Spring Bundle
Eight new books by Snuggly Books are now available for bundled order. Five of the titles are available in paperback only; three of the titles are available in both paperback, and limited edition hardcover. So there are two bundle offers—one for all paperback and one for three hardcovers and five paperbacks.
Please note, any books from our catalogue added to your bundle order will have no additional charges for shipping.
The special offer bundle titles are as follows:
1. Krakatit. A Novel, by Karel Čapek
Prokop is a scientist who has a passion for the chemistry of explosives; this passion flowers in the discovery of Krakatit, a new explosive infinitely more powerful than any previously known, an explosive capable of wrecking the world; the small box of Krakatit is stolen; Prokop, in a panic of fear lest his terrible discovery do irreparable harm to humankind, begins frantically to chase what faint clues he has.
“Krakatit is a book to own and not to borrow.” – The Central European Observer
“The book is an adventure story, a fantastic mystery tale; but fundamentally it is a tour de force, the literary representation of the idea of explosion.” – Time
“The story rushes on tearing wheels like a high power car.” – The Virginia Quarterly
“This is a highly explosive book and must be handled with the utmost care.” – The Slavonic Review
“Čapek’s dramatic instinct is unerring; he extracts from every situation an essence of terror, pity, or comedy that gives emotional significance to the smallest episode.” – Times Literary Supplement
Paperback: 316 pages. Release date: January 3, 2024
ISBN-13: 978–1–645251–50–7
Price paperback: US$23.00
2. The Blood-Guzzler and Other Stories, by Rachilde. Translated by Sue Boswell
Rachilde was the pseudonym employed by Marguerite Eymery (1860-1953). Though remembered today primarily for her novels, which include the Decadent masterpiece Monsieur Vénus, she was also an exceptional writer of short fiction.
The current volume, adeptly translated by Sue Boswell, brings together six of her short stories, none of which have previously appeared in English. This array of strange, Symbolist tales, sometimes brutal, always bizarre, strikes with a deep psychological power and deft artistry.
The work of a true genius, “The Blood-Guzzler and Other Stories” is an important addition to the writings of the Queen of Decadence available in English.
About the Author
“Rachilde” was the pen name of Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (1860–1953), one of the most important writers of the Decadent Movement. Her works include the novels Monsieur Vénus (1884), and The Princess of Darkness (1895), the latter book being written under the pseudonym Jean de Chilra. She also wrote a 1928 monograph on gender identity, Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe (“Why I am not a Feminist”).
About the Translator
Sue Boswell studied French Language and Literature at UCL and for a time taught French at Goldsmiths University of London. She then moved into university administration, specialising in university external relations and communications. Later she became a translator for the Wiener Holocaust Library. Her translations include The Assassins and other Stories by Marcel Schwob and The Last Train by Arnaud Rykner (both Snuggly Books 2020). Sue lives with her husband, Colin Boswell, in London and Ouveillan, a village near Narbonne in the Languedoc.
Paperback, 126 pages. Release date: 12 March, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-143-9
Price paperback: US$16.00
Hardcover, 128 pages
Release date: 12 March, 2024
Price hardcover: US$30.00
3. The Demon of the Absurd, by Rachilde. Translated by Shawn Garrett
There is no other reality than things invented by an inimitable imagination. Everything else is foolishness or error. . . . If Rachilde is the only one to be frightened by mirrors, to contemplate in the glory of the sunset or the hermetic castle where she will never enter, to experience the pangs of death for a pulled tooth, it is because she sees further than we. The master of the absurd has entered our bodies, according to Jesus’ permission, and our sight has become obscured. If Rachilde’ s tales seem absurd to the demon named “Legion,” we can be sure that they contain an invaluable part of the truth.
Thus wrote Marcel Schwob in his introduction to Rachilde’ s classic collection of Decadent stories, The Demon of the Absurd, first published in 1894 and here presented for the first time in English, in a translation by Shawn Garrett.
These tales and pièces de théâtre, uniting tragedy and comedy, horror and deep mystery, in their sum total, represent a major work by the Queen of Decadence.
About the Author
“Rachilde” was the pen name of Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (1860–1953), one of the most important writers of the Decadent Movement. Her most famous work includes the novels Monsieur Vénus (1884), La Marquisede Sade (1887), and La Jongleuse (1900). She also wrote a 1928 monograph on gender identity, Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe (“Why I am not a Feminist”).
About the Translator
Shawn Garrett is a freelance editor, critic and short fiction aficionado. He currently co-edits the horror fiction podcast Pseudopod and posts weekly columns with Rue Morgue. His translations include Robert Scheffer’ s Prince Narcissus and Other Stories (Snuggly Books, 2019), and Gabriel Mourey’ s Monada (Snuggly Books, 2021).
Paperback, 142 pages. Release date: May 7, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-151-4
Price paperback: US$17.00
Hardcover, 144 pages. Release date: May 7, 2024
Price hardcover: US$ 30.00
4. Horror! Horror! Horror! Three Tales, by Edith Olivier
Edith Olivier (1872-1948), though chiefly remembered for her fantasy masterpiece The Love Child (1927), was also the author of a number of other works, including three horror stories, written in 1934-1935, which are gathered together here for the first time.
These fine British tales of terror, uneasy, ghastly, and sometimes even gruesome, mark Olivier, despite her limited output, as one of the genre’s unsung adepts.
Paperback, 126 pages. Release date: 19 February, 2024
ISBN-13: 978–1–645251–52–1
Price paperback: US$11.00
5. Me and My King, by Arnaud Rykner. Translated by Sue Boswell
“My king is so far away. It would perhaps be best if I kept quiet. But silence means nothing to him. He wants words. Perhaps that’s why I talk. That’s perhaps the only reason. The only reason for my words is that it’s him I’m talking to.”
Here, presented for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Sue Boswell, is Arnaud Rykner’ s first novel, “Me and My King”.
Behind a bolted door, a voice is talking to itself and talking to its king, he who has explained to it the universe, the stars, but also those who have been hanged, the crows, the giants, hell. In this kingdom of four walls, the space where it’s confined, where its pain reigns, the small voice soliloquises unceasingly at this other loved and hated being. A chatty voice, perpetually fighting against the void and the silence, words woven together, sung, without echo.
To each his prison, to each his king.
About the Author
Arnaud Rykner is a writer and academic. He has published eight novels, several of which have appeared in paperback including “Le Wagon” which won the Jean d’ Heurs prize for historical fiction in 2011. He is a Professor and Director of Research at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, and has also authored a dozen essays and edited many collected works. As a theatrical producer he has notably put on the works of Nathalie Sarraute, Maurice Maeterlinck and Bernard-Marie Koltès. He is a Visiting Professor at Rutgers University and a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Durham.
About the Translator
Sue Boswell studied French Language and Literature at UCL and for a time taught French at Goldsmiths University of London. She then moved into university administration, specialising in external relations and communications. Later she became a translator for the Wiener Holocaust Library, and translated Arnaud Rykner’ s novel Le Wagon as The Last Train (Snuggly Books, 2020). Her other translations include Marcel Schwob’ s The Assassins and other Stories, Ilarie Voronca’ s The Confession of a False Soul and with her husband, Colin Boswell, Gustave Kahn’ s The Mad King, also for Snuggly Books
Paperback, 106 pages. Release date: January 12, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-142-2
Price paperback: US$14.00
6. The Complete Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson, edited by by Ruth Derham and Sarah Green
Lionel Johnson, Decadent poet and critic, was one of the leading voices of the British 1890s. When he died suddenly at the age of 35, his old school friend Frank Russell—brother to Bertrand Russell and by then a radical member of the House of Lords—published a series of Johnson’s early letters as “Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson (1919)”.
Carefully edited and anonymized, Russell claimed that these letters showed ‘the true Lionel’, rather than the ‘later genius’, to be a ‘loving, suffering man, burning with zeal to help and comfort his fellow-sufferers in the world’. But why were the correspondents anonymized? What was missing from those edited sections? Were there aspects of the friendship Russell wished to conceal?
This new edition, edited by historian Ruth Derham and scholar Sarah Green, restores for the first time the full text of Johnson’s Winchester Letters from the recently discovered originals. Instead of pronouncements from a young prophet, these letters reveal something altogether more human, as four young men navigate some of the biggest questions of their day. Was religion still possible or desirable? Did sin still exist? And when did love of one’s friends become something more?
About the Editors
Ruth Derham is a biographer and social historian whose work has centred on Victorian attitudes to marriage and divorce. Her first book, Bertrand’s Brother: The Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours of Frank, 2nd Earl Russell—a biography of the original editor and recipient of Lionel Johnson’s Winchester Letters—was published in 2021; and her second, Decadent Divorce: Scandal and Sensation in Victorian Britain, is due for publication in 2024.
Sarah Green is a scholar specialising in the literature of the 1890s. Her monograph, Sexual Continence and Aesthetic Experience in Victorian Literary Decadence, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, and explored the work of Walter Pater, Lionel Johnson, Vernon Lee, and George Moore. She has also published on the work of J. M. Barrie and is particularly interested in the history of sexuality and sexual health. She lives in Cambridge, UK.
Paperback, 296 pages. Release date: March 5, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-140-8
Price paperback: US$23.00
7. The Memoirs of Maxim Odin, by Charles Nodier. Translated by Brian Stableford
In 1831 Charles Nodier began to publish a series of “Extraits des mémoires de Maxime Odin”*in the Revue de Paris. Although “Odin” is an anagram of the first four letters of Nodier, the relationship between the author and “Maxime Odin” is far more complicated than a simple transfiguration, and although all the stories in the present collection are entirely fictitious, the intensity of the author’s imaginative involvement with them should not be underestimated.
The Memoirs of Maxime Odin,** presented here for the first time in English, in a magnificent translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the great works of French romanticism-exquisite, entertaining and touching, this is a masterpiece, the arrival of which has been long overdue in the English speaking world.
About the Author
Charles Nodier (1780-1844) was one of the pioneers of French Romantic prose; his salon at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, begun in 1824 and known as Le Cénacle, brought together many of the key figures in the Movement and spun off other cénacles in which it was anchored, including Victor Hugo’s. His best work consists of short stories and novellas.
About the Translator
Brian Stableford has been writing for fifty years. His fiction includes include eleven novels and seven short story collections in a series of “tales of the biotech revolution”; a series of metaphysical fantasies set in Paris in the 1840s, featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin, most recently Yesterday Never Dies (2012); and a series of supernatural mysteries set in an artist’s colony, most recently The Pool of Mnemosyne (2018). Recent novels independent of any series include Vampires of Atlantis (2016) and The Tangled Web of Time (2016). He also translates antique works from the French, with particular interests in the Symbolist and Decadent Movements, roman scientifique and the fantastique.
Paperback, 381 pages. Release date: April 2, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-149-1
Price paperback: US$24.00
8. The Viridian Book of Occult Fiction, edited by Brendan Connell
The Viridian Book of Occult Fiction, the fifth volume of the books of occult fiction of many colors, brings together twenty-two tales, dating from 1824-1917, from the American occult revival.
Tracing the history of the occult fiction of the United States from its beginnings, with writers such as Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe, the book marches forth through the mystical texts of occultists like Paschal Beverly Randolph, Freeman B. Dowd, and Belle M. Wagner, the scribe of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, into the first part of the twentieth century, where Blanche Cromartie and Max Heindel, of the Rosicrucian Fellowship, spin their astrological magic.
Containing a diverse and splendid assortment of stories, about mysterious initiations and magnetism, hierophants and soul-transfers, The Viridian Book of Occult Fiction, edited by Brendan Connell, who also supplies a fine, erudite introduction, is an indispensable addition to any library of the supernatural and occult.
About the Editor
BRENDAN CONNELL was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1970. He has had fiction published in numerous places, including McSweeney’s, Adbusters, and the World Fantasy Award winning anthologies Leviathan 3 (The Ministry of Whimsy 2002), and Strange Tales (Tartarus Press 2003). His works of fiction include Unpleasant Tales (Eibonvale Press, 2013), The Architect (PS Publishing, 2012), Lives of Notorious Cooks (Chômu Press, 2012), Miss Homicide Plays the Flute (Eibonvale Press, 2013), Cannibals of West Papua (Zagava, 2015), Jottings from a Far Away Place (Snuggly Books, 2015), and Against the Grain Again: The Further Adventures of Des Esseintes (Tartarus Press, 2021).
As editor he has worked on various projects, including The Neo-Decadent Cookbook (Eibonvale Press, 2020), which was co-edited by Justin Isis.
Paperback, 342 pages. Release date: April 2, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-141-5
Price paperback: US$24.00
Hardcover, 344 pages
Release date: April 2, 2024
Price hardcover: US$36.00
OFFER N. 1 – SPRING 2024 BUNDLE – ALL EIGHT BOOKS IN PAPERBACK
OFFER N. 1 UK/USA/AUSTRALIA: US$ 121
OFFER N. 1 ALL OTHER COUNTRIES: US$ 131
OFFER N. 2 – SPRING 2024 BUNDLE – FIVE PAPERBACKS AND THREE HARDCOVERS
OFFER N. 2 UK/USA/AUSTRALIA: US$ 152
OFFER N. 2 ALL OTHER COUNTRIES: US$ 162