In this retelling of Lewis Carroll's classic tale, Alice's fall down the rabbit hole turns into a terrifying descent through the centre of the Earth, hopelessly snarling her hair into a tangles mess, and nearly setting it alight.

"The Haunting of the Snarkasbord" is a dark, humorous parody of Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" concerning what followed the Baker's vanishing and the Crew's continued hunt for a snark on Snark Island. Alison Tannenbaum wrote the poetry in "Snarkasbord: A Crewsome Choice" and also wrote notes on Byron W. Sewell's illustrations for it. An introduction and Gardnerian-style notes have been written by August A. Imholtz, Jr in his inimitable style. This edition marks the first public publication of the poems "The Booking," "The Recrewting," and "The Sailing"-the three "Missing Fits" composed by Charlie Lovett. These were originally written for a secret English Snarkian Society, and were mentioned by Selwyn Goodacre in his "The Listing of the Snark" in Martin Gardner's final version of The Annotated Hunting of the Snark. Hitherto, they have only ever been seen by the members or guests of the Society. In addition to his wonderful illustrations, Byron W. Sewell has contributed an original short story, ,"" which tells what happened to the Baker from the viewpoint of the Boojum. Like Lovett's parodies, this short story has never before been seen by the public; it was issued in a very limited number to his Carrollian friends.

Although the author (with many previous unique Snarkian works under his belt) describes "Snarkmaster" as the final work in a trilogy, it stands alone quite distinctly as a unique, gripping tale of a power struggle between good and evil, concluding with the development of an unusual intermediate state. Most of the story takes place prior to the traditional Snark voyage (described in verse in Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark"), but becomes inextricably linked with it-unless it isn't... The literary structure of "Snarkmaster" reveals some influence of Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno" tales, as the characters (including the great Charles Dodgson himself) experience dream states and the appearance of at least one fairy. The comprehensive glossary and painstakingly hand-detailed maps of each of the islands in the archipelago may not be essential to follow the story, but they certainly enhance it. The meticulously hand-inked illustrations emphasize some of the important aspects of the story and provide a tropical ambiance for the text. While not necessarily a prerequisite, knowledge of Carroll's original poem is likely to make Snarkmaster more enjoyable for most readers.

In the first of these two crime fiction tales, R.I.P. (Restless in Pieces), modern grave-robbers steal the bones of Charles Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll), expecting to hold them for ransom. But they also discover a rare first edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" as well as one of Dodgson's missing Diaries in the casket. This sets off a series of events, both deadly and comical, across England, Wales, and North Korea. Inspector Ian Spectre of Scotland Yard is brought in to solve the case, assisted by none other than Dodgson's ghost. The second tale, "The Oxfordic Oracle," is set in Victorian Oxford. Inspector Spectre goes undercover to investigate numerous reported strange events during the meetings of the Oxford Phantasmalogical Society, where an actress prophesies under the influence of ethene gas escaping into the basement of the building. Charles Dodgson also makes a first time appearance at the Society meeting, which gets out of hand as too much ethene escapes and everyone begins to prophesy nonsense which becomes the inspiration for some of the famous poems in Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno" books."

Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" has been translated into over a hundred languages, from French to Japanese to Esperanto. In this translation into the rich dialect of the Appalachian Mountains, the translators have treated the story as a folktale, in order to create the sense that the reader is listening as an adult tells the story to a child. The story has been transported from Victorian English to post-Civil-War West Virginia, into an Appalachian setting appropriate for the dialect. The spelling used aims towards a literary orthography, rather than towards a phonemic respelling of the language entirely, and so it avoids unnecessary "eye-dialect" ("funkshun" instead of "function," and so forth). The sounds of the language used in "Alice's Adventures in an Appalachian Wonderland" will certainly be familiar to most readers, but a short glossary has also been included.

Roa Wioz (1882-1937), the locally-admired though otherwise little-known Zumorgian translator, spent seventeen years of his miserable life (when he wasn't tending to his beloved goats) translating Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" into Zumorigenflit and transposing it into u ian culture. Sadly, u was swallowed up by the Soviet Union in 1947. Most of its citizens were either purged (lined up and summarily shot when they refused to combine their goats into a communal herd) or transported to the Gulag for political re-education and attitude adjustment. All cultural artifacts were systematically destroyed and most Zumorigenflit books were burned as part of the Soviet effort to obliterate u, along with any memory of it. The only known present-day u ian survivors of The Great u Purge (other than any possible survivors of the Gulag, whose descendants might conceivably live in Siberia) are now toothless old women, whose parents fled with them as infants from u to Transjordan the night of the purge. Today they live (if you can call it that) in a squalid refugee camp on the desert outskirts of Amman surrounded by very unhappy and angry displaced Palestinians. Some of these u ian refugees are still able to speak a little Zumorigenflit, though few of them can read it. For those interested in such esoteric things, "Alo k ujy Gigio Soagenli y" was first published by the Itadabukan Press in the capital city of Sprutni ovyurt in 1919. The city, which was mistakenly thought to be a German forward supply area, was literally flattened and burned to the ground by Royal Air Force saturation bombing in 1943, and all that remains of it are a few remnants of the ancient Palace's foundations and a gigantic reinforced concrete statue of Joseph Stalin, whose face has been shattered by what was probably machine gun target practice. The original story has here been updated to modern times, as if this strange, harsh, and dangerous land still existed in the modern world. It doesn't, except in my imagination and that of Mahendra Singh, whose heart swells with the Song of the Goat. -- Byron W. Sewell