Mythumbra

Storm Constantine is a mistress of shadow fantasy, exploring the dark and the weird in human nature and the natural world. Her short stories cross genres from science fiction, to horror, to fantasy, and this collection is the fifth to showcase her uncollected works.

'Long Indeed Do We Live' is set upon a desiccated, barren future earth, where life exists only in artificial domes. But the spirit of nature - perhaps vengeful - is persistent and can find its way through the cracks. 'From the Cold Dark Sea' is a Lovecraftian story of the peculiar inhabitants of a mansion, next to the ocean in Cornwall. A young woman goes there to restore a mysterious old book that seems to tell a weird history of creatures of the sea. The peculiar inhabitants of the nearby town might well have stepped from the pages. 'A Winter Bewitchment' spins an elegant tale of fantasy, exploring the mysteries of feminine allure. A countess, bored of her marriage, wants one last splendid fling, but it's the witchcraft of her young companion which enables this, and the results are unpredictable. 'The Saint's Well' is a tale of the unseen in the landscape and how ancient beliefs persist in hidden corners of the countryside. An agent of the Vatican investigates the alleged manifestation of a saint in a small Welsh village in the 1950s. Is this down purely to the imagination of a child, or something more - and of much earlier times?

These are but tasters for the tales within this collection, which presents Storm Constantine at her story-telling best.

"Storm Constantine is a myth-making Gothic queen, whose lush tales are compulsive reading. Her stories are poetic, involving, delightful and depraved. I wouldn't swap her for a dozen Anne Rices."

• Neil Gaiman