Short Story Collection: The Museum of Shadows and Reflections, by Claire Dean

It is with great pleasure that we announce the publication of the newest book in our mythic arts series: The Museum of Shadows and Reflections by Claire Dean is a strange, troubling, and chillingly beautiful collection of fourteen short stories, with equally haunting illustrations by Laura Rae. This is an unnumbered, limited edition hardback. We are accepting pre-orders for this edition from now through 24 November 2016, and we will only print as many copies as have been ordered.

These stories interweave the shadows of myth and folktale with the voices of people who are marginalised and isolated: elders and new mums, cleaning ladies and gardeners, children and caregivers. Dean writes with deep empathy but relentless insight, and her fierce, tough magic is captured with exquisite force in Rae’s line drawings.This is a truly special collection in a beautiful edition, by a powerfully talented voice in mythic arts and in modern short stories. It’s a one-of-a kind book—so if you want one, pre-order fast.

Here’s what some people who’ve read The Museum of Shadows and Reflections are saying about it:

Claire Dean’s short stories are disturbingly and darkly beautiful. They speak of transformations both physical and of the psyche, with the coruscating logic of Wonderland and fairy tales. Not to be missed.

—Jane Yolen, author of Briar Rose, The Devil’s Arithmetic,
and the Nebula Award-winning Sister Emily’s Lightship

Wonderfully told stories of flight and flood, of limitation and transformation, where the commonplace is uncanny, the strange unexceptional, and myth and folklore wash in with the waves. Dean’s stories are meticulous explorations of the quotidian and the uncanny, in turn foreboding and life-affirming.

—Carys Bray, author of the Costa shortlisted A Song for Issy Bradley

You can pre-order your copy at our ‘Books & Periodicals’ tab, above, or by clicking the PayPal button below the blurb:

Sometimes, we decide to try and live without our shadows. Sometimes we slip into someone else’s and live in their shape for a while. But try as we might, the old shadows linger. They’ve grown dusty, perhaps, brittle and faded, but look there—straggling out behind you and before you—the shadows of every shape you ever were, or once hoped to be. And when a new shape grows too heavy, when it gnaws holes in you or binds you, when your feathers fall to the carpet or the sand drags you underground, all your old shadows are still there… waiting.

A hauntingly powerful new voice in British fiction, this highly anticipated short story collection from Claire Dean showcases fourteen stories of wonder and memory, wind and water, metamorphosis and regret.

The Museum of Shadows and Reflections
Claire Dean
128 pages
ISBN 978-1-907881-49-7
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder

Pre-orders are now closed.