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.
ISBH: 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).