The Fire Spirits — Paul Busson

This book was written in 1923 and concerns the war roiling in the Tyrol a hundred years earlier. It concerns a young aristocrat who inherits a house in a small village and travels to see it. He becomes embroiled in the politics of the time and area, not to mention several of the women he meets, and hears about the mysterious "Fire Spirits" who haunt the solstice. The book is amazingly frank about sex and class and will draw the reader into the era as well as the plot. John Pelan tells the story of the novel in his introduction and Gavin O'Keefe provides the cover art.