Horror Blackwood, Algernon: The Lost Valley and Other Stories (illus). v1. 08 Jan 2022

[GrannyGrump]

A collection of ten eerie and fantastic stories to give you chills, and to give you food for thought.

Brief summaries of the stories:

Spoiler:

The Lost Valley
Twin brothers Stephen and Mark have spent their 30-plus years together, eschewing relationships that would keep them apart. On a holiday in the Alps, they meet a woman who threatens their relationship.

The Wendigo
In the far Canadian north two moose hunters break off from their group and head out to find their game. One of them is a French Canadian acting as guide who begins to feel there is something in the woods that might be hunting them — is it the legendary Wendigo, a native mythical creature of immense strength that has cannabalistic traits?

Old Clothes
A widow with a pre-teen daughter calls on her cousin when her child takes her imaginary playmates far too seriously.

Perspective
While hiking in the Swiss Alps a man has a strange experience that later results in him being able to affect two strangers’ destinies.

The Terror of the Twins
Expecting a son as an heir, a man is sorry to have fathered twin sons, and vows to fix the problem when the boys come of age.

The Man from the ‘Gods’
A composer who is finding it difficult to create his masterpiece has a strange dream that fulfills his aim.

The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf
While staying in an Alpine village, a man encounters an outcast and his mongrel dog. The outcast makes beautiful sounds on a leaf and enchants the visitor.

The Price of Wiggins’s Orgy
A man who just came into a small legacy celebrates at a fancy restaurant with wine he’d unused to, and comes to realize his fellow patrons have sinister plans for him.

Carlton’s Drive
A man taking a hansom cab ride home begins to see people he knows, but they act in a sinister manner.

The Eccentricity of Simon Parnacute
A retired professor well set in his ways performs an out-of-character act that astonishes him and has repercussions later when he falls ill.

(Synopses from Amazon customer review)

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One of the foremost British writers of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) wrote stories in which the slow accumulation of telling details produced a foreboding atmosphere of almost unendurable tension. Though he wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, “His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s.”

Blackwood’s literary renown began in 1908 with the publication of a highly successful collection of stories, John Silence — Physician Extraordinary, featuring a “psychic doctor.” His two best known stories are probably “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”.

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The Lost Valley and Other Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951), was first published in 1910. Illustrations by W. Graham Robertson (1866–1948). This ebook is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.
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