Fairy Legends

In the hills of Appalachia, humor and wisdom are mixed up forever in funny, wise stories that seem to grow more lustrous with each telling. Here are two of the best: "Uncle Frank Invents the Electron Microphone", Appalachian folk wisdom rolled into one of Davis' funniest stories; "Uncle Frank and the Crown Feed Boys", Davis' legendary Uncle Frank teaches a couple of traveling salesmen the lesson of their lives.

Scarlett returns to the mortal realm different than before. She's mended her relationship with her sister, but now has new secrets she must keep. After taking the pill Kaelem, the Unseelie King, had given her at the Summer Court, the magic in Scarlett grows, and she's losing control of her power. When Kaelem offers Scarlett his help, she has no choice but to accept before she hurts someone she loves. Scarlett must trust him to teach her to master her new gifts, but his intentions aren't pure and Scarlett is pulled even further into the fae world.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

Here are a baker's dozen of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poems brought to life in the medium he always wrote for - the spoken word. As narrated by Bobby Norfolk, these poems evoke the range of moods, from elegy to wonder to celebration, that the poet is remembered for.

Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, and the other denizens of Mount Olympus feel almost as present and larger than life today as they did when they were worshipped as gods. Humanity has been telling and retelling stories about the characters from Greek and Roman myth for centuries—heck, the Romans liked the Hellenic originals so much, they remade them faster than Marvel remakes Spider-Man movies. And from Virgil's Aeneid to Xena: Warrior Princess to Percy Jackson to The Song of Achilles, the obsession has never waned.

Nationally acclaimed storyteller J.J. Reneaux grew up Cajun for true, surrounded by the stories, music, food, and culture of rural communities in southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana. A traditional storyteller who collects by word-of-mouth, Reneaux has developed her repertoire over years of collecting: on front porches, school playgrounds, and her beloved fishing trips, as well as at nursing homes, airports, and at neighborhood fais-dodos.

As the only hedgewitch in Blackthorn, Massachusetts―an uncommonly magical place―Aziza El-Amin has bargained with wood nymphs, rescued palm-sized fairies from house cats, banished flesh-eating shadows from the local park. But when a dark entity awakens in the forest outside of town, eroding the invisible boundary between the human world and fairyland, run-of-the-mill fae mischief turns into outright aggression, and the danger―to herself and others―becomes too great for her to handle alone.

A story of love and a power that echoes through time. A prophecy foretold by the Council. A sword forged by the Ladies of the Lake. A child born from love and the hope of thousands. Seventeen-year-old Idrisa is a student from Dumont Orphan School. When the Emperor of Dumonia invites all citizens to a birthday gala for Prince Merrick, she attends and becomes entangled in a world beyond belief. At the party, Idrisa begins to hear strange voices that urge her to go to the lake.

Keenan left home to watch out for a young woman searching for her friend. But when bandits attack, leaving them separated, Keenan is left lost and wounded, stumbling through the woods in search of help. Princess Sakura needs a titled husband to inherit the throne. Since a prophecy declared her the future bride of a common soldier, she only has a few months until her brother is named heir in her place. But it’s hard to find a husband at all in an isolated castle.

Deina is trapped. As one of the Soul Severers serving the god Hades on earth, her future is tied to the task of shepherding the dying on from the mortal world—unless she can earn or steal enough to buy her way out. Then the tyrant ruler Orpheus offers both fortune and freedom to whoever can retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice, from the Underworld. Deina jumps at the chance. But to win, she must enter an uneasy alliance with a group of fellow Severers she neither likes nor trusts. So begins their perilous journey into the realm of Hades . . .

No story offers a deeper reflection on humanity — or mankind’s endless struggle for power. A bestseller in its first week of release, ranked #4 on Amazon Kindle’s Young Adult Fiction in Ancient Civilisation, The Forgotten Tale of Larsa is an epic of love, loss, and destiny — inspired by history, though forgotten by time. In a ruthless quest to be worshipped as a god, the almighty Assyrian Emperor Jaquzan wages war against a legendary kingdom known only as the Garden of the Gods — a realm so breathtaking it is said to have inspired the creation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

The gate of hell is opening—and he must stop it. Darkness rises in the land of Llad--and only unity, courage, and the light of truth can stand against it. In this epic conclusion to The Chronicles of Llad, the Windweavers—Ladnar, Darby, and Sheba--must unite elves, dwarfs, meres, wizards, prairie dogs, and the mysterious light fairies to stop Barshahor, the fallen wizard, who seeks to open the Gate of the Underworld.

Treachery and lies pave the road to the truth. Prince Merrick, Idris, and their companions flee from Dumonia and seek refuge with Elora, the empress of Whisterfield Empire. There they discover the history of their world and their true bloodline. Allies and enemies will emerge from other empires when they find out Idris and her band of orphans are in Cambria, the first kingdom, as they plan for Uther Pendragon’s descendant to claim the throne.

After spending my whole life not knowing who I was, all I wanted was to graduate high school and get into college. The strange new guy, Hart, throws my life into a tailspin with myths, magic, and revelations about my heritage. Charged with saving Native American magic, I have to survive prophecies and adventure, a whole world I knew nothing about. Third edition with latest cover, updated formatting, no new material. (First version is large print, not-updated)

For a thousand years the faeries known as the Children of Rhys have lived in safety on their magical islands, protected from the evils of the outside world. Yet a deadly conflict is brewing on the mainland, as the evil faery Empress gathers an army to destroy the brave rebels known as the Oakenfolk. And when Rhosmari's betrothed Garan steals the sacred Stone of Naming and runs off to help the rebels, she realizes that the only way to keep the Children of Rhys out of the war is to go after him and get the Stone back.

Michael, the Angel of Death, is the loneliest of all creatures. No mortal can see or hear the Grim Reaper, and all those he touches must die. One day, though, a family adopts him as their own Godfather Death. From that day on, Michael tells bedtime stories to their youngest child. These are fairy tales from the angel's ten-thousand-year-old mind, dark, magical, whimsical, and tender. Told with warmth, wit, and an undercurrent of ancient magic, each story touches upon themes of longing and loneliness, love and sacrifice, courage, loss, and transformation.

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.

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.

These shivery tales were collected from the oral tradition, from people all over the Southwest, and represent the rich cultural diversity of the region, from the Ozarks to the Rio Grande, California to the Big Thicket.