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This World and That Other
This new shared volume offers two original novellas influenced by the supernatural and metaphysical thrillers of “Inkling” Charles Williams (1886-1945).
In “All the Times of the City”, John Howard evokes resonances across time and alternate realities in a London that is by turns familiar and unfamiliar. Caught in a strange spiral, his characters move in a changing City threatened by amoral plotters driven by greed and ambition. But visions of alternative possibilities, of what might have been, still haunt their City too. This is a deeply imagined story that immerses the reader in a tense and troubling drama.
In “Armed for a Day of Glory”, Mark Valentine’s narrator tells us: ‘The Archdeacon thinks I should begin with the Byzantine cloak, the King of Moab with his shewstone, the young archer with the old yew bow, the Dame with the Great Horn, the laird with his lost banner, and Kate with the escaped dragon. They all have their merits and will have their due turn.’ And so they do, in a rip-roaring thriller about an occult conspiracy that only a band of antiquarians and eccentrics can thwart.
This World and That Other follows the duo’s Sarob Press volume Powers and Presences, also inspired by Williams.
Dust-Jacket art by PAUL LOWE.
In “All the Times of the City”, John Howard evokes resonances across time and alternate realities in a London that is by turns familiar and unfamiliar. Caught in a strange spiral, his characters move in a changing City threatened by amoral plotters driven by greed and ambition. But visions of alternative possibilities, of what might have been, still haunt their City too. This is a deeply imagined story that immerses the reader in a tense and troubling drama.
In “Armed for a Day of Glory”, Mark Valentine’s narrator tells us: ‘The Archdeacon thinks I should begin with the Byzantine cloak, the King of Moab with his shewstone, the young archer with the old yew bow, the Dame with the Great Horn, the laird with his lost banner, and Kate with the escaped dragon. They all have their merits and will have their due turn.’ And so they do, in a rip-roaring thriller about an occult conspiracy that only a band of antiquarians and eccentrics can thwart.
This World and That Other follows the duo’s Sarob Press volume Powers and Presences, also inspired by Williams.
Dust-Jacket art by PAUL LOWE.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2022
24 people want to read
About the author
John Howard
96 books82 followersJohn Howard was born in London. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies and the collections The Silver Voices (2010), Written by Daylight (2013), and Cities and Thrones and Powers (2013). The majority of his stories have central and eastern European settings; many are set in the fictional Romanian town of Steaua de Munte. The Defeat of Grief (2010) is a novella set in Steaua de Munte and the real Black Sea resort of Balcic; Numbered as Sand or the Stars (2012) attempts a 'secret history' of Hungary between the World Wars.
Between 2003 and 2007 John Howard collaborated on eight short stories with Mark Valentine, six of which featured Valentine’s long-running series character The Connoisseur, an occult detective whose real name is never revealed. All 23 tales of The Connoisseur, including the collaborations, were reprinted in The Collected Connoisseur (2010).
Secret Europe (2012) is a collection jointly written with Mark Valentine comprising 25 short stories set in a variety of real and fictional European locations. Ten of the stories are by Howard and fifteen by Valentine.
John Howard has written articles for numerous magazines including Book and Magazine Collector, Supernatural Tales, Wormwood, Studies in Australian Weird Fiction, and All Hallows. He contributed essays to the Fritz Leiber special issue of Fantasy Commentator (No. 57/58, 2004) and to the books Black Prometheus: A Critical Study of Karl Edward Wagner (2007), Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008), and The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch (2009), all edited by Benjamin Szumskyj.
John Howard also wrote the introduction to the Ash-Tree Press edition of Francis Brett Young’s classic 1924 horror novel Cold Harbour (2007).
Between 2003 and 2007 John Howard collaborated on eight short stories with Mark Valentine, six of which featured Valentine’s long-running series character The Connoisseur, an occult detective whose real name is never revealed. All 23 tales of The Connoisseur, including the collaborations, were reprinted in The Collected Connoisseur (2010).
Secret Europe (2012) is a collection jointly written with Mark Valentine comprising 25 short stories set in a variety of real and fictional European locations. Ten of the stories are by Howard and fifteen by Valentine.
John Howard has written articles for numerous magazines including Book and Magazine Collector, Supernatural Tales, Wormwood, Studies in Australian Weird Fiction, and All Hallows. He contributed essays to the Fritz Leiber special issue of Fantasy Commentator (No. 57/58, 2004) and to the books Black Prometheus: A Critical Study of Karl Edward Wagner (2007), Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008), and The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch (2009), all edited by Benjamin Szumskyj.
John Howard also wrote the introduction to the Ash-Tree Press edition of Francis Brett Young’s classic 1924 horror novel Cold Harbour (2007).
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