The Ephemera of Philatelic Fiction

Extreme Stamps
Ape & Essence

Ape and Essence: China's Monkey King, by Frederick Highland

Chicago Philatelic Society Medal

The Mystery Box book is the proud winner of a Silver Medal awarded by the Chicago Philatelic Society CHICAGOPEX Literature Exhibit

Read the Book Review by Barbara Kinne of the APS American Philatelist

Ephemera: Printed matter of passing interest

This new frenzy started with publication of an entertaining book of short fiction by Frederick Highland called, not coincidentally, The Mystery Box. But it really started long ago.

Although I was a stamp collector as a child, in one of our family's many moves around the globe, those albums were lost and my own interest waned. Beyond using US Commemoratives for mailing my bills and letters, I gave but passing thought to stamp collecting in the many years that intervened.

Whoever found those albums must have smiled and may have remembered with fondness the quiet days of their own youth, poring over place names such as Nyasaland, Belgian Congo... places now long gone.

nayasa stamp

It was with such pleasure that the magic of stamps returned to me through the manuscript of short stories and historical commentary that was to become The Mystery Box book. It was through the design, layout, and production of this collection that the worlds opened by stamps filled the horizon of my imagination.

I was, in a word, hooked.

credits