The Swan River Press

	Join The Swan River Press on Facebook for news and updates. *New Publication — February 2012*
	Ghosts by R.B. Russell Introduction by Mark Valentine Printings: February 2012 (250) Style: Dust jacketed hardback Length: xii + 201 pages ISBN: 978-0-9566587-3-9 Out of print. Please check with our online dealers: Cold Tonnage (UK), Fantastic Literature (UK), Realms of Fantasy (USA), Wrigley-Cross Books (USA), Ziesing Books (USA). "I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy." - Charles Baudelaire Ghosts contains R.B. Russell's debut publications, Putting the Pieces in Place and Bloody Baudelaire. Enigmatic and enticing, they combine a respect for the great tradition of supernatural fiction, with a chilling contemporary European resonance. With original and compelling narratives, Russell's stories offer the reader insights into the more hidden, often puzzling, impulses of human nature, with all its uncertainty and intrigue. There are few conventional shocks or horrors on display, but you are likely to come away with the feeling that there has been a subtle and unsettling shift in your understanding of the way things are. This book is a disquieting journey through twilight regions of love, loss, memory and ghosts. This volume contains "In Hiding", which was shortlisted for the 2010 World Fantasy Awards. "Bloody Baudelaire" is soon to be filmed by 3:1 Cinema. Contents Introduction by Mark Valentine Putting the Pieces in Place There's Nothing That I wouldn't Do In Hiding Eleanor Dispossessed Bloody Baudelaire Acknowledgements . . . and in association with Klanggalerie, this volume comes with Russell's debut album of the same title as a bonus. "Ghosts presents a selection of tracks composed and arranged by Russell himself. Vocals for a number of tracks are provided by the incomparable Lidwine whose poignant voice is the perfect complement to the music. This is an album of haunting songs from ambient to rock, with both vocal and instrumental tracks. Guitar and piano creep in, in a ghostly manner, and sometimes a rhythm kicks in, only to disappear again . . . This is very melancholy, very evocative music." A sample selection of tracks can be heard here. More on R.B. Russell can be found here. R.B. Russell is an English author, born in Sussex, who has a fondness for old books and vinyl records. Apart from Putting the Pieces in Place and Bloody Baudelaire, a further collection of tales, Literary Remains, was published by PS Publishing in 2010. Russell is co-proprietor of the independent publishing house Tartarus Press, and now lives in the Yorkshire Dales with his partner, the writer and publisher, Rosalie Parker, their son, and two cats.
	*Hardbacks*
Europe €25.00 International €25.00	Strange Epiphanies by Peter Bell Printings: March 2012 (250) Style: Dust jacketed hardback Length: 192 pages ISBN: 978-0-9566587-2-2 Available for pre-order. Details may vary slightly before publication. All copies inscribed and signed by the author on request. Please make a note of this when ordering. "...man is made a mystery for mysteries and visions..." — Arthur Machen A mentally disturbed woman is entrapped in Beltane rituals in the Cumbrian fells; a widower mourning his wife falls beneath the mystic allure of Iona; a quest to the Italian Apennines brings a lonely man to a dread Marian revelation; an alcoholic on a Scottish isle is haunted by a deceased chronicler of local legend; in a small German town a sinister doll discloses truths about a murky family tragedy; an unknown journal by a Victorian travel-writer sends a woman on a grim odyssey to Transylvania; in a childhood holiday paradise a man encounters a demented artist's terrifying legacy. The protagonists in Peter Bell's stories confront the awesome, the numinous, the uncanny, the lure of genius loci, and landscapes undergoing strange epiphanies. Contents Resurrection M. E. F. The Light of the World An American Writer's Cottage Inheritance A Midsummer Ramble in the Carpathians Nostalgia, Death and Melancholy Afterword: Marie Emily Fornario — A Historical Note Acknowledgements Peter Bell has written articles and stories for All Hallows, The Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter, Wormwood, Faunus, and Supernatural Tales; his work has also been published by Ash-Tree Press, Gray Friar Press, Side Real Press, The Scarecrow Press and Hippocampus Press. He is a historian, a native of Liverpool, an inhabitant of York, and likes to wander the hidden places of Scotland and the North of England.
	Ghosts by R.B. Russell Introduction by Mark Valentine Printings: February 2012 (250) Style: Dust jacketed hardback Length: xii + 201 pages ISBN: 978-0-9566587-3-9 Out of print. Please check with our online dealers: Cold Tonnage (UK), Fantastic Literature (UK), Realms of Fantasy (USA), Wrigley-Cross Books (USA), Ziesing Books (USA). "I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy." - Charles Baudelaire Ghosts contains R.B. Russell's debut publications, Putting the Pieces in Place and Bloody Baudelaire. Enigmatic and enticing, they combine a respect for the great tradition of supernatural fiction, with a chilling contemporary European resonance. With original and compelling narratives, Russell's stories offer the reader insights into the more hidden, often puzzling, impulses of human nature, with all its uncertainty and intrigue. There are few conventional shocks or horrors on display, but you are likely to come away with the feeling that there has been a subtle and unsettling shift in your understanding of the way things are. This book is a disquieting journey through twilight regions of love, loss, memory and ghosts. This volume contains "In Hiding", which was shortlisted for the 2010 World Fantasy Awards. "Bloody Baudelaire" is soon to be filmed by 3:1 Cinema. Contents Introduction by Mark Valentine Putting the Pieces in Place There's Nothing That I wouldn't Do In Hiding Eleanor Dispossessed Bloody Baudelaire Acknowledgements . . . and in association with Klanggalerie, this volume comes with Russell's debut album of the same title as a bonus. "Ghosts presents a selection of tracks composed and arranged by Russell himself. Vocals for a number of tracks are provided by the incomparable Lidwine whose poignant voice is the perfect complement to the music. This is an album of haunting songs from ambient to rock, with both vocal and instrumental tracks. Guitar and piano creep in, in a ghostly manner, and sometimes a rhythm kicks in, only to disappear again . . . This is very melancholy, very evocative music." A sample selection of tracks can be heard here. More on R.B. Russell can be found here. R.B. Russell is an English author, born in Sussex, who has a fondness for old books and vinyl records. Apart from Putting the Pieces in Place and Bloody Baudelaire, a further collection of tales, Literary Remains, was published by PS Publishing in 2010. Russell is co-proprietor of the independent publishing house Tartarus Press, and now lives in the Yorkshire Dales with his partner, the writer and publisher, Rosalie Parker, their son, and two cats.
Europe €25.00 International €25.00	Curfew & Other Eerie Tales by Lucy M. Boston Introduction by Robert Lloyd Parry Printings: August 2011 (350) Style: Dust jacketed hardback Length: xix + 195 pages ISBN: 978-0-9566587-1-5 " . . . his eye sockets were appallingly hollow, and he lifted his chin as the blind do when they seek." — from "Curfew" Lucy M. Boston is best remembered today as the Carnegie Medal-winning author of a series of children's novels set in Green Knowe, an ancient, haunted house based on Hemingford Grey Manor near Huntingdon, Cambridge. She began writing these chilling tales when she was already in her sixties, but they were not her first attempts at fiction. A handful of supernatural tales dating from the early 1930s exist among her papers, and these are here published together for the first time, along with her only play, The Horned Man, which has been out of print since 1970. An introduction by Robert Lloyd Parry considers the literary influences on these works and looks at them in the context of Boston's personal life. Of the short stories in this volume only three have been published before — "Curfew", "The Tiger-Skin Rug" and "Many Coloured Glass" — all having appeared originally in long out of print anthologies for children. Children play pivotal roles in the first two of these stories, but there is nothing specifically juvenile about their language or themes, nothing to exclude them from a mature bookshelf. Indeed in her use of children as witnesses and victims of the supernatural, Boston was — consciously or otherwise — emulating that other great East Anglian supernaturalist, M. R. James. Boston's debt to James, in fact, runs deep. The stories collected here offer the same unmistakeable, inexplicable malice that we find in James, and the same lurking feeling of terror: what Boston calls in "Curfew" the "thrill, or chill, of expectation". And like James's most celebrated stories, most of those collected here centre around antiquarian objects — an old bell, a rug bought at auction, an intricately carved desk left in a house by a previous occupant — curious trouvés, artefacts of the past that carry more than memories with them. Contents Introduction by Robert Lloyd Parry Curfew Pollution Blind Man's Buff Many Coloured Glass The Italian Desk The Tiger-Skin Rug The Horned Man: A Play in Two Acts Acknowledgements Lucy M. Boston (1892 – 1990) was born in Southport, Lancashire. She studied English at Oxford and served as a nurse in France, before settling in Cheshire towards the end of the First World War. After her marriage broke down in 1935 she trained as a painter in Europe, eventually returning to England on the eve of the Second World War. In 1939 she bought the eleventh century Manor in Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, which was her home and literary inspiration until her death. It is the setting of her much-loved series of Green Knowe novels for children, and is now open to visitors. For more details see www.greenknowe.co.uk.
	The Old Knowledge & Other Strange Tales by Rosalie Parker Introduction by Glen Cavaliero Printings: September 2010 (200) Style: Dust jacketed hardback Length: ix + 114 pages ISBN: 978-0-9566587-0-8 Out of print. Now available as an e-book from Tartarus Press. "Make the reader think the evil, make him think it for himself . . . " -Henry James This first collection of tales by Rosalie Parker contains eight stories that explore the uncanny in the modern world. As Glen Cavaliero observes in his introduction, "like all good stories of the preternatural, these in The Old Knowledge have a subversive effect." In them, "the world of logical, predictable reality is seen to be at risk from rejected modes of knowledge which can thwart the materialist and victimise those innocents who stumble into another order of reality." In "The Rain", Geraldine heads to the North for a holiday she hopes will provide a welcome break from her busy city life, only to suffer a complicated and enigmatic distortion of her usual world-view. The narrator of "In the Garden" strays into new pastures while explaining her theory of gardening. In "Chanctonbury Ring", the well-meaning protagonist, helping a lady in distress, gets rather more than he bargained for. The temporary schoolteacher in "The Supply-Teacher" elicits altruism from her class, whilst, in "The Old Knowledge", a group of archaeologists called in to excavate a prehistoric round barrow have to negotiate local interventions. In "The Cook's Story" a Gothic country house provides the setting for a modern tale of mystery. Do not expect blood-and-guts, wraiths or revenants: these stories hold a different kind of terror. "Their unostentatious magic is of an insidious kind; and like the protagonist of the title story, is liable to exert itself in disconcerting ways." Contents Introduction by Glen Cavaliero The Rain Spirit Solutions In the Garden Chanctonbury Ring The Supply Teacher The Old Knowledge The Cook's Story The Picture Acknowledgements Rosalie Parker was born and grew up on a farm in Buckinghamshire, but has lived subsequently in Stockholm, Oxford, Dorset, Somerset, Sheffield and Sussex. She took degrees in English Literature and History, and Archaeology, working first as an archaeologist before returning to her first love of books. Rosalie is co-proprietor and editor of the independent publishing house, Tartarus Press, and lives in the Yorkshire Dales with her partner, the writer and publisher Ray Russell, their son and two cats. Visit her website at: www.tartaruspress.com/rmp1.htm
	*The Bram Stoker Series*
Subscription #0-3 Europe €25.00 Subscription #0-3 International €25.00	Thirty Years A-Going: A History of the Bram Stoker Society by Albert Power Bram Stoker Series #0 Printings: October 2009 (160) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 20 pages "It was on a raw January evening in 1980, at a public meeting held in the darkling pile of Trinity College Dublin's graduates memorial building, with its ample expanse of grey frontage, high windows and maw-like entrance led up to by a flight of stone steps, that the sturdy first steps to set up the Bram Stoker Society were taken. The date was January 10th and the event had been organised by the college Philosophical Society, of which Bram Stoker had been President in 1869-1870." Albert Power was present at the January 1980 inaugural meeting of the Bram Stoker Society in Trinity College as a rapt undergraduate. Now, at the dawn of an exciting new chapter in the society's history, he paints a personal picture of its uneven, sometimes unsettled growth - from the heady days of the early 1980s when a plaque was installed on premises lived in by Bram Stoker on Dublin's Kildare Street; through the short fraught association with Trinity College's Philosophical Society; the thirteen years of the journal; the Bram Stoker Club; fraternal links with the Clontarf-centred annual Bram Stoker Summer School; to the death of the society's founder and chairman, Leslie Shepard, in August 2004. The narrative concludes with a putative pencil sketch for the future. Note: The Bram Stoker Series is available by subscription only. For €25.00, subscribers will receive each of the four titles shortly after their respective publication dates. The price is inclusive of packaging and postage. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title.
Subscription #0-3 Europe €25.00 Subscription #0-3 International €25.00	Four Romances by Mr. Bram Stoker Introduced by Paul Murray Bram Stoker Series #1 Printings: January 2010 (125) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 40 pages "While the stories that make up this collection are not among Stoker's best, they do cast an interesting light on the psyche of their creator. His lifelong concerns, anxieties, obsessions and ambiguities would cohere into the masterpiece that is Dracula in the 1890s but his other work, including these stories, shine a revealing light into the mind of its creator, a mind more profound, if also more troubled, than has generally been realised." Here collected for the first time since their original publication in periodicals, these four romances display a side of Bram Stoker's writing somewhat less familiar to modern readers. Even so, these tales are not quite devoid of the elements we have come to expect from the master of horror, mystery, cruelty and black humour. Spanning Stoker's literary career, this volume reprints "Greater Love" (1914), "Our New House" (1886), "A Yellow Duster" (1899) and "The Way of Peace" (1909). Rounding out the collection is an introduction by Stoker biographer Paul Murray and a never before printed essay, "Rules for Domestic Happiness", by Charlotte M. B. Stoker — Bram's mother, who is often credited with instilling in the young author an early sense of fatalism and the macabre. Note: The Bram Stoker Series is available by subscription only. For €25.00, subscribers will receive each of the four titles shortly after their respective publication dates. The price is inclusive of packaging and postage. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title.
Subscription #0-3 Europe €25.00 Subscription #0-3 International €25.00	Bram Stoker's Other Gothics--Contemporary Reviews Introduced by Carol A. Senf Bram Stoker Series #2 Printings: April 2010 (125) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 36 pages "Just as I would recommend any of Stoker's works, these reviews serve as a reminder that Stoker's literary legacy is substantially more than just Dracula, still his best-known work. These reviews, most of them now in print for the first time in over a century, provide fresh insights into Bram Stoker as an author who dabbled in the popular genres available to writers at the turn of the twentieth century, and who made the Gothic genre his own, not only in Dracula, but in other works that today are not as well known as they deserve to be." Collected here are a selection of reviews of Stoker's works that are generally classified under the broad heading of Gothic: Under the Sunset (1882), The Snake's Pass (1890), The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Assembled from the list provided by Richard Dalby and William Hughes in their Bram Stoker: A Bibliography (Essex: Desert Island Books, 2004), these reviews appeared in many of the leading publications of their day, including The Spectator, Punch, The Academy, and The Athenaeum as well as in more specialised journals such as The Dial, The Bookman, The Reader Magazine. Note: The Bram Stoker Series is available by subscription only. For €25.00, subscribers will receive each of the four titles shortly after their respective publication dates. The price is inclusive of packaging and postage. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title.
Subscription #0-3 Europe €25.00 Subscription #0-3 International €25.00	Extracts from Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving by Bram Stoker Selected and Introduced by Elizabeth Miller Bram Stoker Series #3 Printings: November 2010 (125) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 28 pages "Henry Irving had died in 1905. Born John Brodribb in a Somerset village in 1838, he was the son of a travelling salesman. He would become one of the best known figures in London, and the first actor be be honoured with a knighthood. He acquired the Lyceum Theatre in 1878 and quickly hired Bram Stoker (then living in his native Dublin) to join him as Acting Manager. Stoker was immediately swept into a whirlwind of activity on which he thrived: seasons in London, provincial tours, and eight North American tours. Biographers concur that Henry Irving was the single greatest influence on Stoker's life." Bram Stoker's tribute to his late, former employer in Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906) proved to be one of his most successful books during Stoker's lifetime. While Dracula has since surpassed Personal Reminiscences in popularity, the latter title contains many fascinating accounts central to the author’s life. Selected and introduced by Elizabeth Miller, this booklet features the most interesting portions of Stoker's semi-autobiographical account. Extracts focus on Stoker's early meetings with Irving, anecdotes from his years managing the Lyceum Theatre in London, and his association with many of the famous people of his day including Whitman, Gladstone, Tennyson, Browning, Vambéry and Liszt. The volume also includes excerpts from five contemporary reviews. Note: The Bram Stoker Series is available by subscription only. For €25.00, subscribers will receive each of the three titles shortly after their respective publication dates. The price is inclusive of packaging and postage. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title.
Subscription #4-6 Europe €25.00 Subscription #4-6 International €25.00	Contemporary Reviews of "Dracula" Introduced by Leah Moore and John Reppion Bram Stoker Series #4 Printings: January 2011 (125) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 36 pages "Over the decades, as with so many other iconic stories, Dracula has fallen prey to numerous popularly held misconceptions. Until recently we had ourselves laboured under one such misconception: that Dracula was not well received by the reading public when it was first published. We believed it to have been something of a disappointment where sales where concerned; an overlooked treasure, ahead of its time, destined to be rediscovered at a later date... we also assumed that some of the subtler aspects of the novel, which give the post-modern reader satisfaction, might have gone over the heads of the nineteenth century audience. How could a stuffy Victorian possibly get pleasure from this book in the same way a twenty-first century reader might? Needless to say — as this volume of reviews demonstrates — we grossly underestimated not only the horror reader of 1897, but also, to some degree, Mr. Stoker himself." Contemporary Reviews of "Dracula" collects together a selection of reviews of Stoker's seminal work shortly after it was published in England in 1897 and in America in 1899. These reviews — both complimentary and critical — give insight into Dracula's initial public reception, unmarred by decades of misconceptions, academic scrutiny and literary legendry. Assembled from the list provided by Richard Dalby and William Hughes in their Bram Stoker: A Bibliography, these reviews appeared in many of the leading publications of their day, including The Spectator, Punch, Vanity Fair, and The Athenaeum. The booklet includes an insightful introduction by Leah Moore and John Reppion, who faithfully adapted Dracula as a graphic novel; and also reproduces first edition US and UK covers, as well as two short reviews of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914). Note: The Bram Stoker Series is available by subscription only. For €25.00, subscribers will receive each of the three titles shortly after their respective publication dates. The price is inclusive of packaging and postage. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title.
Subscription #4-6 Europe €25.00 Subscription #4-6 International €25.00	To My Dear Friend Hommy-Beg: The Great Friendship of Bram Stoker and Hall Caine Introduced by Richard Dalby Bram Stoker Series #5 Printings: April 2011 (125) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 48 pages "Hall Caine was an incredible literary phenomenon, becoming the richest and most popular novelist of the late Victorian and Edwardian era, greatly outselling all of his rivals from Henry James to Joseph Conrad. By the end of the twentieth century all of his novels were out-of-print, and ironically his major claim to fame now comes from being the dedicatee of Dracula, albeit under the disguised family nickname of "Hommy-Beg". It is a bizarre twist of fate that Bram Stoker is now so much more famous worldwide than Hall Caine — an unbelievable reversal of their roles one hundred years ago." This booklet explores the intimate, lifelong friendship between Stoker and Caine in their own words. Accompanying an introduction by Stoker scholar Richard Dalby are rare and un-reprinted pieces including letters, extracts from Caine's autobiographical My Story (1908) and Stoker's Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906), Stoker's introductions to The Works of Hall Caine (1905) and hitherto unknown essay "The Ethics of Hall Caine" (1909), Caine's touching obituary to Stoker (1912), and a reproduction of Stoker's inscription to Caine in the latter's copy of Dracula — printed here for the first time. Note: The Bram Stoker Series is available by subscription only. For €25.00, subscribers will receive each of the three titles shortly after their respective publication dates. The price is inclusive of packaging and postage. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title.
Subscription #4-6 Europe €25.00 Subscription #4-6 International €25.00	The Definitive Judge's House Introduction and frontispiece by Mike Mignola Endnotes and afterword by Jack G. Voller Bram Stoker Series #6 Printings: December 2011 (150) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 36 pages "I was probably about thirteen years old when I read Dracula for the first time. I have no idea why. I ordered it from one of those little book catalogues you used to get in school. I shudder to think what would have happened if, instead, I'd tried to read Frankenstein at that age. It surely must have been in the same catalogue. Maybe I'd be an accountant now. Nothing against Frankenstein, but I know me, and I know it would not have hooked me through the eyeball (and brain) the way Dracula did. I distinctly remember finishing the book and thinking, 'Well, this is it. I have found my thing.' It’s like finding that city or, if you’re very lucky, that house where you know you want to spend the rest of your life. And that's pretty much what I've done." Just in time for Christmas comes the definitive edition of Stoker's famous haunted house story, "The Judge's House". This facsimile edition, celebrating the 120th anniversary of the tale's first appearance, reproduces the text from Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914). And especially for the occasion, Mike Mignola, the esteemed creator of Hellboy, has provided an original frontpiece — a portrait of Stoker's baleful and vindictive Judge — and an introduction entitled "Bram Stoker and I". Also included is a reproduction (in miniature) of the story's 1891 appearance in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News's Christmas annual, Holly Leaves. Rounding out the booklet are endnotes and an afterword by Gothic scholar Jack G. Voller. And remember, "Rats is bogies, I tell you, and bogies is rats!" Note: The Bram Stoker Series is available by subscription only. For €25.00, subscribers will receive each of the three titles shortly after their respective publication dates. The price is inclusive of packaging and postage. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title.

	*The Sheridan Le Fanu Series*
Europe €9.00 International €10.00	Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu — A Concise Bibliography By Gary William Crawford and Brian J. Showers Sheridan Le Fanu Series #0 Printings: June 2011 (200) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 44 pages "As my book J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1995) has shown, cataloguing Le Fanu’s work is no easy task. There are many snares and chasms, omissions and errors to be found on the bibliographer’s journey. Most difficult is the fact that many of Le Fanu’s works were published anonymously in Victorian magazines. This has been further complicated by the fact that Le Fanu’s account books, notebooks and other papers were dispersed and lost after his death. There are undoubtedly many unsigned items produced by Le Fanu’s pen that will never be found. "This concise edition of that bibliography was edited, re-organised and amended by Brian J. Showers, with assistance from Richard Dalby. A major difference is that the magazine appearances are listed chronologically to help give a sense of Le Fanu’s development as a writer. The listing of books is selective as to first editions and major appearances, as is the secondary material with annotations provided for landmark critical works." - from the Preliminary Word by Gary W. Crawford Contents: "A Preliminary Word" by Gary W. Crawford; I. Magazine Publications and Serialisations; II. Books; III. Manuscripts; IV. Misattributed Stories and Writings of Disputed Authorship; V. Early Articles and Studies; VI. Significant Studies and Criticism. The booklet also reproduces a selection of five title pages.
Europe €9.00 International €10.00	My Aunt Margaret's Adventure A Long Lost Tale of Mystery and Suspense, Attributed by M.R. James to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Sheridan Le Fanu Series #1 Cover by Allison Elrod Printings: July 2009 (200) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 36 pages "My Aunt Margaret's Adventure" is reminiscent of the great terror tales of mounting alarm such as Wilkie Collins's "A Terribly Strange Bed"; the hotel scene, to a lesser extent, in Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"; James Whale's The Old Dark House; and the more recent film The Last Great Wilderness (2002) directed by David Mackenzie. In fact, with their often arch and sardonic senses of humour, the latter two examples are most appropriate comparisons. Comfort and safety are fleeting in stories like these. Familiar and generally hospitable surroundings quickly take turns into strange worlds of indefinable menace. Terror mounts. A candle going out may be discomforting, but an accident befalling your only light source is downright sinister. Like Aunt Margaret, the reader is cursed with an active mind courtesy of the author's vivid prose rich in regional flavour and Gothic detail. It's only a matter of time — we can just feel it in our bones! — before the other shoe drops. "My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure" first appeared in the March 1864 issue of the Dublin University Magazine, which was then under the editorship of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The DUM was a regular venue for Le Fanu’s work. The February issue contained the final instalments of his novel Wylder's Hand, while the April issue saw the publication of "Wicked Captain Walshawe of Wauling"--"My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure" appeared in the interceding issue. Believed by M.R. James and S.M. Ellis to be the work of Le Fanu, "My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure" shares many motifs, themes, and effects found in the Irish author’s work. This new edition will feature commentary on the story and its authorship by two leading Le Fanu scholars, Jim Rockhill (introduction and annotations) and Gary W. Crawford (afterword).
Europe €12.00 International €13.00	The Ballads and Poems of J. Sheridan Le Fanu Introduced by Alfred Perceval Graves Sheridan Le Fanu Series #2 Printings: August 2011 (150) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: xi + 45 pages "When in the year 1880 I wrote a memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, as a Preface to his 'Purcell Papers', I was not aware that, besides being the author of the Irish poems contained in that collection of Irish stories and of the celebrated 'Shamus O'Brien', Le Fanu had anonymously contributed half-a-dozen other poems to the Dublin University Magazine between the years 1863 and 1866; two of which . . . exhibit Le Fanu's genius in a new and unexpected light. They show him to have been capable of dramatic and lyrical creation on a distinctly higher plane than he had hitherto reached . . . The same magnetic attributes of superhuman mystery, grim or ghastly humour and diabolic horror which characterise the finest of his prose fictions meet us again." -from the Introduction by A. P. Graves This booklet reproduces much of the contents of The Poems of Le Fanu, which was first published in 1896. The original introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves is herein reproduced as are the appendices. New to this edition are extracts from Seventy Years of Irish Life in which the author's brother, William Le Fanu, included extracts of juvenile poetry ("O'Donoghue" and "Valentine to Miss K"); and a selection of contemporary reviews. Contents: Introduction, "Duan na Claev—The Legend of the Glaive", "Shamus O'Brien", "Phaudhrig Crohoore", "Molly, My Dear", "Abhain au Bhuideil—Address of a Drunkard to a Bottle of Whiskey", "Song", "Memory", "The Stream", "A Doggrel in a Dormant-Window", Notes on "Shamus O'Brien", Notes on "Phaudhrig Crohoore", Extracts from Seventy Years of Irish Life, and Contemporary Reviews.
Europe €12.00 International €13.00	The Complete Ghost Stories of Chapelizod Introduced by Albert Power Sheridan Le Fanu Series #3 Printings: October 2011 (150) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: v + 51 pages "One does well not to under-appreciate the ever-alive allure of reminiscences begotten in childhood. . . . Chapelizod, like the Irish capital of which it was in effect a suburb, in the early 1800s glumly epitomised the glamour and the grandeur that was gone: 'Dead walls; dead trees overhanging them; dead lights instead of windows in the houses; the men grave, the women lifeless, the little spirits squeaking and gibbering in the muddy streets!' Thus must it have appeared to the sensitive mind of the child who grew up to be the author of Uncle Silas, Wylder’s Hand, and The House by the Church-yard—this last the writer’s towering salute to the village and its picturesque environs which had sparked his eager imagination before it could shape itself in prose. Although the Le Fanu family moved to the mid-west of Ireland in 1826, with Reverend Le Fanu’s appointment as Dean of Emly and Rector of Abington, and much of his elder son’s early macabre tales are set in this region and elsewhere in the Irish countryside, the memory of Chapelizod lay dormant in the writer’s mind for twenty-five years before being unleashed in the stories which feature in this book." -from the Introduction by Albert Power This edition commemorates the 160th anniversary of "Ghost Stories of Chapelizod" (1851) and the 150th anniversary of The House by the Church-yard (1861-1863), and is the first time "Some Gossip about Chapelizod" (1851) has been re-printed. Contents: "Introduction" by Albert Power, "Ghost Stories of Chapelizod", "Some Gossip about Chapelizod" and "Ghost Stories of a Tiled House—Some Extracts from The House by the Church-yard" and "An Afterword Concerning the Text to 'Ghost Stories of the Tiled House' " by Jim Rockhill.
	*Haunted History Series*
Europe €5.00 International €8.00	On the Banks of the River Jordan by John Reppion, cover by Meggan Kehrli Haunted History Series #7 Printings: March 2010 (150) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 20 pages Postscript Orders for this booklet are filled by the author. Signed on request. "Dear Brian, My name is John Reppion. You may remember that we corresponded briefly last year on the subject of my article "Where Goes the Blackberry Man". I am currently at something of a loose end whilst my wife, and day-to-day writing partner, is off visiting her sister for a few days prior to Christmas. It is at times such as these that I would normally take the opportunity to work on some of my more esoteric researches. Going through my notes, I came across a mass of material concerning Princes Park - the Victorian park adjacent to where I live - which I gathered whilst researching my book 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool. There are many intriguing and esoteric titbits associated with this locale . . . but I'm finding it hard to get the various pieces of information into a logical order. I'm sure there is an obvious angle, a path winding through these disparate elements that would draw the whole thing together . . . I wonder if I might ask you the favour of offering your opinion on material I have amassed thus far. If you are willing, I would like to "talk" through the disjointed data via email and hopefully make sense of it all in the act of doing so. Very best, John"
	The Seer of Trieste: A Lecture by Mark Valentine, cover by Meggan Kehrli Haunted History Series #6 Printings: December 2008 (150) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 12 pages "The old Austro-Hungarian imperial seaport of Trieste has been home to several literary figures: Anglo-Irish novelist Charles Lever, Victorian explorer, translator and erotologist Sir Richard Burton, James Joyce, who started his masterpiece Ulysses there, the fine bookseller-poet Umberto Saba, and Italo Svevo, the chain-smoking man of business who caught its curious atmosphere so well in his novels. A place apart, at first mercantile and prosperous, but with a history associated with loss, melancholy and the liminal, it also has a strange undercurrent of the shabby-bohemian and semi-magical. An acquaintance with a genteel seer and almanac-maker in the city led me to an unexpected revelation about the prevailing spirit of the place and its influence upon those who wrote there. In quest of this, I encountered scrying youths, a masked ball, a reclusive artist perfecting a new form, and at last a monstrous brooding presence. Here is the full text of a lecture to the Aeolian Club of Lincoln which may merit a place amongst the more astonishing of the accounts it has heard. -Mark Valentine"
Japan €5.00 International €8.00	The Nanri Papers by Edward Crandall, illustrations by Meggan Kehrli Haunted History Series #5 Printings: August 2008 (150) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 24 pages Postscript Orders for this booklet are filled by the author. Signed on request. "Dear Mr. Otani, I am contacting you on behalf of Mr. Masanobu Nanri of Onimaru, Saga City. Mr. Nanri recently showed me some papers and personal effects belonging to his parents (both deceased). These papers have to do with events he describes as 'likely paranormal in nature' that have occurred over the years at Akamatsu Primary School, also in Saga City. For your reference, I have included transcripts of the original documents he showed me as well as an explanation of the circumstances under which he showed them to me. Mr. Nanri is concerned, as you will see from the following text, that there is the chance of physical danger not only to the students, teachers and staff of the school, but also to the general public. You will see from the printout of a website Mr. Nanri recently viewed that the school has been listed as a 'paranormal hot spot' on the Internet. He is therefore interested in the site being investigated by reputable professionals and experts in the field so that any danger may be averted. -Sincerely, Edward Crandall"
Europe €5.00 International €8.00	Brutal Spirits: Some Notes on Strange Occurrences in a Car Park in Gateshead by Gary McMahon, illustrations by Meggan Kehrli Haunted History Series #4 Printings: February 2008 (150) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 18 pages Postscript Orders for this booklet are filled by the author. Signed on request. "My friend and sometime mentor, Charles Edward Urban, died in March 2007. He was seventy years old. Unfortunately, Charles took his own life before I had the chance to ever meet him in the flesh, and our long-distance relationship remained sadly unresolved. I had been fortunate enough to conduct an informal correspondence with him (a loose friendship that took the form of letters and emails) in the few years before his untimely death, which was begun when I sent him a fan letter because a story of his ("The Red Yawn") affected me profoundly enough to cause me to re-examine my entire life. Charles named me in his will as sole executor of his estate. Going through his belongings, ostensibly in search of unpublished material for a proposed posthumous collection of his short fiction , I came across the following papers in the locked bottom drawer of a battered Victorian bureau. Whether they constitute notes for an unfinished tale, the ramblings of a suicidal and deeply unsettled mind, or accounts of genuine strange occurrences in the north east of England, I will leave you to decide. -Gary McMahon, editor"
Europe €5.00 International €8.00	The Red House at Münstereifel by Helen Grant, illustrations by William Bond Haunted History Series #3 Printings: July 2007 (150) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 28 pages Postscript Orders for this booklet are filled by the author. Signed on request. "Early in 2007, whilst researching an article about Steinfeld Abbey, I came across the collection of documents (originally in German) which comprise this booklet, in a forgotten folder bearing the name of Löher, a name closely connected with that infamous period in European history when witch-hunting was at its height. For reasons which will soon become clear upon perusal of the documents, I have chosen to publish them outside Germany. It is imperative that the facts relating to the history of the Red House in Münstereifel--in so far as they can be established--are put before those persons best equipped to take the appropriate action. The author of the original documents perished in a horrific incident which appears not unconnected with their compilation. Whether his fears and suspicions were justified is for you, the reader, to judge. -H. Grant, editor"
	Blind Man's Box: Some documents relating to the history of the Grand Pavilion Theatre, Seabourne by Reggie Oliver, illustrations by Meggan Kehrli Haunted History Series #2 Printings: June 2007 (150) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 20 pages Postscript "On the thirteenth of July this year, Dr. George Vilier, died suddenly at the age of fifty five. He was lecturer in Theatre Studies at Bath University, and a colleague and friend of mine, so I suppose it should have been no surprise to discover that he had made me his literary executor. Among his papers I found the almost complete MS of his long-awaited work, The Gothic Experience in Victorian Drama, which I hope will soon see publication. I also found a folder which contained the following documents and notes. I am sure that Vilier was intending to use them to form a single connected narrative, and I debated whether I should do the same. In the end I decided that I would serve his memory better if I arranged these papers in a moderately coherent order, secured the relevant copyright permissions and published them as they stood. I have added a short note at the end, but readers must decide for themselves whether what follows provides any clue to the mystery of his sudden and tragic death. -Reggie Oliver, editor"
	On the Apparitions at Gray's Court by Peter Bell, illustrations by Meggan Kehrli Haunted History Series #1 Printings: Dec. 2006 (150) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 16 pages Postscript For details on ordering a copy of On the Apparitions at Gray's Court, contact Peter Bell at: emily.bronte@tiscali.co.uk "This intriguing pamphlet, handsomely produced by Swan River Press, is the first in a promised series of fake histories of real buildings. Peter Bell's fascinating On the Apparitions at Gray's Court leaves you eager for more. Taking the form of a reprinted academic paper, complete with footnotes, bibliographic references and the kind of entertainingly pernickety detail beloved of the local history enthusiast, we're very much in M. R. James territory, physically as well as stylistically--a medieval building in the cathedral precinct at York, which has played host at different times to clergy, academics and something altogether less reassuring. "By the end I was googling away to try and sort the truth from the fiction. It's a great idea and Dr. Bell pulls it off with ease and elegance. If anyone out there has a second hand copy of the author's Poltergeist over the Wolds: a Study of Paranormal Phenomena in the East Riding of Yorkshire, I'd be very interested in putting in an offer." -Robert Lloyd Parry, All Hallows #42
	*Chapbooks*
Quis Separabit €5.00 All Six Chapbook €25.00	Quis Separabit by Brian J. Showers, illustrations by Jeffrey C. Roche Printings: December 2007 (300) Style: A7, hand-sewn soft cover chapbook with ribbon bookmark Length: 48 pages Postscript "Shortly after crossing La Touche Bridge and proceeding south along Rathmines Road, you will notice a nondescript and ultimately dead end lane stretching to the west. This is tiny Blackberry Lane, as evidenced by a sign bolted to the adjacent terrace, and in days past it was literally neither here nor there. This east-west lane was once a narrow and much lengthier bohreen beat through the dense foliage between the Earl of Meath's lands to the south and the old Farm of St. Sepulchre to the north. It should arouse no curiosity that neither estate claimed this stretch of ground, as for countless generations it was primarily utilised by the dead. Until 1850, the lane served as a corpse road--a path used not only by funeral processions, but also, according to belief, by souls of the deceased."
70 Merrion Square €10.00 All Six Chapbook €25.00	No. 70 Merrion Square, Parts One & Two by Brian J. Showers, illustrations by Duane Spurlock Printings: Oct. 2006 (300) / Dec. 2006 (300) Style: A7, hand-sewn soft cover chapbook with ribbon bookmark Length: 48 pages x 2 Postscript "Anyone familiar with Brian J. Showers' supernatural stories, presented in the delightful miniature chapbooks of Swan River Press, so tastefully illustrated by Duane Spurlock and Meggan Kehrli, will not be disappointed by his latest publication: No. 70 Merrion Square. Aficionados will recognise the address of the Dublin house where the great Sheridan Le Fanu wrote some of his finest tales and spent the last lonely decades of his life. Showers has cleverly engaged with the motif of Le Fanu by writing a story in which the protagonist, a horror author seeking renewed inspiration, settles in the house and encounters troubling experiences. "Inter-textual references, to classic and contemporary supernatural writers, constantly inform the narrative, making it great fun for the connoisseur; and it is threaded with a vein of wry humour, tastefully and effectively juxtaposed against the horror, never an easy task. Throughout, the narrative displays the author's lucid prose style and easy pace, a hallmark of all his previous work: in a phrase, Showers is a damned good story-teller, as well as a master of atmosphere and a shrewdly informed practitioner of the ghostly tale. Working closely within established genre conventions--haunted house, ghostly possession, numinous dreams, the angry dead, the inspiration and alienation of the artist, and the borderland between insanity and the supernatural-- Showers has written a superb tribute to Victorian Gothic set within 21st Century Dublin. Few modern writers can be as versed in the supernatural heritage of that atmospheric city, with its strange mix of glitzy economic miracle and elegantly sombre past." More... -Peter Bell, ghost story writer

Tigh an Bhreithimh €5.00 All Six Chapbook €25.00	Tigh an Bhreithimh by Brian J. Showers, illustrations by Duane Spurlock Printings: Oct. 2005 (300), March 2007 (150) Style: A7, hand-sewn soft cover chapbook with ribbon bookmark Length: 48 pages Postscript A struggling writer travels to a remote cottage in western Ireland for the solitude and inspiration he needs to finish writing his first novel. But when the forgotten secrets of the desolate landscape want to be remembered, he learns a lesson in fear, one more terrifying than any tale he could ever write. In the tradition of M.R. James and J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Brian J. Showers's Tigh an Bhreithimh is a tale that is sure to please fans of the traditional ghost story. "I really enjoyed Tigh an Bhreithimh, which is a nicely written ghost story set in a small town in Ireland. The atmosphere--puzzle and horror--is very well handled, and the folkways are interesting. The story is conveyed in a small, attractive chapbook with good line illustrations by Duane Spurlock." -E.F. Bleiler, editor
Snow Came Softly €5.00 All Six Chapbook €25.00	The Snow Came Softly Down by Brian J. Showers, illustrations by Duane Spurlock and poetry courtesy of William Wordsworth Printings: Dec. 2004 (200), Sept. 2005 (100), Feb. 2007 (150) Style: A7, hand-sewn soft cover chapbook with ribbon bookmark Length: 48 pages Postscript "Small but perfectly formed, The Snow Came Softly Down by Brian J. Showers is a delightfully-produced little chapbook with its own ribbon marker and simple but effective line drawings by Duane Spurlock, containing 'A Tale Concerning Ghosts'. You would expect from this, and from the old-fashioned typeface, that it is set in a more innocent era, and so it proves. M.R. James would probably disapprove of the decidedly benign spooks, but the tale cannot be faulted for atmosphere--especially the protagonist's scary walk through the freezing woods on Christmas Eve. If I call the tone of the story 'Dickensian' it is meant as a compliment, evoking as it does those semi-mythical White Yuletides depicted on a certain type of Christmas card... but with added creepiness. Wordsworth’s poem 'Lucy Gray', possibly an inspiration to the tale and certainly complementing it, rounds off this charming book." -Chico Kidd, All Hallows #42
The Old Tailor €5.00 All Six Chapbook €25.00	The Old Tailor and the Gaunt Man by Brian J. Showers, illustrations by Meggan Kehrli Printings: Oct. 2003 (150), March 2005 (100), June 2006 (150) Style: A7, hand-sewn soft cover chapbook with ribbon bookmark Length: 48 pages Postscript "Here is a small treat from The Swan River Press in Dublin, Ireland: an old-fashioned ghost story in a hand-sewn binding with soft covers and its own ribbon marker. Brian J. Showers, an expatriate American writer living in Dublin, reveals an expert hand at deploying the shadows and portents, ironic disclosures, and gradual accumulation of detail, which still make the masters of supernatural fiction so chillingly entertaining to this day. His tale of a lonely old tailor eking out a miserable existence who discovers 'there is still enough faith for dark things to walk the night' is a delightful folkloric ghost story in a gently facetious and slightly antique tone reminiscent of Charles Dickens and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The text is complemented by Meggan Kehrli's arabesque cover design, six full-page illustrations, and an equal number of spot illustrations, all of which add to the work’s eerie charm. This is perfect fare for solitary reading on blustery autumn evenings or a group gathered round the holiday fireplace in expectation of a Winter’s Tale." -Jim Rockhill, All Hallows #40 'The Old Tailor & the Gaunt Man' was re-printed in Ash-Tree Press's 2004 collection, Acquainted With The Night.
	*Booklets*
	Just Like That by Lucy M. Boston Introduction by Brian J. Showers Printings: August 2011 (125) Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet Length: 15 pages Sold Out Unlike the stories included in Curfew & Other Eerie Tales, "Just Like That" lacks that overt element of supernatural brutality. Where the majority of Boston's stories adhere to the Jamesian call for "malevolence and terror", "Just Like That" is more a story of emotional tragedy, and its supernatural manifestation is of the non-threatening order. As if to punctuate this, Boston originally gave this story the title "Gentle Shadow", which she crossed off, writing "Just Like That" in pencil — this re-titling, perhaps, emphasises the natural element of fate more than the slight supernatural manifestation of fate's gentle shadow. Just Like That is a booklet limited to 125 copies containing a hitherto unpublished story by Lucy M. Boston. The booklet was given away free with the first 100 copies of Curfew & Other Eerie Tales sold through this website.
	Ghostly Rathmines: A Visitor's Guide Cover by Duane Spurlock Printings: March 2008 (125) Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet Length: 32 pages Sold Out Ghostly Rathmines: A Visitor's Guide is a companion booklet limited to 125 numbered copies containing artefacts, images, and photographs from locations in the stories in The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories. The booklet was given away free with the first 125 copies of The Bleeding Horse sold through this website. Click here for details.