Originally published in French in 1925, Whiskey Tales immediately established the reputation of the Belgian master of the weird, Jean Ray (1887-1964), whose writings in the coming years would come to chart out a literary meeting ground between H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Dickens. A commercial success, the collection earned Ray the appellation of the "Belgian Poe." A year later, however, the author would be arrested on charges of embezzlement and serve two years in prison, where he would write some of his best stories. Something of a prequel to later collections such as Cruise of Shadows or Circles of Terror (both forthcoming from Wakefield Press), Whiskey Tales finds Ray embracing the modes of adventure and horror fiction adopted by such contemporaries as Pierre Mac Orlan and Maurice Renard. Taking us from ship's prow to port, from tavern to dead-end lane, these early tales are ruled by the spirits of whiskey and fog, each element blurring the borders between humor and horror, the sentimental and the sinister, the real and the imagined. A handful of these stories first appeared in English in Weird Tales in the 1930s, but the majority of this collection has never been translated. This first complete English-language edition is the first in many volumes of Jean Ray's books that Wakefield Press will be bringing out over the coming seasons.

The Belgian writer Raymond de Kremer (1887-1963) wrote hundreds of short stories, novellas and novels, in the horror and mystery genre, under the main pen-names Jean Ray and John Flanders. In the 1930s, several stories by Ray/Flanders appeared in the American pulp horror journals Weird Tales and Terror Tales. The next appearance of Jean Ray in English was not until 1965. GRAVEYARD SPECTRES collects five of these translated stories - three from the 1930s and two from 1965 - as an introduction into the bizarre, disturbing, and highly original world of Jean Ray. NUDE WITH A DAGGER; THE MYSTERY OF THE LAST GUEST; THE GRAVEYARD DUCHESS; THE SHADOWY STREET; THE MAINZ PSALTER

ne of the most famous gothic/uncanny novels of 20th century French writing, Ray's work has been compared to the best of Lovecraft and Meyrink and has never been out of print since its first publication in 1943. The author was a man surrounded by as much mystery as the bizarre old mansion of Malpertuis where the insane and horrific events of this novel ineluctably unfold. Fellow writer, Thomas Owen, said of him: Jean Ray was a Gothic personality. He had about him a touch of the damned priest or the cathedral gargoyle.'

Miss Marple meets H.P. Lovecraft in Ray's genre-defying tale of ghostly intrigue and murder Published in occupied Belgium in 1943 a few months after his celebrated novel Malpertuis, The City of Unspeakable Fearremains one of Jean Ray's most curious works. Haunting an ambiguous interzone between detective novel, horror fiction and Anglophile parody, it follows the misadventures of presumed police officer Sidney Terence Triggs upon his retirement to the sleepy English country town of Ingersham. A cast of characters worthy of Dickens awaits him, from the sympathetic old clerk Ebenezer Doove to the druggist Theobold Pycroft, the eccentric department store owner Gregory Cobwell and a motley collection of other humorously humdrum inhabitants. The emphatically commonplace quickly gives way to haunted melodrama as Triggs's new neighbors begin to die violently or vanish. His false identity as a detective is put to the test under the threat of murderous phantoms as city and citizens come apart at the seams. Jean Ray(1887-1964) is the best known of the multiple pseudonyms of Raymundus Joannes Maria de Kremer, a pivotal figure in the "Belgian School of the Strange," who authored some 6,500 texts in his lifetime.

This completely revised edition is updated with the latest techniques for transferring images to fabric. Step-by-step instructions for today’s most exciting processes. Includes new full-color photos, complete material lists, and tips for safely accomplishing beautiful results. *Important Note about PRINT ON DEMAND Editions: This title will be printed after purchase and will arrive separately from any in-stock items. Please allow approximately 2 weeks for USA delivery, with an additional 2 weeks for international shipments. Expedited shipping is not available on POD Editions. The printing quality in this copy will vary from the original offset printing edition and may look more saturated due to printing on demand by a high-quality printer on uncoated (non-glossy) paper. The information presented in this version is the same as the most recent printed edition. Any pattern pullouts have been separated and presented as single pages.

Here is the largest, most comprehensive history of American quilts ever published! The Quilt explores the evolution of quilting in America, showing in vivid colors and patterns how African American, Amish, Hawaiian, Hmong, and Native American quilts celebrate cultural identity, and how quilts connect us to one another through quilting bees and other community groups. Noted quilt historian Elise Schebler Roberts also goes beyond the historical nature of quilts to cover current efforts at quilt preservation, collecting and appraising, and state documentation projects. Her book features an encyclopedia of favorite quilt styles and is gloriously illustrated with more than 200 full-color photographs of classic collectible quilts.

In English for the first time, the collection that launched Jean Ray's reputation as the Belgian master of the weird tale After the commercial failure of his 1931 collection of fantastical stories Cruise of Shadows, Jean Ray spent the next decade writing and publishing under other names in the stifling atmosphere of Ghent. Only in the midst of the darkest years of the Nazi Occupation of Belgium would he suddenly publish a spate of books under his earlier nom de plume. The first of these volumes was The Great Nocturnal. Published in 1942, the collection, as its subtitle indicates, consists of tales of fear and dread, but a dread evoked not by the standard tropes of horror but what had by now evolved into Ray's personal brand of fear, drawn from a specifically Belgian notion of the fantastic that lies alongside the banality of everyday life. An aging haberdasher's monotonous life opens up to a spiritual fourth dimension (and serial murder); an inebriated young man in a tavern draws cryptic symbols and mutters statements that evoke an inexplicable terror among some sailors, and, as he sobers up, himself; three students drink Finnish Kümmel and keep watch over a deceased woman's apartment, awaiting a horrific transmutation. Yet these tales are laced with a certain mordant humor that bears as much allegiance with Ambrose Bierce as Edgar Allan Poe, and toy as much with the reader's expectations as they do with their characters. Jean Ray(1887-1964) is the best known of the multiple pseudonyms of Raymundus Joannes Maria de Kremer. Alternately referred to as the "Belgian Poe" and the "Flemish Jack London," Ray authored some 6,500 texts in his lifetime, not including his own biography, which remains shrouded in legend and fiction, much of it of his own making. His alleged lives as an alcohol smuggler on Rum Row in the Prohibition Era, an executioner in Venice, a Chicago gangster, and hunter in remote jungles in fact covered over a more prosaic, albeit ruinous, existence as a manager of a literary magazine that led to a prison sentence.

Frederic Hamilton, an aging millionaire and philanthropist, calls upon Harry Dickson to investigate most curious facts. For some time, he has been having strange dreams in which he appears before a mysterious court – eleven masked judges who accuse him of despoiling Humanity. Now, his latest dreams have included physical torture … and the pain is still present when he wakes up! Dickson and Superintendent Goodfield travel to Hamilton’s residence, but their mission quickly turns into a nightmare …