Five Degrees of Latitude

Sarban meets Blackwood meets late Machen.' Jim Rockhill

This stunning debut collection by Michael Reynier includes five fictions about land­scape, people, and the mysteries in between. They are tales of curiosity and discovery, of passion, hatred and the supernatural, and they will entertain and stimulate the intel­lect in equal measure.

In ‘Le Loup Garou’ Professor Florant Hortholary investigates a series of disap­pearances and vicious animal mutilations in a remote French mountain village. In ‘Sika Tarn’, two walkers hear otherworldly sounds at an isolated lake. A Victorian academic discovers the research records of his maverick predecessor and learns of a startling set of experiments in ‘The Rumour Mill’. In ‘No. 3 Hobbes’ Lane’, set in rural England of the industrial revolu­tion, a trav­eller wonders at the mystery of a house with no windows. ‘The Visions of Lazaro’ blends two disparate narratives — one an academic account of a bizarre religious sect dating back to the sixteenth century, the other a contemporary journal describing a visit to a deserted outstation — and time and space soon become inter­twined.

These are stories written in full aware­ness of the British and European super­natural tradition, but they have a freshness and originality all their own. Michael Reynier is undoubtedly an exciting new talent in the field of uncanny litera­ture.

Michael Reynier is British, forty-three and works in London. He studied as an archae­ologist and worked at the British Museum and the University of Leicester before moving into university administration. He is married with two children.