Fairy Myths

The year is A.D. 299. Diocletian rules the Roman Empire. And the gods have suddenly fallen silent. Seventeen-year-old Jurian doesn’t have time for the gods. He’s trying to hold his family together after his father died in disgrace, and piety, even to the Christ, just isn’t practical. But then, a ruthless enemy targets his family, forcing Jurian to make a choice: will he pursue the glory he’s always wanted, or will he sacrifice everything to protect a faith that was never really his own?

A dandelion-obsessed witch mother, a car crash, and the attention of teenage boys lead to fourteen-year-old Dandelion's imprisonment in a remote tower. If Dandelion wants to escape the tower (and the control of her witch mother) she must learn how to stand up for herself.

Lan spends her nights as a songgirl in Haak’gong, a city transformed by the Elantian colonizers. Her days are consumed by the search for knowledge about the strange mark—an untranslatable Hin character—burned into her arm by her mother in her last act before she died. Zen is a practitioner—one of the fabled magicians of the Last Kingdom. He’s never seen anything like Lan’s mark, but he knows that if there are answers, they lie deep in the pine forests and misty mountains of the Last Kingdom, with an order of practitioning masters planning to overthrow the Elantian regime.

Advancement has come quickly to Ling Qi. With help from strong allies and connections, her foe has been defeated. The enemies of the alliance she has helped to build have surrendered. Her talent no longer goes unnoticed in the Celestial Empire, casting new eyes on her path. Those like her are accounted for; a title of nobility is within her reach...a prize with implications that will stretch over her now long life.

Welcome back to the irresistible world of Greenglass House, where 13-year-old Milo is, once again, spending the winter holidays stuck in a house full of strange guests who are not what they seem. There are fresh clues to uncover as friends old and new join in his search for a mysterious map and a famous smuggler's lost haul. This exciting sequel to a beloved book is sure to thrill both fans and newcomers.

On the first night of Hanukkah, a weary traveler named Hershel of Ostropol eagerly approaches a village where plenty of latkes and merriment should warm him. But when he arrives, not a single candle is lit. A band of frightful goblins has taken over the synagogue, and the villagers cannot celebrate at all! Hershel vows to help them. But can one man alone stand up to the goblins, save Hanukkah, and live to tell the tale?

Nationally acclaimed storyteller J.J. Reneaux grew up Cajun for true, surrounded by the stories, music, food, and culture of rural communities in southeast Texas and southern Louisiana. A traditional storyteller who collects by word-of-mouth, Reneaux has developed her repertoire over years of collecting on front porches, school playgrounds, and her beloved fishing trips, as well as at nursing homes, airports, and at neighborhood fais-dodos.

Before Santa was Santa, he was North, Nicholas St. North - a daredevil swordsman whose prowess with double scimitars was legendary. Like any swashbuckling young warrior, North seeks treasure and adventure, leading him to the fiercely guarded village of Santoff Claussen, said to be home to the greatest treasure in all the East, and to an even greater wizard, Ombric Shalazar. But when North arrives, legends of riches have given way to terrors of epic proportions! North must decide whether to seek his fortune… or save the village.

Corinne La Mer isn't afraid of anything. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. They're just tricksters parents make up to frighten their children. Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest. Those shining, yellow eyes that followed her to the edge of the trees, they couldn't belong to a jumbie. Or could they?

"Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . . " So begins the wish that changes everything—for Geppetto, for the Blue Fairy, and for a little puppet named Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy isn't supposed to grant wishes in the small village of Pariva, but something about this one awakens some long-buried flicker within. Perhaps it's the hope she senses beneath the old man's loneliness. Or maybe it's the fact that long ago, before she was the Blue Fairy, she was a young woman named Chiara from this very village, one with a simple wish: to help others find happiness.

Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history - because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, South Dakota, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie. When the rune readers reveal that the monsters of Ragnarok are coming and kids will stand in for the gods in the final battle, Matt can hardly believe it. Matt and his friends must race to put together an unstoppable team to prevent the end of the world.

For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.

After Beacon Academy fell, Coco, Fox, Velvet, and Yatsuhashi made a vow: No one else is getting left behind. It's been more than a year since Team CFVY saw their school destroyed by the creatures of Grimm, their friends felled in battle or scattered across the world of Remnant. Since then, they've been settling into life at Shade Academy in Vacuo, fighting hard to finish their training so they can find their friends and save their world.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

Around the world each night, parents tell stories to children as they put them to bed. Margaret Read MacDonald - a folklorist, storyteller, and children's librarian - uses bedtime tales in the daytime to end her story hours on a calm note. Here, with accompaniment on dulcimer and autoharp by musician Richard Scholtz, she includes seven of her favorites from around the world.

In this story, a farmer and his wife match wits with a large, mean-spirited ogre. If they can't outwit him, they will end up with no crops of their own to eat or sell. This whimsically drawn story, illustrated by A. B. Hoffmire, is based on an old Swedish folktale.

Alan Bennett reads The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and Other Nonsense Rhymes by Edward Lear. The poems and limericks include "The Daddy Long-Legs and the Fly", "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat", "The Duck and the Kangaroo", "The Table and the Chair", "The Broom, the Shovel, the Poker and the Tongs", "Mr and Mrs Discobbolos", "The Nutcrackers and the Sugar Tongs", "The Two Old Bachelors", "The Pobble Who Has No Toes", "The Jumblies", "The Dog with a Luminous Nose", and many more.

Newly re-mastered for digital formats, this is the definitive recording of Hans Christian Andersen's six best-loved stories. Narrator Diane Wolkstein, the artistic director of the Hans Christian Andersen Center in New York City, tells Andersen stories throughout the world. She is the author of 23 award-winning books of folklore and has been honored by the National Storytelling Network as a recipient of its coveted Circle of Excellence Award, a designation reserved for America's best living storytellers.

Growing up with his mom on the island Crete, Zeus learns that families can be just plain strange, no matter if you're a god or a mortal. Listeners will thrill to accounts of Zeus battling Titans and other monsters while fulfilling his destiny to become the god of gods.

The Emperor loves to wear the most fashionable and finest clothes in the land. However, when two strangers suggest that they can weave him a special suit - which is invisible to anyone who's not worthy and wise - it has to be seen to be believed. A magical retelling of the classic fairy tale, read by Tamsin Greig.