The Girl with the Peacock Harp, by Michael Eisele is a sewn hardback book of 268 pages printed lithographically, with head and tailbands, and d/w.

Sorry - out of print!

The Girl with the Peacock Harp

Michael Eisele

The fifteen strange stories that comprise this stunning debut collection range over the fantastic, the supernatural and the psychological. In ‘An Old Tale’, a young ballet student discovers hope beyond the barriers of death. ‘The Music’ tells of a violinist who must face the ghosts of his past; and those ghosts are brought to life in ‘The Beginning’. In ‘Gloria and the Selchie’ a modern Irish girl discovers that the stories her old granny told her are all too true, while in ‘The Lighthouse’, a retired sea captain falls in love. ‘What Dreams May Come’ moves the scene to modern day Manhattan, as an advertising executive is haunted by dreams of a giant raptor. In ‘Sanity’, the boundary between delusion and reality becomes a battlefield between a patient and her therapist. ‘Rolf’ takes the reader to the world of the medieval mason, and a strange apprenticeship. ‘The Change’ concerns the legend of the were-wolf from an unusual point of view, and in ‘The Kelpie’, a novice mage learns the true extent of her powers.

Michael Eisele’s stories entertain, entrance and delight in equal measure.

Reviews:

"Eisele demonstrates uncommon skill at exposing the hearts and minds of his characters and giving their conflicts an emotional immediacy, no matter how weird their circumstances." Publishers Weekly

"I think this book will appeal to anyone who enjoys richly-imagined, intelligent fiction. They are not easy to classify, and certainly don't qualify as horror or ghost stories per se. Instead they occupy a fascinating region where myth and legend overlap with the fears and crises of all-too-real world." David longhorn, Supernatural Tales

Also included in Michael Dirda's Holiday Book Picks at the Washington Post.

"These two collections [Tree Spirit and The Girl with the Peacock Harp] contain stories that are polished, quirky and eccentric; that won’t quite fit into any genre straitjacket but instead entertain and enthral in part by virtue of their protean nature." Peter Tennant, Black Static

Copyright Tartarus Press 2024