"Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" or "Strange Tales of Liaozhai" is a collection of nearly five hundred mostly supernatural tales written by Pu Songling during the early Qing Dynasty. It was written in Classical Chinese rather than Vernacular Chinese. Pu is believed to have completed the majority of the tales sometime in 1679, though he could have added entries as late as 1707. He borrows from a folk tradition of oral storytelling to put to paper a series of captivating, colorful stories, where the boundary between reality and the odd or fantastic is blurred...

This poem celebrates Christmas by exploring the mystery of Christ's mission on earth: his death, resurrection, and second coming as judge of all human souls. Sir Gawain is cast in the role of Everyman. At the feast of the New Year, an unarmed green giant rides his green horse into the banqueting hall of King Arthur and challenges any member of the assembled company to behead him with a huge axe and then to submit to the same treatment from his victim the next year. Gawain volunteers to prevent Arthur from accepting this challenge, fairly confident that the challenger will be unfit to return the blow...

Stories of King Arthur and His Knights. Retold from Malory’s “Morte dArthur”.

A collection of folklore stories accumulated during the Islamic Golden Age, The Arabian Nights Entertainments has entertained and fascinated readers for centuries. The book centers on a frame story concerning the sultan Shahrayah and his wife Scheherazade, who cleverly narrates captivating stories to her husband each night in order to save herself from his retribution and live another day. As a result the book encourages the literary technique of a story within a story. The frame story begins when the sultan Shahrayar learns of his brother’s adulterous wife and subsequently discovers his own wife is guilty of infidelity...

Published in 1910, The Lilac Fairy Book is the last book in the series of fairytale collections known as Andrew Lang's “Coloured” Fairy Books and features stories from various folklores and cultures including Welsh, Portuguese, Scottish, Italian, and many other foreign literary branches. Moreover, the collection is a gem in the short story genre due to the fact that Lang collected some of the featured stories from foreign languages and made them available to English audiences. Featuring 33 stories, The Lilac Fairy Book offers a different perspective to the happy-ever-after fairytales most people are accustomed to and expect...

Not your common fairy tales, this collection is a mixture of morals, quirkiness, and sarcasm. In it one finds ironic derivatives (if not roots) of well known fairy tales such as “The Brave Little Taylor” and “Beauty and the Beast,” as well as some more unusual settings to impart the popular fairy tale themes of justice and happily ever after. Most stories are told with wry humor and often shocking irreverence for the expected fairy tale turn out. This is NOT a book for children, but one for adults who love fairy tales, and enjoy making fun of them...

The Fairy Ring, originally published in 1910, is a collection of 63 fairy tales from around the globe. It includes such well-known favorites as “History of Jack the Giant-Killer,” “The Frog Prince,”"Rumpel-stilts-ken,” and “Snow-white and Rose-red,” among many others. Children of all ages will enjoy these stories.

“The House that Jack Built” is a standard of juvenile literature that delights children and adults alike with the increasingly lengthy sentences, stretched to the breaking point, that make up its narrative. Through a chain of events, beginning with a rodent eating some grain and culminating in a festive wedding, children learn that playing with grammar can be fun! You can read along with this recording.

Since this series of books is intended for all young people from one to one hundred, it opens with about eighty of the old MOTHER GOOSE RHYMES. Nothing better was ever invented to tell to little folks who are young enough for lullabies. Their rhythm, their humor, and their pith will always cause us to prize them as the Babies’ Classics. Editors: Hamilton Wright Mabie, Edward Everett Hale, William Byron Forbush.(Gutenberg Text)

A collection of my favorite short children's stories and rhymes.

This book of favorite fairy tales was compiled and illustrated by Peter Newell. it includes Jack The Giant Killer; Cinderella; Sleeping Beauty; Little Red Riding Hood; Aladin and the Wonderful Lamp, The Ugly Duckling, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and Rose Red, The Wild Swans, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, and 4 others that are not so famous. The stories included were based upon the those that various famous men remembered as their favorites when children

Following in the vein of my Coffee-Break collections, this is a collection of short (all under 15 minutes) stories for kids. Focus is on fables and fairy tales published before 1923.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. Appropriate stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore. - Summary by Lynette Caulkins

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures. - Summary by Lynette Caulkins

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

You get to choose what you want to read! So long as the source is Public Domain for you, any short story or chapter that tells of legends, heroes, myths, or ancient lore, is welcome. We are looking for representations of many different cultures within each collection. If you have questions of whether a source is Public Domain for you , I recommend asking about that in this project's discussion before you begin recording. Simply post the question with a link to the source you've found. :) Limit of 2 sections per reader in a given Myths & Legends collection. - Summary by Lynette Caulkins

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

Collection of Russian peasant tales: "The Deserted Mine" - The key to saving the trapped miners is held by a man who hasn't spoken a word in 10 years. "Mahmoud's Family" - Escaping prisoners of war should be shot, but Mahmoud has a family. "A Misunderstanding" - A young woman seeks escape from her past, in a convent. "The Luck of Ivan the Forgetful" - An incorrigible criminal escapes from a sentence of hard labor to find freedom and perhaps a kind of redemption in the forest.

William Matthew Flinders Petrie – the father of Egyptian Archaeology – developed and applied statistical analysis to pottery from prehistoric sites and by this established seriation as a relative dating method as a major contribution to Egyptian Archaeology. In this scientific paper he describes special varieties of the conception of the supernatural in ancient Egypt. The source text also includes a list of "principal works on Egyptian religion" and a list of works "on religions ancient and modern".

The three charming stories contained in The Frog Prince and Other Tales include a less-known fairy-tale called Princess Belle-Etoile besides the title story and Alladin and the Wonderful Lamp. Published in 1874, the tales are re-told by the famous illustrator Walter Crane, who has also provided some of the most lovely illustrations in the book. The book makes an ideal gift and both parents and children will certainly enjoy it. It's perfect for bedtime story-reading sessions and kids would love gazing at the beautiful Greek-style illustrations that are scattered throughout the book...

Three monkey brothers, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod, are Mulla-mulgars or royal monkeys. As she dies, their mother gives them the enchanted Wonderstone for protection, and tells them to follow their father. They embark on a journey of fantastical adventure to find their father, who left years earlier in search of the kingdom of his brother, the Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar, promising to return for them after he had found the way.

Wilhelm Hauff was a German poet and novelist, perhaps best known for his fairy tales . Some of his stories, such as the Caliph Stork found in this volume, are popular in German-speaking countries to this day. In this book of fairy tales, we find the tale of the beautiful Swanhilde and various other stand-alone fairy tales, as well as a frame story "The Caravan" which includes multiple fairy tales within it. Hauff's freshness and originality shine through in these tales.

I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.Many of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a little bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin in the village of Ballisodare...

Everywhere on earth the fairy world of each country is older and perhaps more enduring than the one we see and feel and tread upon. So I tell in this book the folk lore of the Korean people, and of the behavior of the particular kind of fairies that inhabit the Land of Morning Splendor.

Compiled by an American missionary, West African Folk Tales by William H Barker is a delightful collection of folk tales from Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania and other countries along the west coast of Africa. These stories spread in various forms to other countries like the West Indies, Suriname, the Netherland Antilles, etc and can be still heard today among the people of these countries. West African Folk Tales is a wonderful read for both young people and older readers alike. The stories are charmingly retold...

The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales, stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and girls of from six to sixteen years of age.

The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales, stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and girls of from six to sixteen years of age, but adults will enjoy these just the same! This volume contains stories about heroes such as Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Don Quixote. Summary by Foon

This volume contains two publications by W. Scott-Elliot, namely The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904). A theosophist and believer of the Occult, W. Scott-Elliot gives us a description of the history and structure of Atlantis and Lemuria, along with what he considers evidence of this. The Story of Atlantis is prefaced by Alfred Percy Sinnett.

Venus and Adonis is Shakespeare's narrative poem about the love of the goddess Venus for the mortal youth Adonis, dedicated partly to his patron, the Earl of Southampton (thought by some to be the beautiful youth to which many of the Sonnets are addressed). The poem recounts Venus' attempts to woo Adonis, their passionate coupling, and Adonis' rejection of the goddess, to which she responds with jealousy, with tragic results. This recording features three different readers performing the narration, Venus, and Adonis.

A limbless reptilian monster that propels itself through the swamps with a propellor-tipped tail? A creature so ashamed of its monstrous appearance that it dissolves into tears when captured? Learn about the snoligoster, the squonk and many other 'fearsome critters' in this field guide written and illustrated by two North American foresters who know them well. Listeners who suspect that these creatures are the stuff of tall tales, will nevertheless do well to look out for slide-rock bolters when vacationing in the Colorado mountains. - Summary by Phil Benson

Seventeen ghost stories centered around the ruined medieval cathedral of Saint Andrew in the Scots city of that name. The author was famous in his time for his interest in ghostly apparitions.

This version of the classic tale of the three bears has a heroine named Golden Hair. The jolly bears, instead of chasing her away from their home, come to live with her at Grandmother’s house. The recording can be enjoyed by itself, or you can read along.

Many of us are familiar with Grimm's Fairy Tales, or children's stories from France, England, China, India and Germany, but are less aware of similar folk tales and children's stories from Japan. Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki captures the exotic flavor, traditions and customs of this ancient land. Published in 1903 entitled the Japanese Fairy Book, the title was changed in the 1908 edition to Japanese Fairy Tales. Theodora Ozaki was the daughter of a wealthy Japanese aristocrat Baron Ozaki, the first Japanese man to study in the West, and his wife, an American schoolteacher's daughter...

A collection of romances from old Japan rendered into English by Yei Theodora Ozaki. Filled with tales of honor, adventure, tragedy, and romance, this collection will surely give anyone interested in Japanese culture and literature an insightful and enjoyable experience.