“[A] delightful mishmash of quotations, digressions, obscure facts, arcane anecdotes and playful romps.”   – Literary Review

Why do we collect? Is it to rescue objects from oblivion? Is it a kind of desire-or even a kind of madness?

Robert Irwin-novelist, historian, translator, collector-was a true original; a virtuoso thinker who combined encyclopaedic knowledge with boundless curiosity. In this ‘mosaic of fiction, philosophy, sociology, biography and autobiography’ he takes us on a wayward journey through the art of collecting, and his own intellectual passions.

Drawing on  a treasure-trove of literary references from writers including Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, Iris Murdoch and Georges Perec, as well as a host of lesser-known geniuses, flaneurs, obsessives and eccentrics, Irwin explores everything from mysticism to nostalgia, psychology to propaganda, classical antiquity to surrealism, dreams to death. We join Thomas De Quincey on a night mail coach, encounter the man who set out to acquire every stamp ever issued, enter the shadowlands of long-vanished kingdoms and the badlands of fakes and forgeries, all in the company of a uniquely brilliant mind.

This is a  one-of-a-kind  book of wonders; of labyrinthine digressions, good humour and a ‘delight in small things’. It is a satisfying and unforgettable meditation on the stuff of life.

“Maria Turtschaninoff has no equal when it comes to diving deep into the spirit of an era”  – Le Monde des Livres

Prize-winning author Maria Turtschaninoff delivers a mesmeric tale of nature, history and hope. Filled with fantasy, magic and a deep love of human connection, Tangled Roots is an epic, passionate story of survival.

An old soldier retires and is given a plot of land deep in the Finnish forest, as pension for his years of faithful service to the crown. Here, he carves a secluded croft and calls it home, but try as he might to tame the land, its wild magic endures.

From this 17th-century beginning comes centuries of his descendants who will continue work the farm, through days of plenty and famine, love and war, their fates entangled with the rhythms of the ancient wilderness, where mysterious shapes flit between the trees and danger lurks in the treacherous fen…

Like dragonflies darting over the marsh, their lives glimmer briefly and then are gone: a young girl entranced by the forest folk, a faithless fiancé who meets his match beneath the age-old branches, a farmhand with a strange obsession….

What endures is the wild landscape and its secrets. This place holds the certainty that wherever we put down roots, the land will grow roots in us too.

“?For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake.” – Attributed to Hildred Castaigne, narrator of “The Repairer of Reputations.”

The weird tales in this slim volume are all linked by a play, the second act of which reveals truths so terrible and beautiful that it drives all who read it to despair: The King in Yellow.

I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon . . . I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth-a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.

These four macabre, uncanny, and unsettling stories are some of the most thrilling ever written in the field of weird fiction, exploring themes of the supernatural, spirituality, and the potentially corrosive influence of belief in the afterlife. Since their first publication in 1895, they have become a cult classic, influencing everyone from the renowned master of cosmic horror, H.P Lovecraft,  to the creators of  HBO’s True Detective.