We craft and tell stories because we’ve stood on the uncertain edge between the waking world and our imagination, between enchantment and fear. And we remember other stories that help us build our own stories, scraps of lumber and fragments of narrative we gather together to make stories for ourselves.

Books & Periodicals

Unsettling Wonder Issue 6
156 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-907881-74-9
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder
Purchase at one of these sellers:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

How can we tell if we desire anything? And, if we desire, is it our own self doing the desiring or something other—a flash of neurons, a memory of past life, the divine will. Karma. Predestination. Kismet. The oldest and darkest stories dare to ponder this question: Can we ever really know why anything happens in life?

This issue of Unsettling Wonder spins new stories to ask that old question, and challenge the ways we think we know the answer. Two djinn meet in a Glasgow bar to kvetch about the world’s fortunes. A Caribbean grandmother leads her family into the stewpot. Cinderella’s coachman recalls his life as a rat. A banshee strikes a devil’s bargain. Featuring work by Kirsty Logan, Jack Butler, Katherine Langrish, Ioulia Kolovou, and many others, Tales of Kismet is a beautiful, haunting collection on the caprices of fate.


The Museum of Shadows and ReflectionsThe Museum of Shadows and Reflections
Claire Dean
128 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-907881-61-9
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder
Purchase at one of these sellers:
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com

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.


Unsettling Wonder Issue 5Unsettling Wonder Issue 5
106 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-907881-60-2
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder
Out of Print.

Anyone who’s cared for a child knows the sudden choke of fear, that sudden need to lean tense and breathless over the cradle to just listen—is the child still breathing? Is their small heart still beating? Is this fragile, feeble young thing still safe in the night? Or have they—somehow—been changed? The oldest, darkest stories give a name to that fear—the instinctive, protective fear that someone, something, some shadow stalks by night to steal away the children: Lamia. Nian. Red Mother. Changeling.

This long-anticipated issue of Unsettling Wonder delves into the ancient folk motif of the changeling. Babies stolen from cradles, patients stolen from hospitals, objects stolen from kitchens, mothers stolen from families, and in their place something that looks the same but ever-so-slightly wrong. Has the familiar become strange, or has the strange become familiar? Twelve newly commissioned stories, interviews, and artworks from around the world draw from diverse languages and folk traditions to articulate that haunting, night-terror idea: even the ones we love most might be changed.


Unsettling Wonder 2.1Unsettling Wonder Vol. 2 Issue 1
64 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-907881-59-6
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder
Out of Print.

A little girl accidentally turns the sky to lemonade. A fragile witch tries to make a child out of wood. An armchair creaks with the magic of a thousand stories. And did you know Fibonacci designed a velodrome? Never mind rings and swords: here are unexpected objects cracking with magic of their own, full of laughter and fear and loneliness and just plain curiosity. This issue is a celebration of the puzzling, tickling wonder of ordinary things, asking the bewildered question “Why Would Anyone Enchant That?” Surprising answers from Jane Yolen, Sierra July, Sharon Dodge, Katherine Langrish, Maureen Bowden, Benjamin Darnell, and Sarah Ann Winn, with photography by Thomas Brauer. Cover design by Laura Rae.


Unsettling Wonder Volume 1Unsettling Wonder Volume 1
192 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-907881-58-9
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder
Out of Print.

All three issues of Unsettling Wonder Vol. 1, bound in a single cover: ‘Wonder Voyages’, ‘Wise Fools’, and ‘Fairy Brides’. An entrancing, haunting journey through fairy tales old and new. We craft and tell stories because we’ve stood on the uncertain edge between the waking world and our imagination, between enchantment and fear. And we remember other stories that help us build our own stories, scraps of lumber and fragments of narrative we gather together to make stories for ourselves. Unsettling Wonder is about going back to that place, that troubling, entrancing glimpse into story. We want to tell these tales, not as deconstruction or subversion, not as nostalgia or sentiment, but in the same way these stories have always been told—spun out and re-imagined by the tale-teller in the moment of telling, for the ones who hear it.


Sister Fox's Field Guide to the Writing LifeSister Fox’s Field Guide to the Writing Life
Jane Yolen
96 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-907881-54-1
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder
Purchase at one of these sellers:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
The Book Depository

Sister Fox knows so many secrets: why the chickadee sings in the lilac bush, where the best places are to bark at the moon, and how to see an owl on a winter night. Sister Fox even knows the secret of how to catch poems and stories. She knows how to tell from their plumage where poems are coming from and where they might be heading. She’s learned through long practice when to chase her tail and when to scan the sky for a song. And in this book, Sister Fox will whisper those secrets to you—if you believe her.

Bestselling author Jane Yolen brings us this delightful new collection of poems on the art and craft of writing. Sometimes whimsical, often amusing, and always a wonder and a delight, Sister Fox’s Field Guide to the Writing Life showcases Yolen at her finest poetic form, ably complimented by Laura Rae’s sensitive illustrations. From the goodhumoured, earthy wisdom of “The Muse Speaks,” to the snappish introspection of “Keep on Singing,” to the sparkling magic of “The Storyteller,” these are poems that enchant and dazzle and amuse. They linger in the mind and colour the imagination long after Sister Fox has closed the book. This is a collection no writer, poet, or lover of words should be without.


Seven Ways to Prune a GrapefruitSeven Ways to Prune a Grapefruit
Johnny Wink
64 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-907881-5-34
Papaveria Press/Unsettling Wonder
Purchase at one of these sellers:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
The Book Depository

Seven Ways to Prune a Grapefruit is the long-awaited second collection from literary provocateur Johnny Wink. With three dozen poems spanning three decades, the collection showcases Wink’s comitragic wit and restless, inventive genius. Poems such as ‘Great Gray Moles’, ‘Learning to Read’, and ‘Poem That Some Think Should Be Entitled “Generic Joke”’ deploy clandestine erudition and cunning wordplay to confront aging, education, sex, death, and other riddles of the human condition. Often funny, frequently moving, but always a startling delight, Seven Ways to Prune a Grapefruit heralds the maturity of a uniquely individual poetic voice.