Book picks similar to
Persephone in the Late Anthropocene: Poems by Megan Grumbling
poetry
mythology
fantasy
rhymes
For The Most Beautiful
Emily Hauser - 2016
It was a war that made - and destroyed - both men, a war that shook the very foundations of the world. But what if there was more to this epic conflict? What if there was another, hidden tale of the Trojan War that had yet to be told?Now is that time - time for the women of Troy to tell their story.Thrillingly imagined and startlingly original, For the Most Beautiful reveals the true story of true for the first time. The story of Krisayis, daughter of the Trojans' High Priest, and of Briseis, princess of Pedasus, who fight to determine the fate of a city and its people in this ancient time of mischievous gods and mythic heroes.In a novel full of passion and revenge, loyalty and betrayal, bravery and sacrifice, Emily Hauser breathes exhilarating new life into one of the greatest legends of all - in a story that has waited millennia to be told.
Savage Her Reply
Deirdre Sullivan - 2020
A retelling of the favourite Irish fairytale The Children of Lir. Aife marries Lir, a king with four children by his previous wife. Jealous of his affection for his children, the witch Aife turns them into swans for 900 years. Retold through the voice of Aife, Savage Her Reply is unsettling and dark, feminist and fierce, yet nuanced in its exploration of the guilt of a complex character. Voiced in Sullivan's trademark rich, lyrical prose as developed in Tangleweed and Brine - the multiple award-winner which established Sullivan as the queen of witchy YA. Another dark & witchy feminist fairytale from the author of Tangleweed and Brine
And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories & Other Revenges
Amber Sparks - 2020
Now, she reaches new, uncanny heights with And I Do Not Forgive You. In “Mildly Happy, With Moments of Joy,” a friend is ghosted by a simple text message; in “Everyone’s a Winner at Meadow Park,” a teen precariously coming of age in a trailer park befriends an actual ghost. At once humorous and unapologetically fierce, these stories shine an interrogating light on the adage that “history likes to lie about women”— as the subjects of “A Short and Speculative History of Lavoisier’s Wife” and “You Won’t Believe What Really Happened to the Sabine Women” (it’s true, you won’t) will attest. Blending fairy tales and myths with apocalyptic technologies, all tethered intricately by shades of rage, And I Do Not Forgive You offers a mosaic of an all-too-real world that fails to listen to its silenced goddesses.Mildly unhappy, with moments of joy --You won't believe what really happened to the Sabine women --A place for hiding precious things --Everyone's a winner in Meadow Park --A short and slightly speculative history of Lavoisier's wife --We destroy the Moon --In which Athena designs a video game with the express purpose of trolling her father --Is the future a nice place for girls --Our mutual (theater) friend --The dry cleaner from Des Moines --The eyes of Saint Lucy --We were a storybook back then --Rabbit by rabbit --Through the looking-glass --The noises from the neighbors upstairs --Our geographic history --Death deserves all caps --A wholly new and novel act, with monsters --When the husband grew wings --The language of the stars --Mildly joyful, with moments of extraordinary unhappiness --Tour of the cities we have lost
Devil Ash Days
Mitchell Olson - 2012
The devils of Hell live in fear of constant demon attacks, and Ash is recruited to help fight. The boy is teamed up with Shiva, the feisty daughter of Satan, and Aura, a pervy man with a dangerous curse. The team's first mission is to track down King Satan's stolen pendant, which might just be Ash's ticket back to Earth as well.
Loki
Mike Vasich - 2010
Father of Lies. Harbinger of Destruction. Exiled and tortured by the gods, Loki swears vengeance. He will summon the mighty Fenris Wolf and the legendary Midgard Serpent, and they will lead an army of giants and all the dead in Niflheim. Brimming with the power of the most destructive being in the Nine Worlds, he will not rest till Asgard is in ashes and all the gods are dead under his heel.
The Fall of Arthur
J.R.R. Tolkien - 2013
Already weakened in spirit by Guinevere’s infidelity with the now-exiled Lancelot, Arthur must rouse his knights to battle one last time against Mordred’s rebels and foreign mercenaries. Powerful, passionate, and filled with vivid imagery, this unfinished poem reveals Tolkien’s gift for storytelling at its brilliant best. Christopher Tolkien, editor, contributes three illuminating essays that explore the literary world of King Arthur, reveal the deeper meaning of the verses and the painstaking work his father applied to bring the poem to a finished form, and investigate the intriguing links between The Fall of Arthur and Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Walking with Shadows
Luke Romyn - 2016
I highly recommend it." -- Vigilant Reader Book Reviews From USA Today and Amazon #1 bestselling author, Luke Romyn, comes a compelling tale of survival and companionship. A plane crashes in the midst of the Amazon rainforest, leaving only two survivors: Jonas Drake, a wealthy award-winning author, and a terrified young boy named Jeremy. Jonas must find the strength to lead Jeremy through an army hunting them for ransom, predatory beasts, and all manner of perils not found in the concrete jungle he usually calls home. To keep Jeremy calm, Jonas shares extraordinary stories involving magical characters, tales from his early days as an author. Unfortunately, neither of them know what to do when these creations start to come alive in the jungle surrounding them. Filled with profound characters, this stunning adventure journeys into the heart of a man turned cold by a world he barely recognizes, who slowly thaws while learning to care for someone other than himself.
Destroyer of Light
Jennifer Marie Brissett - 2021
In the four habitable areas of the planet—Day, Dusk, Dawn, and Night—the haves and have nots, criminals and dissidents, and former alien conquerors irrevocably bind three stories:*A violent warlord abducts a young girl from the agrarian outskirts of Dusk leaving her mother searching and grieving.*Genetically modified twin brothers desperately search for the lost son of a human/alien couple in a criminal underground trafficking children for unknown purposes.*A young woman with inhuman powers rises through the insurgent ranks of soldiers in the borderlands of Night.Their stories, often containing disturbing physical and sexual violence, skate across years, building to a single confrontation when the fate of all—human and alien—balances upon a knife’s-edge.
Lay Back the Darkness: Poems
Edward Hirsch - 2003
He explores the boundaries of human fallibility both in candid personal poems, such as the title piece—a plea for his father, a victim of Alzheimer’s wandering the hallway at night—and in his passionate encounters with classic poetic texts, as when Dante’s Inferno enters his bedroom:When you read Canto Five aloud last night in your naked, singsong, fractured Italian, my sweet compulsion, my carnal appetite, I suspected we shall never be forgiven for devouring each other body and soul . . . From the lighting of a Yahrzeit candle to the drawings by the children of Terezin, Hirsch longs for transcendence in art and in the troubled history of his faith. In “The Hades Sonnets,” the ravishing series that crowns the collection, the poet awakens full of grief in his wife’s arms, but here as throughout, there is a luminous forgiveness in his examination of our sorrows. Taken together, these poems offer a profound engagement with our need to capture what is passing (and past) in the incandescence of language.From the Hardcover edition.
Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses
Ted Hughes - 1997
The Metamorphoses of Ovid stands with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton as a classic of world poetry; Hughes translated twenty-four of its stories with great power and directness. The result is the liveliest twentieth-century version of the classic, at once a delight for the Latinist and an appealing introduction to Ovid for the general reader.
When Fox is a Thousand
Larissa Lai - 1993
Larissa Lai interweaves three narrative voices and their attendant cultures: an elusive fox growing toward wisdom and her 1000 birthday, the ninth-century Taoist poet/nun Yu Hsuan-Chi (a real person executed in China for murder), and the oddly named Artemis, a young Asian-American woman living in contemporary Vancouver.With beautiful and enchanting prose, and a sure narrative hand, Lai combines Chinese mythology, the sexual politics of medieval China, and modern-day Vancouver to masterfully revise the myth of the Fox (a figure who can inhibit women’s bodies in order to cause mischief).
John Milton's Paradise Lost In Plain English
Joseph Lanzara - 2012
The PLAIN ENGLISH version you’ve been waiting for! Now a new, improved Kindle-friendly edition! Nothing else like it! Between-the-lines format! More choices! Easy navigation! Still hated by your teacher!
House of Cry
Linda Bleser - 2017
On Jenna Hall’s thirteen birthday, her mother committed suicide, a tragedy that continues to haunt the young woman twenty years later. Now, on her thirty-third birthday, Jenna’s pain over her mother’s death and abandonment is tempered by her hopes for a brighter future—of a happier life in the new home she’s buying with her beloved sister, Cassie. While touring the house, Jenna finds a secret room—a portal that magically transports her to an alternate reality in which her mother is still alive. It is the first of many alternate existences Jenna will experience in which she discovers a different version of herself and the people she knows, both the living and the dead. Accompanying her on these mystical journeys is her ever-present guardian angel. Traveling through these alternate realities, Jenna uncovers a long lost sibling, learns about her mother's past, reconnects with a childhood best friend, and meets her soul mate. Ultimately, she discovers newfound courage, confidence, forgiveness, and love—for herself, those around her, and those who are gone.Enchanting and thoughtful, House of Cry explores the consequences of our daily choices and the power they have to shape our lives, reaffirming our faith in restoration and the possibility of personal transformation.
Mythic Journeys: Retold Myths and Legends
Paula GuranM. Rickert - 2019
. . the snake-haired Greek Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze turned men to stone . . . Kaggen, creator of the San peoples of Africa . . . the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend . . . Freyja, the Norse goddess of love and beauty . . . Ys, the mythical sunken city once built on the coast of France . . . Ragnarok, the myth of a world destroyed and reborn . . . Jason and the Argonauts, sailing in search of the Golden Fleece . . .Myths and legends are the oldest of stories, part of our collective consciousness, and the source from which all fiction flows. Full of magic, supernatural powers, monsters, heroes, epic journeys, strange worlds, and vast imagination, they are fantasies so compelling we want to believe them true.This new anthology compiles some of the best modern short mythic retellings and reinvention of legend from award-winning and bestselling authors, acclaimed storytellers, and exciting new talent, offering readers new ways to interpret and understand the world. Adventure with us on these Mythic Journeys . Stories and authors include are:“Lost Lake” – Emma Straub and Peter Straub“White Lines on a Green Field” – Catherynne M. Valente“Trickster” – Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due“Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” – Brooke Bolander“A Memory of Wind” – Rachel Swirsky“Leda” – M. Rickert“Chivalry” – Neil Gaiman“The God of Au” – Ann Leckie“Faint Voices, Increasingly Desperate” – Anya Johanna DeNiro“Ogres of East Africa” – Sofia Samatar“Ys” – Aliette de Bodard“The Gorgon” – Tanith Lee“Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood” – Charles de Lint“Calypso in Berlin” – Elizabeth Hand“Seeds” – Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter“Wonder-Worker-of-the-World” – Nisi Shawl“Thesea and Astaurius” – Priya Sharma“Foxfire, Foxfire” – Yoon Ha Lee“Owl vs. the Neighborhood Watch” – Darcie Little Badger“How to Survive an Epic Journey” – Tansy Rayner Roberts“Simargl and the Rowan Tree” – Ekaterina Sedia“The Ten Suns” – Ken Liu“Armless Maidens of the American West” – Genevieve Valentine“Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” – Maria Dahvana Headley“Zhyuin” – John Shirley“Immortal Snake” – Rachel Pollack“A Wolf in Iceland Is the Child of a Lie” – Sonya Taaffe
Poems to Fix a F**ked Up World
Various Poets - 2019
. .Taking as its starting point the classic 'wheel of balance' life-coach model, this beautifully packaged collection of extracts and short poems gathers wisdom old and new in a perfect gift for anyone who needs comfort in this f**ked up world of ours.'This is not a poetry book as you know it, this is a life raft.' Emerald Street on Poems for a World Gone to Sh*t.