Showing results for "classics" in Customs & Traditions

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Scheherazade, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Scheherazade always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.

WHEN GODS TURN VENGEFUL, ONLY THE BRAVE CAN DEFY FATE AND FIND THEIR WAY HOME Discover Stephen Fry's epic re-telling of the Odyssey for the 21st century After the fall of Troy, wily Odysseus, King of Ithaca, sails for home and his steadfast queen Penelope. However, the angry gods curse him to...

Baali and Sugreeva of the Vana Nara tribe were orphan brothers who were born in abject poverty and grew up as slaves like most of their fellow tribesmen. They were often mocked as the vanaras, the monkey men. Sandwiched between the never-ending war between the Deva tribes in the north and the...

Belle, a beautiful young girl, becomes the captive of what seems to be a terrible beast - until she discovers her captor to be an enchanted prince.

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale. The original author is unknown. The first published version was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, and the best-known written version is an adaptation of her work, published in 1756 by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont.

Three thousand years of encounters with malevolent beings that have invaded our waking lives and our nightmares A Penguin Classic For millennia, societies have told tales of their fears incarnate—otherworldly couriers of plague, death, temptation, and moral decline. The Penguin Book of Demons...

'Jeffs narrates these interconnected tales with warmth, intimacy and a subtle undercurrent of menace' Guardian (Audiobook of the Week) Enriched for audio with specially commissioned music based on traditional melodies, Old Songs fuses short stories, histories, lyrics and music in an enthralling...

Listen to a spellbinding version of the beloved classic "Beauty and the Beast" followed by two of Hans Christian Andersen's two classic fairy tales, "The Tinderbox" and "The Princess and the Pea". Prepare yourself for an hour of fascinating stories and storytelling.

Under the order of King Pelias, Jason embarks on a perilous journey to steal the Golden Fleece from the Land of Colchis. Far from heroic, Jason is the typical everyman. Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER An enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city: “Elegant and wicked.... [This] might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime." —The New York Times Book...

Take a step – if you dare – into the shadows and the story of our primal fascination with fear, terror, and the macabre. This comprehensive and creepy audio guide that explores the dark and eerie landscapes of horror down the centuries and across the world – from prehistoric death rituals...

The forgotten book on world mythology by Alan Watts is now an audiobook for the first time. Alan Watts is today remembered as a trailblazing interpreter of Eastern philosophy, but The Two Hands of God reveals a different side of his multifaceted genius. In this ambitious work, Watts takes...

A witty, inspiring reckoning with the ancient Greek and Roman myths and their legacy, from what they can illuminate about #MeToo to the radical imagery of Beyoncé. The picture of classical antiquity most of us learned in school is framed in certain ways -- glossing over misogyny while omitting...

Of all the ghostly lore that bedevils Sleepy Hollow, none terrifies more than the galloping spectre of the Headless Horseman. Few in the haunted glen are as susceptible to the tale as the superstitious schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane. But just as bewitching - and bewildering - to Ichabod is the elusive coquette Katrina Van Tassel. On an autumn eve, Ichabod attends a harvest party, hoping to finally woo the woman of his dreams. Instead, he sees his worst nightmares come true.

'A groundbreaking reclamation of the forgotten women who slay dragons. A must-read for dragon fans.' Professor Daniel Ogden A seminal chronicle of the hidden history and mythology of female dragon slayers from ancient world expert and author of Goddess with a Thousand Faces Jasmine Elmer. The...

The surprising origins and people behind the world's most influential magical tales: the people who told and re-shaped them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them and were in turn formed by them. Fairy-Tales are not just fairy-tales: they are records of historical...

George Brisbane Scott Douglas (1856-1935), the Scottish poet and writer, published the book Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales in 1901. The literary genres of the book include comic, literary, nursery, and animal stories plus fairy tales of mythic creatures like the brownies, bogles, kelpies, and mermaids. Classified, tabulated, and scientifically labelled, these imaginative narratives are related in vernacular language, and have a timeless appeal to adults and children alike. Amongst the most popular stories are "The Fox’s Stratagem", and "The Bee and the Mouse".

Two thousand years of legend and lore about the menace and majesty of dragons, which have breathed fire into our imaginations from ancient Rome to Game of Thrones to Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm A Penguin Classic The most popular mythological creature in the human...

Author and illustrator Martín Prechtel is internationally known for his explorations of ancient folklore and uncovering the lessons therein for modern readers. In The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun, he revives a hitherto unknown Guatemalan Tzutujil Mayan tale of the beginnings of the...

The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo is a long essay linking the role of tea (teaism) to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of Japanese life. Addressed to a western audience, it was originally written in English and is one of the great English tea classics. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was proficient at communicating his thoughts to the Western mind. In his book, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life.

The Silverado Squatters is Robert Louis Stevenson's travel memoir of his 1880 honeymoon trip with his bride and her son Lloyd Osbourne to Napa Valley, California. On May 19, 1880, he married Fanny Vandegrift, and they decided to spend their honeymoon in a three-story bunkhouse at an abandoned mining camp called "Silverado" in the Mayacamas Mountains. The book offers fascinating historical views of late 19th-century California. During their two-month honeymoon, Stevenson visits a petrified forest, encounters some wine growers, and meets various colorful characters.