“The poems in Mike Allen’s latest book, Hungry Constellations, make a rowdy, red-tinged tapestry, representing twenty years of work from one of the major creative forces in this genre. These poems are physical, expansive, and revolutionary. They are grand and dystopic. They seethe with the conflict of opposites. Allen likes the destructive side of creation as much as the emergent side ... He writes about stars and legends and human beings contending with the monster-filled and glorious cosmos. He does it all with a relentless, energetic style, full of thought and invention.” —Star*Line The mutants of Wonderland threaten to smash through the looking glass as the river of Time overflows its banks. The King of Cats and the Queen of Wolves dance a duet across eons, alternately foes and lovers. Monstrous constellations come to life in the sky, hungry for people-filled worlds. Hungry Constellations, the newest poetry collection from Nebula Award finalist and three-time Rhysling Award winner Mike Allen, surveys two decades of mind-bending verse. Editor Dominik Parisien starts with poems drawn from Allen’s previous book-length collections, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead (2006) and The Journey to Kailash (2008), then concludes the triptych with a selection of new and previously uncollected pieces, which author, poet and editor Amal El-Mohtar calls Allen’s most ambitious work to date in her introduction. Cover artist Paula Arwen Friedlander (arwendesigns.net) adroitly illustrates the collection’s Rhysling Award-nominated title poem. Funded by a Kickstarter campaign, Hungry Constellations is Allen’s first poetry collection available in digital format. From the introduction by Amal El-Mohtar: “Let me tell you about Mike Allen’s poetry. This is a man who delights in breaking bodies: butchering, splitting, flaying, dismembering, then seeding landscapes with viscera until they too become bodies—bodies invaded, bodies stuffed, bodies contaminated. This is a man who carves words into and out of bodies, be they skin or sapphire, corpses or constellations. But somehow Allen skirts gore and clinical detachment both: there is a precision and an economy to his horror that’s reminiscent of clockwork, architecture, astronomy. Imagine a clock with bone-gears, a skin-tree growing liver-fruit, a ship knifing a face into the moon, and you’ll have something of a sense of what lies before you … Subterranean in conception and galactic in execution, this is a book of monsters.” Praise for Mike Allen's poetry: “Allen’s is poetry for goths of all ages … There is a long tradition of poetry dealing with the uncanny—think Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ or Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’—and it’s nice to see someone putting it to such use again. Allen’s poems … do a fine job of making the human scary and the scary human.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Mike Allen pours everything he’s got onto his poem-canvases. Mythologies, science-fiction scenarios, private memories and desires, and untestable ideas crowd and overlay one another upon the pages as if flung from an overloaded brush. Here is a vividly vertiginous collection of poems, all fun and mind-games.” —Fred Chappell “Mike Allen is a poetic Shiva, whirling his thousand limbs to snatch gold from thin air and create these epics-in-miniature, each with its own metallic sheen.” —Catherynne M. Valente “In the great tradition of Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin, Mike Allen shows us how science fiction poetry can do what all first-rate poetry does—rouse the imagination to venture into darkness and the unknown, there to discover old truths and new delights.” —R.H.W. Dillard

"Roxanity" is an extraordinary collection of poems. It covers most aspects of a young woman's life from an angle of simple common sense, and no getting lost in dark speculations. Each poem has a point of positivity, of vibrant life supporting energy, each poem is a confirmation that life is worth living, for it's own sake. The author gets her inspiration from every day beauty, the sky, clouds, rain, trees, and of course love between woman and man. Often the poems present, clarify and conclude, using no words of complication. Leaving the reader happier, and indeed confirmed in a higher degree of sanity. I denne samling sætter Roxana Bogdan opmærksomheden primært på kærlighed, forventninger, håb og overvindelse af tvivl og svaghed. Hun præsenterer digte skrevet over en 10-årig periode i overgangen fra ungdommen til voksenlivet. Den beskriver hendes søgen efter forståelse og formål med livet. Rigt, varieret og meget smukt håndværk. "Roxanity" indbefatter de enestående egenskaber der gør os til mennesker og formidler et budskab der er endegyldigt positivt.

An epic novel of genius and obsession — apocalyptic, lyrical and erotically charged. Spanning three centuries and two cultures, Hunger’s Brides brings to vivid life the greatest Spanish poet of her time, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and plumbs a mystery that has intrigued writers as diverse as Robert Graves, Diane Ackerman, Eduardo Galeano and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. Why did a writer of such gifts silence herself? At the time of her death in 1695, Juana Inés de la Cruz was arguably the greatest writer working in any European tongue, yet she had never set foot in Europe. Instead she was born among the descendants of the Aztec empire, in the shadow of the mountain pass Cortés and his troops descended on their advance to Montezuma’s capital. A child prodigy from a barbarous wilderness, her beauty and wit provoked a sensation at the viceregal court in Mexico City. But at the age of nineteen, still a favourite of the court, Juana entered a convent, and from that point her life unfolded between the mystery of her sudden flight from palace to cloister, and the enigma of her final vow of silence, signed in blood. After a quarter-century of graceful, often sensuous poetry, plays and theological argument, Sor Juana chose silence, which she maintained until she died of plague at the age of forty-five. Drawing on chronicles of the conquest and histories of the Inquisition, myth cycles and archeological studies, ancient poetry and early Spanish accounts of blood sacrifice, Hunger’s Brides is a mammoth work of inspired historical fiction framed in a contemporary mystery. In the dead of a Calgary winter night, a man escapes from an apartment in which a young woman lies bleeding — in his arms he clutches a box he has found on her table addressed to him. He is Donald Gregory, a once-respected, now-disgraced, academic. She is Beulah Limosneros, one of his students, and for a brief time his lover. Brilliant, erratic, voracious, she had disappeared two years earlier in Mexico, following the thread of her growing obsession with Sor Juana. Over the ensuing days and weeks, as a police investigation closes in around him, Gregory pieces together the contents of the box she has left him: a poetic journal of her travel in Mexico, diaries, research notes, unposted letters, and a strange manuscript — part biography, part novel — on Sor Juana. Hunger’s Brides is a dramatic unveiling of three intimate journeys: a man’s forced march to self-knowledge, a great poet’s withdrawal from the world, and a profane mystic’s pilgrimage into modern Mexico, in which the bones of the past constantly poke through a present built on the ruins of the vanquished. Excerpt from Hunger’s Brides “From the moment I was first illuminated by the light of reason, my inclination toward letters has been so vehement that not even the admonitions of others . . . nor my own meditations have been sufficient to cause me to forswear this natural impulse that God placed in me . . . that inclination exploded in me like gunpowder. . . .” —Sor Juana, in a letter of self-defence written to a bishop in 1691, just before she took a vow of silence

This book consists of 43 short fairy tales. This series of tales describes the 88 known constellations of our night sky.In the book the tales are collected and written by an astrologer, Lee. She travels across the world and presents people with her tales. These tales remind children and adults that the planet Earth with its inhabitants is just a little part of the universe. In these tales, people, birds, animals and scientific instruments are turned into the constellations. In each tale the good people, birds and animals understand one another. And only wicked creatures cannot live in harmony. The tales teach children to distinguish between good and evil.The author composed the tales on the basis of prehistoric megalithic culture to provoke the readers’ interest towards the history, archaeology and science equally with the interest towards astronomy and the beauty of the night sky. The book is suitable for older children and adults. There are many colour illustrations. This book contains the preface by Russian cosmonaut A. Soloviov.The book is illustrated by the author.

“Rich word choices and settings that blend speculative concepts with quotidian reality highlight this stellar anthology of prose and poetry from well-known editor Mike Allen (Clockwork Phoenix) and his wife and copublisher, Anita Allen ... This anthology is a winner from cover to cover.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review This new anthology from the creative team behind the critically-acclaimed Clockwork Phoenix series assembles beautiful poetry and strange prose from the first year of the digital journal Mythic Delirium. Funded by Kickstarter, this international gathering of writers spans cultures and blurs genres, showcasing work that, in the words of co-editor Mike Allen, "makes our notoriously offbeat Clockwork Phoenix seem like a product of the straight and narrow." With contributions from Marie Brennan, Ken Liu, Alexandra Seidel, Karthika Naïr, Sonya Taaffe, C.S.E. Cooney, S. Brackett Robertson, Amal El-Mohtar, Virginia M. Mohlere, Georgina Bruce, Patty Templeton, David Sklar, Liz Bourke, Jennifer Crow, Brittany Warman, Yoon Ha Lee, Brigitte N. McCray, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Kenneth Schneyer, Robert Davies, Lisa M. Bradley, Sandi Leibowitz, J.C. Runolfson, Christina Sng, Beth Cato, Rhonda Parrish, Cedar Sanderson, Yukimi Ogawa, Mari Ness, Lynette Mejía and Jane Yolen. Cover art by Hugo Award winner Galen Dara.

The book starts with a reference to Damon and Pythias, which in the Victorian age -- and apparently also into the first few decades of the 20th century, given this book's publication date -- was code for same-sex love. Here the love that dare not speak its name (but almost does, as is characteristic of Benson's work) is between Robin and his best buddy from (Eton and then) Cambridge. But the bond between the two young men is completely incidental to the main plot: in fact, as the story progresses, it turns out it is primarily about Robin's mother, the rather wonderful Lady Grote and how, when WW1 upsets her pleasure-seeking existence and demands something more of her, she manages to step up to the occasion. The book has excellent characterisation, and is beautifully written, with witty dialogue, lyrical descriptions of the natural world, and an ending a tad too edifying for modern sensibilities. (Aleardo Zanghellini)

2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best Anthology Contains “The Twice-Drowned Saint” by C.S.E. Cooney, 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best First Novel “With fiction from C.S.E Cooney, Jessica P. Wick, Amanda J. McGee, and Mike Allen, Mythic Delirium’s excellent new anthology, A Sinister Quartet, provides further evidence that long-form genre fiction is not just alive and well but thriving.” —Locus, Ian Mond “Mythic Delirium is one of the smaller presses which sustains our field . . . This is lovely and fascinating . . . Really fine work.” —Locus, Rich Horton "Easily one of the best things I've read this year . . . 'The Twice Drowned Saint' alone is worth five times the cost of the collection." —The Little Red Reviewer INCLUDES BONUS STORIES AND EXCERPTS AND NEW FULL COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS Behind the walls of an invulnerable city ruled by angels, old movies provide balm for the soul and a plan to escape risks grisly retribution. A princess discovers a passage to a nightmarish world of deception and blood-sealed enchantment. A woman who has lost everything meets a man of great wealth and ominous secrets. In a town haunted by tragedy, malevolent supernatural entities converge, and the conflict that ensues unleashes chaos. A Sinister Quartet gathers original long-form wonders and horrors composed in unusual keys, with a short novel by World Fantasy Award winner C. S. E. Cooney and a new novella from two-time World Fantasy Award finalist Mike Allen joined by debut novellas from rising talents Amanda J. McGee and Jessica P. Wick. All four offer immersions into strange, beautiful and frightening milieus.