By the Night Express and Other Tales, etc. ~ Keith Fleming

I am extremely pleased—and that is a huge understatement—to announce that on the spookiest day of the year Nezu Press will publish two volumes of stories by Keith Fleming (pseudonym of female author K. E. Fitz-Patrick). And both will include my 21-page biographical essay—‘Most Unassuming in Demeanour’: The Life of K. E. Fitz-Patrick—which reveals a large amount of new information about the writer’s background and life.

   

Until now, next to nothing was known about Miss Fitz-Patrick. When I first began looking for information about her, I had very little to go on. I thought I might find a few choice morsels to shed a little light on her life, but I didn't dare hope for more than that—I certainly wasn't expecting what I did find. And now you can read all about her.

The stories contained in the two volumes are as follows:

By the Night Express and Other Tales:

The novellas ‘By the Night Express’, ‘Dolores’, and ‘Love Stronger than Death’. 

The novel “Can Such Things Be?”.

The short stories ‘So Innocent’, ‘The Transfiguration of Lettice Willoughby’, and ‘The Red Skirt’.

At the Eleventh Hour and Other Tales:

The novels At the Eleventh Hour and The Sins of the Fathers.

The short stories ‘The Courage of Kathie’, ‘An Audacious Wager’, and ‘Garth Austin’s Strategy’.

And the dust jacket of each volume features a wonderful painting by Edward Miller (Les Edwards), of whom I have been a great fan since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

The sensation novel The Sins of the Fathers (which does have supernatural elements) was originally published in instalments in various newspapers from 1893; it was never published in book form, and it has never been republished in any format. All six short stories appeared in periodicals, and none of them have been republished before (I should point out that the short stories are not supernatural).

Both books are available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (By the Night Express | At the Eleventh Hour). Alternatively, they are available from the usual online retailers, and you can order them from bricks-and-mortar stores. They're already at Amazon UK (click here: By the Night Express | At the Eleventh Hour).

The Uncanny House & The Forsaken House at Misty Vale ~ Mary L. Pendered

Nezu Press is bringing out two books in August, both by Mary L. Pendered. A well-known author during her lifetime, she has been almost forgotten since her death, and her books are extremely difficult to get hold of. One of our new titles, The Forsaken House at Misty Vale, is so rare that you're unlikely to ever see a copy of the first edition in the wild.

The Uncanny House was first published in 1927, and The Forsaken House at Misty Vale came out in 1932. Neither of these novels has been republished since its first publication. Please note that both of the new Nezu Press editions contain the same 20-page biographical essay by me: ‘Mary L. Pendered: Author, Suffragist, Pacifist, and Thoroughly Good Woman’.

The Uncanny House

Old Mr Barker was a curmudgeon who underfed his dogs to make them vicious and kept his low-paid staff loyal with promises of legacies that never materialised. Following his death, his home is sold at auction for an absurdly cheap price to Peggy and Percy Dacre. But when the young couple move into their new home with their four children, Peggy soon discovers that The Beeches—commonly referred to as ‘Hell Corner’ by the locals—is already occupied.

Published: 20 August 2024.
978-1-917113-01-4.
Hardback with dust jacket, 228 pages.
Click here to buy from Nezu Press.

The Forsaken House at Misty Vale

Celia Grey, a fifty-year-old, unmarried writer who has longed for a home of her own for decades, thinks all her prayers have been answered when she inherits her uncle’s house. But Clew Lodge is a property with an uncanny reputation. It is a grim and daunting place, desolate and derelict, having been left to the forces of corruption since Uncle Jerrold abandoned it a decade prior to his death—because he ‘could not stand the whispering’.

Published: 20 August 2024.
978-1-917113-02-1.
Hardback with dust jacket, 306 pages.
Click here to buy from Nezu Press.

Both books will be available from the usual online retailers soon. They are available to pre-order from the Nezu Press website right now (see links above).

Over the Cliffs ~ Charlotte Chanter

As promised, here is the third of today's announcements (you can read the first one by clicking here and the second one by clicking here).

On 4 May, to accompany the release of two works by Gratiana Chanter, Nezu Press will publish a hardback edition of Over the Cliffs by Gratiana's mother, Charlotte Chanter, with a biographical essay by me. 

Here are the details:

Charlotte Chanter is best known as the author of Ferny Combes, a guide to collecting and identifying the ferns of Devonshire. Her only fiction novel, Over the Cliffs, was first published in two volumes by Smith, Elder and Co. in the autumn of 1860. The story is set on the coast of Devon at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is a tale of murder, a stolen inheritance, smuggling, shipwrecks, blackmail, treachery, greed, plotting, counter-plotting… and love. There is even a hint of the supernatural in the form of a sighing ghost. Its fearless heroine is Gratiana Dawson, the daughter of a brutal bully who hates his children and is prone to violent paroxysms of passion. Motherless, forced to live under the roof of a tyrant, and the victim of one indignity after another, Gratiana refuses to surrender to the abusive men around her. Edward Mountjoy, the hero of the story, says of her, when speaking to Captain Douglas of the Royal Navy, ‘She has done things in her day that required from her more nerve than would be required of you in attacking an enemy.’ This edition includes a detailed biographical essay by Gina R. Collia, ‘Charlotte Chanter: Fearless Fern-Hunter of Devonshire’.

As with her daughter Gratiana, I'm going to be posting much more about this Devonshire writer in the days and weeks to come.

You can pre-order it directly from Nezu Press (Publisher shop: Click here). Or you can do so from the usual online retailers; the book will be showing up in all the usual places soon.

Nezu Press, 4 May 2024.
978-1-917113-00-7.
Hardback with dust jacket, 460 pages.