Couching At the Door: Strange and Macabre Stories

Edited, with an Introduction, by Jack Adrian
Jacket art is by Jason van Hollander

In 1932, popular novelist Dorothy Kathleen Broster (1877–1950) published a collection of short stories, A Fire of Driftwood. Although more than half of the stories in the collection were historical dramas—her own favourite genre—a few of the tales were distinctly supernatural or horrific. Ten years later, Broster published Couching at the Door, a slim collection of tales all concerned with the supernatural or the horrifying. The volume—published at the height of the Second World War—had a small print run, and was never subsequently reprinted.

Now, almost sixty years later, Couching at the Door is a very rare book indeed, while the excellence of Broster's stories—apparent in the few tales which have been seized upon by anthologists—has ensured a steady demand for the book. Ash-Tree Press is pleased to be able to present the first reprinting of Couching at the Door, the weird tales from A Fire of Driftwood, and a previously unpublished supernatural story, 'The Taste of Pomegranates', found in Broster's papers by editor Jack Adrian. All of the stories demonstrate Broster's eye and ear for the macabre, the sinister, and the horrifying; and her ability to fashion nightmares out of such seemingly innocent incidents as a discarded feather boa, a visit to a prehistoric cave, or a recuperative holiday at the seaside.

An enormously popular writer and a shrewd businesswoman, Broster kept her family ties and private life well hidden from public view. In his introduction, Jack Adrian explores—as fully as possible—the mysterious life of D. K. Broster, details of which are as scarce as collections of her stories.

CONTENTS:

• Introduction by Jack Adrian
• Clarivoyance
• The Window
• All Souls' Day
• Couching at the Door
• From the Abyss
• Juggernaut
• The Taste of Pomegranates
• The Pestering

APPENDIX I—Madness and Obsession:

• The Promised Land
• The Pavement

APPENDIX II:

• The Second of September, 1792
• Sources

Limited to 600 copies