And So Forever ~ Gertrude Dunn

Our second Gertrude Dunn title for Hallowe'en is And So Forever, which was first published in 1929.

Following the death of her uncle, who adopted her when she was sixteen years old, Joan Stirling is left somewhat alone in the world and with very little income. In need of employment, and hoping for a little adventure, she answers an advertisement in the Gentlewoman’s Journal, for a companion-secretary, a ‘gentlewoman of education and parts’. But upon taking up her new post, Joan soon discovers that her employer, a beautiful and charming widow named Mrs Annabelle Vane—who talks ‘like Pepys’ Diary’, looks like a lady from the court of one of the Stuart kings, and believes in witchcraft—is no ordinary woman. Mrs Vane has a past… and it goes right back to 1684.

As with Unholy Depths, this new edition of And So Forever includes a 14-page biographical essay by yours truly: ‘Gertrude Dunn: Creating a Strong Belief in the Incredible’.

‘Decidedly a book to read: there is not a dull page in it.’ Birmingham Daily Gazette, January  1930.

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-19-9.

Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 270 pages

Published: 31 October 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Unholy Depths ~ Gertrude Dunn

We're bringing out two new titles for Hallowe'en, both by Gertrude Dunn, and the first is Unholy Depths, a good old haunted house tale.

If you have heard of Gertrude, it's most likely as the author of The Mark of the Bat. Gertrude published only three novels during her short career, and we did intend to bring out all of them this year. But another small press is putting out her vampire novel in the not too distant future, so we have put The Mark of the Bat on the back burner for the time being. But we will be bringing out our own edition (which is all ready to go), most likely towards the end of next year.

Anyway, back to Unholy Depths...

Verona Wood, a twenty-four-year-old London girl who works in an office to make ends meet, responds to a newspaper advertisement offering holiday accommodation to ‘an unmarried lady’ and goes to spend her three-week vacation with Miss Rose Bullivant at ‘The Nest’ in Wensley, Kent. While out walking in the neighbouring countryside, she comes across ‘Virginia’, the house built by Colonel Belasco, a plantation owner from Virginia who moved to England with his wife in 1866, about a year after the American Civil War ended, bringing with him three former slaves. After encountering the spirit of Quentin Belasco, the colonel’s son, who committed suicide at the property fifty years earlier, Verona makes up her mind to live in the long-empty house. But there is something terribly wrong with ‘Virginia’, and Verona soon finds herself isolated and afraid in her new home, alone save for an ‘obsessed’ housekeeper, and at the mercy of the malevolent force that haunts the very land the Belasco house sits on.

First published in 1926, this new edition of Unholy Depths includes a 14-page biographical essay by yours truly: ‘Gertrude Dunn: Creating a Strong Belief in the Incredible’.

‘Wraiths and materialisations and demoniac possessions are thick as autumn leaves.’ The Sketch, November 1926.

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-18-2

Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 248 pages

Published: 31 October 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Embalmed Alive and Other Tales of Egyptian Mummies

We are back in Egypt for the next Nezu Press release. Aside from being a rather big one (618 pages long!), it's also the first Nezu Press anthology.

As you probably know already, I am an Egyptophile, and this project has been a real labour of love for me. Of the thirty-two tales included, half of them were written by women, a third have not been republished since they first appeared in print, and of the rest a number have been republished only once before. Also, though many of us tend to think of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (death on swift wings, and all that) as the inspiration for lots of mummy curse stories being written, these tales were published between 1827 and 1939, and all but two of them appeared before Carter and Carnarvon made their famous find towards the end of 1922.

There is a 29-page introductory essay by yours truly: ‘Cure Me, Thrill Me, Kill Me! The Mummy: From Magical Cure to Murderous Curse’. And there are forty black-and-white illustrations too, some of which accompanied the tales when they were first published. The stories included are: 

The Mummy (excerpt, 1827) - Jane Webb Loudon

The Mummy’s Soul (1862) - Anonymous

After Three Thousand Years (1868) - Jane G. Austin

Lost in a Pyramid; Or, the Mummy’s Curse (1869) - Louisa May Alcott

The Egyptian Amulet (1881) - Mrs M. Sheffey Peters

The Paraschites (1889) - Mallard Herbertson (pseud. of Marie Hutcheson)

The Curse of Vasartas (1889) - Eva M. Henry

Embalmed Alive (1890) - Gustave Toudouze

Xartella (1891) - Florence Carpenter Dieudonné

Lot No. 249 (1892) - A. Conan Doyle

The Unseen Man’s Story (1893) - Julian Hawthorne

Robber of the Dead (1894) - Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma

At the Pyramid of the Sacred Bulls (1896) - Charles J. Mansford

Pharaoh’s Curse (1897) - Lucian Sorrel

The Story of Baelbrow (1898) - E. and H. Heron (pseud. of Kate and Hesketh Pritchard)

The Mummy Necklace (1899) - Arabella Romilly

The Spirit of Amenof (1899) - Countess De Sulmalla

The Mummy and the Moth (1900) - Agnes Warner McClelland

The Mummy Hand (1901) - Adeline Sergeant

The Skirts of Chance (1902) - Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

The Dead Hand (1904) - Hester White

A Professor of Egyptology (1904) - Guy Boothby

The Bulb (1906) - Clive Pemberton

The Soul of a Mummy (1908) - Blanche Bloor Schleppy

The Secret of Horeb-Ra-Men (1909) - Edwin Wooton

The Case of Professor Engelbach (1909) - Derek Vane (pseud. of Blanche Eaton Back)

The Necklace of Dreams (1910) - W. G. Peasgood

The Dead Face (1910) - Frederick Graves

Smith and the Pharaohs (1913) - H. Rider Haggard

The Mummy’s Foot (1914) - Jessie Adelaide Middleton

Black Coffee (1929) - Jeffery Farnol

The Mummy of Ret-Seh (1939) - A. Hyatt Verrill

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-17-5

Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 618 pages

Published: 15 July 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Now, I’ve had a good old chuckle at some of the real-life curse stories I’ve come across over the years. You know the sort of thing: reports of endless things going wrong when a person so much as looks at a mummy case sideways. But I have to admit that while putting together the cover for this book, and working with the image of the coffin of Lady Tadi-en-hent awy, I have never encountered so many problems during what is usually a straightforward process. In the end, it took five hours to assemble the jacket. Sections of artwork moved without anyone touching them (the text section on the back cover repeatedly moved closer to the coffin on the front), and the colours changed every time the final file was saved. After going back and starting from scratch, the shenanigans began all over again. The design software presets repeatedly unset themselves, spaces in the text disappeared, the titles changed colour, and I half expected the final jacket file to be rejected by the printer! Thankfully, everything worked out in the end.

Lady Tadi-en-hent awy’s coffin resides in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, and I used to visit the museum regularly when I was a child; in fact, that is where my interest in ancient Egypt was born (along with my love of Pre-Raphaelite art). It’s one of two Egyptian coffins in the museum’s collection, and the other, that of Namenkhetamun, still contains the mummy (the name is that of a lady, but the mummy inside is apparently male). Anyway, I hope that Lady Tadi-en-hent awy approves of the cover. It was important to the ancient Egyptians that they were remembered after death, so I think she'll be pleased about you all knowing her name.

In the Dwellings of the Wilderness ~ C. Bryson Taylor

I have a thing for Egypt. I think I've mentioned that before. I've had one ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, when I took part in a school play about the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb. I've also mentioned before that one of my favourite films is Hammer's The Mummy (1959). I also have a fondness for vampires (not the sparkly ones). So, you can imagine how over the moon and beside myself with joy I was when I first read Charlotte Bryson Taylor's In the Dwellings of the Wilderness... which contains a vampiric mummy! Did all of my Christmases come at once, or what!

Anyway, this wonderful book is the next Nezu Press offering, and it will be out on 8 June. The Independent (New York) described it as ‘A story with a new kind of thrill', and warned 'all who have nerves and nightmares against reading this book.' Current Literature was 'strongly reminded of some of Edgar Allan Poe’s work.' According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it is ‘Weird, almost grewsome, with an incongruity of modern practical life which serves to throw its other characteristics into all the stronger light.’

When Deane, Merritt, and Holloway uncover the entrance to a previously undisturbed tomb while digging in Egypt, they ignore the warning inscribed above its entrance to ‘wake not the soul that sleeps within’. They unblock the doorway marked ‘forbidden’ and uncover the mummy of an ancient Egyptian princess who was buried alive for her sins. And in opening the tomb, they release the devil that dwells within. 

First published in 1904, this new edition of In the Dwellings of the Wilderness includes a 20-page biographical essay by yours truly, “Charlotte Bryson Taylor: ‘Clever Writer of Fiction’ and ‘Angel’ of Washington Fire Department”, which contains a large amount of new information about the author of this atmospheric tale of the mummy’s curse.

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-16-8

Case laminate hardback, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 114 pages

Published: 8 June 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.