And that is exactly what this book is: a varied collection of short stories from the acknowledged British master of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Brian Lumley, in a single volume of all three domains of the imagination – but more especially the haunts of the sinister and macabre! Inspired by the weird tales of the great Edgar Allan Poe, and as some readers might reasonably insist, the even greater H. P. Lovecraft – himself an admirer of Poe –
here is a host of rather more modern witcheries from times since the sad demise of many such old masters, based on eras long forgotten before all such tale-tellers so much as existed; concepts spawned in an immemorial past that even now continues to provide the source and fundamentals of similar conceits, such as they were, in the shape of folk legends and the frequently monstrous cautions of so-called “fairy tales,” in modes made their own by the antique yarns of the Brother’s Grimm, now sadly long-demised – a fact which in itself says a lot for the longevity of these genres!
