Mountain Myth

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...

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 ...

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.

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.

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

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

"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...

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.

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 ...

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 ...

Here’s a clean KDP-style description for Weird Tennessee Road Trip: Discover Tennessee’s strangest roadside legends, haunted history, oddball attractions, underground wonders, music myths, and mountain-town madness. Tennessee may look friendly from a distance, with pretty mountains, country music, barbecue, college towns, and cheerful welcome signs. But start driving, and things get weird fast. One minute you are staring at Elvis jumpsuits in Memphis, the next you are watching ducks march through a luxury hotel, standing inside a full-scale Greek Parthenon in Nashville, hearing tales of...

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 ...

An ancient giant has awakened—one whose existence could rewrite the story of mankind. To keep the Nephilim from being captured, exploited, or unleashed upon the world, Heather and her team must escort the colossal being from the mist-shrouded mountains of Uganda to a hidden refuge in Tajikistan. But earning the trust of something that belongs more to legend than to history is no small task—and protecting it is even harder. Dustin “Cowboy” McCord holds the team together as bullets, exhaustion, and fear push them to the breaking point. Every step of their journey is shadowed by the ...

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 ...

Some family secrets should stay buried. Others will tear you apart. Darcy Bellweather hasn't returned to her family's isolated farmhouse in fifteen years. She intends to clean out her late grandmother’s estate, sell the property, and escape back to civilization. But Maude left behind more than dusty antiques. Taped inside a kitchen cabinet is a handwritten list of three strict rules: Keep the porch light burning after sunset. Never cut the white tree beside the creek. Every Sunday night, leave a bowl of milk beneath it. Darcy assumes it’s the harmless superstition of a grieving mind—...

The illustrated guide to every monster Odysseus met on his way home. A cyclops with a single eye. A whirlpool that swallows whole ships. Six-headed Scylla. A nymph who turns sailors into pigs. A floating island where the four winds live as four people. The Odyssey is full of strange creatures, and this is the first illustrated bestiary that gathers them all in one place for young readers. Twenty-one short chapters, twenty-one double-page illustrations. Each creature gets its own portrait, a clear quick-fact box (kingdom, family, special trait, danger to sailors), and a retelling that keeps ...