The Undying Monster: A Tale of the Fifth Dimension
"Where grow pines and firs amain,
Under Stars, sans heat or rain,
Chief of Hammand, ‘ware thy Bane!’"
So goes the ancient rhyme of the Hammands, a family hounded for centuries by a ferocious beast whose visitations wreak death and disorder. Now, in the wake of the First World War, siblings Oliver and Swanhild are the last of the Hammands, safe again at their ancestral home in the South Downs – until Oliver is beset by a creature in the pines by night. Desperate to dispel the curse, the siblings call on the occult detective Luna Bartendale to help unearth the dark origins of the Undying Monster and unshackle them from a savage doom.
First published in 1922 and now available as part of the British Library Tales of the Weird series this cult novel is a heady brew of black magic lore, Norse mythology and weird mysteries spilling out of an eldritch ‘fifth dimension’ – complete with the first female occult detective to appear in an English novel, the ‘White Witch‘ Luna Bartendale.
Jessie Douglas Kerruish
Born in 1884 Jessie Douglas Kerruish was a regular contributor to The Weekly Tale-Teller, a paper publishing short stories, she often set her tales in North Africa and the Near East. She went on to publish two story collections and two novels before eventually publishing her English-set supernatural story 'The Undying Monster'. Initially received well, and even inspiring a film years later, this macabre and imaginative tale has been viewed as a real classic of its genre.
British Library Tales of the Weird
British Library Tales of the Weird consists of fifty-five books, and the series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
