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JIMBO

"We dance with phantoms and with shadows play..." Jimbo is a very imaginative boy, and together with his brothers and sisters, they make up a lot of games around an old building on their father's property that they call The Empty House, their object of "dreadful delight." Then the Colonel hires a new governess. Miss Lake is much too level-headed to believe any of the children's stories about the Empty House. She knows that it's all nonsense. But in order to "knock the nonsense" out of young Jimbo's head, she makes up a story about the Inmate of the House, a very bad creature indeed. Instead of bringing Jimbo to his senses, the story fills him with a real sense of dread. He becomes convinced that something evil lurks within The Empty House. And, of course, he is right for Fright itself lives within, ready to reach out and snatch young Jimbo into his clutches!

THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL

Paul Waters returns to England after having lived for the past twenty years in the Canadian wilderness. Unused to adult company, emotionally he feels little more than a boy inside. When he moves in with his widowed sister Margaret and her three children, he tries hard to keep this inner child hidden. But Nixie, Toby and Jonah figure him out right away, and introduce him to their imaginative games. These are no mere hide-and-seeks, but "aventures" that take them all to another realm, the land beyond the Crack, where all the lost and disgarded things can be found--a land of beauty and mystery. And it is here that Paul truly comes alive, finally coming to understand himself, and all that truly matters in life.

JULIUS LEVALLON

When John Mason first meets Julius LeVallon at school, he feels an immediate connection. They had known each other before not in this lifetime, but many lifetimes before. LeVallon introduces his young friend to a much larger world, the world of feeling-with, of communing with the Forces of Nature, even directing them. As Mason is pulled into LeVallon's peculiar world, he discovers that not only had they known each other before, but they had to correct a mistake they had made with another in the days of pre-history, when they had loosed an elemental on the world. The forbidden experiment needs to be recreated to set things right. After college, Mason loses track of LeVallon. But destiny must be fulfilled, and many years later Mason is contacted by his old friend with portentous news he has found the other! It is time to set things right.

THE BRIGHT MESSENGER

Edward Fillery and Paul Devonham have a new patient at their Spiritual Clinique, a young man raised in the Juru mountains by an eccentric mentor. He seems to be suffering from a split personality. One part of him manifests as a simple country lad by the name of Julian LeVallon, but there is another force within him that Dr. Fillery quickly names "N.H." and seeks to develop. Dr. Devonham, on the other hand, is convinced that "N.H." is the unhealthy side, that LeVallon is the true personality and must be encouraged to become the dominant one. But the young man is more than he seems, for he is not entirely human. And when "N.H." does take control, no one is prepared for the results. Everyone is changed by the bright messenger.

Ten Minute Stories / Day and Night Stories "The author plunges with boldness, yet with consistent invention, into the realm of the fantastic." The Outlook Ten Minute Stories, originally published in 1914, and Day and Night Stories, from 1917, offer two superlative story collections of ghost stories, strange nature tales, weird events and dark fantasies from one of the greatest writers of supernatural fiction in the 20th century.

These pieces are shorter than Algernon Blackwood usually produced, little thoughts or episodes which he often scribbled in his notebook high up in the mountains and then typed up later that day, and sold to newspapers back in England, as Mike Ashley points out in his informative introduction. Some of these stories are humorous slices-of-life, matter-of-fact stories borne out from Blackwood s love of human observation. Many of the Day and Night Stories were written during World War I, and are more reflective than his earlier tales. Most have at least a tinge of the mystic to them. A bonus story, The Farmhouse on the Hill, appears in book format for the first time, an early story that originally appeared in an Australian newspaper in 1907.

These are stories that capture the shifting qualities of perception as daylight gradually fades into dusk, and the curtain of dreams is pulled gently across our vision short stories of day... into night.

The first two short story collections from Algernon Blackwood, originally published in 1906 and 1907, filled with hauntings, strange nature tales, weird crimes and dark fantasy from one of the greatest writers of supernatural fiction in the 20th century. Includes a new introduction by Storm Constantine, who calls Blackwood one of the most influential supernatural writers of his time.

A collection of supernatural stories and various essays collected by Blackwood biographer Mike Ashley, many of which have never been published in book format before. Includes a complete bibliography of the author's works.

Two early novels by this monumental writer of supernatural fiction. "[The Centaur] was to be the favorite among [Blackwood's] novels, because it best represented all that he was trying to achieve... It is unlike any other work in the field of supernatural or mystical fiction." --Mike Ashley, Starlight Man.

THE LOST VALLEY

Algernon Blackwood spent the first half of 1909 traveling around Switzerland. When he returned to England, he produced around twenty stories, most of which formed the basis for his next collection, The Lost Valley, published by Eveleigh Nash in June, 1910. Here are supernatural nature mysteries, ghost stories and visions galore--tales of loss and redemption, and the horror of the unknown--taking the reader from the stark terror of "The Wendigo" and "Old Clothes" to the light of hope in "Carlton's Drive" and the spiritual finale, "The Eccentricity of Simon Parnacute."

THE WOLVES OF GOD

By 1920, Blackwood had recovered from the depression of the First World War, and began writing again with a renewed zest, inspired to some degree by his explorer friend, Wilfrid Wilson, to whom he gave co-credit for the 1921 collection, The Wolves of God, though all the stories were by Blackwood. Many of these tales are wilderness stories, like the title story, "Running Wolf," "First Hate" and "The Valley of the Beasts." But The Wolves of God also features some fine supernatural romances like "The Call" and "The Lane That Ran East and West;" ghostly retribution in "The Decoy;" mystery and murder in "Confession;" and the strange call of the past in "The Tarn of Sacrifice." These are strange stories of retribution and mystical intervention, of horror and hope--of the magic and mystery of life. In all, twenty-four stories by the master supernatural writer of the 20th century--Algernon Blackwood!