About This Book
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 . . . ContentsThree Singular DetectivesThe Adventure of the Green SkullPrince Zaleski's SecretThe Return of Kala PersadFour Curious BooksThe 1909 Proserpine PrizeThe Late PostAn Incomplete ApocalypseThe Seer of TriesteThree Strange PlacesThe Axholme TollThe Fall of the King of BabylonThe Other SaltThree Odd SocietiesThe Tontine of ThirteenMorpheus HouseWithout InstrumentsFour Haunted FiguresFire CompanionsThe Antioch ImperialYoghYou Walk the PagesAcknowledgementsMark Valentine's stories have been selected for Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle, Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Books of Ghost Stories edited by Richard Dalby, and the Ghosts & Scholars books edited by Rosemary Pardoe, as well as for many other anthologies. Along with The Swan River Press, he also publishes with other independent imprints such as Tartarus Press (UK), Sarob Press (France) and Zagava (Germany). His twenty or so books include studies of Arthur Machen and the diplomat and fantasist Sarban, and essays on book-collecting and the esoteric. He also edits Wormwood, a journal of the fantastic.
