Here’s a fun little artifact, eminently suitable for late summer reading: Jonathan E. Lewis’s anthology of classic (and pulp) Egyptian dark fantasies, Ancient Egyptian Supernatural Tales, published in trade paperback in July as part of the Stark House Supernatural Classics line.

Lewis has done a fine job assembling a stellar line-up of dark fantasy and horror stories featuring mummies, curses, ancient Egyptian vampires, and lots more. In addition to classic tales from Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, and Sax Rohmer, there’s a quartet of stories from Weird Tales (by Frank Belknap Long, E. Hoffmann Price, John Murray Reynolds — and Tennessee Williams!), Algernon Blackwood’s novella “A Descent Into Egypt,” and two excerpts: one from the first mummy novel ever written in English, Jane Webb Loudon’s The Mummy (1827), and one from Bram Stoker’s classic The Jewel of Seven Stars.

[Click the images for bigger versions.]

Here’s the 1989 Carroll and Graf paperback reprint of The Jewel of Seven Stars, and the original uncensored cover by Les Edwards.

And here’s the complete Table of Contents for Ancient Egyptian Supernatural Tales.

Introduction by Jonathan E. Lewis
An excerpt from The Mummy by Jane Webb Loudon (1827)
“Some Words with a Mummy” by Edgar Allan Poe (American Whig Review, 1845)
“Lost in a Pyramid” by Louisa May Alcott (The New World, 1869)
“Lot No. 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle (Harper’s Magazine, 1892)
An excerpt from The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker (1903)
“The Vengeance of Nitocris” by Tennessee Williams (Weird Tales, August 1928)
“Smith and the Pharaohs” by H. Rider Haggard (Smith and the Pharaohs and Other Tales, 1912)
“The Dog-Eared God” by Frank Belknap Long (Weird Tales, November 1926)
“Tarbis of the Lake” by E. Hoffmann Price (Weird Tales, February 1934)
“Soul of Ra-Moses” by John Murray Reynolds (Weird Tales, May 1940)
“The Wings of Horus” by Algernon Blackwood (Century Magazine, 1917)
“A Descent Into Egypt” by Algernon Blackwood (Incredible Adventures, 1914)
“The Lost Elixir” by George Griffith (Pall Mall Magazine, 1903)
“The Cat” by Sax Rohmer (The New Magazine, 1914)
“The Whispering Mummy” by Sax Rohmer (Tales of Secret Egypt, 1918)

Previous books in the Stark House Classics lines include:

The Human Chord and The Centaur by Algernon Blackwood
The Empty House and The Listener by Algernon Blackwood
Thief of Midnight and Fell the Angels by Catherine Butzen
Underlay by Barry N. Malzberg
The Astonished Eye by Tracy Knight

Ancient Egyptian Supernatural Tales was published by Stark House Press on July 15, 2016. It is 290 pages, priced at $19.95 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition. The cover is by J. T. Lindroos.

See all our recent New Treasures here.