Old Myths

Joseph Campbell famously compared mythology to a kangaroo pouch for the human mind and spirit: “a womb with a view.” In Myths to Live By, he examines all of the ways in which myth supports and guides us, giving our lives meaning. Love and war, science and religion, East and West, inner space and outer space - Campbell shows how the myths we live by can reconcile all of these pairs of opposites and bring a sense of the whole.

Critically acclaimed author Corey Ann Haydu crafts a spellbinding tale following the modern-day descendants of ancient Greek gods—and how two young girls struggling against the weight of the family history end up becoming their own epic myth with large consequences. If you could choose to be a...

A classic fable from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, read by Johnny Morris. Have you ever wondered how and why the animals came to be as they are? In these magical tales, drawn from stories he heard as a child in India as well as on folk traditions he later collected all over the world, Rudyard Kipling gives some wonderfully imaginative explanations.

Arthur Ransome (1884-1967) wrote Old Peter's Russian Tales while he was in Russia during the First World War, prior to becoming a war correspondent for The Manchester Guardian. There are 22 stories in all and are told by Old Peter at the behest of his grandchildren, Ivan and Maroosia, in a cozy log cabin in the middle of the forest. These are delightful re-tellings in Ransome's own words of Russian folk tales, and include stories such as "The Little Snow Girl", "Baba Yaga", "Frost", and "Salt".

"Read this one with the lights on!"—Beth Revis, New York Times bestselling author of The Night of the Witch Knives Out meets The Hazel Wood in this twisty contemporary fantasy about an amusement park shrouded in dark secrets—and the family desperate to inherit it at any cost. Welcome to...

The stories told, the mother fell to musing, and the result is the little book here presented to the judgment of children other than her own - a few new fairy tales, on the old, old pattern!

The story of Andrew Jackson's improbable ascent to the White House, centered on the handlers and propagandists who made it possible Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his forties his sole claim on the public's affections derived from his victory in a thirty-minute...

""You won’t be able to stop turning pages . . . it is so stinking good!” —Colby Sharp, author of The Creativity Project: An Awesometastic Story Collection From National Book Award finalist Katherine Marsh: Percy Jackson meets Wednesday Addams in this fantastical adventure about Ava, who...

Somewhere in the street stood an old old house; it was almost three hundred years old, as you could tell from the date cut into the great beam. Tulips and hopbines and also whole verses of poetry were carved into the wood as people used to do in those days, and over every window a mocking face was cut into the beam. The second story hung way out over the ground floor, and right under the eaves was a leaden spout with a dragon's head. Rain water was supposed to run out of the dragon's mouth, but it came from his belly instead, for there was a hole in it.

In the German country of Württemberg, where the beautiful acacia trees bloom beside the highways, and the apple and pear trees bend down in autumn under the weight of their ripe blessings, there lies the little town of Marbach. It belongs to the class of quite unimportant towns, but it is located in a beautiful spot near the Neckar, the river that flows swiftly past towns and green vineyards and old knights' castles, to join its waters with those of the proud Rhine.

Have you ever heard the story of the old Street Lamp? It's really not very amusing, but you might listen to it for once. - It was such an honest lamp, which had done its duty for many, many years and which was now going to be discarded. It was the last evening it hung on its post and gave light to the street beneath it. The Lamp felt like an old ballet dancer who is performing for the last time and who knows that tomorrow she will be in a cold garret.

There is a street in Copenhagen with a very strange name. It is called "Hysken" street. Where the name came from, and what it means is very uncertain. It is said to be German, but this is unjust to the Germans, for it would then be called "Hauschen," and not "Hysken." "Hauschen," means a little house; and for many years it consisted only of a few small houses, which were scarcely larger than the wooden booths we see in the market places at a fair time.

In a house, with a large courtyard, in a provincial town, at that time of the year in which people say the evenings are growing longer, a family circle were gathered together at their old home. A lamp burned on the table, although the weather was mild and warm, and the long curtains hung down before the open windows, and without the moon shone brightly in the dark-blue sky.

The second book in National Book Award finalist Katherine Marsh's Myth of Monsters series finds Ava and her friends up against their least-expected foe yet. Ava Baldwin is ready for her second year at the Accademia del Forte. Now that she knows that her fellow classmates, descendants of the...

Nashemu staromu kenguru bylo vechno zharko; no v te vremena, o kotoryh ja govorju, on byl sovsem drugim zver'kom i begal na chetyreh koroten'kih nogah. Shkurka u nego byla seraja, pushistaja, i on otlichalsja gordym nravom. Stranno, on bol'she vsego gordilsja tem, chto tanceval na gornoj ploshhadke v centre Avstralii.

A man whose hands shook with the tremors of old age could not eat neatly and often spilled his soup, so his son and daughter-in-law barred him from their table and made him eat by the stove. When he broke the fine stoneware bowl from which he had been eating, they bought him a wooden bowl that could not break.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid meets Percy Jackson in Odd Gods, the critically acclaimed and hilarious series about the middle school gods you never hear about in myths. In book two, Oddonis must embark on the strangest odyssey ever to save Zeus from the world’s cutest curse. Sometimes it feels like...

The story of a faithful old dog told by the Brothers Grimm. One day Sultan's master decides that the dog has grown too old to be useful and decides to get rid of him. Fortunately, Sultan has a friend, the wolf, who has a plan to help him out.

An enchanting collection of classic stories and rhymes for younger listeners. Warning - you may be tempted to stay up all night listening!

Now I'm going to tell you a story that I heard when I was a little fellow and that I like better and better the more I think of it. For it's the same with stories as with many people; the older they grow, the nicer they grow, and that is delightful.