Lockdown restrictions are easing, but many of us are still avoiding bookshops. In these strange times, it can be harder to keep up with new releases. The second half of 2020 has some exciting things in store for us, book-wise. We have collated a list of the books we’re most excited about. Expect much in the way of non-fiction, memoir and short story collections. Where possible, we recommend you purchase your books from Treadwell’s, and other indies.
If you have a book you think we’d like to read in 2021, drop us an email at cunningfolkmagazine@gmail.com
The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World by Roman Krznaric - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint WH Allen
Release Date 16/07/2020
We have inherited a world shaped by our ancestors. One day our children’s children will inherit a world changed by our actions. In this book, leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric explores how we can re-awaken the lost art of ‘cathedral thinking’; this is a guide to becoming good ancestors and re-building our capacity to imagine a future beyond us.
Love in Colour: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold by Bolu Babalola - Chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint Headline
Release Date 20/08/2020
Bobu Babalola retells stories about love, from the homoromatic Greek myths to magical Nigerian folktales. The publishers say, “the anthology is a step towards decolonising tropes of love and celebrates in the wildly beautiful and astonishingly diverse tales of romance and desire that already exist in so many cultures and communities.”
Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh - chosen by Yasmina Floyer
Imprint Hamish Hamilton
Release Date 27/08/2020
Blue Ticket is the follow up to Mackintosh’s Man Booker longlisted debut, The Water Cure. Themes of motherhood and fate are woven into an intriguing premise of a lottery that determines which sort of woman you are fated to be. Protagonist Calla must draw a ticket to learn if she will be a woman who will have children or one who will not. There is no going back once a ticket has been drawn, but what happens when Calla thinks she has drawn the wrong ticket? This novel explores what happens when fate a freewill collide. Bold and chilling, this book explores ideas surrounding patriarchal violence, identity and human longing.
Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera
Imprint Bloomsbury YA
Release Date 01/09/2020
A modern reworking of the Greek myth of Orpheus, this is a magical realist YA tale about cultural identity and overcoming trauma, with a romance at its heart. “Eury comes to the Bronx as a girl haunted. Haunted by losing everything in Hurricane Maria—and by an evil spirit, Ato.”
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merline Sheldrake (paperback) - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint Bodley Head
Release Date 03/09/2020
A young biologist shows us the world from the perspective of fungi, taking us on a journey from yeast to psychadelic drugs. This will undoubtedly appeal to those who loved Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss. Writes Robert MacFarlane, “Dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing . . . a remarkable work by a remarkable writer, which succeeds in springing life into strangeness again.”
Unknown Language: A Science Fiction by Hildegard Von Bingen and Huw Lemmey - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint Ignota Books
Release Date September 2020
This is a story inspired by the work of the 12th century Christian mystic, polymath and visionary, Hildegard of Bingen. She created her own language, Lingua Ignota, the purpose of which is still unknown; in her illustrated Scivias, she described strange visions, today attributed to migraine or temporal lobe epilepsy. Here Huw Lemmey takes over and history becomes interwoven with speculative fiction; these Scivias, we learn, got lost during the collapse of the information age, and in the future fragments of the lost text are found by Pinky in an amethyst sea cave on the planet Avaaz. ‘Unlocking the secrets of viriditas, Hildegard's mythic quantum energy threaded throughout her communiqués, provides the seeds for humanity's rebirth on Avaaz. Lingua Ignota, Hildegard's visionary 'unknown language', arrives just in time for a world in flux, one whose coordinates are being recast.’
Musings, Mazes, Muses, Margins by Gordon Rohlehr - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint Peepal Tree Press
Release Date 10/09/2020
Gordon Rohlehr is Emeritus Professor at the University of the West Indies at St Augustine and a leading scholar on calypso music. This inner journey is comprised of recorded dreams, poems, diary, flash fiction, polemics, prophecies and philosophical reflections - though has much to say about the outer Caribbean reality.
Outsiders: A Short Story Anthology edited by Alice Slater - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Publication Date 17/09/2020
Imprint Three of Cups Press
Many who read Cunning Folk identify as outsiders. The witch archetype and magic has always been embraced by the marginalised. This anthology promises to strike a chord. Editor Alice Slater has brought together some of the best known short story writers around today, including Kirsty Logan, Julia Armfield and Leone Ross. The publisher says, “these pages are haunted by more than ghosts: loss, lack of direction, insecurity and otherworldly hunger.”
Witch Hunt: A Traveler's Guide to the Power and Persecution of the Witch by Kristen J. Sollée
Imprint Weiser Books
Release Date 1/10/2020
An immersive time traveller’s guide to the witch trials in Europe and the United States. Kristen J. Sollée is the author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists and Cat Call. If that’s not enough reason to pick up this book, Witch Hunt got blurbed by none other than Professor Ronald Hutton: "There is now a very clear need for a travel guide which deals with places associated with historic and contemporary views of witchcraft; and therefore it is a real pleasure to find one so extensive, well-written, well-informed and good humoured.”
Tarot by Jessica Hundley, Johannes Fiebig, and Marcella Kroll - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint Taschen
Release Date 15/09/2020
TASCHEN is known for making beautiful books. In Tarot, author Jessica Hundley traces the history of Tarot; this book explores the symbolic meaning behind over 600 cards and works of art. Also in this volume are excerpts of essays from such figures as Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung and Eliphas Levi. This is the first volume in TASCHEN's Library of Esoterica series - something we’re very excited to know more about.
Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women by Sharon Blackie
Imprint September Publishing
Release Date 26/09/2020
From the author of The Enchanted Life come these modern reworkings of old tales. In these pages we meet the Water Horse of the Isle of Lewis, and Baba Yaga of Slavic folklore. We meet women who’ve transformed into animals, wild women who may remind us of our own ability to metamorphose into something else.
Botanical Curses and Potions: the Shadow Lives of Plants by Fez Inkwright - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint Liminal 11
Release Date 20/09/20
This book introduces the historical uses of deadly plants, witching herbs and fungi. Coming from the author of Folk Magic and Healing, Botanical Curses and Potions promises to be beautifully illustrated and a fascinating, accessible reference book for witches, gardeners, and the curious. Nearer the time, win a copy via our Patreon.
The Devil and The Dark Water by Stuart Turton - chosen by Maria Blyth
Imprint Raven Books
Release date 1/10/2020
Set in the 17th century, this genre-bending novel tells the tale of the world’s greatest detective, Samuel Pipps, and his bodyguard Arent Hayes. Whilst sailing from the Dutch East Indies to Amsterdam, where Pipps will be on trial for a crime he may or may have not committed, their ship is beset by devilishly mysterious goings on. Could the work of a demon be at play?
A Spell in the Wild: A Year (and Six Centuries) of Magic by Dr Alice Tarbuck - chosen by Yasmina Floyer
Imprint Two Roads
Release Date October 2020
This seasonal guide to witchcraft and magical also delves into historical elements and explores the role of being a witch in modern times. Author of the book and academic Dr Alice Tarbuck says, “Where ‘witch’ was once a dangerous- and often deadly - accusation, it is now a proud self definition.” This book will take readers “month by month...through everyday magic for extraordinary times.”
The Harpy by Megan Hunter - Chosen by Jodie Matthews
Imprint: Picador
Release date: 03/09/2020
The Harpy is Hunter’s highly anticipated second novel, following her dystopian debut, The End We Start From. The Harpy is a feminist fairytale, told in rich, suspenseful prose. When protagonist Lucy finds that her husband, Jake, has had an affair, they come to a compromise. She needs a way to deal with the betrayal, and he doesn’t want to lose her or their children. Instead, it is decided – she has permission to hurt him, three times. At any time, with no warnings. As life goes on and Lucy enacts her punishments, her desires become more feral, and she is drawn back toward an obsession she held as a child. The Harpy is a suspenseful revenge story that twists itself into a surrealist tale of a woman finding her inner beast.
The Art of the Occult by S. Elizabeth - chosen by Elizabeth Kim
Imprint White Lion Publishing
Publication Date 06/10/2020
Artists have long drawn inspiration from the occult. Author S. Elizabeth (aka Mlle Ghoul) introduces major occult themes, and some of the artists influenced by them. Here we’ll revisit the mythical images of the Pre-Raphaelites, the theosophical practices of Mondrian and Kandinsky, and Leonora Carrington’s surrealist interpretations of alchemy, kabbalah and more.
Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman by Rebecca Tamás
Imprint Makina Books
Release Date 08/10/2020
Rebecca Tamás is probably best known for her poetry collection WITCH published by Penned in the Margins, and for co-editing Spells: Occult Poetry for the 21st Century. Strangers is an essay collection exploring ‘where the human and nonhuman meet’; via the folkloric, the historical, through the mind, body and land, it looks for new ways forward in a fractured world.
Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold - chosen by Jodie Matthews
Imprint Virago
Release Date 08/10/2020
What started as an Audible original is coming to print. Featuring stories from writers such as Kirsty Logan, Irenosen Okojie, Liv Little, Daisy Johnson and Eimear McBride, this is a dark collection which has (promisingly) been compared to work by Angela Carter.
Queering Your Craft by Cassandra Snow - chosen by Maria Blyth
Imprint Red Wheel/ Weiser Books
Release date 01/11/2020
Many of the conventions of witchcraft can be problematic when viewed through a queer lens. This introductory volume-cum-grimoire combines the personal, the collective, and the political, to demonstrate how we can engage with the craft in a way that is accessible to LGBTQ+ folks.
Ruinsong by Julia Ember - chosen by Maria Blyth
Imprint FSG
Release date 24/112020
This highly anticipated LGBTQ+ fantasy romance might be aimed at young readers, but promises to be a real treat for us all. Set in a world where magic is sung, Ruinsong tells the story of two women - a powerful mage and a noblewoman with ties to an underground rebellion - who find themselves working together to reunite their country whilst navigating their feelings for each other.