Mythic Delirium: Volume Two

an international anthology of prose and verse

edited by Mike and Anita Allen

Cover art by Galen Dara

“Rich word choices and settings that blend speculative concepts with quotidian reality highlight this stellar anthology of prose and poetry.”
—Publishers Weekly

“One of those rare long-term survivors of the small-press landscape…contributes mightily to the health of our genre.”
—Locus Online

Assembled from the second year of the digital journal Mythic Delirium and recast in an artfully arranged anthology, this latest offering from editors Mike and Anita Allen will introduce you to harrowing deserts and vengeful waters, to quantum mythology and edible religion, to slipstream explorations of love and identity.

Publisher and editor Mike Allen writers in his introduction, “If you’re on a quest for the weird, lowercase, here is a book where you can find it. And likely The Weird as well.”

This international anthology of beautiful prose and strange verse features Saira Ali, Michele Bannister, Alicia Cole, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Gwynne Garfinkle, Brady Golden, Adam Howe, John Philip Johnson, Jamie Killen, Swapna Kishore, Margo Lanagan, Geoffrey A. Landis, Nathaniel Lee, Rose Lemberg, Livia Llewellyn, Valya Dudycz Lupescu, C.S. MacCath, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Lynette Mejía, Virginia M. Mohlere, Sunny Moraine, Kristine Ong Muslim, Dominik Parisien, Jessy Randall, Wendy Rathbone, Sonya Taaffe, Shveta Thakrar, Natalia Theodoridou, Sheree Renée Thomas and Jane Yolen. Cover art by Hugo Award winner Galen Dara.

The Spider Tapestries: Seven Strange Stories

by Mike Allen

Introduction by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Cover photo by Ben Heys

“Mike Allen will infect your subconscious with hallucinatory and alarming delight. This book is a must-read for fans of weird fiction and dark fantasy.”
—Helen Marshall, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Gifts for the One who Comes After

“Surrender yourself to The Spider Tapestries and let these tales rewire your mind.”
—Scott Nicolay, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Do You Like to Look at Monsters?

The Spider Tapestries, Mike Allen’s sophomore short story collection, takes a wrecking ball to genre boundaries, showcasing seven stories that mix transhuman noir, Lovecraftian horror, and surrealistic sorcery in an exploration of the further reaches of the Weird. Readers who savored the disorienting strangeness in Allen’s debut collection Unseaming, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and Amazon.com horror fiction bestseller, will find The Spider Tapestries begins where Unseaming left off.

As Nicole Kornher-Stace, author of Archivist Wasp, explains in her introduction, “Allen outdoes himself even further, borrowing and synthesizing across genres with gleeful abandon….This results in stories like ‘Twa Sisters,’ with an atmosphere and setting as if Heironymous Bosch had been brought in as a consultant on Blade Runner. Or ‘Sleepless, Burning Life,’ which, with simultaneous nods to steampunk and metaphysics, explores and upends the familiar trope of Mortal Chosen by the Gods.”