Nature Folklore

This audiobook will help you deepen your connection to the natural world as you explore the magical, mystical world of the faerie folk.

Continent le plus vaste et peuplé de notre planète, l'Asie est fascinante à bien des égards pour les Occidentaux. La richesse de ses paysages, peuples et cultures en fait un monde à part, souvent méconnu. Il n'est donc pas surprenant que la sphère asiatique soit le théâtre de disparitions parmi les plus étranges qui soient.

Using an infamous deception about a fake mountain range in British Columbia as her jumping-off point, Katie Ives explores the lure of blank spaces on the map and the value of the imagination. In Imaginary Peaks she details the cartographical mystery of the Riesenstein Hoax within the larger context of climbing history and the seemingly endless quest for newly discovered peaks and claims of first ascents. Imaginary Peaks is an evocative, thought-provoking tale, immersed in the literature of exploration, study of maps, and basic human desire.

The weather governs our lives. It fills gaps in conversations, determines our dress, and influences our architecture. No matter how much our lives may have moved indoors, no matter how much we may rely on technology, we still monitor the weather. Wait Five Minutes: Weatherlore in the Twenty-First Century draws from folkloric, literary, and scientific theory to offer up new ways of thinking about this most ancient of phenomena.

Fairies abound in the realms of myth and folklore. They have enchanted humans for centuries—but are these mischievous, ethereal creatures more than just myth? One could ask for no better guide to the fairy realm than Ralph Harvey, one of England's foremost modern-day witches. In Fairy Lore he intersperses his own intriguing fairy encounters (among them, a mysterious musical interlude in an Irish valley) with succinct yet interesting introductions to the folktales of the fae.

Iceland, Greenland, Northern Norway, and the Faroe Islands lie on the edges of Western Europe, in an area long portrayed by travelers as remote and exotic - its nature harsh, its people reclusive. Since the middle of the 18th century, however, this marginalized region has gradually become part of modern Europe, a transformation that is narrated in Karen Oslund's Iceland Imagined. This cultural and environmental history sweeps across the dramatic North Atlantic landscape, exploring its unusual geography, saga narratives, language, culture, and politics, and analyzing its emergence as a distinctive and symbolic part of Europe.

As children, we are captivated by stories of huge fantastical creatures, such as the wooly mammoth and the pterodactyl. The prevailing wisdom is these species are long extinct, but new evidence uncovered by author Gerald McIsaac casts doubt on these widely held assumptions. McIsaac gathered stories from the elders of the First Nation, those who were formerly referred to as Indians, Native Americans, or Aboriginals.

Actress Jodie Foster narrates this classic from the Brothers Grimm. One day, a poor fisherman catches and then frees an enchanted flounder who is able to grant any wish imaginable. A simple man without pretensions, the fisherman would rather leave well enough alone. But his wife's greed forces the fisherman to return to the flounder time after time until it is too late.

"A long time ago, when the land was yet wrapped in grand sweeps of forest, when nearby meadows wore nothing but the scent of wildflowers..." So begins the first tale of Spirits of the Wild, an enchanting collection of 60 nature myths from around the world, many of them hundreds - or thousands - of years old. Each myth is charmingly retold by Gary Ferguson, one of the West's best-loved nature writers.