The Mark of the Shadow Grove, by Ross Smeltzer

9781944281007
Fantasy Works Publishing, 2016
236 pp

paperback

With huge apologies to the author, this is one book I should have read a long while ago, and just never got around to.  As the saying goes though, no time like the present, so I carved out late-night time for this one this week.  The book consists of three interconnected and atmospheric stories that in each case take the characters and the reader into the thick woods near Kinderhook, "a retiring town in New York's drowsy upper reaches," which was founded in 1609 under the Dutch.  The stories range in date from 1821 on into the early 1920s.

The "about the author" section reveals that Mr. Smeltzer's imagination was

 "apparently corrupted in adolescence by Hawthorne, Bierce, Machen, Lovecraft and other misanthropes, weirdos and purveyors of high strangeness"

and his influences definitely come through in this book.

The Schermerhorn clan has since the oldest times "mediated" the "liminal space" between "invisible hidden things" and the earthly realm, and in 1821, Katrina Schermerhorn continues the family tradition.  Years earlier, when she was young, she was given the name "arendiwanen," translated by some as "witch," but really meaning "one who possesses spirit power." The women of this clan are extremely powerful, and are also very gifted in terms of understanding the secrets of nature; they are also healers.  Katrina, for example, has a reputation among the locals  for being "dangerous" -- she

"knows when it may rain and when a body may die. She can make any garden grow, stimulate seeds in the deadest of soil."

 She is also skilled in forbidden knowledge, and in the first story, "The Witch of Kinderhook," it is this knowledge that drives a would-be necromancer named Carver to find her for his own bizarre work. The other two stories continue the story of the powerful Schermerhorn women descended from Katrina; in the next one, "Lord of All High and Hidden Places,"  a certain Professor Hildersham finds an assistant in the form of Alice Schermerhorn, a student who finds her way into one of his courses. His research focuses on the Horned God, who is a major fertility deity.  Alice's task is to locate any old tomes that might have bearing on his research; he, much like Carver before him, has no idea what he's getting into. The third story, "The Role of Old Blood"  features newspaper reporter Jim Scordato, who is currently seeking the whereabouts of a missing wealthy businessman whose last known contact is with an artist we know only as  Ms. Schiaparelli.  When he's not out on a story, the reporter is plagued with dark dreams that he knows ultimately reveal his own destruction.

All three stories are really quite engaging, focusing on the strengths of the women in this clan. The women, in fact, are the strongest characters portrayed here; their power derives from their patroness deity, leading them to grasp onto life that comes out of death and destruction. In all three tales, the belief in reason and science help guide the men to their fate; normally reason and science are good things in  the "realm in which you and I live," but have absolutely no place in a realm of gods and deities, "the cosmos of invisible, hidden things," which the Schermerhorn women seem to understand very well.  I highlight the word seem because of the ending, which I'll leave for other readers to ponder.

Two more things and we're done -- first, there is a lot of obvious Lovecraft influence here (as just two examples, old gods, the skin-covered old tomes and even a mention of  The Necronomicon), but to the author's credit, this is not a pastiche nor is this story explicitly derivative.  The author's definitely put his own spin on things here and he does it well.   I can easily see Machen in here too, which is a good thing. Second, I must confess that I inwardly cringed when I saw the word "ecosystem" being used in the 1820s setting; a bit of research revealed that the term wasn't coined until 1935.  Inner cringe. That seemed to me to be just sloppy.

Actually, this book would also make a fine summer read (it's June tomorrow, and summer reads are on my brain) -- not too heavy, not too dark, but just enough creep factor to keep anyone reading.  It's also very obvious that Mr. Smeltzer can write -- from the outset, it's clear to me that he's employed a literary tone  in this novel that's refreshing to see these days, especially in this genre.  Another fine small press read and I thank the author for bringing it to my attention. It's also fun.

new ghostly gothic: That Which Was So Fair, by Tony Reynolds

9781780929392
MX Publishing, 2016
141 pp
paperback

Here it is a day away from June -- I read this book way back in April but time just hasn't really been my friend since the end of March. I'm still catching up on posting about books read back then -- sometimes time is just not my own, but I'm sure everyone has that sort of thing now and then.  Anyway, That Which Was So Fair was brought to my attention by its author, and the storyline seemed intriguing enough to merit buying a copy. In all truth, I was offered an e-copy but I'm a hold-the-book-in-my-hand sort of person so I bought mine.  It's a fun book -- absolutely perfect for a summer read, very short and very to the point while managing to be creepy enough to where a reader won't want to put it down.

The year is 1850, and everything starts when young Catherine leaves her family home to become governess to young Thomas Uttridge.  She is welcomed at Southwell Hall quite warmly by her new employer who is raising Thomas without benefit of a wife,  and soon our young heroine is quite involved with the household and especially with her young charge, and she looks forward to doing a good job.  Aside from the fact that there is no Mrs. Uttridge around, everything seems quite normal.  Soon though, Catherine begins to sense that something is a bit off, and her bizarre experiences (in some cases not shared by others in the same room!) lead her to try to figure out exactly what the heck is actually going on in this place.

That Which Was So Fair is styled as a Victorian ghost story with a very gothic flair, and to his credit, the author lays down atmosphere and a sense of reader unease from the beginning.  There are two ongoing mysteries that run throughout the novel (which I won't disclose) and there's a very nice sense of place and time to be found here.  The ghostly parts of this book are also downright creepy; every sort of off-kilter encounter whetted my appetite for more of the same.  At the same time, I do have to say that as a very well-seasoned, avid reader of mysteries, I figured things out long before the answers presented themselves. Other readers may not notice little things like I did, but it seemed to me that the author tended to give a bit  too much away, where in this case, less would definitely have been more.  Keeping back certain conversations, certain bits of information, etc., would have definitely ratcheted up the level of suspense.  I also think maybe a wee bit of editing would have helped a little in some cases here and there.   However, considering that this book hasn't been out very long, so far readers are loving it, so maybe my too-many-clues-given-away criticism is just uber-pickiness on my end.

This short novel would most definitely make for fine summer-reading material; it's a book anyone could let themselves be carried away by on a hot, sunny afternoon. But do what I did and read it at night -- much creepier that way!

brain break, redux: Terror Tales of the Seaside, Paul Finch (ed.)

9781906331375
Grey Friar Press, 2013
257 pp

paperback

"It's strange how our perceptions of places, events, even people can be totally different from the reality. You convince yourself that something was one way and when you go back to check, it really wasn't."
                                    -- Joseph Freeman, "A Prayer for the Morning"

Trying to get the last couple of weeks of  disturbing images from my reading choices out of my head, I went rifling through my horror shelves for something lighter before moving back into full dark.   I had quite forgotten that I even owned this book, so it was sort of like Christmas when I found it. That happens a lot in this house: buy, shelve, forget, only to be delighted when I come across something I didn't realize I had.

The quotation with which I opened this post really gives a feel for exactly what's going on in this collection of short stories.  Add that to the seaside locations where these authors set their eerie tales, and that's why this book appeals. The back-cover blurb is also enticing,  letting us know that the places we're getting ready to read about have a colorful past:

"The British Seaside -- golden sands, toffee rock, amusement arcades. But also the ghosts of better days: phantom performers who if they can't get laughs will get screams; derelict fun-parks where maniacs lurk: hideous things washed in on bitter tides..."

Editor Paul Finch also gives his readers a bonus: beyond the stories found in this collection:  he has also seen fit to throw in some interesting, often arcane lore between stories. For example, in the short piece about "The Eerie Events at Castel Mare," he tells of a house built during the Victorian period where strange phenomena have been reported, giving it a reputation for being haunted. I won't say more about Castel Mare, but there are thirteen (!) of these little inserts that sent me searching online for more about each.  As interesting as these are, though, there are also fourteen short stories in this book, some of which gave me an outright case of the willies and all of which made for fun reading alone during a thunderstorm.

 I'll list the contents here shortly, but first I want to say that of the fourteen tales,  Ramsey Campbell's "The Entertainment" and Simon Kurt Unsworth's "The Poor Weather Crossings Company" are not only creepy but very, very well written, and they are my favorite stories in this collection by far. Very much out of the box and making both time and money spent on this book well worth it,  these two for me are the best of the bunch.  Campbell's story adds a tinge of undisguised anguish at the end which I wasn't expecting, but this tale as a whole should resonate with anyone who reads it.  The beginning of this story reminded me a bit of Priestly's Benighted, in which a traveler finds himself stuck in a storm that is so bad that drivers are being advised to stay off the roads.  Tom Shone is only half an hour from the motorway but at the edge of the town of Westingsea, when he decides he can't go on and needs to find a place to stay. Everything is full, but he lucks out and finds a sign leading to an old "three-storey house." There the similarity with Priestly ends, but Shone has definitely been "benighted" in the strictest sense of the word. When the door is opened after he rings the bell, an elderly woman asks him a rather bizarre question: "Are you the entertainment?"  What follows is downright weird and scary, and in my opinion, somewhat of  a tipping o' the hat  to Robert Aickman's "The Hospice."    Unsworth's story takes the reader to Morecambe, where an advert is posted for a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to "See the Bay as it Should be Seen!"  Taking the little pull-off strip with the telephone number, a man named Sykes decides it would be "something new to do, after all."  He's done the bay walk before, in a tour headed by "the Queen's guide to the sands," but this time around, the walk takes place at night, and the tour guide seems a bit eccentric.  Here the genius lies in Mr. Unsworth's ability to ever so slowly drop his readers into an ominous, off-kilter and eerie atmosphere from the start, and keeping them there, all the while ratcheting up reader tension by turning that screw just a little tighter until ...

Aside from these two beyond satisfying and delightful neck-hackling terror tales, the rest of the stories are as follows (with the little folklore/arcane knowledge/legends etc in italic):

"Holiday from Hell," by Reggie Oliver another good one that is a mix of horror and ha-ha-ha after I figured out the gimmick here.
The Eerie Events at Castel Mare - Torquay
 "The Causeway," by Stephen Laws - such a disturbing mix here as crime and horror blend together into a weird, eerie tale.
The Kraken Wakes - Guernsey
 "The Magician Kelso Dennett," by Steven Volk.  If you don't ask "how did he do that?" at the end, there's something really wrong with you.
Forces of Evil - Pittenweem, north of the Firth of Forth
"A Prayer for the Morning," by Joseph Freeman, another favorite because of the frightening  implications of the ending. Wow.
The Ghost of Goodwin Sands - Kent
 "The Jealous Sea" by Sam Stone.  Seriously, the writing is good, but variations of this sort of story have  been told many times by different authors.
The Horse and the Hag - Minster-in-Sheppey, Kent

"Bighthelmstone," by R.B. Russell, is way more of a true-life sort of terror than anything supernatural. 

The Devil Dog of Peel - Isle of Man

 "Men With False Faces," by Robert Spalding.  Dear God.  I hate clowns, and this tale is filled to the brim with them, but the story itself is quite good, and well written. 

The Ghouls of Bannane Head - the Ayrshire Coast of Scotland. Sawney Bean ring a bell?

"GG Luvs PA, " by Gary Fry -- you'll never look at words written in sand the same way twice after reading this one. Okay, good, not great. 

This Beautiful, Terrible Place - Beachy Head 

"The Incident at North Shore," by Paul Finch.  There's something about escaped mental patients and defunct amusement parks that I normally can't resist.  I wasn't really in love with the story, but walking around the old fun park with the main character was eerily awesome.   

In the Deep, Dark Winter - Morecambe 

"Shells," by Paul Kane.  Okay -- this one is bizarre but very cool; has a sort of slow-burn horror feel to it right up through the end. It also, strangely enough, brought to mind a certain old sci-fi flick starring Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy. Guess which one. 

The Walking Dead - Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumbria

"The Sands are Magic," by Kate Farrell,  is just utterly tragic and beyond terrifying in a real-world sort of way.

Hellmouth - Brighton 

"Broken Summer" by Christopher Harman rounds out this collection in this story of a man who is either suffering from drug-induced hallucinations or is actually living a nightmare.

Wild Men of the Sea - Suffolk 

I understand that there is an entire series of these "terror tales" -- with this book, there are nine, I think, ranging from the Lake District up to the Scottish Highlands,  even going out into the ocean!  I'm so there, if this book is any indicator.  As I'm fond of saying, with every anthology of short stories, I can expect some that are excellent, some that are good, and some I don't think are so hot, but as a whole, Terror Tales of the Seaside is entertaining, definitely creepy, and one I can recommend. I'm also very happy to find new authors to read!  This one is really for fans who like their horror more in the cerebral zone; probably not something to read if you can't do without guts and gore.  Must buy more!

*a head-spinning, beyond-disturbing experience, and I loved it: The Tenant, by Roland Topor

193361806x
Millipede Press, 2006
originally published as La loquetaire chemérique (1964)
translated by Francis K. Price
216 pp

paperback

Just in case there's anyone left that doesn't know, The Tenant was made into a film by Roman Polanski.  The movie is freaky but the book is truly beyond disturbing.  Read the book and then see the film; things make so much more sense in that order.

I have looked at a few readers' takes on this book, and see the same thing written again and again: "a vicious satire on conformity."  This phrase, as I discovered, is from Wikipedia, and while it is appropriate, it doesn't even begin to cover what's happening here.  Nor does it give a reader the slightest clue as to just how very dark this book actually is -- Topor's novel burrowed into my head and still hasn't left; I finished it some time ago.  The words "tyranny of conformity" came to mind when describing this book to someone, but it even goes well beyond that.

There is a rare opening in the apartment building on the Rue des Pyrénées, and Trelkovsky, who is facing the prospect of shortly being homeless, decides to jump on it.  When the former tenant, Simone Choule, dies, Trelkovsky moves in. The place is even furnished, since Simone's family doesn't want her stuff; there are reminders of her everywhere.   He's lucky to have the place -- there is a scarcity of available apartments, and he considers himself fortunate. He puts down his money, and at the initial  interview with the landlord, he is told by Monsieur Zy that

"You can see that no one has any trouble getting along with me, so long as he behaves properly, and pays the rent regularly."

Trelkovsky is so eager to get into the apartment that he accepts the conditions. Later, there is a "sort of housewarming" with friends at his place not long afterward, and this is when things begin to change.  The noise made by Trelkovsky's guests brings his upstairs neighbor to the door to complain.  Trelkovsky apologizes; afterwards, back in the apartment, Trelkovsky does his best to quiet his friends, eventually throwing them out. His happiness is now replaced by shame; he even starts to think of himself as an "odious person." As he muses,

"That indescribable din of his revelry had waked up everyone in the building! Could it be that he had no respect for others? That he was incapable of living in a normal, civilized society?"

And here, only some 29 pages in, is where my brain goes click whir, big broad pink highlighter on the phrase as written in my notebook --  now I know what to look for, based on his  mention of his fellow tenants as "normal, civilized society."

To avoid becoming homeless, Trelkovsky no longer invites his friends over; he starts spending quiet nights at home as an insurance policy against a time when he might accidentally make noise.   When there is a robbery and some personal items are stolen, he is urged by the landlord not to go to the police.  He is also told that the previous tenant wore slippers after 10 p.m. Things start to spiral out of control as he comes to realize that with the robbery, he has also lost his past and remnants of his identity; leading him to question exactly what constitutes a self. Unfortunately, as he comes to realize, who he is is no longer his to decide; that decision rests with the rest of the people in the building.    As the neighbors continue to browbeat and persecute him, the outsider/other in this "civilized society,"  into acquiescing, he begins to become paranoid, and finds himself slowly sliding into madness.

That's the nutshell version; to say more would be to ruin it for others completely.

Very early on in this story, the reader understands that  Trelkovsky is an easy target: he  tries very hard to conform to others' expectations,  in real life, hiding his true nature by doing what's expected of him around others. For example, when he goes to the mass for Simone Choule after her death, we learn that he is not religious, but he imitates the movements and attitudes of others. When the thoughts of death are too much for him, he tries to leave but  the door won't open, and he is worried about the "disapproving glances"  of the others there.  When he goes to a movie with Simone's best friend Stella, she hits on him, rubbing her leg against his so he starts touching her, even though he's probably gay.  He even begins to drink hot chocolate in the cafe by his building because the waiter assumes that he wants it because Simone always had it; same thing with her brand of cigarettes.

To me, this novel speaks to alienation within the context of a repressive society; the attempts at imposed conformity and the persecution of the outsider -- extremely disturbing, but in the reading world, I love this stuff. Combine that with an eventual loss of self/identity under the auspices of those who want to define exactly who and what a person should become, and it makes for darkness very readable. Here, we get an example of exactly what it is when I look for while reading -- when does someone reach their breaking point, and what factors combine to bring someone to the edge of that abyss?   It is just so very sad that this novel is out of print and that copies are so bloody expensive -- The Tenant would make a great book to read with a group.  Hell, if I had unlimited funds, I'd buy several copies and start a group just for the purpose of reading it!

Polanski's film based on this book is also disturbing and really does capture the essence of the novel.  Of course, most of the book takes place within the confines of Trelkovsky's head, so there will naturally be some omissions, but the movie is one of the better screen adaptations I've seen this year. I was alone when I watched it, so I chose to do it late afternoon, but it was so eerie that I had it in my head the rest of the night. Read the novel first though -- I was so happy I did it in that order.

Book and movie -- both very, very highly recommended.  Just be warned. Neither is liable to leave your head for some time.

The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle

9780765387868

Tor, 2016

149 pp

paperback

(read in March)

"You're a monster, then..."

"I was made one." 

The Ballad of Black Tom is a book that takes H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Horror at Red Hook" and stands it on its head.  

LaValle says in an interview that he started reading Lovecraft around age 11, and found himself "hooked."  He says that while he liked Lovecraft's monsters, he "loved the ideas even more, the scale of his imagination. Cosmic as fuck." This all changed when he turned sixteen, when, as he notes,

"I lost youthful innocence, I guess. Or I began to see things I'd once missed. Or ignored. Things that should've been obvious, but hasn't been."

After going through a short list of what "should've been obvious," he mentions that perhaps one of these is that he started to realize that his "beloved Howard Phillips Lovecraft was one hell of a racist."  Not only that, but he also mentions that his writing was pretty bad. Still, he continues to have a certain admiration for HP Lovecraft, and he wondered what would happen if he "reimagined" "Horror at Red Hook" and brought the story forth from the points of view of the people "playing the background."  It's a ballsy move, in my opinion, and it works.

I won't go much into the plot here, but a little appetite whetting might be in order.  Tommy Tester, who lives in Harlem in a small apartment with his father, is a musician. He is playing on the streets one day when he's noticed by Robert Suydam,  a wealthy white man who wants him to play for him at his home. The man offers Tommy a lot of money for a gig, and Tommy takes him up on it since the money would keep him and his father in groceries for a long while.   It isn't long, though, until Tommy realizes that his new employer is no ordinary guy -- that he is fixated on a bizarre being he calls The Sleeping King.  After the first night, Tommy is terrified and decides not to return.  However, when the cops do something horrific that completely changes his life, Tommy realizes that "a fear of cosmic indifference suddenly seemed comical, or downright naive," and goes back to Red Hook and Suydam.  After all, he says, after what's happened to him, "Indifference would be such a relief."

The real crux of this book for me is reflected in something that Tommy says to Malone (remember him? The detective who survived "the horror at Redhook" in the original).  The two are having a discussion about Suydam, and Malone asks him why he got involved with him.  Tommy's answer is just genius and speaks volumes:

"I bear a hell within me...and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin." 

Now that's a story.  And it's one that LaValle does very well.

November Night Tales: Stories of the Supernatural, by Henry Chapman Mercer

9781943910045

Valancourt Books, 2015

197 pp

paperback

"How often must we account for the origin of human responsibility in nothing more definite than shifts of chance?"

**

The back cover blurb of this book says that Mercer

"channeled his antiquarian interests and his love of Gothic literature into November Night Tales (1928), a volume of highly imaginative weird tales in the mode of M.R. James."

I went into the book as I normally do, without expectations, but it wasn't too long into the first story, "Castle Valley," when I started thinking "I've read something like this before." Sorting through all of the clutter in my head, I realized that in its own way, "Castle Valley"  sort of reminded me of James' "View From a Hill."  In James' story, an archaeologist gets a view of the past with the help of some rather sinister binoculars; here, a painter and his friend discover a scrying stone that does much the same.   But this doesn't mean that November Night Tales is a James ripoff -- au contraire -- it is quite an original collection of stories that should be read and appreciated on its own merit.  This book gathers together many facets of Mercer's personal interests, including  the natural landscape, local legends, mythology, and above all, castles.  As the introduction notes,

"Indeed, to Mercer, the very presence of a castle suggested an almost infinite number of possibilities. 'Castles, Castles, Castles -- Where do their stories begin or end?"

As happens often with James (especially in his Antiquary stories), Mercer's  characters tend to find themselves in the position of coming across something they probably shouldn't be messing with, but are all the same compelled to explore further in hopes of some sort of satisfactory, rational answer.  In the process, these people end up discovering that there are often things that exist well beyond their understanding, but they also tend to realize something about themselves as well.

The table of contents is as follows (I won't go into each story here, since it's best to discover Mercer on one's own):

"Castle Valley"

"The North Ferry Bridge"

"The Blackbirds"

"The Wolf Book" 

"The Dolls' Castle"

"The Sunken City"

"The Well of Monte Corbo"

I will say that while I thought all of the stories in this book were quite good, I found three I enjoyed just a bit more than the others. There's  "The Dolls' Castle," a great gothic haunted-house sort of story that was just downright creepy, as was "The Wolf Book," which starts in an old monastery in the Carpathians.  I don't know about anyone else, but the combination of old text, monastery and the Carpathians is a definite draw for me,  a scenario I can't resist; there were other very cool historical bits in this story as well as a look at how local legends and myths can transform a community.    "The North Ferry Bridge" was also quite fun, with a little dark, pulpy creeposity  in the telling  which was a definite plus for me; added to that aspect, I also got the horrific tale of an escaped madman, another story type that I can't not read.  While these three elevated my heart rate for a while, all of the stories in November Night Tales were definitely "highly imaginative" and "weird," as promised.  Then, of course, comes the added bonus of finding a previously-unknown (to me) author and reading his work ...

While the stories may not exactly scare the pants off of readers, they are highly intelligent, well written and they set the brain into high gear while reading them.  These are dark tales for thinking people who don't need everything spelled out for them and frankly, they're just plain fun.

As always Valancourt, thanks for bringing the obscure back into the light.

brain break: The People of the Pit and Other Early Horrors from the Munsey Pulps, (ed). Gene Christie

9781928619963
Black Dog Books, 2010
202 pp

paperback

If you're reading this book on an airplane, prepare to be stared at as people go down the aisle and check out what you're reading.   The scantily-dressed women (and the two naked babes in the background) certainly drew attention from passers-by, and I felt a bit squirmy when I'd meet people's eyes.  How do you explain a cover like that?  On the other hand, I love love love these old covers  --they're an art form unto themselves and should be appreciated as such.

The first thing that caught my eye was the foreword by Robert Weinberg. In it he notes that the old pulps were written with "a modicum of "good taste" as contrasted to some of today's modern horror, most notably splatterpunk, which "murders good taste."  I agree -- when writers write mainly for effect, to see how much "blood and guts and brains and gore" they can get on a page, well, to me that's just tasteless. Try writing.  Not that these old pulps are great literature, but like good horror, in most of these tales, the horror is implied. That's another point Weinberg makes -- that

"The pulp horror stories require that the the reader possesses some smatterings of intelligence. The tale assumes that you can follow a plot and don't need to be force fed every clue or every twist and turn of the story."

Oh, Robert Weinberg, your entire foreword is singing my song.  

There are fifteen stories in this little book, some of which I've read before:
-- "The People of the Pit," by A. Merritt,
 -- "The Orchid Horror," by John Blunt (which I read in Robert Dunbar's wonderful anthology Dark Forest)
--  "The Ship of Silent Men," by a most obscure pulp writer Philip M. Fisher, whose collection of tales can be found in Beyond the Pole and Other Weird Fantasies (also published by Black Dog)

and beyond those little gems, the rest are new to me:
 -- "Behind the Curtain," by Francis Stevens:   Mummy pulp
-- "Number Thirteen" (excerpt), by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which I must say I did not care for at all, but I can't win them all.
-- "The Tenth Question," by George Allan England:  a tale of revenge where a man's life depends on getting the right answer to question number 10.   Delightfully strange.
--"Disappointment," by Achmed Abdullah: More atmospheric than anything, but still quite pleasing.
--"The Pretty Woman," by Owen Oliver:  I love a good madness tale, and this is one of the best.
-- "The Living Portrait," by Tod Robbins:  Exactly as the title implies.
--"An Offer of Two to One," by Talbot Mundy:  auto-suggestion at work -- great story.
--"Beyond the Violet," by J.U. Geisy: the war leaves a man able to see well beyond the normal spectrum, and you just wouldn't believe what's out there.
--"The Elixir of Life," by C. Langton Clarke -- another absolute stunner.  
-- "The Mystery of the Shriveled Hand," by Sax Rohmer -- set in Cairo, another cool tale of justifiable revenge.
-- Damon Runyon's very well-known "Fear", in which a police chief gets his comeuppance.  Very Damon Runyon.

and last, but by no means least,

--"Monsieur de Guise," by Perley Poore Sheehan (whose name just screams "I write pulp fiction"), which takes place down in the swamp. The atmosphere on this one alone makes it very much worth the read.

For just pure entertainment, this book is worth its weight in gold, and having the names of several new and (to me) obscure authors to look up is a side benefit. Many of the stories here are seeing their first time in reprint since the days of the old pulp mags; some are definitely what I would consider horror; some others are more of a mystery-ish bent, but all (with the exception of the entry by Edgar Rice Burroughs) are just plain fun.  It's an ahhh read, comfort food between two covers, and for fans, a very, very nice collection.  Just put a brown cover over it or something out in public.