Short Stories Fairy Tales

Aesop's Fables are stories based on analogies and caricatures featuring mostly animals. These stories got the collective name Aesop’s Fables from the person who collected the stories. Aesop, popularly believed to have been a Phrygian slave, collected his fables sometime around the sixth century BC. Whatever his real story may be, the fables he collected feature valuable lessons.

From Daniel Mallory Ortberg comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from his beloved Children's Stories Made Horrific series, The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Ortberg to listeners of both The Toast and his best-selling debut Texts from Jane Eyre. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.

Stheno is on the warpath after Perseus killed her sister, Medusa.

In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.

Original, honest and thought-provoking, Roar is Cecelia Ahern's unforgettable story collection. With her trademark honesty, Cecelia Ahern gives us 30 linked stories, all titled 'The Woman Who...', that capture the different facets of women's lives. Humorous, moving, surreal and poignant, the stories capture the moments the characters are overwhelmed by guilt, confusion, frustration, intimidation, exhaustion - the private moments when they feel the need to roar.

Pele in Therapy is a short story that carries on Hawai‘i's long tradition of storytelling and myth making. Written with both humor and an eye for detail, best-selling author Darien Gee has created a modern view of the goddess and her impact on those lucky enough to call Hawai‘i home.

In the tradition of his best-selling debut novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason's Metamorphica transforms Ovid's epic poem of endless transformation. It reimagines the stories of Narcissus, Pygmalion and Galatea, Midas, and Atalanta and strings them together like the stars in constellations - even Ovid becomes a story. It's as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino.

> Berserker is a stand-alone short story, framed as a missing chapter from Paternus, the urban fantasy, mythic fiction novel, by Dyrk Ashton. It tells of the time when one of the characters finally met his father, many centuries ago.

Fairy stories have captivated the hearts and minds of children over many centuries. With their stories of witches and fairies, enchanting castles, and beautiful princesses, they contain all the right ingredients for exciting a young mind. But as is well known, the truths that can be found within these timeless compositions are rich in meaning and metaphor. In this innovative book, narrated by the author, seven traditional tales are beautifully retold. Appealing to children, these are also intended to inspire new meaning for adults.

When we came to America, we brought anger and socialism and hunger. We also brought our demons. In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces listeners to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own.

Award-winning storyteller Bobby Norfolk brings his talents to six traditional stories. A mixture of classics and lesser-known folktales, these are all performance-tested audience favorites, capturing Norfolk's trademark energy and humor. Whether the story is from the American South, Japan, or the Caribbean, Norfolk pinpoints the message of the story and invites his listeners to celebrate the best in all of us.

In this trilogy of witty and beguiling tales, you'll meet a shy and scholarly prince, a salon storyteller with a secret, and a modern-day woman who has lost her faith in magic...be transported to a different world, full of wonder and enchantment (that perhaps isn't so very different from our own world, after all).

The man notes that his mind reading abilities must have been off. This was not easy to communicate with this two limbed, female human without sound emitting from his own mouth. Using his voice to communicate would give him all of the proof that he needed regarding the alliance. Apparently, making breakfast for this female was not a good idea.

The North Wind's fearsome reputation precedes him: "I haunt the human walrus hunters that live in my land. They are cautious of me - for I frostbite them, kick them about like shuttlecocks. I blow them into deep crevasses - then I crush them with my mighty icebergs! For pleasure, I freeze their smashed bodies and like jewels of red sapphire, they sink to decorate the bottom of my cold sea!" The New Tempest is Hans Christian Andersen's fable reimagined as a fearsome storm that aims to wreak havoc on the world below, today. The New Tempest takes the classic fantasy adventure and paints it with a story instantly epic, and yet, all its own. In the midst of a land torn by a treacherous war, a father must protect his daughter from the storm, and only one being can aid his desperate cause: the mysterious South Wind, dwelling in secrecy, who truly wields power over life, death, and destiny.

A young woman hunts for her wayward shadow at the school where she first learned magic - while another faces a test she never studied for as ice envelopes the world. The tasks assigned a bookish boy lead him to fateful encounters with lizards, owls, trolls, and a feisty, sarcastic cat. A bear wedding is cause for celebration, the spinning wheel and the tower in the briar hedge get to tell their own stories, and a kitchen maid finds out that a lost princess is more than she seems. The sea witch reveals what she hoped to gain when she took the mermaid's voice.

Thirteen award-winning fantasy and science fiction writers offer up their versions of these classic fairy tales as well as other favorites, including The Ugly Duckling, Ali Baba, Hansel and Gretel, and more. Some of the stories are funny, some are strange, and others are dark and disturbing - but each offers something as unexpected as a wolf at the door.

Theodora Goss's first major short story collection showcases such stories as "The Rose in Twelve Petals," "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow," "Lily, With Clouds," "In the Forest of Forgetting," "Sleeping With Bears," and many more.

Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today: Ellen Hopkins, Amanda Hocking, Julie Kagawa, Claudia Gray, Rachel Hawkins, Kimberly Derting, Myra McEntire, Malinda Lo, Sarah Rees-Brennan, Jackson Pearce, Christine Johnson, Jeri Smith Ready, Shaun David Hutchinson, Saundra Mitchell, Sonia Gensler, Tessa Gratton, Jon Skrovron.

Remember the Monster Stick? The greatest and most dangerous fishing-rod ever? What about Buck, who simply "ain't no ordinary dog"? Anyone who has seen the Lepp boys perform or read their book The Monster Stick will never forget them. In this recording, we revisit West Virginia with Bil Lepp as he tells some of the stories that made his brother, Paul, and himself repeat winners of the West Virginia State Liars Contest.

Grandma's house was a magical place, and in this vivid memoir, Donald Davis makes it possible for each of us to go back to our own grandma's kitchen, clutter room, living room, and to that immeasurable bed that seemed to swallow us whole. This selection also contains a traditional story Davis learned from his grandmother, one handed down through his family from generations who once lived in Scotland before coming to the Appalachian mountains, about the time that fortune-seeker named Jack made the king mad.