Myth Fiction

Growing up in North Carolina, Donald Davis heard stories that came to America through Scots-Irish immigrants about a fellow named Jack who was so real that young Davis thought he was a distant relative or otherside-of-the-mountain neighbor. Now Davis knows that Jack is a universal legendary figure who, by various names, is found in nearly every culture.

When the Southern Bells brought the telephone to rural North Carolina, it looked like a "big black daffodil". What the telephone company had not counted on in conceiving its eight-party line service was a pair of "past-middle-age, unmarried sisters", the chatty Misses Lucy and Lena Leatherwood. Once the Leatherwood sisters were connected by the Southern Bells, nobody else on that line had a chance!

Turtle is scavenging a drowned town when she saves a stranger’s life. There’s something special about Kai—an attraction she’s never felt before. She would do anything to see him again. But Turtle can never truly be with Kai, because Kai is Normal, and Turtle is one of the Mer, kids whose genes were illegally hacked before birth and who now have working gills as well as lungs. Turtle lives on an old cruise ship with the other Mer in order to be close to the water she needs to survive. Yet she sneaks away and lies to her friends to spend more time on land with Kai.

Fifteen years have passed since the end of the war, and life in the Five Kingdoms is peaceful. Or so it would seem. Morgan and Sarah have a family, and their oldest daughter, Gwen, is about to leave home for the first time, to attend the prestigious Academy of New Faeland. Dark clouds blanket the horizon, clouding Morgan’s visions of the future. Old enemies hide in the shadows, and a terrifying new power threatens to overturn the peace he’s fought so hard to maintain.

What magical beings inhabit Earth’s waters? Some are as almost-familiar as the mer-people; some as strange as the thing glimpsed only as a golden eye in a pool at the edge of the Great Desert Kalarsham, where the mad god Geljdreth rules; or the unknowable, immense Kraken, dark beyond the darkness of the deepest ocean, who will one day rise and rule the world. Here are seven tales from the remarkable storytellers Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson. Vividly imagined and written, they transform the simple element of water into something very powerful indeed.

London has been destroyed in a blitz of bombs and disease. The only ones who have survived are children, among them Gwen Darling and her siblings, Joanna and Mikey. They spend their nights scavenging and their days avoiding the ruthless Marauders - the German army led by Captain Hanz Otto Oswald Kretschmer.

As conditions in Sherwood Forest grow more precarious, time is running out for inhabitants of the abandoned shopping mall. With constant pressure on them from Sheriff Marjorie and gangster Guy Gisborne, Robin decides to engage his brother, Little John, as undercover spy. And John strikes gold when he discovers his mother's plan for the ailing Sherwood Castle resort. Robin and Marion join in an audacious plan to scupper their oppressors, but the sheriff has her response prepared - and it's ferocious. Have they bitten off more they can chew this time?

Herodotus is not only the father of the art and the science of historical writing, but also one of the Western tradition's most compelling storytellers. In tales such as that of Gyges, who murders Candaules, the king of Lydia, and usurps his throne and his marriage bed, thereby bringing on, generations later, war with the Persians, Herodotus laid bare the intricate human entanglements at the core of great historical events.

Read by a cast of award-winning narrators, this collection contains some of the most timeless and enchanting folk and fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. The Brothers Grimm collected the original fairy tales that Americans are most familiar with today. Lyrically translated and beautifully narrated by an all-star cast, these 21 tales are selected from The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales and presented just as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm originally set them down: bold, primal, just frightening enough, and endlessly engaging.

Swords of Eveningstar is the first title in an exciting new series by author Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. This series explores the youthful adventures of the much-loved heroes, Florin, Islif, and Jhessail, as they battle to win a name for themselves and then to defend it against the machinations of a more insidious and devious evil than they ever thought to face.

Award-winning storyteller Barbara McBride-Smith breathes life (albeit a wizened Texan version) into the old Greek myths. With her incurable Texas drawl, she spins the Greek myths as you've never heard them before, rendering them 99% more fun while retaining 100% of their original insights into the crooked ways of the human heart and the no less crooked ways of the ancient Greek gods.

Rhoma Grace is a 16-year-old student from House Cancer with an unusual way of reading the stars. While her classmates use measurements to make accurate astrological predictions, she looks up at the night sky and makes up stories.

On a September evening in 1931, John and Jack, two of the caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica, discover a plea for help on a medieval manuscript - which seems to have been written by their friend, Hugo Dyson! When they rush to warn him, Hugo walks through a door in time - and vanishes into the past. And in that moment, the world begins to change.

The labyrinth is a death sentence. And I’m trapped inside with a monster. I’m being imprisoned for a crime I didn’t commit. My sentence is brief—only three months—but it doesn’t matter. No one gets out of the labyrinth alive.

Dans la vallée, il y avait trois fermiers, éleveurs de volailles dodues... Le premier était gros et gourmand ; le deuxième était petit et bilieux ; le troisième était maigre et se nourrissait de cidre. Tous les trois étaient laids et méchants. Dans le bois qui surplombait la vallée vivaient Maître Renard, Dame Renard et leurs quatre renardeaux, affamés et malins.

For 17-year-old actress Kelley Winslow, faeries are just something from childhood stories. Then she meets Sonny Flannery, whose steel-gray eyes mask an equally steely determination to protect her. Sonny guards the Samhain Gate, which connects the mortal realm with the Faerie's enchanted, dangerous Otherworld. Usually kept shut by order of icy King Auberon, the Gate stands open but once a year.

Sawar aur doosray Afsanay is the first collection of short stories by Shamsur Rahman Faruqui. The theme of this collection of stories is the Indian culture of that time, narrated through 18th-century Delhi. The 18th century has probably been the most controversial in India's history of the last thousand years. According to the historiography that makes up the consciousness of modern India, it was an age of decadence and arrogance. In contrast, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi depicts in detail that Indian society was presenting the most developed view of a mixed Hindu-Muslim tradition.

Four Jack Tales from the Appalachian oral tradition, recorded by a nationally accalimed storyteller. In this collection, Jack has a little trouble adjusting to the workaday world and to personal financial management. Eventually he works hard enough, but his fortunes do not seem to parallel his productivity. Jack finally has to go a bit out of his way to prove himself, meanwhile dealing with a prospective father-in-law who plays hard to get.

Shieldmaiden Ingrid Tirsdatter is in the final leg of her first mission. After chasing a dark mage one thousand years into the future, she and her team have spent the past two months trying to stop him from doing the unthinkable—enacting a magical spell that's certain to destroy their world. But when a collection of crystals goes missing, it's clear their enemy is making his final play. And when Axel starts acting peculiar, Ingrid realizes that more than just their home is on the line. If she and her team can't stop the dark mage, her past—and her future—may disappear forever.

Once upon a time, a beautiful queen was cursed by a dark faery. That curse, inherited by twin princesses, Aura and Luna, binds their lives in the strangest of ways. At an early age, the girls were more than sisters. They were the strongest of allies until a combination of jealousy, anger, and dark magic tore their relationship to shreds. Aura took everything from Luna: her home, her family, and her love by murdering the prince who'd chosen her instead of Aura. Luna wants revenge, but she's running out of time.