Fired up by the accounts of exploring parties in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers of the weird and supernatural began to construct a literary Arctic and Antarctic in which terrors lay undiscovered in the ice and gateways to bizarre hidden worlds were waiting. From James Hogg’s lurid North Pole narrative of life amongst polar bears in ‘The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon’ to tales of mad science and ghostly visitations among the wind-blown expanse of the southern continent, this new collection showcases a wealth of neglected material and an overlooked niche of literature obsessed with the limits of human experience.

Pulp tales of alien forces emerging from the ice and a battle between hunter and invisible man-eating duck creature drift alongside modern horror from indigenous Arctic voices to show the extent and endurance of the lure of these sublime landscapes.

A truly lost novel from 1927 rediscovered from the British Library collections, not republished since its first appearance and with the remaining copies extremely scarce. Featuring a new introduction by Horror expert Johnny Mains, including new research on the enigmatic husband-and-wife writing duo, the Syntons, rediscovered by Mains and the Tales of the Weird team. Described in the Occult Review September 1927 as ‘an occult “shocker,” exciting curiosity in a more weirdly unpleasant mother-in-law than I remember to have hitherto met in my travels through fiction.’

The Wicker Man meets The Twisted Ones in Bitter Karella's Quaint Folk-a queer folk horror novel that peels back the idyllic veneer of a perfectly quaint island town to reveal the rot beneath.

From the outside, it looks like Jessica has the perfect life. She's a stay-at-home mom, married to a man with a respectable job, raising a son they adore. Her family is as wholesome as all-American pie. But deep down, Jessica knows there's something wrong with her; she knows she can't escape her past.

When her husband's job has them move abroad, Jessica thinks this is her chance for a fresh start. On the remote island of Hasenhurst, the modern world can't get in. The people there grow their own herbs, make their own jam, and mind their own business. They believe in folk tales and the power of dreams. They tell visitors, we're a quaint, quiet people. The right sort of family would do well here. Jessica is determined to be the right kind of person for a family-and a life-like this. But as she tries to befriend the townsfolk and learn their ways, she soon realizes that beneath the town's cosy idyll, something sickly-sweet and rotten lays buried...

'Quaint Folk must be experienced for oneself, in all of its folklorist, fever-dream glory . . . the vibes are immaculate, especially for readers looking for something that's equal parts quirky and creepy'
Booklist

'To experience Bitter Karella's cheerfully unhinged fiction is to surrender to a spectacularly fierce and uncompromising literary force. Quaint Folk astonished me with its charming, mythical weirdness threaded with genuine moments of pure tenderness. A bold, potent brew of all the best elements of folk and queer horror'
Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

‘These stories have all had their origins in dreams... Terrifying enough to the dreamer... I hope that some readers will experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them.’

A malignant entity answers the call of an ancient curse on the coast of Brittany; a traveller’s curiosity delivers him to an abominable Hallowe’en ritual; the curious new owner of a haunted mansion discovers something far worse than ghosts in the night.

Randalls Round has long been revered by devotees of the weird tale. First published in 1929, its stories of ritualistic folk horror and M. R. James-inspired accounts of ancient forces terrorising humanity are thoroughly deserving of wider recognition. This collection includes a new introduction exploring Eleanor Scott’s impact on weird and folk horror fiction, and two chilling stories by N. Dennett – speculated to be another of the author’s pseudonyms.