Mary Elizabeth Counselman: Hostess of Horror and Fantasy

Armchair Fiction features the best in classic horror and fantasy short story collections, complete with original illustrations. "Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Hostess of Horror and Fantasy” features the work of a master craftsman of fantastic fiction. Mary Counselman was a mainstay at Weird Tales for parts of three decades, delivering quality story after quality story. In describing her own literature, she once said, “The Halloween scariness of the bumbling but kindly Wizard of Oz has always appealed to me more than the gruesome, morbid fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and those later authors who were influenced by their doom philosophies. My eerie shades bubble with an irrepressible sense of humor, ready to laugh with (never at) those earth-bound mortals whose fears they once shared.” And while some of her tales have that “lighter” touch, make no mistake about it, Mary Counselman could also write chilling tales of dread with the best of them. One can feel the goosebumps starting to rise with tales like “Night Court,” “The Smiling Face,” “Cordona’s Skull,” and numerous others. So whether you lean toward swirling fantasy or all-out tales of horror and dread, Mary Elizabeth Counselman has all that and more, waiting here within these pages… CONTENTS 1. Cordona's Skull (Weird Tales, July 1950) 2. The Smiling Face (Weird Tales, January 1950) 3. The Web of Silence (Weird Tales, November 1939) 4. Night Court (Weird Tales, March 1953) 5. Mommy (Weird Tales, April 1939) 6. The Green Window (Weird Tales, November 1949) 7. The Tree's Wife (Weird Tales, March 1950) 8. The Unwanted (Weird Tales, January 1951) 9. The Prism (Weird Tales, March 1952) 10. A Death Crown for Mr. Hapworthy (Weird Tales, May 1948) 11. The Three Marked Pennies (Weird Tales, August 1934) 12. No Rain for N'Tomba (Jungle Stories, Winter 1951-1952) 13. Drifting Atoms (Weird Tales, May 1941) 14. The Bonan of Baladewa (Weird Tales, January 1949) 15. The Devil's Lottery (Weird Tales, September 1948) 16. Seventh Sister (Weird Tales, January 1943) 17. Chinook (Weird Tales, July 1951) * Armchair Fiction Masters of Horror #MH-3 Cover art by Hannes Bok