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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Jan 24, 2012 23:19:22 GMT
Even better still is "the Five Quarters" which Mr Duffy co-wrote with ian Rodwell, this is a collection of 5 tales related by the members of an informal drinking club and reads as an episodic novel. This last one hasn't hit the e-shelves yet, but keep your eyes peeled. A fantastic book indeed, Chris. My particular favourite in it is The Penny Drops, featuring chilling thrills with an abandoned pier-end penny arcade. I also like the very detailed and interesting story notes Steve provides in his collections. As for eReaders, I don't have one, but I use the PC version downloaded from Amazon. Not sure about direct downloads from the ATP site, though, as I've not bought any from there... yet.
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Post by cw67q on Jan 25, 2012 15:25:16 GMT
Hello everyone,
Christopher Roden of Ash-tree Press got back to me on downloading ebooks direct from ATP:
"We deliver files as an email attachment, and they can be used either on a reader or on PC. For Kindle files you need to download the free 'Kindle for PC' application from amazon or Calibre (also free). Calibre will also enable you to read ePub files. If you prefer to work solely with ePub files, you can also get a free download of Adobe Digitial Editions. All of the programs work in much the same way.
I hope that helps. Christopher"
Cheers - Chris
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Post by monker on Jan 26, 2012 3:20:57 GMT
Yep, thanks. I went a bit silly (under the circumstances) and downloaded about nine books, including the missing Burrage (Francis Chard). In other words, anything I want to read in which the actual printed version is at a virtually prohibitive price. I hope it stops there for a while; this could become quite addictive.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 27, 2012 1:27:30 GMT
It's the day after Australia Day, so everyone is hungover and watching the cricket - a good chance to look through old issues of Fantasy Newsletter. I can't resist posting part of this article by Karl Edward Wagner, who had a regular column in FR, as did Fritz Leiber - it's about a trip to London in 1980 and the book dealers and collectors he knew and met. Some of them are legendary, like George Locke, of Spectrum of Fantasy fame, and John Eggeling, who still operates as Todmorden books and emails lists of rarities at reasonable prices (perhaps unlike George Locke who is also legendarily expensive Evidently Locke has (or had) runs of those Harmsworth magazines with Burrage ghostlies, but was asking vast prices for them, and wouldn't otherwise part with them, which delayed Jack Adrian's final volume - perhaps just a vicious rumour...). I think it was from these guys that Wagner acquired many of the rare and bizarre titles that ended up in those Twilight Zone lists he wrote up a few years later. KEW also mentions Martin Stone, the brilliant book-runner, musician and substance snorter who is given classic treatment in John Baxter's memoir of book collecting, A Pound of Paper.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 27, 2012 11:51:06 GMT
I loved Fantasy Newsletter. Still have the issues I bought.
For those who are maybe interested, the Karl Edward Wagner edition by Centipede Press which collects all horror stories and was limited to 200 copies for a riciculous price - which sold out way before release - is now announced as a two volume hardcover release in March. At 24.99/26.42 at Amazon this is still not cheap, but at least affordable.
I pre-orderd this, as the Nightshade edition of Wagner was rather fast out of print.
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Post by cw67q on Jan 27, 2012 16:43:46 GMT
Hello everyone,
ATP have just put the other two Burrage books up for downloading. As I said earlier I highly recommend both "Someone in the Room" and "Warning Whispers". The second half of SitR (ie the actual original collection SitR) is one of the best collections of ghost stories ever published, there are many real gems to be found there. The first half is worth a read also but is less strong. If you want consistency throughout go for Warning Whispers, which doesn't contain quite as manu of AMB's absolute best but is of a high standard througout.
As a personal aside, one of the tales in WW, "the Wind in the Attic, is one of very few stories that has actually sent a physical shuddr down my spine, and done so on both occasions that I have read it. I cannot quite explain why, I don't think it is AMB at his finest, I like many of his stories more, and it covers similar ground to the much more famous "Playmates" (in "Some Ghost Stories") but at some visceral level this story has pushed my shudder button and done so twice. But my favourite from this book is "the Aquital".
If you haven't yet read Burrage, or only know the excellent Smee or the Sweeper, then run don't walk over to some download site and get stuck into Someone in the Room".
I'm delighted that Burrage is being made available again, but waht I'd really love to see is a pb "best of". But then I couldn't possible imagine any such collection containing less tahn thrity odd tales.
- Chris
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 27, 2012 21:19:03 GMT
For those who are maybe interested, the Karl Edward Wagner edition by Centipede Press which collects all horror stories and was limited to 200 copies for a riciculous price - which sold out way before release - is now announced as a two volume hardcover release in March. At 24.99/26.42 at Amazon this is still not cheap, but at least affordable. I don't have any Centipede Press books - way too expensive and I can only imagine postage to Australia - somehow they look like books to be admired rather than read.
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 27, 2012 23:12:50 GMT
I'm delighted that Burrage is being made available again, but waht I'd really love to see is a pb "best of". But then I couldn't possible imagine any such collection containing less tahn thrity odd tales. Now you've got everyone wondering what your top 30 would be. I've only read a handful of Burrage tales myself, but I'm looking forward to having the chance to read a lot more now (even if it is just on my PC).
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Post by dem bones on Jan 28, 2012 9:49:38 GMT
KEW also mentions Martin Stone, the brilliant book-runner, musician and substance snorter who is given classic treatment in John Baxter's memoir of book collecting, A Pound of Paper. "Formerly lead guitarist for Savoy Brown, Martin Stone (122 Canon Street Road, E1) ...." ..... which is just around the corner from me, and I never knew he lived there! Martin was also the model for bedraggled and seedy book-dealer 'Nicholas Lane' in Iain Sinclair's White Chapell, Scarlet Tracings, a novel I could make little sense of when first I read it (no giant praying mantis attacks). The equally legendary Drif is in there too. Really must give it another go.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 15, 2012 5:44:40 GMT
A. M. Burrage - Un-Paying Guests (ed. Jack Adrian, The Ghost Story Society: Special Booklet # 1, 1989: editor Jack Adrian) Dallas Goffin ( Behind The Panels) Jack Adrian - Introduction
Un-Paying Guests (as Ghost Stories, The Home Magazine, Dec 1919) Behind The Panels ( The Weekly Tale-Teller, June 19th 1915) The Black Diamond Tree ( London Evening Standard, Apr 23rd 1934) 1989 was a good year for Burrage fans. Jack Adrian had recently compiled 16 of his previously uncollected supernatural tales as the excellent Warning Whispers for Equation, and then came this booklet comprising three stories left over from the project. Un-Paying Guests: Originally published as Ghost Stories. The author relates a series of 'factual' ghost stories as related to him by friends, family and acquaintances. The Victorian maid, phantom nun, premonitions of doom, etc. As Mr. Adrian points out, Burrage's father's tale of a spectral sword-swishing Cavalier making a nuisance of itself, provided inspiration for both stories included in this booklet. Behind The Panels: Cornwall. Narrator Eric accepts his friend, Charles Wilmer's invitation to join him, his mother and sister, Muriel, on a month-long fishing holiday. Eric, being sweet on Muriel, accepts. Charles has rented Penwith Manor, home to the Trewithin family for centuries, at a ridiculously low fee. On their arrival, Muriel bagsies the room with the four poster, only to relent when she's overcome by a powerful sensation of misery and evil. The carving above the grate is enough to set her mother to screaming, so it's left to Charles to spend his nights there. His first discovery is a walled-up room which he rightly suspects leads to a subterranean tunnel. Noises from behind the panels, as of somebody trying to claw a way out using only their fingernails - and a spectre whose demonic face resembles that of the carving, suggest the Trewithins have their share of dark family secrets. The Black Diamond Tree: When his own car breaks down outside Kerstham, Mr. Digby accepts a lift and a bed for the night from kindly stranger, Charles Harboys. Harboys has been ostracised by the local community since the suicide of his father, Sir Charles, a man who showed one face to the public, a completely different one to family and servants. The son despised him for the conniving, power hungry bully he was. The locals detest the son as a scoundrel who drove their big-hearted old pal to the grave. Mr. Digby at first takes young Harboys for a whiner with a ludicrous grudge against plum trees, but has cause to re-evaluate his opinion when, that night, he's visited in his bed by a disembodied head like a child's yellow balloon, urging him to take a look out of the window. The creaking of branches suggests something very unpleasant is taking place - and so it proves.
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Post by humgoo on Jun 3, 2019 13:00:36 GMT
A. M. Burrage - Between The Minute And The Hour: Stories Of The Unseen (Herbert Jenkins, 1967) [...] The Sweeper‘: Tessa Winyard, 22, is engaged as female companion to eighty-year-old Miss Ludgate of Billingdon Abbots. The old lady has a reputation for meanness which makes her extravagant gestures toward passing tramps and beggars all the more inexplicable. Miss Ludgate has her reasons. Eighteen years earlier an emaciated man called at the Abbots and after castigating him as a workshy scrounger she set him to work clearing all the leaves from the path. After a few sweeps he fell to the ground and with his dying breath promised to complete the job and “I’ll come for you, my lady, and we’ll feast together. Only see as you’re ready to be fetched when I come”. Since then his spectre has returned each autumn and with each passing year he draws closer to the house … "The Sweeper" isn't really collected in Between The Minute And The Hour, which is a bit strange considering it's supposed to be some kind of "Best of Burrage". Fortunately, it can be found in many anthologies, and deservedly so, as it's really Burrage at his best: a well-paced tale based on an excellent conceit! Bearing in mind that I'm not exactly renowned for my good taste, One Who Saw would be the first choice. 'Smee', The Sweeper, Browndean Farm, Playmates and The Waxwork are all deserving of their reputation and if we move onto the Jack Adrian collection, The Attic, A Recurring Tragedy and the title story, Warning Whispers, are all top notch. All delicious tales! May I add "The Green Scarf"? The imagery in it is chilling. "The Shadowy Escort", one of his Great War-related stories, in the Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 2 is also impressive!
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Post by dem bones on Apr 18, 2020 8:51:20 GMT
Between the Minute and the Hour: Charles Trimmer, Brentford F.C. supporting newsagent of Nesthall, West London, is cursed by the boss-eyed beggar woman he fobs off with a bag of stale biscuits. "When night turns to morning, between the minute and the hour is your time." Sure enough, over consecutive nights, at precisely 11.59pm, Charles is thrown back in time, first to the age of the dinosaur, then, rather more to his liking, the highwaymen era, where he falls for Miss Marjory, a stunningly beautiful seventeen-year-old. On the third night, desperate to take the girl as his wife, Charles complacently steps out of his shop ... into a snowbound wilderness. A starving wolf pack lie in wait.
Amazing. Didn't get on with this story first time I read it - late 'eighties? - hadn't revisited it until last night and now, of course, I reckon it's marvellous. How typical.
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Post by humgoo on Apr 20, 2020 18:25:36 GMT
Burrage loves his time-slip, I think there's at least another in the collection. It's nice to know others re-read Burrage. He's like an old friend who you love to visit from time to time. There's a certain kind of good-naturedness in him, and his sentimental streak is endearing. He wrote to make a living and one may detect a certain formula in the way he constructed his tales, but they're always readable (if my fond memories haven't deceived me).
Indifferent POD publishing seems to have taken hold of him some years ago, which means we probably won't have a new decent collection of his stories in the near future.
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Post by dem bones on May 6, 2020 17:15:58 GMT
The Gamblers' Room: (Some Ghost Stories 1926). Paston, a former head boy and Cambridge big cheese has never placed a bet in his life - until, that is, he spends a night in a notoriously haunted hotel room. A ghastly trio - "vice incarnate" - dressed in the fashion of two centuries before, take but a few hands at cards to corrupt him. When the fun stops, stop, etc.
The Garden in Glenister Square : (London Magazine, Oct. 1925). In senior years, John Julian returns to the London street where he spent his childhood, hid from his friends' self-manufactured bogeyman, and fell in love with Gwennie. One night he meets a beggar woman selling matches outside the locked park where he used to play, hands her a pound note he can ill afford to part with. In return, she allows him to choose from a bunch of keys. "Take one, and you will find it the key to your heart's desire." Death is often wonderful.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 12, 2021 17:18:02 GMT
The Oak Saplings: Mrs Upcott's ghost story. As a young woman of twenty, she took a job as companion-secretary to recently widowed Mrs. Carr of Brindley Manor, Dorset, the prolific author of terrible, vanity published books. The new employee is short sighted and, from a distance, mistakes two oak saplings in the park for young lovers, It's obvious her eyes are playing tricks, but how to explain the trees whispering to one another?
A cottage in the park is home to a deeply unpleasant octogenarian, Mr. Baylord, last of a proud family long fallen from grace. Baylord loathes the Carr's as vulgar new-monied nobodies; he will never forgive Michael Carr for eloping with his only daughter thirty years ago. Neither has been heard from since. The embittered old man warns the young woman against venturing into the park after dark. "There's company in the copse at night as you wouldn't like meeting. There's them that can't sleep because they lies hard and damp." Todd Slaughter should have toured this one.
The Affair at Paddock Cross: Travelling home to visit his mother in Dorset, Captain Hebden's carriage comes a cropper on the hairpin bend at Paddock's Cross. Badly concussed, the Royal Hussar is carried to the home of Lord Stevensbury, whose reckless driving caused the collision. Stevensbury insists the Captain remain at the manor house until fully recovered. A generous gesture but otherwise Stevensbury is a drunken, gambling, cockfighting boor whom the Captain fast comes to loathe, not least for his treatment of his wife. One day his Lordship catches Lady Clarissa and the Captain in one another's arms. Inevitably, Stevensbury demands a duel and Captain Hebden came off worst.
One hundred and fifty years later, the narrator is involved in a car smash at Paddock's Cross. Badly concussed, he's carried to Datcham House, the home of Mr. Wellings, who admits full responsibility for the accident. He insists the injured party remain here as his guest until restored to health. Despite this courtesy, the injured party doesn't care for the man. He is, however, much taken by the fellow's charming, put-upon wife ....
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