The Dead of Summer

A unique collection focusing on an important but overlooked stretch of the ritual year, and the surprising wealth of fiction devoted to the uncanny and liminal time of May Day Eve, Walpurgis Night and the Summer Solstice. Featuring stories from classic authors such as E. F. Benson and Joan Aiken along with lost classics from obscure periodicals of Britain and America. May Day Eve, Walpurgis Night and Midsummer Eve or the Summer Solstice. Tales of these fated days and nights, and their riotous rituals and feasts, have rung down the centuries, and yet in today's world those that observe their ancient ways are few. Setting out on a mission to re-weird this lost stretch of the ritual year, Johnny Mains returns with a collection of tales of the bizarre, the beastly and the brutal to welcome the summer and raise the cry: Wyrd is Icumen in!