The Spider Tapestries

“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 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.” More praise for The Spider Tapestries “Elegant language and surrealistic themes defy genre and moral expectations in the weird and transgressive stories found in this collection... Allen’s pairing of individualistic suffering and cosmic hugeness evokes a lyrical friction between dread and wonder.” ­— Publishers Weekly “The seven stories in this slim collection range from dark fantasy to sf to horror—sometimes all within one tale. There are enough spiders here to make an arachnophobe go into hysterics, but they are not the only ones spinning webs ... Allen weaves intriguing connections among his tales, applying dizzying, sensual images.” ­— Library Journal “The aptly named Spider Tapestries forms a stunning picture that is equal parts darkness and light . . . a whirlwind tour through worlds of decadent fantasy, noir-touched future-weird, and elegant horror. Mike Allen offers up intricate mythologies that feel real and lived in, rich-detailed stories for readers to immerse themselves in, and from which they will emerge changed. The stories feel epic in scope, from an assassin climbing through the clockwork gears of the world to rescue a goddess in a cage, to an AI moving through bodies and networks to gather up and reassemble the pieces of his lost love. Allen takes readers on a journey through years and worlds, all in the space of a few pages.” —A.C. Wise, author of The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again “There was a time before the marketplace sliced our wild fantastic literature into bite sized chunks, a time when visions could be astounding, amazing, and weird all at once, a time when Clark Ashton Smith could mainline a Thousand and One Nights into million-colored suns. Now comes Mike Allen, shredding raw that scar-woven shroud between then, now, and infinity, releasing hallucinatory torrents of jewel-encrusted erotic transhumanism with the intensity of a quasar and stripping bare the secret wheels and cogs of the universe beside those lovers who would destroy them.” —Scott Nicolay, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Do You Like to Look at Monsters? “Mike Allen, among the most dynamic of contemporary fantasists, habitually upends Lovecraftian tropes with his own brand of cosmic horror.” —Laird Barron, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of X’s for Eyes

Louise Bourgeois' tapestry and needlepoint work deals with reparation in both a literal and metaphorical sense. In many of the works, fragmented tapestries are pieced together and repaired to create new sculptural forms. The recurring practices of weaving, stitching and mending express Bourgeois' identification with her childhood and the family business of tapestry restoration. Coupled with the medium of tapestry, Bourgeois' recurring motif of the spider symbolizes her mother, a weaver, and fully explores the complex relationship between mother and child. This publication includes archival photographs and facsimile documents from the Bourgeois family archive, as well as excerpts from the artist's psychoanalytical writings.

"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." More praise for THE SPIDER TAPESTRIES: "The aptly named SPIDER TAPESTRIES forms a stunning picture that is equal parts darkness and light . . . a whirlwind tour through worlds of decadent fantasy, noir-touched future-weird, and elegant horror." -A.C. Wise, author of THE ULTRA FABULOUS GLITTER SQUADRON SAVES THE WORLD AGAIN "Mike Allen, among the most dynamic of contemporary fantasists, habitually upends Lovecraftian tropes with his own brand of cosmic horror." -Laird Barron, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of X'S FOR EYES

Award-winning creators, Amy Novesky and Isabelle Arsenault, present a picture book biography of a beloved artist in Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois. Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) was a world-renowned modern artist noted for her sculptures made of wood, steel, stone, and cast rubber. Her most famous spider sculpture, Maman, stands more than 30 feet high. Just as spiders spin and repair their webs, Louise’s own mother was a weaver of tapestries. Louise spent her childhood in France as an apprentice to her mother before she became a tapestry artist herself. She worked with fabric throughout her career, and this biographical picture book shows how Bourgeois’s childhood experiences weaving with her loving, nurturing mother provided the inspiration for her most famous works. With a beautifully nuanced and poetic story, this book stunningly captures the relationship between mother and daughter and illuminates how memories are woven into us all. “With evocative, gorgeous illustrations and an inspirational story of an artist not often covered in children’s literature, this arresting volume is an excellent addition to nonfiction picture book collections, particularly those lacking titles about women artists.” —Booklist, starred review

This book of poetry—written by a retired university professor who was deafened during childhood—reveals the challenges, defeats, and triumphs of living in a world that often ignores those who live and struggle in silence and who are cut off from access to communication and information. Filled with words of longing, poignancy, resiliency, spirituality, and love, the author uses a tapestry as a metaphor to illustrate how all those challenges have come to be woven into one whole fabric of a meaningful life.

Financial Times Book of the Year The extraordinary artist, the spider woman, the intellectual, the rebel, the sly enchantress, and the “good girl” sing together in this exuberant, lithe text beautifully translated by Cole Swensen. This brilliant portrait of the renowned artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) shows a woman who was devoted to her art and whose life was also that of her century. The art world’s grande dame and its shameless old lady, spinning personal history into works of profound strangeness, speaks with her characteristic insolence and wit, through a most discreet, masterful writer. From her childhood in France to her exile and adult life in America, to her death, this phosphorescent novella describes Bourgeois’s inner life as only one artist regarding another can. Included as an afterword is Frémon’s essay about his own “portrait writing” and how he came to know and work with Louise Bourgeois.

This romantic rouse crosses the Pond from Ireland to America. It's 1985. Rich American Businessman Bradford Thompson is at Dublin's Trinity College to interpret the message of The Book of Kells. When he collides with Mary Grace Clooney, she turnes his world upside down and inside out. A twist of fate? Perhaps. Bradford, enraptured with the young girls's Irish seductiveness, needs to bring Mary Grace to America as his mistress. But Mary Grace has a secret scheme of her own... Has Bradford fallen into her trap? This Dublin game player is blessed with gypsy power, clever allies, and the guidance of her Grandmum Clooney, who spouts Irish wit and Irish warnings. When Mary Grace threatens Bradford's world, the game turns vicious. These prime players will stop at nothing to triumph. But alas! There can only be one winner left dancing!

The world is at the brink of ruin . . . or is it salvation? Astaroth has been weakened, and the demon Prusias is taking full advantage of the situation to create an empire of his own. His formidable armies are on the move, and Rowan is in their sights. Rowan must rely on Max McDaniels and David Menlo and hope that their combined powers can stop Prusias's war machine before it's too late. But even as perils loom, danger stalks their every move. Someone has marked Max for death and no one is above suspicion. Should the assassins succeed, Rowan's fate may depend on little Mina whose abilities are prodigious but largely untested. And where is Astaroth? Has he fled this world or is he biding his time, awaiting his next opportunity? In the Tapestry's fourth book, author-illustrator Henry H. Neff boldly raises the stakes in an epic tale of mankind's struggle to survive in a world now populated by demons and demigods and everything in between!

We will embark upon a fascinating study through the first book of Samuel. Along the way God in His amazing splendor will reveal His beautiful tapestry of time and eternity. We will learn how each of us can find God's purpose for our own lives. This journey will take us through the adventures of kings and fugitives, the bloodshed and heart ache of the innocent, the victories of the mighty and the love of the loyal. There are kingdoms to conquer and hearts to be stolen all in this study before us.