BOOK DETAILS
Trade paper ISBN-13: 978-1941147320 List Price: $19.99 U.S. Pages: 314 Published: 2014 |
The House of the Wolf (1983)
Basil Copper With an introduction by the author Afterword by Stephen Jones Book Description
High above the Hungarian village of Lugos rise the towers of Castle Homolky, whose subterranean dungeons contain the remains of a chamber of horrors once used for the torture of enemies, and whose tragic and violent history has caused it to be known as The House of the Wolf. Into this legend-haunted region comes John Coleridge, an American professor and expert on lycanthropy, who is staying as a guest of Count Homolky while attending a conference on European folklore. After a villager is found dead with his throat torn out and a huge black wolf with seemingly preternatural powers is seen stalking the halls of the Castle, leaving scenes of bloody carnage in its wake, Coleridge and his colleagues must hunt the beast. But is the killer a wolf, or could the unthinkable be true: that one of the Castle’s inhabitants is actually a werewolf? After the success of his Victorian gaslight Gothic tale Necropolis (1980), published by the legendary Arkham House, Basil Copper (1924-2013) returned with another atmospheric Victorian chiller, The House of the Wolf (1983). This new edition of Copper’s classic includes an introduction by the author discussing the influences on his novel, including Universal and Hammer werewolf films, an afterword by award-winning editor Stephen Jones, and more than 40 illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian. |
reviews
“Britain's leading purveyor of the macabre.” – Peter Haining
“One of the last of the great traditionalists of English fiction.” – Colin Wilson
“An outstanding British writer in the genre.” – August Derleth
“One of the last of the great traditionalists of English fiction.” – Colin Wilson
“An outstanding British writer in the genre.” – August Derleth
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Basil Copper was born in London in 1924. As a boy, Copper moved with his family to Kent, where he attended the local grammar school and developed an early taste for the works of M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe. In his teens he began training as an apprentice journalist, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, he found himself put in charge of a local newspaper office while also serving in the Home Guard. He then joined the Royal Navy and served as a radio operator with a gunboat flotilla off the Normandy beaches during the D-Day operations.
After the war, Copper resumed his career in journalism. He made his fiction debut in The Fifth Book of Pan Horror Stories (1964) with “The Spider,” for which he was paid £10. His first novel, a tongue-in-cheek crime story in the Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler mode, The Dark Mirror, was turned down by 32 publishers because it was too long, before Robert Hale eventually published a cut-down version. Four years later, in 1970, Copper gave up journalism to write full-time.
Copper published some fifty novels featuring the Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday and also wrote several horror and supernatural novels and a number of collections of macabre short stories. His horror fiction in particular has been receiving renewed attention recently with new editions from PS Publishing and Valancourt Books. Basil Copper died at age 89 in 2013 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
After the war, Copper resumed his career in journalism. He made his fiction debut in The Fifth Book of Pan Horror Stories (1964) with “The Spider,” for which he was paid £10. His first novel, a tongue-in-cheek crime story in the Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler mode, The Dark Mirror, was turned down by 32 publishers because it was too long, before Robert Hale eventually published a cut-down version. Four years later, in 1970, Copper gave up journalism to write full-time.
Copper published some fifty novels featuring the Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday and also wrote several horror and supernatural novels and a number of collections of macabre short stories. His horror fiction in particular has been receiving renewed attention recently with new editions from PS Publishing and Valancourt Books. Basil Copper died at age 89 in 2013 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.