Literary Collections

The mythology of the ancient Celts is a rich and complex one. Celtic myths relate epic stories of heroic ancestors, when the divine and mortal realms were intimately intertwined and gods and goddesses inhabited the natural world. The exploits of Cúchulainn and Fionn mac Cumhaill, of Deirdre and Rhiannon, and of other heroes and heroines may have their roots in the distant past but they continue to thrill and enchant readers today. Celtic Myths is a fascinating survey of these myths and of the history behind them. Preserved in the monasteries of early Christian Ireland and in stories first written down in medieval Wales, their origins lie much deeper in the largely lost world of the Celts. Only on the Atlantic coast of Western Europe have aspects of the oral culture of the ancient Celts resisted the tide of history. The languages and traditions of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany still resonate with the mythology of a pre-Christian world. For all those who want to understand the Celts and the way in which they perceived their world, and for all those who simply enjoy the narrative power of ancient myths, this Pocket Essential provides the ideal introduction. more...

Price: $14.99

This is an electronic edition of the complete collection complemented by author biography. This collectiontable of contents linked to every book and chapter. ******************. The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and that relates the "history" of the Land of Oz. Oz was originally created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen Oz books. Although most of the Oz books are strictly adventures, Baum—as well as many later Oz authors—styled themselves as "Royal Historians" of Oz to emphasize that Oz is a genuine place. Later authors wrote 26 other "official" books after Baum''s death. Many other authors have put their own twists on Oz, notably Gregory Maguire''s revisionist Wicked. For more such books, please see List of Published Oz Apocrypha. — Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. more...

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In this beautifully crafted memoir, a young half-Muslim, half-Christian woman travels to India to connect with a tiny Jewish community and unlock her family’s secret history. Sadia Shepard grew up in a joyful, chaotic home just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where cultures intertwined, her father a white Protestant from Colorado and her mother a Muslim from Pakistan. Her childhood was spent in a house full of stories and storytellers, where the customs and religions of both of her parents were celebrated and cherished with equal enthusiasm. But Sadia’s cultural legacy grew more complex when she discovered that there was one story she had never been told. Her beloved maternal grandmother was not a Muslim like the rest of her Pakistani family, but in fact had begun her life as Rachel Jacobs, a descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny Jewish community whose members believe that they are one of the lost tribes of Israel, shipwrecked in India two thousand years ago. This new knowledge complicated Sadia's cultural inheritance even further, intimately linking her to the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and to the customs of India, the United States, and Pakistan. At her grandmother's deathbed, Sadia makes a promise to begin the process of filling in the missing pieces of her family's fractured mosaic. With the help of a Fulbright Scholarship and armed with a suitcase of camera equipment, she arrives in Bombay, where she finds herself struggling to document a community in transition. Her search to connect with the Bene Israel community and understand its unique traditions brings her into contact with a cast of remarkable characters, tests her sense of self, and forces her to examine what it means to lose and seek one’s place, one’s homelands, and one’s history. In the process, she unearths long-lost family secrets, confronts her fears of failure, and finds love in places that surprise her. Sadia beautifully weaves together the more...

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As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Nguyen is filled with a rapacious. hunger for American identity, and in the pre-PC-era Midwest (where the Jennifers and Tiffanys. reign supreme), the desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic-. seeming than her Buddhist grandmother’s traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled. “delicacies” of mainstream America capture her imagination. In Stealing Buddha’s Dinner , the glossy branded allure of Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll. House Cookies becomes an ingenious metaphor for Nguyen’s struggle to become a “real”. American, a distinction that brings with it the dream of the perfect school lunch, burgers and Jell-. O for dinner, and a visit from the Kool-Aid man. Vivid and viscerally powerful, this remarkable. memoir about growing up in the 1980s introduces an original new literary voice and an entirely. new spin on the classic assimilation story. more...

Price: $15.00