Mountain Myth

Every October, the mountain town of Ash Pitch, West Virginia, lights lanterns to keep the Hollow quiet. At the edge of the old strip mine stands a corn-stalk effigy, a glowing miner’s lamp burning in its chest until dawn. Folks say the ritual keeps the balance between the town and whatever stirs in the dark soil. This year, when the lantern is stolen in a Halloween prank, the flame dies—and something wakes. Crows circle but will not land. People start coughing up husks. The effigy collapses in the night. Sara Hale, a local librarian, her retired-miner father, a shaken teenager, and a ...

Discover the sacred legends, haunting myths, and rich oral traditions of the Cherokee nation. Deep within the misty peaks and ancient valleys of the Appalachian Mountains lies a tapestry of stories passed down through generations. Cherokee Folklore opens a window into a timeless world where nature and the spirit realm exist as one, revealing the profound wisdom and enduring imagination of the Cherokee people. In this immersive collection, you will explore: The powerful origin stories of the world, fire, and the stars as told by ancient storytellers. Legendary encounters with spirit ...

Step into the Northwoods, where trees stretched taller than steeples, storms cracked louder than cannons, and laughter echoed across the rivers. Here lives Paul Bunyan — the mightiest lumberjack who ever walked the land — and his faithful companion, Babe the Blue Ox. From the moment Paul was born too big for his cradle, to the day he and Babe reshaped rivers, carved valleys, and cooked flapjacks on a griddle the size of a lake, their adventures grew into the tallest tales America has ever told. Taller than the pines, bigger than the mountains, funnier than a flapjack roof, this book ...

Legends of Ukraine: Volume 2, presents a rich tapestry of Ukrainian literature, weaving together the threads of mythology, culture, and the beauty of the Ukrainian language. This enchanting collection delves deep into the heart of Ukraine's folkloric traditions, bringing to life tales that have been passed down through generations. Each story is a gem, reflecting the diverse landscape of Ukrainian mythology, from the creation of the world to the tales of guardians protecting the land, and the intertwining of destiny with everyday life. Rich in symbolism and steeped in cultural heritage, ...

For some, the only way to possess magic is to steal it from others. Born without magic, Davis is an outcast in his own shapeshifter family. Yearning for his father’s approval, he sets down a path that intertwines with Iris, a girl whose own ambitions are hindered by a mysterious illness. Their quest leads to Yuras, one of California’s smallest towns, unremarkable until they discover a cave of magic-transferring stones. Now they have a chance to change their fates. But they’re not alone.

When our lives fall apart, we often feel broken, ashamed, and deeply alone. But what if you knew, as you experienced this descent, that it was mapped out in a myth thousands of years old? What if, despite the uniqueness of your own life and experiences, each stage of the process was universal? The journey of descent and rising is the core initiation of the feminine—the heroine’s journey—one traveled by billions of women before you.

Tribal game officer Ada Runningwater knows the strict rules of the ridge: you hunt beside the hollow, but you never cross the line. When a local hunter’s truck is found abandoned with his gear still inside, the fragile peace of the mountain shatters. The local county authorities quickly rule the disappearance a bear attack, but a human-like footprint pressed deep into the wet pine needle dust says otherwise. Something is watching from the shadows of the valley.

Seven days of total disconnection. No phones. No roads. No escape. Marcus Cole traveled to a remote mountain retreat to escape the noise of his demanding life. The property promised absolute quiet and complete isolation. But the dense woods are keeping a dark secret, and the quiet isn't peaceful—it's predatory. When the camp's caretaker is found violently broken among the pines, Marcus and the remaining guests realize they are trapped twenty-two miles from civilization. The supply boat isn't returning for days. Their emergency radio is destroyed. And the massive tracks circling their ...

Nature always fights back. Blackridge Summit Resort is expanding, and management refuses to let a forecasted snowstorm or wildlife warnings delay their multimillion-dollar schedule. They order the explosives detonated on the upper ridge to clear the way. The resulting blast triggers a catastrophic slide that buries the ski lift, crushes the communications tower, and leaves hundreds of guests trapped in a freezing, powerless hotel. But the detonators did not just break the snowpack. They collapsed the roof of an ancient, hidden cave system, exposing a den that has belonged to a clan of ...

Most books about Appalachian folklore begin with the words "locals say." This one gives you the court records. You have read the other ones. Forty legends, two paragraphs each, every story introduced by an anonymous source that cannot be checked. You finish the book unable to tell the difference between a legend with a courthouse file behind it and one somebody invented for a website in 1994. Primeval Appalachian Folklore takes the opposite approach. Every story here comes with a county, a date, and wherever possible the name of the person who told it and the name of the person who wrote it...

Deep in the North Ridge Valley, some secrets are better left buried. Steve is a Wilderness Response ranger who has seen it all, but an anonymous tip about illegal poaching leads him into a restricted zone where the rules of nature no longer apply. Lena is a determined wildlife photographer chasing the shot of a lifetime, unaware that she is about to become the prey. When a brutal flash flood traps them in a "dead zone" of magnetic interference and impenetrable timber, they realize they aren't just fighting the elements. A team of ruthless mercenaries is hunting a legend, and they won't ...

Greek mythology has a hundred books in English. Norse has Neil Gaiman. Japanese has a shelf of its own. Korean mythology? Almost nothing. Korea has one of the oldest and richest mythological traditions on earth. Five thousand years of creatures, spirits, and supernatural beings preserved in shamanistic chants, Buddhist temple records, and stories that grandmothers still tell. In English, the shelf is nearly empty. Korean Monsters fills that gap with fourteen chapters, each dedicated to one creature: Shape-shifters: the nine-tailed Gumiho and the weeping Jangsan Beom Tricksters: the Dokkaebi...

"As soon as listeners hear Johnny Heller's easy Western drawl, they'll know they're in for a story about the Old West."—AudioFile The explosive true saga of the legendary adventurer Jedediah Smith and the Mountain Men who explored the American frontier, written by New York Times bestselling...

The smoke found him before the memory did. Brian Timothy survived the Juniper Creek fire, but the blaze took his crew and his peace of mind. He retreats to the deep redwoods of Northern California to escape his past. The isolation is exactly what he needs until he finds the footprint. Eighteen inches long and pressed deep into the mud of a protected sanctuary. When a corrupt logging operation moves in to illegally harvest the old growth, they awaken something ancient and territorial. The giant beast does not tolerate intruders. Soon, the loggers start a massive forest fire to cover their ...

Amelia has been running a resistance clinic in a cave system for nine years on black-market suppressants and stubbornness. She's a nurse. She hasn't needed an alpha yet and isn't planning to start. Then her truck goes off a mountain road in chimera territory, her last suppressant shatters, and rebound heat starts counting down the hours until it kills her. Vex finds her stitching her own leg wound on his cave floor. Eight hundred pounds of tawny skin, feathered wings, three centuries of chosen solitude. He claims her because she's dying and he's the only alpha on the mountain. His body does...

Wales is beautiful. Wales is historic. Wales is also completely unwilling to behave normally. In WEIRD WALES TRAVEL, Guy Wann follows trains, ferries, buses, mountain railways, bicycles, and his own increasingly suspicious feet through a country packed with haunted castles, ancient curses, saints, dragons, shipwrecks, mining towns, flooded valleys, bizarre legends, and enough medieval stonework to make your knees file a complaint. This is not a standard travel guide. It is a funny, story-rich journey through the stranger side of Wales. Travel from Cardiff’s Roman walls and Victorian ...

The Korean Cinderella is drowned, returns as a creature, and is killed again. This is the version Disney never told. Every culture keeps a Cinderella, a great flood, a daughter who sacrifices everything for her father. Korea's versions are among the oldest and least known in English, and they were never softened by Victorian editors or studio animators. Here the stories kept their bones. Korean Legends retells fourteen of Korea's foundational tales as full, immersive narratives, with the darkness and the moral weight left intact. These are the stories Koreans have told for centuries to ...

Seventeen-year-old Ashlyn Lanski is tired of her boring, single life. Swimming and spending time with Tatiana, her best friend, are her only sanctuary. The girls plan to leave their drab lakeside town far behind for college, and Ash hopes to finally ditch her longtime crush for Finley, Tatiana's twin brother. But when Tatiana and her family fail to return home after a family emergency, Ashlyn chooses to do something drastic to find them

Something was buried in the ice. Now it’s awake. Cole Maddox knows the mountains. As a wilderness guide, he respects the cold, the terrain, and the storms. But he has never seen anything like the facility hidden in the deep valley of the Timberline. Hired to escort a team of investors and scientists into the frozen wild, Cole thinks it’s just another high-paying babysitting job. He’s wrong. Inside the compound, a disgraced geneticist has achieved the impossible. He hasn’t just cloned a fossil; he has resurrected an apex predator that evolution tried to erase. A hunter designed for ...

The official report blamed exposure for Brooke's disappearance. The nineteen-inch footprints told a different story. Armed with her sister's cryptic journal, Leanna leads a desperate expedition deep into the unforgiving wilderness of Colter's Gap. She expects to find answers. Instead, she leads her team straight into a hunting ground. Something massive is stalking them through the old-growth forest. It watches through their cameras. It leaves territorial markers in the trees. And terrifyingly, it mimics the voices of the lost to lure searchers into the dark. Trapped in a burning valley, ...