New Releases by James P. Blaylock

Two thousand years ago there lived a man who sold some valuable information for a fee of thirty silver coins. Is name was Judas Iscariot, and he is no longer with us. The coins, however, still exist - and still hold an elusive power over all who claim them. Like Andrew, whose attempts at innkeeping bring in stranger business than he ever expected. And Aunt Naomi, whose most prized family heirloom is a silver spoon - with a curiously ancient-looking engraving. And especially old Mr Pennyman, who is only five silver coins short of immortality...

When Calvin Bryson decides to visit his aunt and uncle, he learns that their small town is harboring some strange secrets-including a modern- day incarnation of the legendary Knights Templar.

A good deal of controversy arose late in the last century over what has been referred to by the more livid newspapers as The Horror in St. James Park or The Ape-box Affair.... So begins the first chronicle in the long and often obscure life of Langdon St. Ives, Victorian scientist and adventurer, respected member of the Explorers Club and of societies far more obscure, consultant to scientific luminaries, and secret, unheralded savior of humankind. From the depths of the Borneo jungles to the starlit reaches of outer space, and ultimately through the dark corridors of past and future time, the adventures of Langdon St. Ives invariably lead him back to the streets and alleys of the busiest, darkest, most secretive city in the world -- London in the age of steam and gaslamps, with the Thames fog settling in over the vast city of perpetual evening. St. Ives, in pursuit of the infamous Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, discovers the living horror of revivified corpses, the deep sea mystery of a machine with the power to drag ships to their doom, and the appalling threat of a skeleton-piloted airship descending toward the city of London itself, carrying within its gondola a living homunculus with the power to drive men mad....

Those two madmen, Powers and Blaylock are back, with a recently unearthed and touched up short story thought lost to the ages. "Pilot Light" is vintage William Ashbless, complex to the point of incoherence, with a good eighteen footnotes added by the poet refuting and clarifying the changes made by Powers and Blaylock to his sacred words. Also included in this small form hardcover chapbook are an introduction by Powers and an afterword by Blaylock.