Description:
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 . . .
Contents
Three Singular Detectives
"The Adventure of the Green Skull"
"Prince Zaleski's Secret"
"The Return of Kala Persad"
Four Curious Books
"The 1909 Proserpine Prize"
"The Late Post"
"An Incomplete Apocalypse"
"The Seer of Trieste"
Three Strange Places
"The Axholme Toll"
"The Fall of the King of Babylon"
"The Other Salt"
Three Odd Societies
"The Tontine of Thirteen"
"Morpheus House"
"Without Instruments"
Four Haunted Figures
"Fire Companions"
"The Antioch Imperial"
"Yogh"
"You Walk the Pages"
Acknowledgements
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.
Review Quotes:
"The world is an ineffably strange place, filled with wonder and hidden or lost things. So are Mark Valentine's stories. There's scarcely a weak one in this book . . . " - Rosemary Pardoe, Ghosts & Scholars
"Seventeen Stories demonstrates the wide range of [Valentine's] considerable talents. He is attentive to place and to the power of obsession, but one of his true gifts is an ability to suggest modes of artistic expression." - Henry Wessells, The Endless Bookshelf
"In Seventeen Stories . . . Valentine offers 'The Adventure of the Green Skull', a Sherlock Holmes pastiche that is almost supernatural; the lush 'Prince Zaleski's Secret', which reprises as its protagonist an exceptionally languid and decadent mastermind created by M. P. Shiel; and 'The Return of Kala Persad', in which he reintroduces an Indian guru who first appeared in an 1895 collection of stories by Headon Hill . . . Other stories in this compact and beautifully made volume from Swan River Press are grouped under the rubrics 'Four Curious Books', 'Three Strange Places', and 'Three Odd Societies'." - Michael Dirda, Barnes and Noble Review
"Is Valentine a fantasist? Yes, but in a much broader sense than is often meant today . . . . Valentine is a writer in love with the great tradition of the weird tale. Anyone who shares this passion is unlikely to be disappointed by Seventeen Stories." - David Longhorn, Supernatural Tales