London: Starfire, 2012. Limited Edition of 1000 copies. A FINE CLOTH COPY IN DUST JACKET. Full color cover, illustrated endpapers, with a colored frontispiece. Front panel of the full color dust jacket is a montage designed by Steffi Grant, as are the custom endpapers. 233 pages. Octavo.

This is the rich and gripping first novel by Kenneth Grant. Written in late 1952 and early 1953, the typescript was thought lost for many years. A welcome addition to Kenneth Grant’s substantial and diverse body of work, it is now published for the first time as the latest in the novella series of Nightside Narratives. This work was subtitled by the author as “A Novel of Nemesis”, and the story has a variety of characters who are clearly anamorphic — and thus distorted — representations of ‘real life’ persons in the occult circles of the time. However, as cautioned in a prefatory note by the author, “All the characters in this book exist solely in the imagination of the reader”. It is a few years after the death of the notorious English occultist, Ruthven Seeley. Now in charge of the British branch of his magical Order, Seeley’s erstwhile disciple Marcus Maybourne becomes aware that something nefarious is gathering momentum. Earthbound, and desperate to resume human life, Seeley sees his chance of resurrection when learning of an impending sacrificial Rite. At the moment of the bloody sacrifice, he will vampirize the released energy and once again become corporeal . . . 233 pages. Octavo