The Haunted Vintage: Volume 55

’The wine looked a thick amber colour, powdered with gold. Lally thought of the doctor’s story of the two men who had followed this woman to the forest and afterwards died miserably. Perhaps it was here that she had brought them.’

Following a scandal in the Duke’s court, roguish officer Lally Duchene is dismissed to a new post at a small monastery and asylum deep in the forests of the Rheingau. Disregarding the local superstitions about the dangers of ghosts and nixies in the woods and vineyards, his days slip by in a haze of daydreams. But there is something stirring in this woodland idyll. Among the patients is a woman possessing an overpowering, otherworldly aura, and the vestiges of a sinister paganism leer from beneath the holy facades. As the wine harvest approaches and figures from Lally’s past find themselves drawn to the monastery, the forces of nature awaken and the countryside erupts in an intoxicating carnage of ancient rites.

First published in 1921, this rare historical mystery of pagan weirdness rife in nineteenth-century Germany returns to print for the first time since it’s original publication.

Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) was the principle penname for Margaret Campbell de Vere Long, a prolific English author best known for her dark historical romances, strange and literary novels and weird short stories. She also wrote under the pseudonyms of ’Joseph Shearing’, ’Robert Paye’ and ’George R. Preedy’. Describing herself as an ’enchantress of dread’, her writing was highly regarded by contemporary critics and writers such as Graham Greene, who listed her as a chief influence. Michael Dirda (born 1948) is an American book critic, working for the Washington Post. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993.