A young man, tired of life and love, indifferent to the people and world around him, takes up a room in a Parisienne boarding house.Noises from the adjoining room draw his attention to a hole in the wall, and he observes its occupants through it.He becomes obsessed with the individual episodes of human life that play out before his eyes; love, adultery, incest, childbirth, death, thievery and betrayal. Through his voyeurism, the unnamed narrator becomes an omniscient godlike character, observing the room's inhabitants in their most private and naked moments. The hole becomes a window to the very soul of humanity and the human condition.But as with Prometheus, his godlike powers come at a cost.

"In place of happy love, lonely pain. In place of motherhood, disease. Misery and shame, child. Medicine and surgery, and never any possibility of any child for me."First published in her magazine The Forerunner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Crux is an emotive tale on the nuances of female independence, social expectation and love in early 20th century America.Following an all-female group who move west to open a boarding house for men, The Crux focuses on the experience of Vivian ― and her desire for the undesirable. Deeply in love with Morton, a charismatic young man infected with both syphilis and gonorrhoea, Vivian's expected journey through her 'marriage' years is abruptly turned upside down.Torn by her personal intuition, the advice provided by her female companions and the knowledge that Morton will never give her healthy children, Vivian is faced with a permanent choice ― to forfeit love for the benefit of future generations.Balancing female and male perspectives on illness, personal preservation and nationalism, The Crux tracks Vivian's path through heart break, emotional development and female camaraderie.As an allegory for Gilman's own branch of utopian feminism, The Crux is a story of sacrifice and partnership deliberation within the framework of 20th century disease hysteria, eugenic ideology and developing modernism.Often omitted from her writing canon, The Crux is an integral aspect to understanding not only Gilman's own writing ― but the history of feminism as a whole."The Crux is essentially a seminar in biological, feminine and social correctness. As stated in the original Forerunner publication, the novel was intended for a specific set of people - young and impressionable women primarily, followed by men and anyone else willing to listen. The Crux, in its barebones, is a nationalist parable for all of America to heed."from Ambrose Kelly's new introduction to The Crux* * *Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935) was an American humanist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist and served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle.

Edited with a new introduction by Aimee McLaughlin"The Yellow Wallpaper" by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892, is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century.What happens when a woman is pushed too far? Is she able to express her thoughts and feelings, or is she forced towards the expectation of behaving 'normally' again soon?A woman travels with her husband to an old colonial mansion after a nervous breakdown triggered by the birth of their child. Confined to the nursery and allowed only to breathe fresh air, eat well and rest in line with a regimented 'cure', she slowly begins to unravel at the seams. Her only distraction is writing in secret – that, and the woman she begins to see trapped inside the yellow wallpaper of the room itself.Isolated and breaking apart, she sets herself a task: to free the woman, and to become one with her temporary confinement.Charlotte Perkins-Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' presents a harrowing, disturbing account of mental stress, confinement and female turmoil - within which the only available solace can be found inside four peeling, sickly yellow walls ...Our new edition also features the sequence of poems "Woman" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman."The gothic genre offers Gilman an effective mode of diagnosing contemporary culture whilst in tandem expressing her ensuing fears and anxieties. Gilman within this novella, gothicises the domestic setting, inverting the pillars of domesticity: family, security and understanding, in turn unveiling the dangers lurking behind the familiarity of gender roles within marital relations. The intimate first-person narration of the narrative serves to enhance Gilman's exposure of the oppressive forces of a male-dominated society, as she deplores her protagonist's inferior position in her domestic arrangement. The female narrator is encumbered by masculine superiority, undoubtedly dwelling in the middle of patriarchy. Embedded within her characterisation is the subjugated role bestowed upon Victorian women. Gilman projects derangement onto a familiar literary figure ― the middle−class wife and mother ― placing the source of this madness in the inviolate sphere for dutiful women ― the home."from the new introduction to The Yellow Wallpaper by Aimee McLaughlin

An Edinburgh advocate experiences humiliation and terror in a surreal Scottish Highland adventure.Donald Humbie, leaving behind his career and his wife in Edinburgh, heads north to familiar places for a short break. Unfortunately, the familiar places have become unfamiliar and increasingly hostile.Each setting, each character, each event is an unsettling side-step away from normality in a dark, surreal landscape that has Donald fleeing manically around the country. Fearing that his wife has been abducted, he seeks out MacNucator, a private detective, to find her.Meanwhile the Sinister Cabaret, led by the strange and unfathomable Mr Motion, pursues him relentlessly.John Herdman's characters inhabit a dark universe illuminated by his profoundly laconic wit. In the Sinister Cabaret he continues the exploration of extreme states of mind and ambiguous interior worlds with the Gothic imagination, which has led critics to compare him with James Hogg and R L Stevenson.Gothic, surreal, and type Jungian to the max, this hypnagogic novel from John Herdman will take you to the edge of reason."The narrative combines a series of journeys and encounters, an atmosphere compounded of nightmare, comedy and erudition, which is uniquely Herdman... There is a quality of surreal experience, comic nastiness, metaphysical horror ... the always gripping narrative becomes intense and moving."An Edinburgh advocate experiences humiliation and terror in a surreal Scottish Highland adventure.Donald Humbie, an Edinburgh advocate of every kind of substance, undergoes an interior experience of humiliation and terror, totally losing his way in a surreal Scottish Highland adventure.Donald Humbie, leaving behind his career and his wife in Edinburgh, heads north to familiar places for a short break. Unfortunately, the familiar places have become unfamiliar and increasingly hostile.Each setting, each character, each event is an unsettling side-step away from normality in a dark, surreal landscape that has Donald fleeing manically around the country. Fearing that his wife has been abducted, he seeks out MacNucator, a private detective, to find her.Meanwhile the Sinister Cabaret, led by the strange and unfathomable Mr Motion, pursues him relentlessly.John Herdman's characters inhabit a dark universe illuminated by his profoundly laconic wit. In the Sinister Cabaret he continues the exploration of extreme states of mind and ambiguous interior worlds with the Gothic imagination, which has led critics to compare him with James Hogg and R L Stevenson.Gothic, surreal, and type Jungian to the max, this hypnagogic novel from John Herdman will take you to the edge of reason."The narrative combines a series of journeys and encounters, an atmosphere compounded of nightmare, comedy and erudition, which is uniquely Herdman... There is a quality of surreal experience, comic nastiness, metaphysical horror ... the always gripping narrative becomes intense and moving."Isobel Murray, The Herald & Scottish Studies Review

Viye Raines' novel The Levite's Concubine is an engrossing retelling of the most bizarre and savage chapter in the Hebrew Bible — Judges Chapter 19.Told with striking historical detail, one of the most ancient parts of the Old Testament comes alive, opening with the concubine fleeing her master and closing with the her startling and unforgettable destruction.Affecting and intimate, unrestrained and ghastly, The Levite's Concubine combines rich storytelling with an original insight into Biblical history and women's roles in a compelling time and place — about 1000 years BCE — in the land that would become Israel.Although the story told in Judges Chapter 19 is violent, it ultimately takes our attention because of its treatment of women. Not only does it feature as its central act a vicious molestation of an innocent woman, it is also a part of a religious text. This text, our Hebrew Bible, is not just central to Jewish and Christian civilisation, but also to their worship, and is held by nearly a third of the people of the planet to be spiritually significant.