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Insect Literature

“The insect-world is altogether a world of goblins and fairies.”

As Lafcadio Hearn observes in his essay “Insects in Greek Poetry”, “the capacity to enjoy the music of insects and all that it signifies in the great poem of nature tells very plainly of goodness of heart, aesthetic sensibility, a perfectly healthy state of mind.” And to this, one might add a keen sense of wonder.

Insect Literature collects twenty essays and stories written by Hearn, mostly in Japan, a land where insects were as appreciated as in ancient Greece. With a witty gentleness bordering on the eerie, Hearn describes in these pieces the song of the cricket, the spectral flight of dragon-flies, quotes the entomological haiku of classical Japan, and recalls Buddhist tales in which the souls of insects and men are never far one from the other.

  •  This much-celebrated volume is back in print with a second edition hardback
  • Read more about the design of the Swan River Press edition of Insect Literature
  • More on Lafcadio Hearn can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Second edition hardback limited to 450 copies.

Cover art by Takato Yamamoto
Introduction by Anne-Sylvie Homassel

ISBN: 978-1-78380-009-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-740-6 (pbk)

November Night Tales

“History fades into prehistoric darkness . . . “

Each story in November Night Tales is a differently colored gem whose many facets reflect the lively mind of the author. Henry C. Mercer’s life-long interest in world mythology, fairy tales, local legend, symbols, and artifacts form the fabric of his tales. Here, the reader will find vanishing castles, secret sects, biological weapons, sinister wilderness, lycanthropy, possessed dolls, and mythical lands. The characters in each story are driven to explore the unknown, face their fears, and perhaps discover something of themselves in the process. The compelling narratives, infused with intelligence and humanity, leave the reader curious why the stories remain virtually unknown today, and mournful that there are not more to explore. United at last with the six original November night tales is a seventh, posthumously published story, The Well of Monte Corbo. First published in 1928, this new edition is fully illustrated by Alisdair Wood and features an introduction by Peter Bell.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Alisdair Wood
Introduction by Peter Bell

ISBN: 978-1-78380-010-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-760-4 (pbk)

Uncertainties 2

“Omnia exeunt in mysterium.” – Arthur Machen

“We think we know the world we live in, but we don’t—we very much don’t—and stories of the supernatural and strange, of the weird and the uncanny serve as a reminder of that.” – from the Foreword by Brian J. Showers

Uncertainties is an anthology of new writing—featuring contributions from Irish, British, and American authors—each exploring the idea of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as ‘winter’s tales’. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, and when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .

  • Steve Duffy’s “The Ice Beneath Us” and Gary McMahon’s “What’s Out There?” were chosen for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 2016.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Chris Priestly
Selected and edited by Brian J. Showers
Foreword by Brian J. Showers

ISBN: 978-1-78380-015-5 (hbk)

The Pale Brown Thing

“The ancient Egyptians only buried people in their pyramids. We are living in ours.” – Thibaut de Castries

Serialised in 1977, The Pale Brown Thing is a shorter version of Fritz Leiber’s World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the supernatural, Our Lady of Darkness. Leiber maintained that the two texts “should be regarded as the same story told at different times”; thus this volume reprints The Pale Brown Thing for the first time in nearly forty years, with an introduction by the author’s friend, Californian poet Donald Sidney-Fryer. The novella stands as Leiber’s vision of 1970s San Francisco: a city imbued with an eccentric vibe and nefarious entities, in which pulp writer Franz Westen uncovers an alternate portrait of the city’s fin de siècle literary set—Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Clark Ashton Smith—as well as the darker invocations of occultist Thibaut de Castries and a pale brown inhabitant of Corona Heights.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Jason Zerrillo
Introduction by Donald Sidney-Fryer

ISBN: 978-1-78380-012-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-761-1 (pbk)

Uncertainties 1

“Turn and face the strange.” – David Bowie

“It may be my own imagining, or perhaps the cumulative effect of reading the entire book over a couple of evenings, but the contents appeared to grow darker as the pages turned.” – from the Foreword by John Connolly

Uncertainties is an anthology of new writing—featuring contributions from Irish, British, and American authors—each exploring the idea of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as ‘winter’s tales’. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, and when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .

  • Maura McHugh’s “The Light at the Centre” was selected for Stephen Jones’s Best New Horror #28

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Chris Priestly
Selected and edited by Brian J. Showers
Foreword by John Connolly

ISBN: 978-1-78380-014-8 (hbk)

You’ll Know When You Get There

“Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?” – Shirley Jackson

A woman returns home to revisit an encounter with the numinous; couples take up residence in houses full of sinister secrets; a man fleeing a failed marriage discovers something ancient and unknowable in rural Ireland . . .

In her introduction, Lisa Tuttle observes that “certain places are doomed, dangerous in some inexplicable, metaphysical way”, and the characters in these stories all seem drawn in their own ways to just such places, whether trying to return home or endeavouring to get as far from life as possible. These nine stories by Shirley Jackson Award winner Lynda E. Rucker tell tales of those lost and searching, often for something they cannot name, and encountering along the way the uncanny embedded in the everyday world.

  • “Who Is This Who Is Coming?” was selected for Stephen Jones’s Best New Horror #28.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Tobia Makover
Introduction by Lisa Tuttle

ISBN: 978-1-78380-013-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-755-0 (pbk)

Selected Poems

“Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might / Forget how we imagined light.”

Published in September 1935, just two months after his death, A.E wrote of Selected Poems, “If I should be remembered I would like it to be for the verses in this book. They are my choice out of the poetry I have written.” A.E.’s life-long friend and sometimes rival, W. B. Yeats, observed that his poetry expresses “something that lies beyond the range of expression”, and that he has within him “the vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart.” To commemorate the 150th anniversary of A.E.’s birth, Swan River Press is pleased to reissue this career-spanning collection of poems from a key artist of the Celtic Revival. This volume includes selections from The Earth Breath, Voices of the Stones, The House of the Titans, and others, introducing a new generation to Ireland’s foremost mystical poet.

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Casimir Dunin Markiewicz
Introduction by W. B. Yeats
Afterword by Daniel Mulhall

ISBN: 978-1-78380-016-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-762-8 (pbk)

A Flutter of Wings

“Strange,” he said to himself. “I had an idea that Pat’s Tommy was dead.”

First collected in 1974, the stories in A Flutter of Wings span Mervyn Wall’s entire writing career, dating back as far as the 1940s. Told in an easy style, tales such as “They Also Serve . . . ” and “Adventure” offer the same satirical sensibilities found in Wall’s classic novel The Unfortunate Fursey; while darker tales such as “Cloonaturk” and “The Demon Angler” are not without a hint of the grimly sardonic. In addition to an introduction by Val Mulkerns and illustrations by Clare Brennan, this new edition boasts the uncollected Jamesian fragment “Extract from an Abandoned Novel”, and Wall’s early play, Alarm Among the Clerks, a savagely hilarious and ultimately brutal depiction of office life.

  • More on Mervyn Wall can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Hardback edition limited to 300 copies.

Cover art and illustrations by Clare Brennan
Introduction by Val Mulkerns

ISBN: 978-1-78380-017-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-764-2 (pbk)

The Scarlet Soul

“Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile.” – Oscar Wilde

Art, obsession, love, lust, sorcery—ten contemporary writers respond to the imperishable themes of Oscar Wilde’s great Decadent romance, The Picture of Dorian Gray. What happens when a face, a form, an uncanny force changes everything we thought we knew? What survives of us when we stray into a borderland of the mind, where our deepest urges seem to call up remorseless powers?

Whether in fantastic imaginary realms or in the gritty noir of today, these new stories, all especially written for this anthology, take us into some of the strangest and darkest places of the psyche. These ten boldly original portraits in the attic take many disturbing forms, revealing strong truths about the secrets of our selves, our society, and our very souls.

  • More on Oscar Wilde can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by John Coulthart
Selected and introduced by Mark Valentine

ISBN: 978-1-78380-019-3 (hbk)

Old Hoggen

“Old Hoggen had disappeared: and murder was naturally suspected.”

At the time of his death in 1912, Bram Stoker was preparing for publication three volumes of stories. The first, Dracula’s Guest, saw print in 1914; the second and third never manifested. Old Hoggen and Other Adventures is a tantalising possibility of one of these unrealised selections, and the stories in this volume span the author’s entire career. In reading them, one thing becomes clear: adventure and mystery rival even the gothic in Stoker’s literary heart. And yet, one will find among these pages many of the same themes found in Dracula: reverence for the dead, the malice of wicked men, black humour, hidden fortunes, daring bravery, exotic locales, a deep love of the sea, and the creeping intrusion of the supernatural.

  • More on Bram Stoker can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Our limited edition hardback is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Cover art by Jason Zerrillo
Introduction by John Edgar Browning and Brian J. Showers

ISBN: 978-1-78380-018-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-78380-769-7 (pbk)

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