The Snake Fiend and Other Stories

A young chorister is thrilled to be chosen by Leonardo da Vinci to model for the face of Jesus in his painting of The Last Supper. But who will model for the face of Judas? Three young men, from Germany, France, and England, swear eternal fidelity to one another - and then the Great War breaks out... A small portable shrine, at the touch of a secret catch opens to reveal a sight that draws people to gaze upon it - and die! Kidnapped by a desert tribe, a bishop's daughter is the unwitting prize in a game of chess - played with live pieces! A man driven mad by jealousy plans an ophidian revenge... A mind-frazzling encounter with beings from the Fourth Dimension... A grizzled old diver, shaken to the core by an underwater battle with an octopus... Two sisters try to sleep in an unquiet house with an evil reputation... A reporter investigates a strangely silent suicide... A fairground fortuneteller foretells doom when a young man next sees the pole star... These, and more, are the stories of Farnsworth Wright, editor of the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales during a Golden Age in which it published the works of H P Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C L Moore, Robert Bloch, and others. What of Wright's own fiction? Though some of it appeared in Weird Tales (often under the pseudonym Francis Hard) and its sister magazine Oriental Tales, much of it was published before, and reveals a different side to the man who presided over weird fiction's defining years. Stories from the Great War, from his days as a newspaper reporter, from his time as a music critic and opera promotor - sentimental stories of virtue and vice, adventurous stories and tales of revenge!