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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993                   TAG: 9303070206
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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BOOKS IN BRIEF

Whistling Past the Churchyard: Strange Tales From a Superstitious Welshman.\ By John Manchip White. Atlantic. $21.

These 17 tales really live up to their billing. They are, indeed, strange tales of eerie adventure. Just a taste, from "Nightingales":

"It had been really stupid, suddenly veering off the highway . . . What on Earth had possessed him? But now his spirits rose. What a bit of luck, stumbling on an inn in such a lonely place."

Well, as you can imagine, it's not a bit of luck at all.

These tales are much too tame for fans of Stephen King. But those who love Ambrose Bierce and re-runs of "The Twilight Zone" will be . . . enchanted.

- MONTY S. LEITCH

Virginia: A Guide To the Old Dominion.

Virginia State Library. (price not listed.)

This is a re-issue of the fourth printing (1947) of the 1940 Oxford University Press edition, itself a part of the Depression-era series on the states by the Federal Writers Project.

It's an exhaustive work, a sketchbook and almanac and history in one volume that, surprisingly, holds up well and gives a balanced portrait of race and culture for its day. Liberal writer Garrett Epps has been signed on to write a few lines about bigotry, real and imagined. It doesn't help.

- ROBERT HILLDRUP

Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for this newspaper.\ Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.

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