NEWS: Tartarus Press invite you to 'Tea and Gargoyles' with Mark Valentine

Newly announced by Tartarus Press and shipping this week is the new collection of essays from Mark Valentine, 'Tea and Gargoyles'.

These collections are always fascinating and always manage to be the cause of much consternation with my bank account as Mark lifts the lid on more strange delights.

From the Tartarus Press website...

In Tea and Gargoyles, Mark Valentine explores fiction that seems to hover on the edge of the uncanny, including work by Robert Aickman, Elizabeth Bowen, Gladys Mitchell and Walter de la Mare. He also discusses the more unusual and obscure metaphysical thrillers of the mid twentieth century.

Another essay looks at books that are rarer still: the imaginary titles conjured up in fiction which often, however, seem strangely familiar. His enjoyment of the recondite continues with a delight in a forgotten Edwardian nonsense poet and a shadowy relic of the 1890s, in old board games, and in the esoteric music and journals of the 1970s.

Valentine also celebrates the menagerie of seventeenth-century book-sellers’ signs, an old book about a town populated by bears which has a bookshop open all night, and the book¬shop detectives who uncover even more places to find books. The collection concludes with joyful accounts of book-browsing expeditions in the Marcher country.

'Tea and Gargoyles' is published in a 350 limited edition run of Tartarus Press' beautiful hardbacks and is available now from the publisher here...

http://www.tartaruspress.com/valentine-tea-gargoyles.html

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Seventeen Stories

Mark Valentine

Swan River Press

Mark Valentine’s stories have been described by critic Rick Kleffel as "consistently amazing and inexplicably beautiful". He has been called "A superb writer, among the leading practitioners of classic supernatural fiction" by Michael Dirda of The Washington Post, and his work is regularly chosen for year’s best and other anthologies.
This new selection offers previously uncollected or hard to find tales in the finest traditions of the strange and fantastic. As well as tributes to the masters of the field, Valentine provides his own original and otherworldly visions, with what Supernatural Tales has called "the author's trademark erudition" in "unusual byways of history, folklore and general scholarship". Opening a book will never seem quite the same again after encountering this curious volume of Seventeen Stories . . .

Swan River have released two of these collections of stories by Mark Valentine - the other being 'Selected Stories' - and they are, as is often the case, stories that the MV devotee might have already read in some obscure anthology or chapbook , but for many these will be entirely new.

Mark is a storyteller of the liminal spaces, of the thin places and of thresholds. He speaks of slips into the unknowable, of flavours lost or untasted, and of sounds best left unheard.  He tells stories of those broken by experiences of the numinous, of those with the power to exploit it and of those with the wherewithal to leave well enough alone when they feel it's presence and here Swan River Press have provided us with a beautifully rounded collection of Mark's tales.

To my mind, he's our best writer of the classic form of weird and supernatural tales whose stories are to be savoured like - and possibly with - a fine cognac.

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NEWS: Sarob Press publish 'Votive Offerings'

Coming in January from Sarob Press is a new 4 author collection called 'Votive Offerings'

From the mail out...

Four ‘all new’ long stories (or novelettes) imbued with the mystery and otherworldliness of place and of landscape – strange, secret, mystical and ancient.

In “Roman Masks” by Mark Valentine art college teachers and their students in north west England invoke, through strange ritual, ancient gods and terrible dark forces at a coastal temple ruin.

John Howard’s weirdly enigmatic “Desire Path” takes the unwary reader along pathways long forgotten and thought lost ~ but what if you could walk along ways that no longer exist?

“Figures in a Landscape” by Peter Bell finds its heroine seeking a lost (or possibly mythic) Welsh hill figure and discovering the seemingly harmless to be anything but.

Colin Insole’s “The April Rainers” is a tale of the re-emergence of something old, powerful and malevolent, and the story of the centuries-old fellowship pledged to protect the land and keep it safe from the terror.

Published as a limited edition hardback.

Info on how to order can be found here...

https://sarobpress.blogspot.com/2025/12/new-title-news-votive-offerings.html?m=1

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NEWS: Tartarus Press publish Mark Valentine's 'The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things'

Originally published in 2018, by Zagava 'The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things' is a collection of short stories by Wyrd Britain favourite, Mark Valentine. On December 1st, Tartarus Press are re-publishing this long out of print collection with the addition of nine stories or vignettes written at the same time but omitting the selection of journal entries.

From the Tartarus Press release notes...

All the stories were originally selected for anthologies or journals. ‘Vain Shadows Flee’ was included in Best British Short Stories 2016 edited by Nicholas Royle (Salt Publishing), and ‘Yes, I Knew the Venusian Commodore’ was translated into Spanish by María Pilar San Roman in an award-winning anthology.

And from Mark's post on his Wormwoodiana blog...

The artwork depicts the mysterious Three Headed King motif from the ancient church at Sancreed in the far west of Cornwall, which appears in the title story. Other stories are about the ancient mysteries of Palmyra and Jerusalem, the music of Stonehenge and of the fabulously rare record Goat Songs, the uncanny in performances of Milton’s Comus and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and the wondrous influences of a toy cockatrice.

I was privileged to receive a copy of the original edition about which I wrote that this book finds Mark "exploring ephemeral landscapes of the unknowable and the inimitable.  He tells stories of the borderlands, of the thin places where glimpses are caught of the otherwheres, where the truly (un)lucky get to tread on soil unused to human feet.  Stories of those liminal places where a travellers only map would be the tales told of them."

And, that he takes us on, "journeys both sinister and beautiful (often simultaneously) to places terrifying and beguiling (often simultaneously) in the company of the lost, the curious, the brave and the foolish and in each we can see ourselves as they react to the outrageous in deeply human ways."

This new edition of 'The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things' is available as a 350 copy limited edition hardback and is sure to sell out fast.  Order now at...

http://tartaruspress.com/valentine-uncertainty.html

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The Thunderstorm Collectors

Mark Valentine
Tartarus Press

Mark Valentine’s book-collecting began with classic supernatural and fantastic fiction and decadent poetry but soon included antiquities, folklore and the Arthurian legends. The first of these enthusiasms is reflected here in essays on Walter de la Mare, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson and David Lindsay and on lesser-known modern ghost stories. There are also several essays on slim volumes of rare and strange verse.

He also explores the origins of the Red Lion inn sign, the enjoyable wanderings of 1930s antiquarians and ramblers, and the keen weather-watchers behind the irresistible title British Thunderstorms, Continuing Summer Thunderstorms. The author speculates on the secrets behind an interwar listing of obscure periodicals and on the odd finds at a village hall flea market. Readers will find in all these essays a delight in the obscurer byways and an engaging interest in the unlikeliest places

I'm a bit of a whim reader of non-fiction these days, I used to read lots but now, with very few exceptions,  I rarely find myself picking up anything other than fiction.  Those exceptions tend to be an occasional music study, a random curio and any and all of Mark Valentine's explorations of forgotten books and underappreciated authors, with intermittent digressions into the likes of pub signs and barometric observations.

'The Thunderstorm Collectors' is not the latest of Mark's collections from Tartarus Press, I still have that one waiting on my shelf.  This one came out a year or so ago and got lost amidst my long-COVID malaise but is still available from the publisher as one of their lovely paperback editions.

I love these books although my bank balance is less keen as Mark guides us through a tantalising and often irresitable array of goodies interlaced with fascinating and typcally erudite examinations of those authors of more lasting reputations such as Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen & William Hope Hodgson.

There's much to entice here and several things have, inevitably, been added to the wants list. Additionally, some of the most interesting pieces here are the ones dealing with Mark's love of ephemera and of the edges of his main focus as he takes us into various Earth mysteries, landscape records and the vagaries of collecting.

As ever, with Mark's books - both fiction and non - we heartily recommend this and suggest that those wishing to try out his work would be well advised to grab one of these fabulous collections and to check out his Wormwoodiana blog.

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Literary Hauntings

Available now from Tartarus Press is this fantastic new guide book  to the uncanny or perhaps I should say to uncanny influences.

The literary equivalent of Janet and Colin Bord's essential 'Mysterious Britain' and 'The Secret Country' it provides an exploration of the real world locations that have "inspired the best fictional ghost stories of Britain and Ireland". Contributors include Tartarus Press head honchos R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker along with Mark Valentine, John Howard, Mike Ashley, Swan River Press' Brian J Showers and others and it makes for fascinating reading

If you've ever been fabulous enough to want to float down the canals of Elizabeth Jane Howard's 'Three Miles Up', visit Thomas Carnacki at Cheyne Walk or to climb Arthur Machen's Hill of Dreams then in this fantastic book you'll find your guide to the destinations of all your best nightmares.

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This World and That Other

John Howard
Mark Valentine
Sarob Press

This is the second of John and Mark's shared exploration of the concepts and ideas of 'Inkling' Charles Williams following on from 2020s 'Powers and Presences' from the same publisher.

John opens the book with his 'All the Times of the City', a story of a cathedral and a poem and the influence that both exert over different times and different realities.  It's very typically John, delicate, poetic, poised on a razor's edge and deeply immersed in the lure of the city and in the shapes that buildings take on in our imaginations and the hold they have over us.

Mark's story has a more pulpy feel to it.  A cross country romp that reminded me of his Connosieur stories and in particular 'Descent of Fire' (co-written with John Howard). It's great, breathless fun that introduces a variety of eccentrics and their associated artifacts all of which resonate with mythic significance.  I must admit to being a little disappointed that we didn't get the return of Rachel Verulay, Thomas 'Marmoset' Mulberry and Lepus the straw hare from that previous volume but maybe another time and as replacements the cast of characters we have here did not disappoint.

I've never read any Charles Williams despite having three of his books on my shelves for a few years now - so many books so little free time - so my understanding of how these stories  resonate with his own writing is for other people to appreciate but for me this is another great read from two of our finest writers of supernatural fiction.

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Infra Noir 2020

Various authors
Zagava

Since some friends of Zagava missed single titles of our chapbook series, Zagava now offers all 11 Infra-Noir chapbooks published in 2020 as an inexpensive paperback! If you want all of the brilliant stories in one affordable place, this is the book for you.
D.P. Watt: Craft; Mark Valentine The Clerks of the Invisible; Jonathan Wood: The Idyll Is Over; Karim Ghahwagi: Codex of Light; Mark Samuels: Posterity; Rebecca Lloyd: Ancestor Water; Mark Valentine: Stained Medium; Timothy J. Jarvis: The Purblind Bards; Reggie Oliver: The Wet Woman; R.B. Russell: A House of Treasures; Rosalie Parker: Home Comforts 

Through 2020 Zagava released a series of small chapbooks by a coterie of authors associated with the publisher and enjoyed by us here at Wyrd Britain including Mark Valentine, Rosalie Parker, R.B. Russell and more.  These stories have now been collected together in this delightful volume.

D.P Watt has the honour of opening the proceedings with an entrancing tale of a beautifully made book whereas for Mark Valentine - in the first of two contributions - it's the mystery of a rare book and the joy of the hunt whilst Jonathan Wood explores the inner life of the book and the characters that the writer hopes to populate it with.

Karim Ghahwagi's 'Codex of Light' takes a different tack with a fantastical fable of fire and the restrictions of tradition.  Mark Samuels' 'Posterity' tells a wonderfully creepy talke of scholarlty hubris and a dead author (a thinly veiled Robert Aickman).  Rebecca Lloyd's 'Ancestor Water' like Ghahwagi's earlier story deals with the pull of heritage although it's contemporary setting free of gothic trappings gives it a more urgent and less folky aspect.

Happily we are given another Mark Valentine story (regular readers will be well aware of our love of Mark's writing) this time dealing with forgotten philosophies chance meetings and lost literary treasure whilst Timothy J. Jarvis spins a fascinating post apocalyptic tale in 'The Purblind Bards'.

Reggie Oliver is one of several authors on my ever growing 'must read more' list as what I have read has been a treat.  Here his story 'The Wet Woman' continues a trend I've noticed in his writing for a sort of dark whimsy which here takes the form of a group of thesps and musos engaging in petty revenge that unleashes more profound events.

The book ends with two stories from Tartarus Press publishers R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker.  Ray's story 'A House of Treasures' is a beautifully poised tale of a search realised whilst Rosalie tells of desire and perhaps lust for a cuddly but avaricious toy waiter named Nigel.  It's very wrong and very funny.

Unfortunately this collection, as with all the Zagava paperbacks, was only available for a very short while due to to issues with print quality but if you can track a copy down it'll definitely reward the hunt.

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Sphinxes & Obelisks

Mark Valentine
Tartarus Press

Why did Queen Victoria demand to see the disembodied head of a talking sphinx? Why will you never find the fabulous art deco book In That Look the Unicorn Stood? What was the slight flaw in the idea of racing cheetahs at the White City? What was the date confidently given for apocalypse at a Somerset railway station book-stall? Who had visions of Atlantis in an old house in Nightingale Lane?
These and many other enigmas are discussed in this new book of essays from Mark Valentine. As in his previous well-received collections, you will also be offered suggestions for recondite reading in overlooked books that ought to be better known: an interplanetary fantasy by a Welsh squire; a timeslip into a mysterious England by a priest once called the original of Dorian Gray; an avant-garde novel about a tea-party and the Holy Grail.

This is the third collection of Mark's explorations of forgotten and underappreciated authors alongside some of his other diversions such as music, pub signs and tarot.  Like the previous books - 'A Country Still All Mystery' & 'A Wild Tumultory Library' - it's a fascinating delight of a read that will send you scurrying to the nearest dusty bookshop.

In these pages Mark discusses a bewildering assortment of intriguing books by authors of the early 20th century and late 19th such as Gerald Warre Cornish, H.M. Vaughan, Riccardo Stephens and E. Temple Thurston amongst many others - the last two being some of the very few folks here that I had already been aware of and that's only because Mark had kindly gifted me copies of their books last year.

As I've said before and will certainly say again Mr. Valentine is one of the finest writers we have at the moment as whether he's writing fiction or non he can transport and beguile like few others and his works are always gems to be savoured.

A few copies remain from the publisher at the link above.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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The Master of the Macabre

Russell Thorndike
Valancourt Books

Tayler Kent flees London in a blinding snowstorm, hoping to escape the ghosts that haunt his home. Instead, he finds things may have gone from bad to worse when he crashes his car, breaks his ankle, and is forced to take refuge at a medieval monastery now inhabited by the eccentric Charles Hogarth, known as “The Master of the Macabre.” As Kent’s ankle heals, Hogarth entertains him with fine food, brandy, and a series of gruesome stories connected with an odd assortment of old relics on display in a curio cabinet. But the terrors are not confined to Hogarth’s tales: the monastery is haunted by the evil spirit of an apostate monk and besieged by more corporeal foes, who will stop at nothing to get their hands on one of the Master’s treasures. . . .
Best known for his series of novels featuring the smuggler Dr. Syn, Russell Thorndike (1885-1972) in The Master of the Macabre (1947) delivers an irresistible mix of horror, adventure, and black humour that is certain to please fans of classic ghost stories and supernatural fiction. This first-ever republication of the novel includes the original jacket art and a new introduction by Mark Valentine.

Russell Thorndike (1885 - 1972) was an actor and author of the popular 'Dr Syn' books, the tales of the swashbuckling pirate turned vicar turned smuggler, which he started writing before enlisting to serve in WWI where he was severely wounded at Gallipoli.

Written in 1946 'The Master of the Macabre' is Thorndike's entry into the occult detective genre.  All the usual tropes are present; an enigmatic lead relating stories of his escapades to an eager biographer / acolyte which in this case is the result of a series of possibly supernaturally influenced incidents, accidents and illnesses that leave author Tayler Kent collapsed with a broken ankle on the doorstep of Charles Hogarth, collector of macabre mysteries.

There are echoes of occult detectives past and Mark Valentine points out several of these in his introduction but for most of his tales Hogarth is an observer or chronicler rather than active participant.  Outside of these fireside tales (and in the manner to become so beloved of the portmanteau movies of the late 1960s and early 1970s) there's an overarching storyline that weaves itself around the stories which in this case involves ancient ghosts of a diabolical monk and a beautiful young woman and a troupe of murderous Muslim mountain men questing for a religious artefact they believe to be in Hogarth's possession.

Thorndike's writing is entertainingly melodramatic and the stories are enjoyably lurid.  There's a queasy colonialism inherent in the attitudes of the protagonists that makes for occasionally uncomfortable reading but equally often just as laughably absurd.

'The Master of the Macabre' is another in the line of Valancourt reissues of neglected and forgotten gems of supernatural fiction and as with the others I've written about in Wyrd Britain (and some I haven't because they don't fit with the blog's remit like Forrest Reid's fabulous 'The Spring Song' (UK / US)) a very enjoyable one.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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Supernatural Tales 45

David Longhorn (ed)
Supernatural Tales

Now this is a rarity, I'm actually up to date with issues of Supernatural Tales thanks mostly to wanting to catch up on all my unread zines, chapbooks and the like over this second lockdown.  Happily this one was the best issue in a while helped in no small part by stories by three authors I really like.

Carrie Vacaro Nelkin gets things off to a strong start with 'Stricken' a fun little story about the monster under the bed before the very excellent Charles Wilkinson gives a characteristically strange story about starlings and music in 'The Harmony of the Stares'.  This is followed by Rosalie Parker's 'The Decision' which is written with her customary eye for the odd and the unsettling but I must admit to being a tad confused by the ending.

Mark Valentine is on fine form here taking a turn as a football pundit and if only all match reports were like this then maybe I'd read the back pages of the newspaper.  I wasn't particularly taken with Malcolm Laughton's story which melded 'Kidnapped' with a rose tinted slavery subplot and a vengeful spirit.

I liked William Curnow's 'The Round-About' which came across like a sentimental Aickman and Iain Rowan's 'The Wildness' was a brief but interesting tale of madness before the book ends with Tim Foley's rather obvious ghost story.

Like all compilations Supernatural tales can often be a little patchy but it's always worth a read as there's usually a good story or two or three or, like here, six.

Buy it at the link above.

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The Mummy

Riccardo Stephens
Valancourt Books

Dr. Armiston, middle-aged bachelor and general practitioner, has his quiet and routine life interrupted when he is called in to consult on the deaths of two young men. One case seems to be a tragic accident, the other the result of natural causes, but they have one strange thing in common: the presence of the same ancient Egyptian mummy case in both men's homes. When Armiston learns that the sarcophagus is inscribed with a terrible curse promising vengeance on anyone who disturbs the mummy's repose, and as the series of deaths continues, the doctor will risk his own life to unravel the mystery and find out whether the mummy - or something or someone else - is responsible.

I've never had much in the way of an interest for Egyptian history or mythology which goes some way to explaining why this was the last of the four Valancourt books I was kindly gifted that I read.

The blurb on the back made it all sound like an intriguing Hammer style romp with a mummy at it's core but the reality proved to be a more intriguing conundrum, a murder mystery with occult and near sci-fi elements. 

Dr Armiston, a crotchedy, middle-aged batchelor is drawn into a bet between the members of the Plain Speakers Club that has already resulted in the death of a member with a second to follow soon after.  The deaths all seem connected to the lots drawn to take custody of a supposedly cursed sarcophagus for a fortnight.  Armiston throws himself into the centre of the mystery and the lives of the eclectic group of characters that make up the faction of the Plain Speakers.

Armiston is a fairly unlikeable character being a right misery whilst the character I found most interesting doesn't make it far into the book which was a shame.  As a whodunnit it's fairly easy to spot the 'who' and the 'dunnit' isn't entirely relevant.  It's a pretty slow sort of read that I have to admit I struggled to get into for a while.  By the mid point though I'd found it's rhythm, was enjoying it and was intrigued by how it played out.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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Hell! Said the Duchess: A Bedtime Story

Michael Arlen
Valancourt Books

A female killer stalks the streets of London, sleeping with young men before slashing their throats and mutilating their bodies. The crimes have baffled the police and enraged Londoners, who demand the murderer's arrest. Mary, Duchess of Dove, a gentle young widow who is beloved by all who know her, seems an unlikely suspect, but the clues all point to her. The police have a variety of theories - perhaps the Duchess has been hypnotized or drugged, maybe she has an evil double, or could it be a Communist plot to discredit the peerage? Inspector Basil Icelin is determined to solve the mystery, but the true explanation is far more shocking and terrifying than anyone could ever imagine.

In 1924 Michael Arlen, a naturalised Brit born Dikran Kouyomdjian in Bulgaria in 1895, published 'The Green Hat' a novel about a "shameless, shameful" woman that launched Arlen to worldwide fame, riches and as a reputation as the foremost British chronicler of the 'lost generation' of the inter-war years.  'Hell! Said the Duchess' written some 10 years later is the story of a series of 'Jane the Ripper' crimes and the woman of impeccable reputation who is suspected of perpetuating them.

Arlen is a delight as a writer and had me laughing aloud on numerous occasions both from his deliciously barbed descriptions and his fabulously caustic asides.  The unfolding of the crime would, I think, drive many a whodunnit buff to despair as would the denoument but for the rest of us it's a delightfully twisted frollic of an investigation leading to a bonkers, bizarre and brilliant conclusion that almost entirely throws the atmosphere of the rest of the book straight out the window.

Wonderful stuff.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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Flower Phantoms

Ronald Fraser
Valancourt Books

A fey art-deco girl who works in Kew Gardens finds that her spiritual yearnings lead to a passionate mystic communion with an orchid.

Sir Arthur Ronald Fraser (1888 - 1974) was a diplomat and as author with 27 novels and ownership of a New Age healing and meditation centre to his name and an author photo that makes the last fact all the more improbable sounding but Fraser had a lifelong interest in Buddhism which is eminently apparent in this short novel, the story of a young woman engaged in a passionate and deeply spiritual love affair with an orchid in Kew Gardens.

The story opens tentatively as we are introduced to Judy and her pompous, stuffy and overbearing businessman brother Hubert and Roland, her ardent but ineffectual suitor but as Judy's world becomes subsumed within her growing fever for the plants she tends and the horizons opening up to her it becomes ever more expansive and florid.

With echoes of other early works of female empowerment such as Sylvia Townsend Warner's fabulous 'Lolly Willowes' Fraser weaves a wonderfully strange and psychedelic tale that explores notions of cosmic harmony and interconnectivity alongside more prosaic issues as personal expressions and independence into a story that is as witty as it is poetic and as delicate as it is bold.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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Powers and Presences

John Howard & Mark Valentine
Sarob Press

Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886-1945) wrote seven mystical/supernatural novels between 1930 (War in Heaven) and 1945 (All Hallows’ Eve). He was also a poet and theological writer, and a member of The Inklings, the Oxford-based group of literary titans that included, amongst others, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

In this all new shared volume, John Howard and Mark Valentine pay affectionate tribute to Williams’ writings with a long novella, “The Dance of Gold” by John and two novelettes, “Kraken Tide” and “Seek for the Pomegranate” by Mark. Both authors have also provided illuminating afterwords to their stories.

I've had three of Charles Williams' novels on my shelves for a couple of years now but have yet to find the opportunity or the urge to dip into them so the ways in which John & Mark have reflected his work in this collection is to an extent a mystery to me.  What isn't beyond me though is just how good their stories are.

The collection consists of two prose pieces relating each authors experience of Williams' work, a novella from John and two short stories from Mark.  The prose pieces are interesting and illuminating but not what I came here for so onward ever onward.

John opens the book with 'The Dance of Gold' where a gold coin of rare historic and mythic provenance is found in the donations box of a remote parish church.  Soon mystery and intrigue begins to accumulate around the coin as it's presence and it's absence exerts a very real effect on those around it and the country at large.

I've been a fan of John's writing for a while now (since first reading him in another Sarob publication) and getting to read him in a longer form than is usually the case was a real treat.  The story he weaves is one of delicate poise, a metaphysical thriller wherein the mythic past holds the fate of the country in the balance through the intermediaries of a small rural village.

Mark's two stories proved to be a real surprise as both proved to be far more playful than I've come to expect.  'The Kraken Tide' reads like a John Wyndham romp through a flooded Lincolnshire before taking a sudden shift into Lovecraft or Wheatley territory.  It would have made for a great Hammer movie and was fantastic fun to read.

The second story proved equally so with the introduction of two, or perhaps more accurately three, characters that I really hope Mark returns to for further adventures; the mildly eccentric and magnificently dry Rachel Verulay, her introverted almost paramour Thomas Mulberry or 'Marmoset' as she soon christens him and not forgetting Lepus the straw hare.

With shades of Agatha Christie and Michael Arlen it's an absolute joy that had me chuckling aloud on several occasions before the story is wrapped up far too soon in a mythic finale.

With two of my favourite modern writers of the supernatural I knew I was going to be in for an enjoyable ride here but what I got far surpassed all my hopes.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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He Arrived At Dusk

R.C. Ashby
Valancourt Books

From the moment William Mertoun arrives to catalogue the library at Colonel Barr's old mansion on the desolate Northumbrian moors, he senses something is terribly wrong. Barr's brother Ian has just died, mysteriously and violently, and the Colonel himself is hidden away in a locked room, to which his sinister nurse denies all access. As strange and supernatural events begin to unfold, Mertoun learns the local legend of a ghostly Roman centurion, slain on the site sixteen centuries earlier, who is said to haunt the estate. Mertoun is sceptical at first, but after another murder, a harrowing seance, and an actual sighting of the spirit one lonely night on the moor, he realizes that he and everyone at Barr's mansion are in mortal danger. What does the ghost want, and can it be stopped?

William Mertoun is summoned to the wilds of Northumberland by the reclusive Colonel Barr to provide a valuation of the estate but once there he is drawn into the mystery of the family and their travails at the spectral hands of a ghostly Roman centurion.

Ashby's novel originally published in 1933 is a darkly immersive page turner that takes its rather daft premise and turns it into a neat and compelling narrative.  At its heart lie the menacing, desolate moors and coast of the Northumbrian landscape and an isolated mansion overlooked by the ancient monument from which it takes its name, 'The Broch'.

Ashby populates her novel with a cast of characters reflecting the highs and lows of society from our noble, if a little a little dim, auctioneer to a mad doctor via an American psychologist, a Marxist shepherd and a frivolous teen girl straight out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel who gets all the best lines.

I have to admit I struggled a little at the beginning of the book as I found the prospect of a ghostly Roman soldier a little, well, naff but once I began to pick up an inkling as to where Ashby was leading me and also once the quality of her prose had gotten it's teeth into me this became a joy to read from beginning-ish to end. 

Buy it here - UK / US.

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The Nightfarers

Mark Valentine
Tartarus Press

In The Nightfarers, you will discover the secret of a remote Lincolnshire island, visit the last official of a seventeenth century company of explorers, and watch for the light from a Moorish heliograph tower.
You’ll encounter a book that speaks for itself, books that aren’t quite books, and a rare book that really draws you in. There’s also the reincarnation of a decadent occult detective and another, reluctant sleuth who investigates an unusual printing press.
Other stories are set in the afterglow of old Empires in interwar Europe, in the same milieu as the author’s work in Secret Europe and Inner Europe (shared volumes with John Howard). They depict apocalyptic dawns, strange faiths, the stare of stone masks, a Prague actuary, an astrologer in Trieste, a scholar of lost languages.
This new edition of The Nightfarers, the first for over ten years, includes twelve of the original stories and adds two more from the same period.

Over the last few years I've come to regard Mark as one of my absolute favourite authors both for his fiction - 'The Collected Connoisseur' - and non - 'A Country Still All Mystery'.  As such whenever something new to me appears I jump at it.

'The Nightfarers' was originally published in 2009 be Ex-Occidente Press but with copies now selling on the second hand market for eye-watering prices I had long written it off as ome I'd never get to read until that is the lovely folks at Tartarus Press reprinted it.

The fourteen stories presented here all display Mark's customary elegance of both prose and concept with stories of lost lives and secret places and of liminal lands and unsettled people. Alongside these are gently poignant tributes to those who have gone before either inthe form of a namecheck - Hubert Crackanthorpe - homage - William Hope Hodgson - or pastiche - M.P. Shiel.

It's a stunning collection of stories that once again displays the scope of the gentleman's imagination and is, as ever, hugely recommended.

Available from the publisher at the link above.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Man In A Black Hat

Temple Thurston
Valancourt Books

This strange novel opens at a country estate sale, where after a round of intense bidding, Mr Crawshay-Martin wins the auction for a 16th-century manuscript containing the occult secrets of the order of the Rosicrucians. But he does not get to enjoy his purchase long: the following morning, he is found dead inside his locked room, his throat slashed and the book missing. The police write the case off as a suicide, but Crawshay-Martin's friend Dr Hawke isn't so sure. He suspects the mysterious Gollancz, whose face, partly concealed beneath a black sombrero hat, does not seem to have aged a day in thirty years. Who is Gollancz, and what terrible powers of life and death does he possess? Temple Thurston's weird story will keep readers guessing until the final confrontation between the doctor and the Man in a Black Hat.

Originally published is 1930 this is part of a reissue project undertaken by Valancourt of forgotten and neglected gems of weird crime and thriller fiction.

E. Temple Thurston was an author, journalist, playwright and travel writer most well known at the time for his travel book about English canals, 'The Flower of Gloster' - and his play, 'The Wandering Jew' whilst this novel slipped into - undeserved - obscurity much like the author himself.

Falling under the umbrella term of 'metaphysical fiction' (recently explored in a pair of blog posts by Mark Valentine on his Wormwoodiana blog - part 1 & part 2) Thurston's tale of a Rosicrucian mystic and a locked room murder made for a fascinating read.  Sharing kinship with the likes of Charles Williams and David Lindsay it's a rumination on magic and the nature of reality if in fact the mystic in question, Gollancz, did indeed commit the murder whilst also somehow being many miles away.

The confusion and frustration our protagonist, Dr. Hawke, feels whilst trying to puzzle out the improbable how of things is contrasted by the cool certainty of his counterpart.  Perhaps unusually for a locked room mystery we are always in concert with the good Doctor that Gollancz is indeed guilty and we are swept along in the wake of Hawke's erratic ruminations and investigations.

The book - as is the case with a number of these reissues - contains an introduction by the aforementioned Mark Valentine (where I cribbed the background info from) who provides one of his characteristically informative author overviews as well as thoughts on the template for our villanous mystic.

A truly captivating, thoroughly enjoyable read that hopefully with this reissue will now be enjoyed by the wider audience it deserves.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Time, A Falconer: A Study of Sarban

Mark Valentine
Tartarus Press

In this new biographical study Mark Valentine enables us to understand more of John William Wall (1910-1989), the diffident, compassionate, highly intelligent and sensitive man who wrote under the pseudonym Sarban.

Having read and very much enjoyed Sarban's 'Ringstones' a short while ago I was delighted to unexpectedly take delivery of a copy of 'Time, A Falconer' Mark Valentine's short biography of the author and analysis of his published and unpublished work.

I very much enjoy Mark's studies of forgotten and underappreciated authors, his 'A Country Still All Mystery' and 'A Wild Tumultory Library' (both Tartarus Press) are both fantastic reads full of interesting details and intriguing diversions.  Reading each has proved to be enlightening to both mind and wallet and I've learned to always keep a notebook handy when reading one of his studies which again proved useful here as I now have (another) small list of books to track down.

John William Wall published 3 books under the Sarban pseudonym - 'The Sound of His Horn' (1952), 'Ringstones and Other Curious Tales' (1951) and 'The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny' (1953) - whilst working in various parts of the world as a diplomat for the UK government.  Based mostly in the Middle East his stories often reflected life in the Levant whilst also sharing a Machen or Blackwood like love for the wild spaces and the thin places.

Mark's study provides an overview of Sarban's life and the places he served but happily the focus is very much on the literary work he produced in his spare time. He gives his typically thorough examination of the published work providing context and possible inspiration and further to this we are gifted tantalising insights into unpublished works that saw the light for the first time in a Tartarus Press volume published alongside this one.

Obviously as a study of the work of an obscure author this is likely to be of interest only to those already familiar with Sarban's work and to those people I highly commend it.  If however you haven't sampled his writing then I can only recommend that you rectify that situation immediately by tracking down one of the trio of works and then coming back and treating yourself to this fascinating exploration.

Available from the link above.

Below is a short video by Tartarus Press co-publisher R.B. Russell exploring Sarban's books as well as the unfinished works left in the authors archives.



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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Mazes

Rosemary Pardoe (ed)
Sarob Press

M.R. James’s 1911 tale, “Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance”, is one of the most famous maze short stories, if not the most famous.
Editor Rosemary Pardoe has chosen eight supernatural maze stories to reprint, all of them taken from small press journals and books, and some of them never previously reprinted.
The mazes range from unicursal turf through puzzle hedge to modern crop examples; one tale is a prequel to “Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance”.
The second part of this volume consists of six brand new stories which range even more widely, from a Roman mosaic maze to a mirror maze at the top of a high-rise office block.
All of the stories have a folklore, folk custom and/or antiquarian background.
So, fourteen supernatural maze stories by some fabulous authors of folk horror and ghostly, ghastly, spooky tales of terror.

Selected and introduced by former Ghosts and Scholars head honcho Rosemary Pardoe this collection of ghostly and weird tales all share the theme of mazes (and labyrinths).

As demonstrated by M.R. James - the author whose work Ghosts and Scholars celebrates - in his story 'Mr Humphrey's Inheritance' mazes are a powerful object that hides, that confuses, that entices and entraps.  The stories in this collection all embrace these ideas to various extents.

Now I have small issue with themed collections, I'll get half way through and get a bit bored with the theme.   It doesn't matter how good the book is I just find them a tad repetitive and one dimensional which is what happened herd and the book ended up taking a few weeks to read.

Opening strongly with Mark Valentine's gentle and quiet love story 'As Blank as the Days Yet to Be' - which was the only story here I already knew having it in his Zagava collection from the other year and in booklet form - after which the book meanders slightly with some strong tales by John Howard, Michael Chislett, Rick Kennett, Cable Tyrell, John Reppion and Reggie Oliver, a few that were entertaining in their way and a couple of real stinkers (which I shan't identify).

Sarob are a strong and reliable publisher and Pardoe knows her stuff so this collection - even read piecemeal - really hit home but as I said I always struggle with themed but when they're as strong as this it's never going to be much of a problem picking them back

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain