Homer's Odyssey is not the only version of the story. Mythic material was originally oral, and also local -- a myth would be told one way in one place and quite differently in another. I have drawn on material other than the Odyssey, especially for the details of Penelope's parentage, her early life and marriage, and the scandalous rumors circulating about her. I've chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids....

Dream Angus comes to you at night and bestows dreams - you may spot him skipping across the hills, his bag of dreams by his side. Just the sight of him may be enough to make you fall in love, for he is also the god of love, youth, and beauty. Divine Angus is cherished by all but fated to love only the beautiful Caér, swan maiden from his own dreams. Crafting an ancient myth into a tale fabulously and irresistibly new, Dream Angus is the epitome...

From one of Israel's most lauded contemporary writers, this book retells the myth of Samson-one of the most tempestuous, charismatic, and colorful characters in the Hebrew Bible. Few other Bible stories feature as much drama and action, narrative fireworks and raw emotion: the battle with the lion; the three hundred burning foxes; the women he bedded and the one woman that he loved; his betrayal by all the women in his life, from his mother to Delilah;...

Michel Faber's The Fire Gospel is a wickedly funny, acid-tongued, media-savvy picaresque that delves into our sensationalist culture. Theo Griepenkerl, a Canadian linguistics scholar, is sent to Iraq in search of artifacts that have survived the destruction and looting of the war. While visiting a museum in Mosul, he finds nine papyrus scrolls tucked in the belly of a bas-relief sculpture: they have been perfectly preserved for more than two thousand...

The author of The Cleaner of Chartres "brings Sigmund Freud together with a vivid, loquacious Tiresias for an intriguing retelling of the Oedipus myth" (Publishers Weekly). In the latest retelling of the world's greatest stories in the Myth series from Canongate, the highly regarded novelist Salley Vickers brings to life the Western world's most widely known myth, Oedipus, through a shrewdly told exploration of the seminal story in conversation between...

According to Slavic myth, Baba Yaga is a witch who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. In Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, internationally acclaimed writer Dubravka Ugresic takes the timeless legend and spins it into a fresh and distinctly modern tale of femininity, aging, identity, and love. With barbed wisdom and razor-sharp wit, Ugresic weaves together the stories of four women in contemporary Eastern Europe: a writer who grants...

Arminto Cordovil has inherited a fortune, and with it control of his fathers shipping empire. But when a freighter, The Eldorado, crashes in the lower reaches of the Amazon, its shipwrecked hull seems tied to Armintos destiny. He will soon discover his fathers cunning and the disastrous consequences it will have for his own young life. Orphans of Eldorado is a magical retelling of a legendary expedition. From the vibrant port of Manaus, through the...

In a place like no other, on a mystical island in the shape of tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of oracles. Beautiful Kamikuu is admired far and wide; Namima, small but headstrong, learns to live in her older sister's shadow. On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is chosen as the next Oracle, while Namima is forced to become the goddess of darkness, destined to spend eternity guiding the spirits of the deceased to the underworld. As the sisters...