The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) by Vin Suprynowicz Page A

supposedly mythical creatures as gryphons, unicorns, and Internet sellers happily selling thousand-dollar books for thirteen dollars.
    “And it’s worth …?” asked Chantal, who’d stuck her head out from between a couple of the stacks, where she was putting books back in order by topic.
    “We’ll start it at twelve-fifty,” said Marian, all business again.
    “We bought it at thirteen and we’ll start it at … ?” Chantal looked puzzled. Then her face began to clear. “Oh.”
    “Yes,” Marian replied. “Book was a runaway success, in part thanks to the Feiffer illustrations, Feiffer’s first book, it immediately went into repeat printings. Only one comparable true first online, atfifteen hundred, so we’ll start this one at twelve hundred fifty. By the way, Matthew, that big box from Florida is for you.”
    “Really?”
    “That’s what it says.”
    It was a good-sized box, from the small college town of DeLand. Matthew sliced it open carefully. It appeared to be a jumble of slightly musty leftovers, starting on the top with some issues of “Weird Tales” from the 1930s, with those wonderfully kitsch and garish covers torn or dampstained or mildewed badly enough that they wouldn’t sell for much — if anything — except as placeholders while a collector waited for a better copy. He could see why they’d been left in a box in the back room. Nobody wanted to get a reputation for displaying unsightly mildewed junk.
    The cover note from the lady at the bookstore in DeLand was very gracious, apologizing for the motley lot and telling him she wouldn’t hold him to the price he’d offered, she’d settle for postage plus twenty bucks for her trouble, unless he happened to find something worthwhile.
    The rest of the box held old menus, charter boat schedules, fliers advertising various events around the small college town in the 1930s, some yellowed newspaper clippings — the kind of stuff that was fun to browse, but not likely to be worth much.
    Then, near the bottom, some browning pages of composition paper, covered in script in a male hand, actually a couple male hands. They seemed to be from letters but they sat in a jumble, at first glance none appeared to be addressed to Robert or Bob or RHB, though one was signed “REH.” Matthew stopped. Robert E. Howard, a suicide in 1936 at the age of 30, had written the Conan the Barbarian stories, and had been known to correspond with Barlow in Deland.
    Finally, at the bottom, a yellowed copy of the St. Augustine Evening Record from July of 1934, local and Florida state news dominating the front page, though in Washington they were reportedly organizing a “Federal Communications Commission” to replace theold Federal Radio Commission, and in Austria the National Socialists seem to have had a hand in assassinating the chancellor.
    Since the old newspaper had been used to line the box, it was folded up at the corners, to fit. But as the acidic newsprint had long since turned yellow-brown and brittle, there was an obvious risk the pages would crumble if you tried to pry them out.
    Grabbing a letter opener from the desk, Matthew proceeded to do just that, as gently as he could. Finally he was lifting the newspaper away from the bottom of the pasteboard box, attempting to keep it as intact as possible.
    But it weighed more than it should have. It shifted in his hands, and out of the folds fell a small, nearly square, schoolchild’s composition notebook in black-and-white glossy boards with a matte black cloth spine. Inside, hastily scribbled notes in a cramped handwriting covered the first few pages, illustrated with some freehand sketches and drawings of what appeared to be a large electrical machine.
    And then, the handwritten manuscript of a story, covering perhaps 25 pages, with the working title “The Resonator”:
    “I had not seen my good friend, Henry …” hard to read, but could that be “Annesley”? “… since that day several months before