Egaeus Press

16th March 2024

NOW AVAILABLE TO ORDER...

TRACKLESS PATHS is a collection of unsettling, esoteric, melancholic tales by BENJAMIN TWEDDELL.

Rarely are the realms of the unseen, the unknowable secrets of human life and death, so masterfully evoked than in Tweddell's meticulous prose. Rarely do we find ourselves sharing the same deadly longings, the same sadness as his doomed protagonists. Arcane knowledge often comes at a heavy price

To purchase, or for more information, click HERE.

21st January 2024

As we nudge ever on into 2024, various forthcoming projects start to take focus, and perhaps now would be a good time to start a little chitter-chatter. Here goes... In the next two or three months, Egaeus Press will publish two books.

The first is by BENJAMIN TWEDDELL. Containing 6 novellas and short stories, these unsettling, melancholic, esoteric and often genuinely mystical tales belong to a sphere altogether of their own. We're very excited about this remarkable book. We hope to be able to make a more detailed announcement in a matter of weeks.

And shortly after that, and no less remarkable, we have THE TREE OF SACRIFICE by PER FAXNELD. A collection of 44 folk horror tales, translated from the original Swedish by their author, these enchanted stories convey an atmosphere of dark, Scandinavian folklore. It is illustrated throughout by MIMMI STRINNHOLM.

That is all for now, but there is so much more... soon... Stay near.

Thank you.

Illustration: from Emblemata Nova by Andreas Friedrich (1617).

4th November 2023

TWO BOOK OFFER...

As our northernmost latitudes succumb to the spread of polar night, we find our thoughts wandering to those dark, distant territories, those silent, frozen regions. Not for the first time.

We have decided to mark this annual phenomenon by offering, from now until the end of January 2024, a special 'bundle' price for two of our publications, both of which take the chilly, northern lands as their settings.

THE FORTUNATE ISLES by LISA L. HANNETT features fourteen stories of salt-crusted weirdness from the rugged, cold-clime harbour village of Barradoon, while our anthology, SONGS OF THE NORTHERN SEAS collects thirteen strange tales from some marvellous contemporary authors.

Both books are available for a price of £65, from either of their respective webpages... HERE or HERE.

27th October 2023

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS...

In 2024, Egaeus Press will publish a limited edition (as yet unnamed) volume of stories and poems in the GOTHIC tradition, for which a small number of spaces are open to anyone who would like to submit their work.

But hold hard! Gothic, you say? Could we have chosen a more well-trodden and cliché-entrenched region of dark fiction to explore?... Well, hear us out!...

It is our intention to follow Gothic fiction back, back to a time long before Stoker, before its absorption into the polite world of Victorian chit-chat and theatre society, back to a time when no respectable bibliophile would allow anything of the sort to throw shade upon their collections.

This was a literature of madness and terminal melancholy, of alcoholism and laudanum addiction, and of an early grave. We aren't terribly interested in vampires at all. We're looking for more primal horrors. We're looking for cursed castles, hidden passages, veiled paintings and messages from beyond the threshold of death. We want pits, pendulums, despots and instruments of torture. Give us murders most gruesome, lunacy and diseases of the most miserable kinds.

Let's show those respectable Victorian appropriators, not to mention many of our modern readers, just what Gothic fiction once was, and can be again.

Though we are not necessarily looking for 'period' pieces, we are looking for work that exists within, if you will, a hermetically sealed Gothic environment, more or less shorn of the stuff of our modern world, as such, veering perhaps into the fantastical. But please, surprise us!

Submissions should be emailed as attachments to egaeuspress@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is Walpurgis Night, the last night of April 2024. Work which I feel may fit the bill will be shortlisted, with the final line-up decided shortly after that date.

Word limit for prose is anything from 1,000 to 12,000, with room for negotiation. No word limit for poetry. Payment is 80p per 100 words along with two copies of the finished book.

Space in this book is, as previously stated, limited, and we fully anticipate the heavy-hearted necessity for rejecting works of great merit. Please be aware of this, and please don't be too disappointed should this be your experience.

Thank you.
Mark Beech

Illustrations from Het kasteel van Albert, of het wandelend geraamte (1802), a Dutch translation of The Animated Skeleton (anon, 1798), and The Secret Tribunal; or, the Court of Winceslaus. A Mysterious Tale (anon, 1803).

19th August 2023

NOW AVAILABLE TO ORDER...

UNQUIET GROVE is Egaeus Press's latest collection of strange, dark and uncategorisable stories dedicated to the theme of tree-lore, woods and forests. What ageless mysteries they nurture within their menacing simulacra, their restless shadows.

The book comprises a hefty 288 pages, with 12 previously unpublished stories by some of the today's finest authors of the dark and grotesque, with an introduction by Nina Antonia.

Limited to only 330 copies

For more information and to order click HERE.

20th May 2023

NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER.

THE FORTUNATE ISLES by LISA L. HANNETT collects fourteen tales of salt-crusted weirdness from the rugged, cold-clime harbour village of Barradoon...

Barradoon: the limit of worldly navigation; stronghold of sea-myths and ancient forces; a place of simmering tension and ruthless vengeance meted out by human and inhuman alike.

These densely wrought, boundlessly inventive stories form, in their totality, a singularly strange mosaic novel of sorts - ever twisting and writhing like a storm-charged ocean. Yet they are never out of the meticulous control of Lisa Hannett's masterly storytelling.

For more information, and to pre-order, see HERE.

20th December 2022

Happy Yuletide all, and an enormous THANK YOU for your custom throughout 2022.

It's been a productive one this end, with four new publications: Brendan Connell's gave us the gorgeously decadent HEQET, and our bird-themed ORNITHOLOGIÆ took to the air; then Rebecca Lloyd's DROWNING IN THE SKY and Charles Wilkinson's THE HARMONY OF THE STARES collected some very strange tales from two genuinely unique authors.

But if you were affeared of missing our TWO-BOOK SPECIAL OFFER (for the purchase of the Rebecca Lloyd and Charles Wilkinson collections) we've decided to extend it until the end of January.

So 2023 swaggers forth, and what do we have to offer?

Well, our next publication will be THE FORTUNATE ISLES, a collection of dark, singular, sea-salty tales by LISA HANNETT. And there's a new, themed Egaeus anthology in the works for the summer, but that, and our other projects, will have to remain under wraps for the near future.

Meanwhile, thank you all again, and all the best for the festive period and for 2023.

2nd December 2022

Now available to order:.

Egaeus Press and the marvellously unique CHARLES WILKINSON join forces once more for THE HARMONY OF THE STARES: Ten diversely strange tales, steeped in menace, linked in the most unexpected ways by an auricular theme... These are tales in which music often plays a role: music as ritual, music as language, impossible music, lethal music. But here also are the silences, the stop-gaps between notes, the attempted retreats from the audible world.

We are also offering, for the remainder of 2022, a special price when ordered with REBECCA LLOYD's DROWNING IN THE SKY.

See HERE for details

24th September 2022

Available for pre-order.

DROWNING IN THE SKY by REBECCA LLOYD. Featuring twelve dark-edged stories that take the themes of secrecy, identity, and family into strange and uncharted territories.

Unsettling, insightful and sometimes very funny, the rare and previously uncollected pieces in this collection showcase the author at her most marvellously unique.

See HERE for more information and to order.

Official publication is set for 1st October 2022.

3rd June 2022

Now Available to order!

ORNITHOLOGIÆ is Egaeus Press's long-awaited collection of strange, dark and hallucinatory stories and poems on the theme of birds.

Herein, and alongside the more or less familiar, feathered avian varieties, you will find creatures of pure myth, imposs- ibilities; birds reimagined, reconstructed; birds as symbols and metaphors for all that is both irreconcilably fascinating and alien to humanity.

For more information and to order see HERE.

19th March 2022

Now Available to order! HEQET by Brendan Connell.

In the terrifying confession that makes up Heqet, the new, decadent novel by Brendan Connell, the reader is treated to pages of anguish and extravagance as they follow the delirium-strewn path of the protagonist Félix, a fatal anti-hero like few others...

Also included in this book is a selection of a dozen short, spectacular vignettes and tales under the heading “Ghosts”, nine of which have never before appeared elsewhere.

See HERE for more information and to order.

3rd December 2021

Now Available to order!

SONGS OF THE NORTHERN SEAS is an anthology of thirteen tales of the Arctic north, twelve of which were written especially for this volume and appear here for the first time.

These are tales cast up in dangerous latitudes, hooked on the cardinal points of traitorous compasses. They are dark, strange and sometimes uncategorisable, diverse in their tones and themes, though each uniquely shaped by similarly restless Arctic tides, sharp winds, and ancient ice-flows.

For more information and to order see HERE.

18th September 2021

Now available for pre-order: THE SAD EYES OF THE LEWIS CHESSMEN by George Berguño. Our eighth Egaeus Press Keynote Edition.

Nine stories that explore the consequences of witnessing the impossible and the incomprehensible. The stories plunge the reader into a world where the hideous meets the weird, where the beautiful clashes with the uncanny, and, importantly, where a moment in time overthrows the whole of one’s life.

Official publication will be 25th September 2021, with pre-orders being despatched on, or shortly before, that date.

See HERE for more details.