Book News ~ The Vanishing Hand by E. Lea Wilson

I said there were two books coming out soon, and here is the second one... The Vanishing Hand by E. Lea Wilson, originally published in 1893 and never republished. Copies of the first edition are, quite literally, as rare as hen's teeth. I thought for a time that I'd encountered three out there in the wild (including my own copy), but then I realised that I had seen the same one twice. 

And on the subject of rarity, I have managed to find only one story by Miss Wilson aside from the ones included in this volume, and there doesn't seem to be a surviving copy of it. I intend to go on with researching this author, so if you, dear readers, do ever come across anything written by this lady, I would be extremely grateful if you would drop me a line (via the contact page on the Nezu Press website). Ta! 

Anyway, here's the blurb, etc.:

The Vanishing Hand was published for private circulation in 1893, when its author, Emma Lea Wilson, was sixty-four years old. It contains the novelette ‘The Vanishing Hand’, the novella ‘A Clever Trick’, and the short story ‘An Authentic Story of a Dog’. The title story is a criminous tale about strange nocturnal goings on at isolated Crighton Manor. Young Alice Taylor thinks she’s seen a ghost when a hand appears at her bedroom door and then fades away before her very eyes, so she enlists the help of ‘Aunt Lucy’ to solve the mystery. ‘A Clever Trick’ is the story of two stepsisters who fall prey to a wicked plan hatched by a devious stepmother. And the third tale is about a stray dog, a true ‘cur of low degree’, who befriends the female narrator of the story in order to avoid being stoned. The tales are clever and entertaining… and they are made all the more interesting by the fact that the contents were in part true. A very limited number of copies of The Vanishing Hand were produced, only a few remain in existence, and it has never been republished. This new edition includes an 18-page biographical essay by Gina R. Collia: “E. Lea Wilson: ‘Eccentric Spinster and First-Rate Storyteller’ ”.

Published: 30 June 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-917113-11-3.
Case laminate hardback, 22.86mm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 146 pages.

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available. Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Book News ~ The Door Ajar by Virginia Milward

I am very pleased to announce that the next Nezu Press release (well, one of two) will be The Door Ajar by Virginia Milward, originally published in 1912 and never republished. Its author, Pearl (Virginia was a pseudonym, and she preferred Pearl to her actual Christian name, Margaret), had an unhappy life, and her stories were very much inspired by her own experiences. The Door Ajar was Pearl's only published collection of tales, and she appears to have given up writing entirely in 1920, despite the fact that she didn't die until 1968.

Here's the blurb, etc.:

The Door Ajar, a collection of seven short stories of the weird and uncanny by Virginia Milward, was first published by William Rider & Son, Limited, in the spring of 1912. Two of the tales are premonitory, and three of them involve haunted objects—a book from the time of plague, a silver box that witnessed the French Revolution, and a painting from fifteenth-century Florence—that reveal the tragic ends of those who once possessed them. The atmosphere in all of the stories is oppressive; the women in them are haunted, desperate, tortured, abandoned or exhausted, and the cause for their sad state is usually a man, for ‘where men go pain follows—pain and misery of mind.’ These are tales in which ‘woman suffers and the man sins, and the man shares all the sin, but not the suffering.’

This Nezu Press edition, the first republication of the collection since 1912, includes a 17-page biographical essay by Gina R. Collia that reveals the real identity of the author and paints a vivid picture of her troubled life: “ ‘I Have No Use for Men’: The Life of Pearl Rudkin.”

Published: 30 June 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-917113-10-6.
Case laminate hardback, 22.86mm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 136 pages.

I wrote a post about the stories in this collection a little time back, and you can read it by clicking here.

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available. Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Book News ~ The Shadow on Mockways by Marjorie Bowen

I am extremely pleased to announce that the next Nezu Press release will be the novel The Shadow on Mockways by Marjorie Bowen, originally published by Collins in 1932 (and so popular that it was on its 4th impression by February the following year). It is a wonderfully creepy, atmospheric thriller with a slight supernatural element, described when it was first published as ‘a thriller that is mysterious in the manner of Le Fanu’ (Daily News, 21 June 1932); it contains ‘all the elements of a real thriller, and is saturated with the atmosphere of a terrifying house where weird things happen’ (The Bookman, June 1932).

Henry Beale wants to paint Mockways, an ancient country house that sits in isolation on the Welsh border. When the artist’s friend Edward Falkland saves the life of Mockways’ owner, the eccentric millionaire Jessamy Dobree, and is offered a favour in return, he asks for access to the house on Beale’s behalf. But Dobree flatly refuses Falkland’s request… until he mentions the name ‘Sarah Lomax’. Before he knows it, Falkland is whisked off to the strange old property—along with the rich man’s ward, Isabel Conway, and her nurse—and held there against his will, forced to take part in ghost hunts while Dobree and his sinister companion, Harvey Manning, search the house from top to bottom, looking for a mysterious box hidden long ago by Mockways’ previous owner.

Published: 30 April 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-917113-09-0.
Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86mm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 298 pages.

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available. Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Book News ~ From Out of the Silence by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor

It is my pleasure to announce that the next Nezu Press title, out on 31 March, will be From Out of the Silence by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, first published in 1920 by Books Limited. It was the only short story collection by Bessie that was published. I wrote a review of the tales some time back, and you can read it by clicking here.

It contains seven supernatural tales set around the time of the First World War, perfect for ‘those who enjoy having their hair raised by tales of restless spirits’ (Liverpool Daily Post, 13 January 1921). In addition to the seven tales, this new edition includes ‘Afterwards!’, Bessie's non-fiction piece about unemployment amongst ex-servicemen, published in the Liverpool Evening Express in 1919. It also includes a 23-page biographical essay by yours truly: ‘Bessie Kyffin-Taylor: A Graceful Writer of Ghost Stories’. There wasn't all that much known about Bessie when I first began researching her history, so it was great fun for me, ferreting around and unearthing lots of new information.

Published: 31 March 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-917113-08-3.
Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86mm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 270 pages.

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores. It is already at Amazon UK (please click here), and eventually Amazon US will catch up (please click here).

Mary L. Pendered's Garden Gate

I collect ephemera, or at least I go through phases of doing so. I have quite a few photographs of absolute strangers, generally Victorian, who look like they're plotting someone's murder. I'm on a letter kick at the moment, so I thought I'd share one of my little treasures. It's from Mary L. Pendered, author of The Uncanny House and The Forsaken House at Misty Vale.

It was sent from her home in Great Addington to W. Dexter & Son, ironmongers, who were situated in Wellingborough, 'opposite the Palace' (according to their advertisements in the local papers). Apparently, in 1937 Mary was in need of an 'automatic gate holder' for her garden gate.

Yes, I know, this has nothing to do with Mary's writing, and there was nothing creepy about her garden gate. But it is nice to remember, now and then, that human beings wrote the books we so admire, that they had lives (sometimes much like our own) and garden gate fixtures that didn't work properly.

Book News ~ The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram

I am very pleased to announce that the second Nezu Press title for 2025 will be The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram, first published in 1921 by J. B. Lippincott Company. It was Eleanor's only supernatural story: her last work in fact. She died when she was very young and didn't get the chance to write more.

I am particularly happy about this one; it's a classic of supernatural fiction—very atmospheric and creepy—and it really does deserve to be better known. It's one of my favourite supernatural novels. 'And why is that?' I hear you ask. Well, I did write a blog post about it a while back, so you can read my review by clicking here. And here's the blurb for this new edition:

Roger Locke is an accomplished composer from New York. In need of a summer residence that he can retreat to when New York becomes too hot to work in, he buys the old Michell place in Connecticut. But the house is haunted, and the entity haunting it is no mere ghost—no puny dead human that our hero has some hope of comprehending and conquering. The ‘Thing’ that haunts Roger is outside of his understanding, possesses power beyond his imagination, and is kept at bay solely by the resistance of his mind: a mind which, with each encounter with ‘It’, has the potential to weaken and fail.

This new edition of The Thing from the Lake includes a 21-page biographical essay by me, ‘From the Realm of Romance to the Borderland of Dread: The Life and Work of Eleanor M. Ingram’, which includes a wealth of new information about the author and her family background.

Published: 25 February 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-917113-07-6.
Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86mm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 240 pages.

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores. It is already at Amazon UK (please click here) and US (please click here).