Mark Valentine

The definitive showcase of the year’s finest British short stories ‘Bravo to Salt’s beacon of delight and intrigue – its annual collection of the UK’s best short stories, from established and emerging voices.’ —Duncan Minshull Now relaunched for a new era, Best British Short Stories returns with a bold new look and a renewed commitment to celebrating the art of the short story. As we enter our fifteenth volume, this much-loved annual collection continues to be the go-to anthology for readers seeking the most exciting and diverse voices in contemporary British fiction. Assembled by series editor Nicholas Royle, Best British Short Stories 2025 presents a stellar selection of stories first published in 2024, drawn from magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks, and online. Whether you’re a devoted follower or discovering the series for the first time, this new edition reaffirms our mission to champion storytelling in all its forms. ‘If the latest iteration of Salt’s Best British Short Stories collection is anything to go by then the genre remains in safe hands.’ —Lawrence Foley, TLS Featuring stories by: David Bevan, Rose Biggin, Christopher Burns, Ian Critchley, Pippa Goldschmidt, Linden Hibbert, Hannah Hoare, Catrin Kean, Roger Luckhurst, Baret Magarian, Wyl Menmuir, Alison Moore, Okechukwu Nzelu, Simon Okotie, Imogen Reid, C. D. Rose, Iain Sinclair, Elizabeth Stott, Mark Valentine, and Naomi Wood.

"I am, and ever have been, a great reader . . . a library cormorant. I am deep in all out of the way books." - S. T. Coleridge (1796)The twelve stories in Lost Estates offer antiquarian mysteries, book-collecting adventures, and otherworldly encounters. Mark Valentine's amiable scholars and wanderers explore lonely and mysterious landscapes, places of legend, and secret history. Though drawing on the traditions of English supernatural fiction, these stories also strike out into unusual terrain.Mark Valentine's short stories have been selected for the Ghosts & Scholars books edited by Rosemary Pardoe, Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle, Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Books of Ghost Stories edited by Richard Dalby, and many other anthologies.

"Nothing lasts The faun sleeps, / Smiling, mute, remorseless." - Ludmila Jevsejeva, Autuna Melodio In St. Petersburg, amidst an uneasy truce with the revolution, there exists a secret trade in looted ikons. But who are the dark strangers seeking for the Gate of the Archangel? In the small town of Tzern, news arrives of the death of the Emperor; meanwhile a postmaster, a priest, a prophet and a war-wearied soldier watch the dawn for signs of the future. Constantinople: A quest for the lost faiths of the former Ottoman Empire leads a French scholar to believe that the strangest may also be the truest. On the edges of Europe, exiles and idealists meet in a caf to talk of their hopes-while sinister forces begin to march. These stories, exquisitely told by Mark Valentine, are about individuals caught up in the endings of old empires-and of what comes next. Contents A Certain Power The Dawn at Tzern A Walled Garden on the Bosphoros Carden in Capaea The Bookshop in Novy Svet The Autumn Keeper The Amber Cigarette The Ka of Astarakahn The Original Light The Unrest at Aachen The Mascarons of the Late Empire AcknowledgmentsMark Valentine's stories have been selected for Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle, Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Books of Ghost Stories edited by Richard Dalby, and the Ghosts & Scholars books edited by Rosemary Pardoe, as well as for many other anthologies. Along with The Swan River Press, he also publishes with other independent imprints such as Tartarus Press (UK), Sarob Press (France) and Zagava (Germany). His twenty or so books include studies of Arthur Machen and the diplomat and fantasist Sarban, and essays on book-collecting and the esoteric. He also edits Wormwood, a journal of the fantastic.

Mark Valentine's stories have been described by critic Rick Kleffel as "consistently amazing and inexplicably beautiful". He has been called "A superb writer, among the leading practitioners of classic supernatural fiction" by Michael Dirda of The Washington Post, and his work is regularly chosen for year's best and other anthologies.This new selection offers previously uncollected or hard to find tales in the finest traditions of the strange and fantastic. As well as tributes to the masters of the field, Valentine provides his own original and otherworldly visions, with what Supernatural Tales has called "the author's trademark erudition" in "unusual byways of history, folklore and general scholarship". Opening a book will never seem quite the same again after encountering this curious volume of Seventeen Stories . . . Contents Three Singular Detectives "The Adventure of the Green Skull" "Prince Zaleski's Secret" "The Return of Kala Persad" Four Curious Books "The 1909 Proserpine Prize" "The Late Post" "An Incomplete Apocalypse" "The Seer of Trieste" Three Strange Places "The Axholme Toll" "The Fall of the King of Babylon" "The Other Salt" Three Odd Societies "The Tontine of Thirteen" "Morpheus House" "Without Instruments" Four Haunted Figures "Fire Companions" "The Antioch Imperial" "Yogh" "You Walk the Pages" AcknowledgementsMark Valentine's stories have been selected for Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle, Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Books of Ghost Stories edited by Richard Dalby, and the Ghosts & Scholars books edited by Rosemary Pardoe, as well as for many other anthologies. Along with The Swan River Press, he also publishes with other independent imprints such as Tartarus Press (UK), Sarob Press (France) and Zagava (Germany). His twenty or so books include studies of Arthur Machen and the diplomat and fantasist Sarban, and essays on book-collecting and the esoteric. He also edits Wormwood, a journal of the fantastic.

What is the secret of the house of days? Who are the shadowy figures gathered along an old green road? What is the winged thing seen flitting from an ancient church? Herald of the Hidden collects ten adventures of the occult detective Ralph Tyler, inspired by William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Algernon Blackwood's John Silence, and Arthur Machen's Mr Dyson of The Three Impostors. But Ralph Tyler is different. He is without private means, or any special esoteric knowledge. Sometimes he doesn't play fair with his clients or his friend, the narrator. He smokes foul cigarettes, slumps in his chair, and wears a threadbare jacket. And he's from an obscure shire in the darkest heart of England . . . Mark Valentine's Ralph Tyler stories first appeared in hard-to-find small press publications. Three of the stories in this volume are previously unpublished, including two newly written for this collection. Along with six further supernatural tales, all the stories are previously uncollected in book form.

In Haunted by Books Mark Valentine explores the more curious byways of literature. He presents the author who was always being told he had nearly written a masterpiece, and the genius of the short story who brewed his own cider and lived in a railway carriage.Then there's the figure of the 1890s, praised by Max Beerbohm, who liked to wander around London wearing horns and chewing railings, and the young man in the 1930s who tried to sell his poetry door to door.There are also new angles on key figures: the strange case of Robert Aickman, sailor and philosopher; the book that Sax Rohmer really wanted to write; the enigma of Walter de la Mare's 'Seaton's Aunt'.And there are literary mysteries; what was the MS in a Red Box? Who wrote Shakespeare's Gunpowder Plot? What became of Dr Ludovicus? Other essays celebrate neglected writers worth discovering, such as Mary Butts, Claude Houghton, and Vernon Knowles, or offer fresh perspectives, looking at Lewis Grassic Gibbon's fantasies, Malcolm Lowry's reading in occult fiction. There are even studies of books that were never written.Haunted by Books will delight all readers and book collectors who like to leave the beaten path and wander in the wild woods, forgotten lanes and lonely houses of literature.

'The English landscape was made . . . not just for food and shelter and pleasure, but also for the journey of the soul. There is a field of supernatural stories set in this "other" country, the country of the spirit . . .'In A Country Still All Mystery, Mark Valentine explores how certain writers have used their fiction to convey the idea of numinous terrain, places where we might at any moment stray into the realms of the unearthly and uncanny. These essays continue similar literary and antiquarian themes to his well-received earlier volume, Haunted By Books (2015). When and where was the last wolf seen in England? Why were certain lonely houses left beyond parish boundaries? Is there a missing book by T.E. Lawrence? What was the secret history of Cope & Fenwick, liturgical publishers? What became of the original Tower of Moab?A Country Still All Mystery will be read with pleasure by those who enjoy the out-of-the-way, the obscure, the eccentric and the outr . It will appeal to anyone who has ever strayed into remote country which seems to be not quite fully in this world.