Smoke House and Other Stories

Highly readable and darkly entertaining tales make up Smoke House & Other Stories by Matthew G. Rees who returns after his critically acclaimed debut story collection Keyhole with accounts of unusual people in odd places off the beaten track.

Macabre in a mirthful way at times, this volume is perhaps lighter in overall tone than its predecessor. It has its dark side, nonetheless.

Enter Smoke House & Other Stories and explore - among other destinations - a weird backwoods town whose citizens - though they seem not to know it - are on fire… a rotting seaside resort threatened by a small boy’s escalating awareness of its underbelly of sleaze… a remote, snow-cloaked cathedral with windows of oddly compelling stained glass… an ancient English manor with a garden of eerie topiaries whose grim guardian wields a decidedly worrisome pair of shears… and a peculiar lakeside town 'forgotten in its frost pocket' where curious Christmas lights shine every night of the year.

As for the destinies of those that Rees entreats us to meet - among them a young teacher bizarrely detained by a much older member of the profession, a gallery attendant determined to thwart the artist she loathes, a bird-watcher alone - or so he thinks - on a menace-filled marsh, a farmer with an outlandish obsession, and an irascible, fading writer sentenced to finish an unwanted novel in a sinister small town… What shall be their fates? Macabre or merciful? Enter Smoke House & Other Stories and find out.

Most of the stories in this collection - which runs to a total of thirteen tales and one 'flash fiction' story - make their debut. Others have been updated or drawn from sources no longer accessible. Present-day England, Wales, America, Russia and, briefly, France are the settings… in ways that are unfamiliar. For these are - after all - villages and towns that exist in no authorised guidebook or on any official map.

Roald Dahl is one figure whose writing Rees' past work has been likened to.

As Rees states in a note in the volume's preface: "Certain of the stories are obviously meant as 'entertainment'. Others perhaps have a more serious intent."

A gallery of photographs by Rees accompanies the text.

Matthew G. Rees grew up in the border country between England and Wales known as the Marches. His early career was in journalism. Later he entered teaching, working for a period in Moscow. Diverse other employment in a varied life has included time as a night-shift taxi driver. His first collection of stories – Keyhole – was published by Three Impostors press in 2019. Two plays by him have been performed professionally. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Swansea, Wales.