Strange Epiphanies

Under a cover image by Raymond B. Russell on the dust jacket of the book, my bas-relief Ramifications illustrates the boards of the volume Strange Epiphanies, a collection of short stories by Peter Bell published by The Swan River Press in April 2012, in a signed hardback edition limited to 350 copies.

“...man is made a mystery for mysteries and visions...” — Arthur Machen

“A mentally disturbed woman is entrapped in Beltane rituals in the Cumbrian fells; a widower mourning his wife falls beneath the mystic allure of Iona; a quest to the Italian Apennines brings a lonely man to a dread Marian revelation; an alcoholic on a Scottish isle is haunted by a deceased chronicler of local legend; in a small German town a sinister doll discloses truths about a murky family tragedy; an unknown journal by a Victorian travel-writer sends a woman on a grim odyssey to Transylvania; in a childhood holiday paradise a man encounters a demented artist's terrifying legacy. The protagonists in Peter Bell's stories confront the awesome, the numinous, the uncanny, the lure of genius loci, and landscapes undergoing strange epiphanies”.

Peter Bell has written articles and stories for All Hallows, The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter, Wormwood, Faunus, and Supernatural Tales; his work has also been published by Ash-Tree Press, Gray Friar Press, Side Real Press, The Scarecrow Press and Hippocampus Press. He is a historian, a native of Liverpool, an inhabitant of York, and likes to wander the hidden places of Scotland and the North of England.

Informations and orders: brianjshowers.com/swanriverpress.