The Empire of Death and Other Strange Stories

Edited, with an introduction, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Jacket art by Deborah McMillion-Nering.

Suddenly out of the dark came the noise of a great ship. Our engines were reversed, but not in time, and she struck us amidships. I cowered down... But there was no crash, no shock, no grinding of splintered wood and steel... I began to stare round me. There was the deck unoccupied... exactly as it had been when we were struck. There were the smoke-stacks and boats, and altogether the familiar outline of the ship.

'The Flying Teuton', first published in 1917, was one of the most discussed stories of its day. Critics hailed it as one of the best stories of the year, and the New York Times said that this one story would have been sufficient to make the reputation of a new writer. Its author, however, was not a new voice in the world of letters, but one of the most in-demand contributors to the periodicals of the day. Alice Brown (1857–1948) had first made her mark in the literary world in 1895, and she continued writing until shortly before her death, by which time she was established as one of the very best of the group of New England writers which included Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman and Sarah Orne Jewett.

Many of Brown's works contain elements of the mystic and fantastic, and on occasion she — like Wilkins-Freeman and Jewett — strayed into the territory of the outright supernatural. Most of these works have been unjustly forgotten in the decades since they were written; but from the poignancy of 'The Island' to the stark horror of war as depicted in 'The Empire of Death', her work bears comparison with that of the very finest supernaturalists of her day, and its rediscovery shows Alice Brown to have been a writer with a keen and sensitive eye for the ways in which other worlds can intrude upon our own.

Contents:

• Introduction: The Strange Stories of Alice Brown, New England Mystic
• The Empire of Death
• There and Here
• Old Lemuel's Journey
• A Dream in the Morning
• The Flying Teuton
• Tryst
• The Tryst
• The Man Who Wanted to Be Safe
• Envoy Extraordinary
• Golden Baby
• The Island
• Red Magic and Other Pagan Dreams (poems):
  • Shadows
  • Escape
  • Red Magic
  • Pan
  • Mother of All
  • Mist
  • The Return
  • The Violin
  • Love Denied
  • The Soul Remembers
  • The Shepherds
  • The Flight of the Fairies
  • The Ghost Speaks
  • Mnemosyne
  • The Descent into Hell