Selected Stories

Valentine, Mark

The Swan River Press

Seventeen Stories

'The English landscape was made . . . not just for food and shelter and pleasure, but also for the journey of the soul. There is a field of supernatural stories set in this "other" country, the country of the spirit . . .'In A Country Still All Mystery, Mark Valentine explores how certain writers have used their fiction to convey the idea of numinous terrain, places where we might at any moment stray into the realms of the unearthly and uncanny. These essays continue similar literary and antiquarian themes to his well-received earlier volume, Haunted By Books (2015). When and where was the last wolf seen in England? Why were certain lonely houses left beyond parish boundaries? Is there a missing book by T.E. Lawrence? What was the secret history of Cope & Fenwick, liturgical publishers? What became of the original Tower of Moab?A Country Still All Mystery will be read with pleasure by those who enjoy the out-of-the-way, the obscure, the eccentric and the outré. It will appeal to anyone who has ever strayed into remote country which seems to be not quite fully in this world.

A Country Still All Mystery

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

Independently published

In Haunted by Books Mark Valentine explores the more curious byways of literature. He presents the author who was always being told he had nearly written a masterpiece, and the genius of the short story who brewed his own cider and lived in a railway carriage. Then there's the figure of the 1890s, praised by Max Beerbohm, who liked to wander around London wearing horns and chewing railings, and the young man in the 1930s who tried to sell his poetry door to door. There are also new angles on key figures: the strange case of Robert Aickman, sailor and philosopher; the book that Sax Rohmer really wanted to write; the enigma of Walter de la Mare's 'Seaton's Aunt'. And there are literary mysteries; what was the MS in a Red Box? Who wrote Shakespeare's Gunpowder Plot? What became of Dr Ludovicus? Other essays celebrate neglected writers worth discovering, such as Mary Butts, Claude Houghton, and Vernon Knowles, or offer fresh perspectives, looking at Lewis Grassic Gibbon's fantasies, Malcolm Lowry's reading in occult fiction. There are even studies of books that were never written. Haunted by Books will delight all readers and book collectors who like to leave the beaten path and wander in the wild woods, forgotten lanes and lonely houses of literature.

Haunted by Books

History & Criticism

Herald of the Hidden

Genre Fiction

"Nothing lasts! The faun sleeps, / Smiling, mute, remorseless." - Ludmila Jevsejeva, Autuna Melodio In St. Petersburg, amidst an uneasy truce with the revolution, there exists a secret trade in looted ikons. But who are the dark strangers seeking for the Gate of the Archangel? In the small town of Tzern, news arrives of the death of the Emperor; meanwhile a postmaster, a priest, a prophet and a war-wearied soldier watch the dawn for signs of the future. Constantinople: A quest for the lost faiths of the former Ottoman Empire leads a French scholar to believe that the strangest may also be the truest. On the edges of Europe, exiles and idealists meet in a café to talk of their hopes-while sinister forces begin to march. These stories, exquisitely told by Mark Valentine, are about individuals caught up in the endings of old empires-and of what comes next. Contents A Certain Power The Dawn at Tzern A Walled Garden on the Bosphoros Carden in Capaea The Bookshop in Novy Svet The Autumn Keeper The Amber Cigarette The Ka of Astarakahn The Original Light The Unrest at Aachen The Mascarons of the Late Empire Acknowledgments Mark 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.

Literary

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.\nThis 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 . . .\nContents\nThree Singular Detectives 
"The Adventure of the Green Skull" 
"Prince Zaleski's Secret" 
"The Return of Kala Persad"\nFour Curious Books 
"The 1909 Proserpine Prize" 
"The Late Post" 
"An Incomplete Apocalypse" 
"The Seer of Trieste"\nThree Strange Places 
"The Axholme Toll" 
"The Fall of the King of Babylon" 
"The Other Salt"\nThree Odd Societies 
"The Tontine of Thirteen" 
"Morpheus House" 
"Without Instruments"\nFour Haunted Figures 
"Fire Companions" 
"The Antioch Imperial" 
"Yogh" 
"You Walk the Pages"\nAcknowledgements\nMark 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.

Lost Estates

Arthur Conan Doyle called Machen a genius; Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and H.G. Wells admired him. His classic horror novel The Great God Pan, which both shocked and delighted contemporary readers with its dark portrayal of sexuality and its alluring villainess, has been favourably compared to Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; his The Secret Glory changed John Betjeman's life; while his masterpiece The Hill of Dreams, located in his beloved Gwent, has been called the most beautiful book in the English language. It is a testimony to his writing skill that through one short story, The Bowmen, he once made thousands believe that angels had appeared at the Battle of Mons, sparking a whole series of myths.Largely neglected by critics and biographers, Machen has remained an inspiration to those readers who have sought him out, and current admirers include cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and TV personality Barry Humphries. Mark Valentine's biography, the first in many decades, provides a much needed re-examination of Machen's varied and fascinating career.

Arthur Machen (Border Lines Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Seren

His writing revolutionized the music of composer John Ireland while other testifying admirers have included Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Siegfried Sassoon, John Betejeman, film-maker Michael Powell, cellist Julian Lloyd Weber, and Barry (Dame Edith) Humphdes. Through his stories of the supernatural and his reworking of the Arthurian Grail legend and his Angel of Mons series he became a cult figure in America, while The Terror made him the precursor of recent quasi-scientific novels in which animals conspire to destroy Mankind.

Arthur Machen

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Books by Valentine, Mark

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Valentine, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Selected Stories

Seventeen Stories

A Country Still All Mystery

Haunted by Books

Herald of the Hidden

Selected Stories

Seventeen Stories

Lost Estates

Arthur Machen (Border Lines Series)

Arthur Machen