Toghether with my friends Lucy and Claire we spent a few moments cursing against an unfair universe, a few nights back. The blame, of course, goes to Black Gate, one of the best sources out there for fantasy and sword & sorcery, and one of the main reasons my finances are shaky.
Last week they did a piece on Valancourt Books.
And this led us to sigh and despair for the safety of our bank accounts.

Valancourt Books describe itself as “an independent small press specializing in the rediscovery of rare, neglected and out-of-print fiction”.
And their catalog is just plain terrific.

What Valancourt is offering is a huge collection of titles that are legendary – or should be – and somehow slipped out of the public’s eye.
And I don’t mean in 1855 – I mean in the 1980s.

The moment I saw The Entity, by Frank De Felitta – the classic 1978 horror from which a great movie was made, featuring gorgeous Barbara Hershey – I realized this would be my damnation.

The “Horror & Supernatural” catalogue of Valancourt is chock full of such gems: Basil Copper, John Blackburn, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, J.B. Priestley.

And they also do Victorian and Literary Fiction, plus a selection of gay Interest titles.
A treasure trove.

So, to save my meager finances, I set down a very hard set of rules, to which I’ll stick religiously.

• No more than one ebook per month
• No new ebook until the last one’s finished
• It’s ok to get an extra ebook to celebrate a writing word-count goal (= star writing faster!)
• One extra ebook for birthday or Christmas is ok, too.

To get the ball rolling, I started with Necropolis, by Basil Copper.
The novel’s a gaslight mystery in a sherlockian universe, and it’s very ggod.
Production values – even for the ebook version – are very high: new introduction by Stephen Jones, and author’s bio, illustrations by Stephen Fabian.
Money well spent.
As soon as I’m finished, I’ll post a review here.
Expect more reviews, monthly, as I go through this fantastic selection of books.

Valancourt Books and its growing catalog is probably one of the best discoveries of this year.