Valancourt Books
  • Home
  • About
    • Our History
    • Who We Are
    • Where to Buy
    • Contact
  • Catalogue
    • Gothic & Romantic
    • Victorian & Edwardian
    • Horror & Science Fiction
    • LGBT Literature
    • Literary Fiction
    • International Series
    • Vintage Thrills and Chills
    • audiobooks
  • Authors
  • Booksellers
  • Blog
Picture
Picture
Nightshade and Damnations (1968)
Gerald Kersh
With an introduction by Harlan Ellison


Book Description

An expedition in South America uncovers a terrifying race of men without bones who literally suck the life out of their prey. A man in 20th century London makes a horrifying discovery about a monster found off the coast of Brighton in 1745. A sea captain goes ashore on a deserted island and finds what seem to be the bones of a previously unknown species of monster, only to learn that the bones tell a much more tragic tale than he could ever have imagined. A war correspondent, none other than Kersh himself, is sailing to America when he meets a strange man who claims to be 438 years old. These are the plots of just a few of the weird tales you will find in this book.

Gerald Kersh (1911-1968) was a brilliant and inventive writer acclaimed in his time for his gritty novels of London life and his often bizarre short fiction, but he has unfortunately become neglected since his death. This volume includes an introduction by award-winning science fiction author Harlan Ellison, who also selected the eleven stories that appear in this collection and which represent the very best of Kersh's short fiction. Includes: “The Queen of Pig Island”, “Frozen Beauty”, “The Brighton Monster”, “Men Without Bones”, “Busto Is a Ghost, Too Mean to Give Us a Fright!”, “The Ape and the Mystery”, “The King Who Collected Clocks”, “Bone for Debunkers”, “A Lucky Day for the Boar”, “Voices in the Dust of Annan”, “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?”



reviews

“No mortal can write this well.” – Harlan Ellison

“Kersh has a strange, perverted sense of genius. And how he can write.” – Virginia Kirkus          

“Gerald Kersh had a wild imagination matched by a vivid, near-hallucinatory style. Many of his concepts are so original that they blur the distinction between fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and horror, but the cumulative impact of his short stories is horrific in the extreme.” – 
Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural

“Nightshade and Damnations is a perfect introduction to Kersh’s world, a selection of eleven short stories originally issued in the late 1960s. … All of them are bizarre, macabre and indecently enjoyable entertainments.” – David Collard, Times Literary Supplement


BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 1954321260
ISBN-13:  978-1954321267

$29.99 US, 166 pp.
Case Laminate Hardcover
Published 2019

BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 1948405350
ISBN-13: 978-1948405355

$16.99 US, 166 pp.
Trade paper
Published 2019
Purchase Hardcover, Paperback

ALSO AVAILABLE THROUGH ONLINE RETAILERS

BUY HARDCOVER
$29.99
​Amazon US

Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository*
​*Free shipping worldwide

BUY PAPERBACK
$16.99
​Amazon US

Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository*
​*Free shipping worldwide
BUY EBOOK
$6.99

Kindle US
Kindle UK
Nook
Kobo
​
iTunes
BUY AUDIOBOOK
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Audible US
Audible UK
iTunes

MORE TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Picture
Gerald Kersh was born in Teddington-on-Thames, near London, in 1911. He left school and took on a series of jobs—salesman, baker, fish-and-chips cook, nightclub bouncer, freelance newspaper reporter—and at the same time was writing his first two novels. His career began inauspiciously with the release of his first novel, Jews Without Jehovah, published when Kersh was 25: the book was withdrawn after only 80 copies were sold when Kersh’s relatives brought a libel suit against him and his publisher. He gained notice with his third novel, Night and the City (1938) and for the next thirty years published numerous novels and short story collections, including the novel Fowlers End (1957), which some critics, including Harlan Ellison, believe to be his best.

Kersh fought in the Second World War as a member of the Coldstream Guards before being discharged in 1943 after having both his legs broken in a bombing raid. He traveled widely before moving to the United States and becoming an American citizen, because “the Welfare State and confiscatory taxation make it impossible to work over there, if you’re a writer.”

Kersh was a larger than life figure, a big, heavy-set man with piercing black eyes and a fierce black beard, which led him to describe himself proudly as “villainous-looking.” His obituary recounts some of his eccentricities, such as tearing telephone books in two, uncapping beer bottles with his fingernails, bending dimes with his teeth, and ordering strange meals, like “anchovies and figs doused in brandy” for breakfast. Kersh lived the last several years of his life in the mountain community of Cragsmoor, in New York, and died at age 57 in 1968 of cancer of the throat.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership." 
- Times Literary Supplement

ABOUT US

Our History
What We Publish
Who We Are
Contact

OUR CATALOGUE

Literary Fiction
Horror & Science Fiction
Vintage Thrills and Chills
LGBT Interest
Gothic & Romantic
Victorian & Edwardian

​MORE INFO

Booksellers
Valancourt Books | PO Box 17642, Richmond, VA 23226 | 804.873.8528 | email
Copyright © 2022 by Valancourt Books, LLC. All rights reserved. Valancourt Books® is a registered trademark of Valancourt Books, LLC.
Banner art by M.S. Corley