Books published by Arachne Press

How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager) explores, exploits, and sometimes downright twists the major arcana and the meanings they have accumulated, in the order in which the many hundreds of tarot decks now travelling the world present them. The Star, connoting hope, exists simultaneously as metaphor and feral dog; the rebirth nestled inside the Death card becomes female friendship and escape from patriarchal binds.

Poems that arise from Claire Booker's relationship to the East Sussex coastal, downlands and urban environments. Encounters on buses, streets, scarp slopes, sea shore, town, village, fishing boats and dream-scapes with an ecological edge.

On a wasted island in perpetual sun, the Father practices magic, laments his lost kingdom and commands a ragtag army of three: the passionate and damaged Daughter, the winged Spirit and an indigenous being known only as C. Behind their uniforms - white suits and full-face paper masks - the soldiers seethe with rebellion. The arrival of the Boy, a hapless prince, and the Brother, the Father's rival, unleashes desire, betrayal, insanity and revenge - all of it witnessed by an irate sea.Paper Crusade is a bold reinvention of Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. Michelle Penn's vivid imagery and startling, sensual language create an unforgettable dystopia for our own time.

London 1988: Agata grew up in post-war Prague and believes that her mother was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.But not everyone died. Agata's search for her 'lost' family, set against the background of revolutions in Eastern Europe, threatens to tear apart not only the family she already has, but her own identity.

Fifty poems by Welsh poets celebrating the A470. Originaly written in Welsh or English, every poem has been translated into the other language and set out side by side as we travel the length of the country.

Stories and poems that respond to the floods and droughts and fires all around the globe caused by climate change with tenderness, compassion, fear, grief and rage. Gaia is represented in all ther power and glory, and butterflies and plants sow seeds of hope.

UK authors from the Black and Asian ( and Chinese and Malay, and Latinx and Arab) communities give their responses to maps, and mapping. Stories and poems of finding oneself and getting lost, colonialism and diaspora, childhood exploration and adult homecoming.

Set in Cornwall, coastal errosion and flooding take on a near mythical power as the short stories in this collection weave in and out of the recent past and near future, as lives and relationships ebb and flow with the tide. From one maritime tragedy to another, the community, and three generations of women from the same family, struggle with their over-close affinity for the sea.

When Rob Walton went into lockdown, he didn't know that he would also go into mourning. Here he writes about the life and death of his dad, and how sadness seeped into various aspects of his life. He also manages to find cheap laughs, digs at the government, celebrations of the young and old, unashamed sentimentality and suddenly disarming moments of tenderness.

A man carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of his shirt. During World War II, a young soldier searches the houses and barns of the families with whom he grew up. An astronaut wonders whether she can adapt to life back on earth. In her second collection of short fiction, 100neHundred, Laura Besley explores a kaleidoscope of emotions through 100 stories of exactly 100 words.

"e;You have to understand,"e; says the woman, "e;an incorcism is nothing like its counterpart. No bells and whistles, no drama. All it takes is willingness, which you already have in spades."e; Strange stories about strange things for strange people. Tales of possession and obsession. Of destruction and restoration. Of the demons we hold inside us, and those we leave behind in others. An odd apocalypse freezes a supermarket on Mother's Day, a vanished village holds an ancient curse, an abandoned ice cream van tears a street apart. Rival rainbow setters, the woman who sowed a crop of elephants in her garden, and what happens if you keep on turning the clocks back. Perhaps you had a demon then lost it. Do you miss it? Our time here is brief and so are these curious fables. But the smallest of splinters are the hardest to dig out. Come and be snagged. Come, be unsettled. To be strange is to be human.

For Solstice Shorts Festival 2020, Writers respond or react to, or are inspired by, a sixteenth century poem: Robert Southwell's Tymes Goe by Turnes.

Stories and poems of immigration/emigration, making a living on and beside the water with an historical slant.

As part of our celebrations of the centenary of some British Women getting the vote, a showcase for five authors Arachne Press has published previously in anthologies, giving a wider perspective on their writing with five stories each. The collection as a whole has a tendency towards fantasy and magical realism, with unforgiving reality tempered with warmth in Guatemala in Cassandra Passarelli's (Liberty Tales) stories of overweight truckers, pregnant teenagers, pilgrimages, stolen children and stolen toys.Katy Darby's (London Lies, Stations, Shortest Day, Longest Night) SF and historical stories - future where hygiene is everything, an historical murder, a spectacularly disturbing bedtime story, an inconvenient 'miracle' and an illicit meeting.Joan Taylor-Rowan's (London Lies, Lover's Lies, Stations) acid humour and modern desperation as characters make new lives 'Down From London', or as stowaways in a central London Department store.Sarah James' (Longest Day, Shortest Night; Vindication) elliptical poet's sensibility of Elegant twists and restraint brought to flash fiction.Helen Morris' (Liberty Tales, Solstice Shorts) ability to get to the heart of a story, with wide-ranging emotional rollercoasters of trolls outwitted, drunken boat trips, world domination and the heart ripped out of a family to make you laugh out loud or weep inconsolably.Each of these writers has featured in Arachne Press anthologies. We liked their work so much we asked them to send more. This is the result.

Stories and poems about leaving, and being left behind; or that take an unexpected turn, going completely off piste. From authors featured at The Story Sessions, the South London live literature evening. Stories from Emily Bullock, David Steward, Helen Morris, Nic Ridley, Barbara Renel, Carolyn Eden, Cherry Potts, VG Lee, Liam Hogan, Becky Ros, Joan Taylor-Rowan, David Mathews, Sarah Lawson, Oscar Windsor-Smith and Zoe Brigley. Poems from Kate Foley, Gloria Sanders, Nancy Charley, Joy Howard, Math Jones and Elinor Brooks.

Everyone thinks of noon as being a split second as the clock's hands draw together, the bell tolls twelve times - but there is so much more to it than that - Solar noon happens as much as half an hour either side of what the clock tells you, deadlines are met, or passed, shadows vanish, vampires hide - or do they? Stories and Poems from 2018's Solstice Shorts festival, read live in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Ynys Mon, Carlisle, London and Cork on the stroke of... or nearly, Noon.Featuring stories from: Barbara Renel, Clare Shaw, Diana Powell, Elaine Hughes, Karen Ankers, Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier, Liam Hogan, Lily Peters, Marka Rifat, Patience Mackarness, Roppotucha Greenberg, & Su Yin Yap.And poems from: Alison Gerhard, Alison Lock, Anne Elizabeth Bevan, Catriona Yule, Elinor Brooks, Gareth Culshaw, Graham Burchell, Ian Grosz, Jane Aldous, Laila Sumpton, Mandy MacDonald, Marika Josef, Michelle Penn, Natalie Gasper, Ness Owen, Nicholas McGaughey, Patricia McCaw, Paul Foy, Sara Elgerot, Stuart MacKenzie & Susan Cartwright-Smith.

The third of our #WomenVote100 Anthologies: a showcase for poets Arachne has previously published in anthologies, giving an opportunity to explore their writing in greater depth.These are poems made of myth and family, origins and anger, journeys and home: witty, clever, beautiful and sometimes harsh.Whilst not directly reflecting on the experience of women fighting for the vote, the concerns of women are foremost and are passionately addressed. My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, as if they were in perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.From Vindication by Anne Macaulay, a found poem based on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft.Poems by: Sarah James, Sarah Lawson, Jill Sharp, Elinor Brooks, Adrienne Silcock, and Anne Macaulay.Edited by Cherry Potts.