Popular beliefs and controversial knowledge

Heroes, villains, victims, and minions are more important than ever before in our politics and culture.

An immersive and mesmerizing narrative that reimagines the Mesopotamian myth of the Great FloodA long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans and decided to send a flood to destroy them.

'To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful' The New York Times'Who?

'It will be read and re-read not as a treatise but as a story: one of the most extraordinary that has ever been written of the origins of Western self-consciousness' Simon SchamaThe marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was the last time the gods of Olympus feasted alongside mortals.

Meticulously selected and artfully recreated, the selection of stories in Italian is vast and ranges geographically from Corsica and Sicily to Venice and the Alps.

'He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson .

Combining traditional myth, oral history and re-worked European legend to depict an ancient realm of heroism and wonder, the seven tales collected here are among the most fantastical of all the Norse romances.

This collection brings together all of W.

An action-packed adventure steeped in archaeological treasures, long-lost secrets and intrigue.

Warrior-prince Rama is about to be crowned Young King, when he hears the devastating news that his father, King of Ayodhya, has been tricked into banishing him to the forest.

Endymion, Pelops, Daedalus, Pygmalion what are the stories behind these and the hundreds of other familiar names from Greek mythology names that recur throughout the history of European culture?

Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era: the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed V lsung family, the Hel-ride of Brynhild and the cruelty of Atli the Hun.

Are black cats lucky or unlucky?

Kormak's Saga, The Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-Poet, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People, Viglund's Saga Set in the farmsteads of Viking age Iceland at a time when the old ethos of honour and heroic adventure merged with new ideas of romantic infatuation, each of these sagas features poet heroes, complex love triangles, and travels to foreign lands.

Surveys the pre-Christian beliefs of the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples.

Each of Foster's books has generated vigorous discussion, but in THE IRISH STORY he breaks fresh ground even by his own standards.

Gathering a wide range of traditional African myths, this compelling new collection offers tales of heroes battling mighty serpents and monstrous birds, brutal family conflict and vengeance, and desperate migrations across vast and alien lands.

First written down in the eighth century AD, these early Irish stories depict a far older world - part myth, part legend and part history.

Robert Graves, classicist, poet and unorthodox critic, retells the Greek legends of gods and heroes for a modern audience.

A comprehensive, scholarly accessible study, in which the authors draw upon poetry and mythology, art and literature, archaeology and psychology to show how the myth of the goddess has been lost from our formal Judeo-Christian images of the divine.

Myths and Legends of the Celts is a fascinating and wide-ranging introduction to the mythology of the peoples who inhabited the northwestern fringes of Europe - from Britain and the Isle of Man to Gaul and Brittany.

The Holy Grail is an image familiar to us all as an almost unattainable, infinitely desirable goal.

THE DEFINITIVE AND COMPREHENSIVE RETELLING OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY 'Burning ice, biting flame; that is how life began' The extraordinary Scandinavian myth cycle is one of the most enduring, exciting, dramatic and compelling of the world's great stories.

Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods.

A must-read adventure thriller for fans of Indiana Jones, Dan Brown and Chris Kuzneski.

Men with big feet have big penisesYou should drink at least eight glasses of water a daySugar makes kids hyperEating at night makes you fatChewing gum stays in your stomach for seven yearsYou lose 40% of your body heat through your headEvery day, you hear or think things about your body and health that are just not true.

The figures and events of classical myths underpin our culture and the constellations named after them fill the night sky.

Drawing on myth, folklore and history, the stories of the Mabinogion passed from generations of storytellers before they were written down in the thirteenth century in the form we know.

Steinbeck's first posthumously published work, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is a reinterpretation of tales from Malory's Morte d'Arthur.

This enthralling book will take you, month-by-month, day-by-day, through all the festivities of English life.

Written in the third century BC in Alexandria, this is the only full surviving account of Jason's legendary quest for the Golden Fleece.

Mr Jack has been nimble and he s been quick, searching through the history of nursery rhymes and he s found out all kind of plum tales, just like little Jack Horner.

Half mythical, heroic and sagacious, the emperor Vikramaditya is widely regarded as India's greatest monarch.

Mystery surrounds the parentage of Alexander, the prince born to Queen Olympias.

Sardonic, wry and wise, Aesop s Fables are some of the most enduring and well-loved literary creations in history.

A roller coaster intellectual journey through the back streets and rat runs of history to uncover the traces in architecture and monuments of a secret religion that has shaped the world.

Sunjata Keita was the founder of one of the greatest empires of Western Africa.

In despair at having no son to succeed him, the King of Turkey leaves his palace to live in seclusion.

Recorded in sacred Sanskrit texts, including the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, Hindu Myths are thought to date back as far as the tenth century BCE.

'Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

The Tain Bo Cualinge, centrepiece of the eighth-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales, is Ireland's great epic.

'Then she began to run, and she ran over the sharp stones and through the thorns, and the wild animals bounded past her .

'The valley was full of snakes and serpents as big as palm trees, so huge that they could have swallowed any elephant that met them.

'Tomorrow I must set off to receive that blow, to seek out that creature in green, God help me!

Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Elder Edda is one of the classic books that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.

Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Wanderer tells the classic tales that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.

The Old English epic poem Beowulf has an established reputation as a canonical text.

The Old English epic poem Beowulf has an established reputation as a canonical text.

First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma.

Hatfield's Herbal is the story of how people all over Britain have used its wild plants throughout history, for reasons magical, mystical and medicinal.