Bug Life: How Bees, Butterflies, and Other Insects Rule the World

February 07, 2025

Bugs are everywhere! Humans often think of insects as gross or creepy, but we couldn’t survive without them.

In this love letter to bugs, biologist, linguist, and bug enthusiast Karyn Light-Gibson introduces us to an array of our notable neighbors, from bees to bedbugs, caterpillars to butterflies, ladybugs to katydids, and so, so many more. With informative glee and striking illustrations, she identifies the many bugs we encounter every day and delves into their place in science, history, art, literature, culture, cuisine, and even warfare.

You’ll learn so many cool facts about flies, beetles, moths, aphids, cicadas, bedbugs, crickets, cockroaches, and the other creeping, crawling, and flying critters that make our world go round. For every human, there are 1.4 billion insects in the world, playing a vital part of our ecosystem. A small percentage of bugs can be dangerous or spread disease, but the vast majority are our allies as indicators of environmental health, pollinators of our food, and a key part of the food web we rely on. Even the most wary readers will come away with a new perspective on the tiny creatures around them and a serious appreciation of just how important—and cool—bugs are.

Read on for an excerpt of Bug Life: How Bees, Butterflies, and Other Insects Rule the World by Karyn Light-Gibson, available for preorder from our site or your local bookseller (officially hitting shelves 3/25/25)!

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Your Cozy Life: DIY Nesting Skills for a Sustainable Home

January 17, 2025

Cottagecore projects to save money and the planet

Save money, save the planet, and craft a sustainable domestic life without relying on smelly, toxic, expensive consumer products. This handwritten and hand-drawn book of charming tutorials for natural housekeeping and home repair, organic gardening and food preservation, herbal first aid, and mending clothes is both fun and accessible. It’s full of simple skills that anyone can and should learn.

From creating healthy tinctures and salves to preserving excess food to fixing a leaky faucet, this book is great if you’re looking to live more simply, create a comfortable nest, and truly do it yourself. Combining the power of Raleigh Briggs’s bestselling Make Your Place and Make It Last to form a complete guide to everything you need to consume less and live more in line with your values.

Read on for an excerpt of Your Cozy Life: DIY Nesting Skills for a Sustainable Home by Raleigh Briggs, available for preorder from our site or your local bookseller (officially hitting shelves 3/18/25)!

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Womb Witch: Herbal Magick for Reproductive Health

January 10, 2025

Herbal remedies and wise perspectives to help make your cycle less of a rollercoaster.

Ever felt like your uterus is out to get you? Or experienced dismay at the politicians out to get your uterus? This book will speak straight to your soul. Get to know your body with this inclusive guide to herbal, holistic self-care for every womb, at every stage of life—from puberty to post-menopause and everything in between.

Herbalist and pregnancy loss doula Angelica Merritt offers a wealth of anatomical science, plant medicine, and nutritional and herbal strategies to support body literacy, a regular menstrual cycle, and your reproductive goals. If you’re dealing with irregular menstruation, PCOS, infertility, pregnancy loss or release, perimenopause, or any other reproductive health issue, look to these pages for remedies that bridge the scientific and the spiritual. Inside you’ll find guidance in holistic modalities such as castor oil packs, breath work, breast and womb massage, baths, and infused oils, along with rituals and journal prompts. You’ll learn about the connections between the womb, the moon cycle, and the archetypes of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Transform your self-care through the magick of the womb within!

You can join the community of support for this exciting project on Kickstarter.

Read on for an excerpt of Womb Witch: Herbal Magick for Reproductive Health by Angelica Merritt, available for preorder from our site or your local bookseller (officially hitting shelves 3/18/25)!

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Our Sacred Cycle

November 13, 2024

A Workbook to Reclaim Your Period from PMS and PMDD

Your period doesn’t have to ruin your life! Sometimes our menstrual symptoms prevent us from showing up the way we want to, and there is not a lot of information about how to feel better. You may have had trouble finding resources that explain what’s happening in your body and mind. You may have even been disbelieved or blamed.

Our Sacred Cycle was created to help. Written by a therapist who specializes in premenstrual syndrome (PMS), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and other forms of hormone imbalance, this workbook offers accessible information and reflective exercises to help you understand the physiology of the menstrual cycle and how it affects you, harness your power, and live in harmony with your body. Whether you want to heal from patriarchal trauma or connect with yourself in a new way, this is the empowering, gender-neutral feminist resource you need to reclaim your cycle, take control of your symptoms, and achieve a transformative mind-body connection. You can feel better!

Read on for an excerpt of Our Sacred Cycle: A Workbook to Reclaim Your Period from PMS and PMDD by Mary McDonald, available for preorder from our site or your local bookseller (officially hitting shelves 12/10/24)!

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An Urban Field Guide to the Plants, Trees, and Herbs in Your Path

November 04, 2024

Get to know your leafy neighbors

Imagine going for a walk with a knowledgeable friend who points out all the plants you see and the coolest facts about them. This practical field guide is that friend, providing a delightful introduction to 58 of the plants, trees, weeds, and herbs you’ll encounter walking around most US cities.

Accurate, charming line drawings accompany detailed yet accessible botanical information about each plant that helps you easily identify it in all seasons. You’ll also learn each plant’s backstory, including its relatives, origins, historical uses, and other fun facts. Getting to know the plants you meet every day will help you strengthen your sense of place, improve your foraging game, make new botanical and herbal friends, and marvel at the life that is all around us.

Read on for an excerpt of An Urban Field Guide to the Plants, Trees, and Herbs in Your Path by Maggie Herskovits, available for preorder from our site or your local bookseller!

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Cooking with Magic Mushrooms: The Psilocybin Cookbook

September 16, 2024

Turn your trip into a culinary treat—head to the kitchen to make your next psilocybin experience unforgettable

Magic mushrooms offer so many marvels, from transformative healing to excitement. One thing they are not known for is flavor. David Connell’s quest to make psilocybin palatable led him to develop recipes that integrate small, measured quantities of shrooms into tasty food and drink.

Stop gnawing on bitter, fibrous stalks and begin your journey with a calming, pleasant snack or sip. These healthy, delicious recipes are lactose-free, with gluten-free substitutions throughout, and have no added sugars. Photographs and illustrations will inspire your explorations of food, fungi, and consciousness.

Read on for an excerpt of Cooking with Magic Mushrooms: the Psilocybin Cookbook by David Connell, now available from our site or your local bookseller!

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The Practical Witch’s Almanac 2025: Rebel Wisdom

September 09, 2024

Learn, defy, and evolve on your pagan path

The essential core of witchcraft is wisdom and change. We’ve always been rebellious and defiant, and our own traditions are not exempt from challenge. Delve into iconic witchcraft traditions like the utterance of “blessed be” and the influential Wiccan Rede, exploring their origins and relevance today. This introspective journey isn’t just about history; it’s an empowering quest. It challenges you to assess these traditions’ place in your craft. Embrace, adapt, or boldly defy these customs—this edition empowers you to shape your craft’s evolution on your terms as you travel your unique spiritual path.

This year’s edition includes:

Weekly Schedules
Monthly Lunar Planners
Moon Signs & Phases
Sabbat Times & Dates
Eclipses & Meteor Showers
Spells & Recipes
Correspondences & References
and much more!

Read on for an excerpt of The Practical Witch’s Almanac: Rebel Wisdom by Friday Gladheart, now available from our site or your local bookseller!

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Make It Last: Sustainably and Affordably Preserving What We Love

August 07, 2024

An illustrated guide to clothes, food, and home

Make It Last: Sustainably and Affordably Preserving What We Love is an illustrated guide to clothes and food and home. Raleigh Briggs bridges the gap between life in a disposable culture and the basic skills needed to save money and live more sustainably.

This book teaches you how to extend the lives of the things you love by repairing clothing, preserving home-grown food, and even repairing your kitchen sink and making your own soap. Briggs takes her longtime commitment to community building through the DIY movement and shares her valuable experience with the reader through a conversational tone in her hand-drawn and -illustrated guide.

The Utne Reader described Raleigh’s work as “A forceful antidote to the cheapening of thrift culture: a meticulously hand-lettered, pint-size volume. When you raise your fist against the values that derailed our economy, lift this book in it.” Now you can save money and save the planet while saving your prized possessions!

Read on for an excerpt of Make It Last: Sustainably and Affordably Preserving What We Love by Raleigh Briggs, now available for preorder from our site or from your local bookseller. Out everywhere 10/22/24.

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Disabled Witchcraft: 90 Rituals for Limited-Spoon Practitioners

August 05, 2024

Accessible, inclusive, anti-capitalist magick

Magick is all around us and should be for everyone. But the practices in many witchcraft books can be difficult for many of us to perform due to chronic illnesses, sensory issues, allergies, or other disabilities—and the financial limitations that often go hand in hand with them.

In this guide, disabled witch Kandi Zeller sets out to change that. Through 90 inclusive (and sometimes spicy) magickal rituals designed for witches with disabilities of all kinds—especially the invisible ones—Disabled Witchcraft lays out a truly accessible magickal practice with a solid dose of humor and heart. If your spoons (aka available energy and executive function) are limited on any given day, that doesn’t need to be a hindrance to following your spiritual path. From guidance on using crystals for nervous-system regulation to tarot readings for spoonies to laying a curse upon unjust health systems, you’ll find practical tools to harness the magick of your disabilities, fight both ableism and capitalism, and embrace a more expansive version of the path.

Read on for an excerpt of Disabled Witchcraft: 90 Rituals for Limited-Spoon Practitioners by Kandi Zeller, now available for preorder from our site or from your local bookseller. Out everywhere 9/17/24.

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Burning Rage of a Dying Planet: The FBI vs. the Earth Liberation Front

June 17, 2024

An insider’s view of radical environmentalism

Since the mid-1990s, the secretive cell organization calling itself the Earth Liberation Front (ELF, or Elves) has waged a brazen campaign of property damage and arson attacks against entities they hold responsible for environmental destruction, including timber companies, ski resorts, slaughterhouses, and car dealerships.

In Burning Rage of a Dying Planet: The FBI vs. the Earth Liberation Front, former ELF spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh charts the history and ideology of the ELF, as well as the repression strategies the government uses to destroy activist movements—including tactics we continue to see wielded against global liberation movements today. Rosenbraugh himself was the subject of a shocking New York Times article last year detailing the efforts of an informant connected to the FBI and the CIA to draw him into a book contract designed never to reach publication, but which provided authorities the opportunity to comb his drafts for clues that might help them apprehend ELF conspirators. Rosenbraugh, though, only ever transmitted anonymous communiques, and when he made a discovery about the man posing as his “book packager” that he writes “made my heart race, made my breath vanish, and sent me off to gather every weapon I had in my house,” the project came to an uneasy end.

Luckily, Rosenbraugh was still determined to let his story see the light of day after this harrowing ordeal, and the book was originally published in 2004. Twenty years later, Microcosm is proud to release this revised and updated edition, featuring a new foreword from Extinction Rebellion co-founder Tamsin Osmond. Burning Rage remains a valuable and illuminating insider account of the ongoing battle between radical environmentalist movements and the powers of the state; one that offers frank insight into the great personal cost of political action, but also the urgency of collective resistance to capitalist violence.

Read on for an excerpt of Burning Rage of a Dying Planet: The FBI vs. the Earth Liberation Front by Craig Rosenbraugh, now available for preorder from our site or from your local bookseller. Out everywhere 7/9/24.

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