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.