Yes, "The Picture In The Hoiuse" is another example of humour in an horror story, so is "The book" or "The Moonlit-bog".

"Despite their distance below me I at once knew they were the servants brought from the North, for I recognized the ugly and unwieldy form of the cook, whose very absurdness had now become unutterably tragic."

I do not know what impression sentenses like this one make on the reader but I find them very absurd and unatterably hilarious. :-)

AN horror story? Of no ...

"An horror story" did sound a bit awkward, but I admit I'm one who prefers to write "an historian," "an historical event," rather than using a.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> I'm fond of Tim Powers's Declare, which can remind
> one of John le Carre in its treatment of an
> espionage theme, but is a supernatural thriller.
> I haven't had all that good luck with Powers's
> writing elsewhere, but this is something of a
> favorite.
>
Haven't read "Declare," but I found two of Powers' other novels to be very good: "The Stress Of Her Regard" (any book that takes its title from a Clark Ashton Smith poem scores automatic points with me; and the novel attached to it is one of my favorites), and "On Stranger Tides" (the basis for a very loose adaptation of one of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies; the book was much better). Powers has a knack for describing impossible-to-describe things.

Also recommended: The Ring Trilogy ("Ring," "Spiral," "Loop") and "Dark Water," by Koji Suzuki, the latter a story collection.

The Lost Valley and Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood.

Here is an online version of "The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf" from that collection, an effervescent pagan story far from the world of organized religion. I hope you like it. [web.archive.org]

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Lost Valley and Other Stories by Algernon
> Blackwood.
>
> Here is an online version of "The Man Who Played
> Upon the Leaf" from that collection, an
> effervescent pagan story far from the world of
> organized religion. I hope you like it.
> [web.archive.org]
> www.horrormasters.com/Text/a1352.pdf


I was hoping to share that specific story with somebody! Great find! As much as I enjoy his more famous "Wendigo" and "Willows", and appreciate his novelettes comprising Incredible Adventures, "The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf" will always be my personal favorite of all his stories. It's convincingly mystical on its own terms, neither Christian nor artificially pagan, just lyrical and beautiful.

Knygatin Wrote:
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> I am planning a trip to Transylvania this autumn


I take it that trip didn't come off...?

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Knygatin Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I am planning a trip to Transylvania this
> autumn
>
>
> I take it that trip didn't come off...?


It was such a long time ago I said that, ... much water has flowed under the bridge since then, ... I really can't remember clearly. I know that I somehow have visited Dracula's castle, ... have a distinct impression of it, its towering walls, and halls ... either only in Bram Stoker's book, or in reality too. I harbour dreamy images of Romania, ... deep forests, and beautifully undulating hills, with distant shepherds lazily herding sheep, ... gipsies in grotesque trappings, ... and horse carriages with hay, called forth from long forgotten distant ages.

Here you can read the first few pages from the 1st chapter of Ewer's Alraune, in the original English translation by S. Guy Endore. I was so taken by Ewer's racy prose, that I had to get both Alraune and The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Some recent stuff I liked.

The Wanderer by Timothy J. Jarvis, Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright and Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes by Raphael Ordoñez.

I assume someone here has read the full Frank Braun trilogy. How does Vampire compare to the first two books? Is it a good vampire tale? It is rarely mentioned as often as The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Alraune. I heard that one of its English translations was censored (presumably its anti-American rhetoric parts); would that be the 1934 first translation?

I'm reading Awake in the Night Land at the moment, based on your recommendation. It's pretty good! I read the first two books in Wright's sf trilogy a few years back, so I had some idea what to expect, although - strangely - I've never heard of The Night Lands, the WHH work which inspired it. I know Hodgson for The House on the Borderland plus a handful of stories (with The Voice in the Night being a standout) to the extent that I thought this was all he had written. Go figure.

To me, The Night Land is the pinnacle of cosmic horror and I think Wright more than did it justice.

The Last of All Suns is something else.

Anyone here that has read and enjoys Michael McDowell, author of Elementals and Cold Moon Over Babylon?

LOST SOULS looks like an excellent anthology. And it has a few authors I have not read before.

By the way, anyone here who enjoys Charles Beaumont? There is a collection out called Perchance to Dream.