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The Bergamese Sect by Alastair Gunn
Published by Wimbourne Books 2014
Publication Date: 1st July 2014
© Copyright 2014 Alastair G. Gunn. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9929828-0-5

A mysterious figure, hiding somewhere among the seven billion inhabitants of Earth, is threatening to reveal the startling truth behind a very modern myth. A conspiracy so damaging it could destroy the very fabric of human culture. Following the only lead he has, an encrypted email sent to an innocent proxy, Larry Walsh, Assistant Director of the National Security Agency, becomes embroiled in a race against time, fighting with subversives, saboteurs and religious fanatics to prevent a global iconoclasm. The ancient deception he uncovers is stranger than he ever imagined...

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Praise for The Bergamese Sect;

"A web of deceit that grips you on page one and doesn't let up until its cataclysmic-bang-of-an-end." - Steve Berry, international bestselling author of The Patriot Threat and The Templar Legacy.

"Gripped me from the first page. An intelligent, visceral conspiracy thriller involving a mediaeval sect pervading the upper echelons of 21st century society.” - Bill Napier, international bestselling author of Nemesis and Revelation.

"An intriguing and compelling mystery-thriller. Death and deception at every turn." - James Becker, bestselling author of The Lost Testament and The First Apostle.

The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 1
Edited and with an Introduction by Alastair G. Gunn
Published by Wimbourne Books 2016
Publication Date: 24th October 2016
© Copyright 2016 Alastair G. Gunn. All rights reserved.
ASIN: B01MDQSMLK

Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age. Wimbourne Books presents the first in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 1 in the series spans the years 1852 to 1899 and includes stories from a wide range of female authors; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and American. Includes tales by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charlotte Riddell, Isabella Banks and Gertrude Atherton.

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The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 2
Edited and with an Introduction by Alastair G. Gunn
Published by Wimbourne Books 2016
Publication Date: 18th December 2016
© Copyright 2016 Alastair G. Gunn. All rights reserved.
ASIN: B01NBMDJXK

Thirty Christmas ghost stories from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age. Wimbourne Books presents the second in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 2 in the series spans the years 1836 to 1901, contains ghost stories set at or around Christmas, and includes stories from a wide range of authors including Charles Dickens, Amelia B. Edwards and J. S. Le Fanu.

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The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 3
Edited and with an Introduction by Alastair G. Gunn
Published by Wimbourne Books 2017
Publication Date: 21st February 2017
© Copyright 2016 Alastair G. Gunn. All rights reserved.
ASIN: B06X9873WQ

Twenty ghost stories from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age. Wimbourne Books presents the third in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 3 in the series contains stories published anonymously in America and Britain between 1839 and 1896. Most of these tales are here anthologised for the very first time.

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The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 4
Edited and with an Introduction by Alastair G. Gunn
Published by Wimbourne Books 2017
Publication Date: 7th July 2017
© Copyright 2016 Alastair G. Gunn. All rights reserved.
ASIN: B073T1C24Q

Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age. Wimbourne Books presents the fourth in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 4 in the series spans the years 1835 to 1869 and includes stories from a wide range of male authors; English, Irish, Scottish and American. Includes tales by Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving.

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The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 5
Edited and with an Introduction by Alastair G. Gunn
Published by Wimbourne Books 2017
Publication Date: 22nd August 2017
© Copyright 2016 Alastair G. Gunn. All rights reserved.
ASIN: B0752RWLRD

Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age. Wimbourne Books presents the fifth in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 5 in the series spans the years 1872 to 1901 and includes stories from a wide range of male authors; British, French and American. Includes tales by Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling.

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The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 6
Edited and with an Introduction by Alastair G. Gunn
Published by Wimbourne Books 2017
Publication Date: 31st October 2017
© Copyright 2016 Alastair G. Gunn. All rights reserved.
ASIN: B0773GGHNW

Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age. Wimbourne Books presents the sixth in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 6 in the series spans the years 1854 to 1901 and includes stories from a wide range of female authors, from both sides of the Atlantic. Includes tales by Ellen Wood, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Margaret Oliphant.

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Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

An engraving by R. Graves entitled 'The Ghost Story', circa 1870. In his first full-length novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), Charles Dickens gave us a peculiarly Victorian view of the Christmas tradition. The host of a Yuletide gathering, Mr. Wardle of Dingley Dell, informs his guests that “Everybody sits down with us on Christmas Eve, as you see them now — servants and all; and here we wait, until the clock strikes twelve, to usher Christmas in, and beguile the time with forfeits and old stories”. So begins a long association of the traditional ghost story with Christmas-time; a tradition that has largely died out, but one that should be revived. Of course, the tradition of telling spooky stories at Christmas is much older than Dickens. It was already well-established in the early nineteenth century. In Old Christmas (from The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent ., 1819), Washington Irving describes a busy Yuletide fireside with the parson “dealing forth strange a

American's Guide To Pronouncing British Place Names

You all know there's some minor (though understandable) differences between British and American spelling. For example, we have 'colour' for 'color', 'favour' for 'favor' and 'harbour' for 'habor'. We have 'centre' for 'center', 'fibre' for 'fiber' and 'litre' for 'liter'. And so on. These don't usually cause us any problems, especially since they are normally pronounced the same (although with differences in accent, which is an entirely different subject!). But, British spelling idiosyncrasies go far beyond these simple examples, and never more so than in our emotive and quaint place names. British place name spelling is about as intuitive as the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics - for the non-scientists among you, that means 'not at all'. Actually, it's not the spelling that's odd (they usually retain a perfectly logical spelling based

The Fastest Things In The Universe

Gravitational waves can't actually be seen as in this simulation. When gazing at the night sky from here on Earth, it’s easy to picture the Universe as calm and unhurried. But in reality, out there in space, things move fast – really fast. Putting aside particle accelerators and the like, the fastest-moving man-made object was the Helios 2 spacecraft launched in the 1970s. It reached a top speed of 68.75 km/s (153,800 mph) on its mission to the Sun. But this was just a leisurely stroll compared to the fastest things in the Cosmos. So, where do we find the real speed freaks of the Universe? Here’s a run-down of the top five. 1. Expansion of the Universe Speed: Greater than the speed of light! The Universe is expanding. But the Universe isn’t filling up ‘empty space’ as it expands because it is ‘space’ itself which is expanding. Although the laws of physics say that two objects can’t move faster than light speed with respect to each other, there is no such restricti

Who Was Ghost Story Writer "Mary E. Penn"?

The identity of Mary E. Penn, a late-Victorian author of ghosts stories and crime and mystery tales, is a complete enigma. Scholars of the macabre have been unable to discern any details of her person, origin or character (assuming she was indeed female). We only know that from the 1870s to the 1890s this author published a number of stories in periodicals, most commonly in The Argosy (Ellen Wood’s monthly publication). Some of her early contributions were anonymous (later attributed to Penn in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals ) and her name only appears from 1878 onwards. Her first story, At Ravenholme Junction , was published anonymously in The Argosy in December 1876, but was later ascribed to Penn on stylistic grounds by eminent supernatural fiction scholar Richard Dalby. Her other ghostly tales were Snatched from the Brink ( The Argosy , June 1878), How Georgette Kept Tryst ( The Argosy , October 1879), Desmond’s Model ( The Argosy , December 1879), Old Vanderhav

Black Holes 101

Artist's impression of a black hole. With new blockbuster movie Interstellar now in cinemas, there's a flurry of interest in black holes and wormholes. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne was a scientific consultant for the production and insisted that the depiction should stay within legitimate boundaries. Apart from the odd bit of artistic license, of course! Black holes are scary, right? They suck in everything in their path. They devour whole planets, stars even, ripping them apart like mere wisps of smoke. They condemn anything that confronts them to an unknowable oblivion. It’s the stuff of nightmare, or at least a bad disaster movie. But I think black holes get a bad press. They are misunderstood, misrepresented. The truth is they are fascinating creatures, if confusing, and not a little bit weird. So, relax for a moment while I give you my quick and dirty guide to black holes. The Black Hole 101, if you like. Let’s start with a simple definition of a black hole

Flat Earth Fallacy

I'm an accepting kind of person. I generally allow people to think what they want, believe what they want and (pretty much) say what they want, within reason. But occasionally an opinion is so far-fetched, insulting or incorrect that it debases human intelligence (all human intelligence, not just mine). And then I feel I must speak up. One such 'opinion' is the belief in a 'flat' Earth. Although this topic has a substantial history (see for example Christine Garwood's Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea ), it has so far not been publicly contested in any great depth. Even Phil Plait, author of the ever-popular Bad Astronomy Blog , declined to give such a preposterous proposition any real air-time. And I don't blame him. It really is the most absurd idea. But it should be denounced, for any number of reasons. The basic premise of the 'flat-Earth' protagonists is that ancient cultures were right, the Earth is flat , a circular disk bo

The Anglo-Saxon/Latin Rule, Again!

It's one of those rules we're often told as writers. Don't write in Latin, write in Anglo-Saxon! This so-called 'rule' has been around quite a while. In Politics & The English Language (1946) George Orwell wrote "bad writers... are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones". But, what does this mean? Do we have to check the etymology of every word we scribble down in our manuscript books, weeding out the obnoxious foreigners and replacing them with good, solid, stalwart Germanic conciseness? Or does it mean we should write in an archaic style and pepper our prose with lovely words such as erstwhile , forsooth and threap ? Are we banned from using words such as obfuscate , perambulate, egregious and impecunious ? Well, let's think about this for a moment, with a couple of examples. Here's the opening line of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's book Paul Clifford ; It wa s a dark and stormy nig

Does Today's Music All Sound The Same?

What's wrong Simon? Is this music too interesting? Recently, whilst out shopping, my young son asked "why is all the music in these shops exactly the same?" He had a point. Every neon-illuminated consumer-hovel of fashion we visited was pumping out the same insidious four-to-the-floor musical effluent. There was no variation in rhythm, tempo, timbre or anything else. Absolute tedium. You've heard it said over and over again: "all today's music sounds the same!" It's something that your parents probably say about the music you listen to. Or you say about the music other people listen to. It was probably also something your grandparents said about the music your parents were into. But who is right? Are any of them right? Does today's music really all sound the same? Or is it just generational crankiness? If you're on the ball, you'll already know that the music industry doesn't have your best interests at heart when deciding w

The Date Of Christmas

I've said this many times before, but astronomy effects our daily lives in ways of which we're often unaware. For example, you may be surprised to find that the date of Christmas is almost certainly down to our ancient forebears' astronomical endeavours. Imagine you’re a prehistoric farmer. You would have little understanding of what we today call science. But you would almost certainly know a lot about the motion of the Sun, Moon, stars and planets around the sky. In fact, these motions would be very important to you. Why? Because they mark the passage of the seasons and the seasons dictate what sustenance is available to humankind. Your survival depends on them. If you want your crops to grow, your livestock to survive, your hunt to be a success, you need a good knowledge of where you are in the yearly cycle of life. And it is the skies which give you that knowledge. So, here's the science bit (as people annoyingly say!). In the morning, the Sun rises in the

Are Indie Authors Destroying The Market?

You're probably aware that we are drowning in an ocean of mediocrity. Yes, I know, there's mediocrity all around us; the TV, the music business, in fact everywhere you care to look. But I'm talking about mediocrity in 'literature', as if that term actually means something these days. Once upon a time, not so long ago, 'literature' was a respectable part of the art world. Authors were mysterious intellectuals, removed from society, tortured souls poring over their foolscap notepads with quill in hand. They were just names, often widely-known ones, like A-list celebrities with no public face, controversy or paparazzi. The authors' agents, dark figures sifting through their ever-growing slush pile of tales, held sway over a global industry from behind locked doors. The authors' publishers were equally elusive, a forbidden realm for those with literary aspirations, with the ability to put their clients names right into the homes of the reading public

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