Dragonfly Press has published a group of short stories by Dr. Antony Oldknow, who retired in 2012 from Eastern New Mexico University as an English professor.
The 187-page book is titled “Dr. Upex and the great God Ing: Fifteen Weird Unexpected Stories.”
Story titles include: “Dr. Upex and the Great God Ing,” “The Soldier,” “Cathredal Woman, “Ruelle des Martyrs,” “The Man in the Tree,” “The Catch,” “Woman with Red Gloves,” “The Pulley,” “If You Will Believe This,” “Bathsheba,” “Yellow Lines,” “Bluebells, Lilac, and Chocolate,” “Roll, Rattle, and Shake,” “Accident” and “Rachel.”
“The stories are very different,” Oldknow said. “Their subject matter ranges from World War II to magic realism to some developed from my poems.”
The 77-year-old emeritus professor has previously published the novels “The Gustave Dore Parody,” “Invasions,” “The Eight Wives of King Henry VI” and “Clara d’Ellebeuse.”
He has also published story collections “The Passion Play and Other Ghost Stories” and “The Rod of the Lord.”
A book blurb by Calder Lowe, executive editor of Dragonfly Press, says his new work “encourages readers to become attuned to those haunting occurrences that lie beyond mundane explanation, and border instead upon the liminal, the spectral, the mysterious often hidden in the plain sight of the day-today.
“Some stories provoke outright shivers, but in a delightfully engrossing manner, while others might induce bouts of insomnia or fleeting paranoia.”
Oldknow underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 2015 and spent 143 consecutive days in four hospitals in Arkansas, Texas and New Mexico. He is married to Cheryll Hendershot, ENMU instructor of languages and literature.
The book retails for $15, plus $5 for shipping, and can be purchased from Oldknow by sending a check for $20 to: Antony Oldknow, P.O. Box 1091, Portales, NM 88130.
