This blog is devoted to fantasy, supernatural and decadent literature. It was begun and is managed by Douglas A. Anderson, with contributions from Mark Valentine and other friends, to present relevant news and information.
Francis Gerard was the author of about twenty-two thrillers in the period 1936-52, many featuring his series detective Sir John Meredith. He also wrote continuations of Edgar Wallace’s ‘Sanders of the River’ stories. He published first with Rich & Cowan, then later with Macdonald. His books are vivid, extravagant, rather headlong, and favour pace over atmosphere.The work in
In a post in November, 2020, I wrote about Castle Mandragora, a thriller with uncanny elements by Mary Durham, and I noted that nothing seemed to be known about the author, who published eleven novels in the Nineteen Forties and Fifties.Now, however, crime fiction expert Jamie Sturgeon has uncovered important biographical details about her and reveals these at the Mystery*
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Withnail Books of Penrith, renowned for their chapbooks of literary rarities, have just announced a facsimile edition of Charades, Written a hundred years ago by Jane Austen and Her Family, originally published in 1895. This charming collection of riddles devised by the family for their own amusement and that of guests includes an introduction, family tree, illustrations, and the
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Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) worked in many areas as an artist, and is probably best-remembered as a painter and illustrator. Among the many books he illustrated were Beowulf (1932), translated by William Ellery Leonard; The Canterbury Tales (1934), in modern English by J.U. Nicolson; and The Saga of Gisli (1936), translated by Ralph Allen. Oddly, the one item by which I remember Kent best is
I look forward to every new issue of Chris Mikul's Biblio-Curiosa. The most recent, no. 12, came out two years ago, and now no. 13 is newly published. It has especially interesting contents, but one particularly sad piece is a memoir of Sandy Robertson (1952-2025), a rock journalist (and author of The Aleister Crowley Scrapbook from 1988) who had a great interest in horror fiction,
Darkly Bright Press's new Arthur Machen collection, The Guide, is a 260+ page compilation of "eighty-two works originally published across twenty-seven periodicals and spanning nearly three decades," to quote from editor Christopher Tompkins's "A Brief Introduction." It is subtitled "A Collection of Rare & Unknown Work"--for "rare" we can read it to mean as uncollected from
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In a copy of Peter Vansittart’s The Lost Lands (1964), loosely enclosed, there is a letter from the historian Peter Green: “I read you novel in TS [typescript] before I left the Bodley Head, & did an immensely enthusiastic report on it, entre nous: but seriously, an extraordinary tour-de-force I think, & the atmosphere of decaying, plague-ridden, obsolescent
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cover art by Johnny MainsA Weird Occasional is just what it sounds like it should be. An occasional publication devoted to the weird, particularly the older and unknown stuff. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson and Christopher Tompkins, the first issue is now available. It includes three essays, and five obscure short stories. The contents are:2 * Editorial * Douglas A. Anderson and
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Zagava have recently issued a paperback edition of Qx and other pieces, a selection of fiction and non-fiction. This was first issued in a limited edition in 2024 and is now newly available. It includes over twenty pieces, among them the short stories 'Hark to the Rooks', 'The Man Who Made the Yellow God', the title piece and 'Stained Medium'. Only available here is 'Sivori Levey &
Two Evangeline Walton books, published by Nodens Books, including the novel Dark Runs the Road and the short story collection Above Ker-Is, will cease to be available as of midnight, Sunday May 24th 2026. So if one is at all interested in getting copies, do so soon. (Click on the covers to read the text.) Dark Runs the Road is available until then as a trade paperback (ISBN
May Lamberton Becker published a reply to W.S.'s query (from the 22 December 1928 issue of The Saturday Review) in her column "The Reader's Guide" for 26 January 1929. This time the writer gave his full name, Richard Ely Morse, and fans of H.P. Lovecraft may recognize the name as that of one of Lovecraft's correspondents. Richard Ely Morse (1909-1986) was 19 at the time his letter appeared in The
In the late 1920s, May Lamberton Becker hosted a column in The Saturday Review of Literature (NY). The column was called "The Reader's Guide," and readers were invited to send in questions related to books. In the 22 December 1928 issue the following query appeared from one W.S. of Philadelphia, who was interested in doing a study on fantasy. So far as I know, the study never appeared, and I do
Dornford Yates was a reliable purveyor of interwar thrillers and romances. He knew exactly what readers wanted and he provided it in lavish dishes: handsome, rugged heroes; beautiful, plucky heroines; sleek cars smoothly speeding through lonely landscapes; rough, thuggish villains; Ruritanian conspiracies; fisticuffs, chases, kidnaps, secret treasures. There is no subtlety or
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