IT’s the Murenger House in the High Street as we know it, comfortable and familiar as the fine Yorkshire ale it serves.

Or maybe not quite.

Drop in for a quiet pint in the company of author Jon Gower and you could find yourself tumbling into a time-portal or conversing with the supernatural beings in the basement. They’re tricky, these spooky beings, and so is Gower, who, in The Murenger and Other Stories, invites us into the Newport landmark, ostensibly for a chat over a pint of Sam Smith’s, but be careful how you sup.

South Wales Argus:

John Gower pictured with Murenger landlord Robert Jones

“Only last week someone with a burden of heartbreak borrowed the heavy iron key, opened the door ,stepped inside, and disappeared for a decade. ‘We’re talking sidereal time here’ suggested the time traveller who’d found the journey to be hungry work, and so ordered four pork pies which he despatched like a wolf eating lapwing chicks.”

If still discombobulated, the traveller could choose to stroll into the Physic Garden in which grows hyssop, excellent for the treatment of black eyes, calendula for eyesight problems or apply a mullein poultice. If still bewildered, the option remains of making a swift exit via the secret tunnel running from the Murenger to the Usk river bank. Should he choose to stay he can converse with the philosophical butler who doubts his own existence, talk to the landlord who dreams of a Malpas republic, or mix with the Beings gibbering and cavorting in the cellar.

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Jon Gower is a literary name in Wales, published by the Three Impostors Press which is Newport-based but gaining an international reputation. Formerly the BBC’s former arts and media writer, he has 30 books in English and Welsh to his name and more documentaries for radio and television you can shake a magic wand at.

The title short story is one of 15. Others include Fire with Fire, which is about flames with malicious intelligence (prescient, at a time when Australian bush fires were raging); Candles, a new and frightening twist on the corpse-candles which appear when someone is about to die, and Age, That Old Haven, in which the super-ambitious and super-fit eventually and by a gruelling process come to welcome that which they previously most feared.

Terry Pratchett with a bit of Arthur Machen thrown in might be the nearest if I’m asked to define Gower by other authors’ work but he is his own man; quite unique. Three Impostors publishes very few, but high-end works. A bar which is set high is cleared by Gower, triumphantly.

The Murenger and Other Stories by Jon Gower, published by Three Impostors, is available in paperback for £10 from www.threeimpostors.co.uk and Newport's Waterstones.