that John had arrived at King's Lynn (at the time known as Bishop's Lynn) where his entourage had divided into two groups. The King and one group took the safer but longer road around through Wisbech heading for their destination, while the other took a "short cut" heading for Sutton across the estuary in a spot that was "passable for a few hours at low tide," getting stuck and sinking "into the salty mire."  Taking along a photographer, and temporarily borrowing another friend's old houseboat that had been beached on the marshes as a base,  the writer makes his way to the area where he points out that "out there ... if the tales be true, lies the most fabulous hoard ever known." While investigating the landscape and the story for themselves, the plan is also for the two to interview a couple of local "experts" on the lost treasure for their opinions on the matter.  But it isn't long before another, much darker, diabolical account of the story crops up that is vastly different than any they've heard.  It is a stunner of a story, and I was so taken with it that right away on finishing it  I made an intense trip down the rabbit hole for anything connected to the lost treasure of King John and the area of the Wash itself.  Just as an FYI, by way of more explanation about Valentine's interest in the subject, check out this article written by Valentine for Wormwoodiana.   

from Meandering Through Time

Between these two outstanding tales, there are ten more, and while won't go into all of them, there are a few I'll highlight,  beginning with "Worse Things Than Serpents."  At a crossroads with a signpost offering "Church" one way and "Garden" the other, the narrator of this story examines the church first, since "Norfolk churches are usually worth stopping for," then afterwards decides to go on to the garden.  Turns out there is no garden, but once back on the road he sees a "homemade roadside notice" calling his attention to "Brazen Serpent Books."  He makes his way to the empty old shed that is the book store, no proprietor in sight.  Eventually making a selection, he leaves a note that he is "Happy to Pay What is Due."  Given his experiences in the store, the price might just be a bit on the high side. In "Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire" there are actually two narrators, one from a man searching for his friend Crabbe, who "has vanished from his small house near the sea, and yet he is still here," and the other from Crabbe himself.   Here, landscape, history, lore and of course the other-worldly all come together, making for an eerie and quite honestly extraordinary piece of writing.   One of the darkest (at least for me) entries in this volume is "And maybe the parakeet was correct," involving a journalist hoping to come up with something different by exploring European football.  Traveling through a few countries, he ends up in Paris where in the back streets looking for "narrow passages where the enfants, shall we say not-quite-so-good, might be found, the sort that kick a ball around in the street" while treating strangers with "insolence and derision."  He gets his wish, watching "six or seven urchins" at the end of an alley, but realizes that what he is seeing is no ordinary game.  For "The Readers of the Sands," the best description I can offer is "haunting," which is actually an understatement now that I'm thinking about it again.  It begins as

 "three travellers headed by their different ways to a causeway leading them to the house called Driftwood End, which stood on a spur of land above a vast canvas of sand." 

The first is a guide through the hazardous sands of the estuary, the latest "holder of an ancient office" known as "Bishop's Sandman."  The next is a "seer" who employs sand along with the patterns in the sand in her profession, and the third a woman who creates "hour-glasses" and "egg-timers" from "sea-wood and blown glass." She has also discovered a somewhat strange ability she has which she keeps to herself, one which she will have opportunity to use at a particularly critical moment during the gathering.   Their host is a certain Phillip Crabbe (and I have to wonder if this is the same Crabbe who  vanished in "Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire") who lives at Driftwood End, and he has brought them all there for a particular purpose.  The remaining stories, "The House of Flame," "The Seventh Card," "Laughter Ever After," "The Understanding of the Signs," the titular "Lost Estates" and "The End of Alpha Street," are all excellent as well but I'm running long here. 

The blurb for Lost Estates notes that these tales offer "antiquarian mysteries, book-collecting adventures, and otherworldly encounters," as well as "mysterious landscapes, places of legend, and secret history."   Valentine has an incredible abundance of knowledge about ancient customs, history and lore that inform his stories; the joy is in seeing the connections he forges between that knowledge and the characters who interact with the landscapes which he so expertly renders here, either rural or city.  The stories themselves  have a truly special quality that I appreciate, meaning that once I start one, I'm deep into it and the outside world just vanishes.  He makes me feel like I am right there with the characters as they approach that (as the dustjacket blurb states) "unusual terrain,"   making it  beyond  difficult to put this book down at any time during the reading.  And if you get a Machen vibe, well ...

Very highly recommended -- Lost Estates is most certainly one of the best collections by this author I've read.