Books with category ⚡️ Mythology
Displaying 10 books

The Unicorn Woman

2024

by Gayl Jones

Marking a dramatic new direction for Jones, The Unicorn Woman is a riveting tale set in the Post WWII South, narrated by a Black soldier who returns to Jim Crow and searches for a mythical ideal.

Set in the early 1950s, this latest novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army veteran Buddy Ray Guy as he embodies the fate of Black soldiers who return, not in glory, but into their Jim Crow communities.

A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he's a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he is a true self-educated intellectual and a classic seeker: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love. As he moves around the south, from his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, primarily, to his second home of Memphis, Tennessee, he recalls his love affairs in post-war France and encounters with a variety of colorful characters and mythical prototypes: circus barkers, topiary trimmers, landladies who provide shelter and plenty of advice for their all-Black clientele, proto feminists, and bigots.

The lead among these characters is, of course, The Unicorn Woman, who exists, but mostly lives in Bud's private mythology. Jones offers a rich, intriguing exploration of Black (and Indigenous) people in a time and place of frustration, disappointment, and spiritual hope.

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats.

Nor do they have tails.

But they are most assuredly dead.


Nebula and Alex Award winner P. Djèlí Clark introduces a brand-new world and a fantastical city full of gods and assassins.

Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins―resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories―have only three unbreakable vows.

First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade.

Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. Eveen’s a professional. She’s never missed her mark.

The third and the once you accept a job, you must carry it out. And if you stray? A final death would be a mercy. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.

The Bright Sword

2024

by Lev Grossman

The Bright Sword, penned by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Magicians trilogy, Lev Grossman, returns with a triumphant reimagining of the King Arthur legend for the new millennium. A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he's too late. The king has fallen, leaving no heir, and a mere handful of the knights of the Round Table remain.

These are not the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They are the oddballs of the Round Table, from the edges of the stories, such as Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur's fool, who was knighted as a joke. They are joined by Nimue, Merlin's former apprentice, who turned on him and buried him under a hill. This ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But with Arthur's death, Britain's fault lines are revealed. God has abandoned it, and the fairies, monsters, and old gods are returning, led by Arthur's half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords lay siege to Camelot, and rival factions form around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It falls to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world, and make it whole again. Yet, before they can restore Camelot, they must uncover the truth behind the lonely, brilliant King Arthur's fall, and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain's dark past.

The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, resplendent with duels and quests, battles and tournaments, and magic swords and Fisher Kings. It also casts a fresh light on Arthur's Britain, a diverse, complex nation grappling with its bloody history. This is a tale of imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, searching for a way to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves.

Bear

2024

by Julia Phillips

Bear is a mesmerizing novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor—a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth. They were sisters and they would last past the end of time. Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive.

Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can't earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence. Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want?

When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it's time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger. A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us—and within us, Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.

Children of Anguish and Anarchy

2024

by Tomi Adeyemi

New allies rise.
The Blood Moon nears.
Zélie faces her final enemy.
The king who hunts her heart.

When Zélie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.

Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr's quest to harness Zélie's strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands.

But as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha's shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.

Goddess of the River

2024

by Vaishnavi Patel

Goddess of the River is a powerful reimagining of the story of Ganga, goddess of the river, and her doomed mortal son. This tale weaves through the lives of a mother and a son, a goddess and a prince, exploring themes of curse and oath, and the river whose course will change the fate of the world.

Ganga, the joyful goddess of the river, serves as caretaker to the mischievous godlings who roam her banks. But when their antics incur the wrath of a powerful sage, Ganga is cursed to become mortal, bound to her human form until she fulfills the obligations of the curse.

As a mortal, Ganga weds King Shantanu and becomes a queen, determined to regain her freedom no matter the cost. Yet, in a cruel twist of fate, as she is freed from her binding, she must leave her infant son behind.

Her son, prince Devavrata, unwittingly carries the legacy of Ganga’s curse. His fateful oath to never claim his father’s throne sets in motion a chain of events leading to a terrible and tragic war.

As the years unfold, Ganga and Devavrata's paths cross time and again, each meeting another step on a path predestined by the stars. Goddess of the River is a deeply moving and masterful tale that delves into duty, destiny, and the unwavering bond between mother and son.

Cecilia

2024

by K Ming Chang

Cecilia is a surreal novella that delves deep into the intensity and eroticism of girlhood friendships, the ecstasy of desire and disgust, and matriarchal mythmaking. The story unfolds with Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor's office, reencountering Cecilia, a woman who has captivated her since their school days. As they coincidentally board the same bus, with each claiming not to be following the other, their chance meeting spurs a series of intensely vivid and corporeal memories.

In the midst of this defamiliarization, the narrator begins to see queerness itself as an alienation from normative time. Smart, subversive, and gripping, Cecilia takes readers on a winding, misty road trip through bodily transformation, inextricable histories of desire and violence, diaspora, and obsessive love.

The Morningside

2024

by Téa Obreht

From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, Téa Obreht presents a magical novel of mothers and daughters, displacement and belonging, and myths both old and new.

There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to The Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant-future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past, and because the once-vibrant city she lives in is now half-underwater.

Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning.

Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything. Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.

Fruit of the Dead

2024

by Rachel Lyon

Fruit of the Dead is an electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island. It delves into themes of addiction and sex, family and independence, and explores who holds the power in a modern underworld.

Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, is afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York and uncertain about where home truly is. Her life takes an unexpected turn when the father of one of her campers, Rolo Picazo—the CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company—offers her an alternative. Middle-aged, divorced, and magnetic, Rolo intoxicates Cory and draws her into his world. Presented with a childcare job and a nondisclosure agreement, Cory is ferried to his private island, where she is plied with luxury and opiates.

Meanwhile, Cory's mother, Emer, who heads a precarious agricultural NGO, senses that something is amiss. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer embarks on a journey across land and sea, driven by a maternal instinct that she believes is a cry for help.

Alternating between Cory and Emer's perspectives, Rachel Lyon's Fruit of the Dead is a story that incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. This haunting and ecstatic novel vibrates with lush abandon, offering a tale that explores love, control, and obliteration against the backdrop of America's own late capitalist mythos. A reinvention of the classic story of Persephone and Demeter, Fruit of the Dead promises to be a novel that readers will not soon forget.

Ours

Ours: A Novel by Phillip B. Williams is a beautifully-written and ambitious epic about the complexity of freedom, set in mid-nineteenth-century America. This ingenious, sweeping novel introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjuror who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there.

She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours. It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root. But although Saint does her best to protect the inhabitants of Ours, over time, her conjuring and memories begin to betray her, leaving the town vulnerable to intrusions by newcomers with powers of their own.

As the cracks in Saint’s creation are exposed, some begin to wonder whether the community’s safety might be yet another form of bondage. Set over the course of four decades and steeped in a rich tradition of American literature informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality, Ours is a stunning exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love and freedom by a writer of capacious vision and talent.

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