Supernatural Tales

  Cover art by Paul Lowe A new collection of ghost stories by a disciple of M.R. James (and others) is always of interest. C.E. Ward, a long-time contributor to Ro Pardoe's Ghosts & Scholars , is an old hand at recreating the distinctive atmosphere of those classic tales. Here are garrulous countrymen, curious scholars, interesting settings, and strange phenomena. Four of the eight tales collected here are new. The others have appeared in G&S , The Silent Companion, or in The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows .  One of Ward's fields of interest is military history, and this informs the first story, 'Autumn Harvest'. The deceptively serene title does not prepare the reader for the tale of violence and maleficia stemming from a clash between a Royalist squire and Parliamentary forces in the Civil War era. There are parallels with 'Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance'. Here, too, we find a young gent who unexpectedly inherits a country house with a strang...

h/t Steve Duffy

Charles Williams (1886-1945) was a prolific and versatile writer and a member of the Inklings, the Oxford academic society that included Tolkien and Lewis. Unlike those two authors, however, Williams' work has never reached a very wide audience. He has won many admirers (among them the poet W.H. Auden), but his sophisticated religious and philosophical speculation is not for everyone. I confess I have always found him difficult. Put another way, I've finished two of his books and understood one of them. Possibly.  So it was with some trepidation that I approached this volume from Sarob , as it is a homage to Williams by John Howard and Mark Valentine. Both authors tackle aspects of Williams' work, which is informed by Christian ideas, often in surprising ways. The two novellas are very different, both in tone and content. Both are well-crafted, interesting, and arguably more accessible than Williams' own books.  John Howard's 'All the Times of the City' remi...