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.

Limited to 300 copies, Five Degrees of Latitude is a sewn hardback of 269 pages, printed lithographically, with silk ribbon marker, head and tailbands, and d/w and sold out at the publisher