Valerie and Other Stories

A sense of antiquity—sometimes exhilarating but more often menacing in the primitive traditions it reveals—pervades the nine stories in this fantasy collection. In “The Binding,” a changeling left in the cradle by “the old ones of the green mounds” meets the mortal for whom she was exchanged. “Dance for a Winter Moon” tells of a small town in turn-of-the-20th-century Bosnia-Herzegovina where entrenched folk legends and superstitions precipitate the tragic fate of a young doctor practicing there. In “A Blue Dish of Figs,” an homage to the work of weird fiction master Arthur Machen, a teacher is disturbed to discover that one of her young pupils is schooled in rites for “the ancient dances of trees, rocks, and stars.” The grimness of these stories notwithstanding, Insole describes the tangible world his characters move through with a sensuousness that brings out the dark allure of their unsettling experiences. This is a collection of finely tuned fantasies by an author confident in his craft. (July)