Enthralling tales of the sea, rivers and lakes from around the globe.

Folklore of the seas and rivers has a resonance in cultures all over the world. Watery hopes, fears and dreams are shared by all peoples where rivers flow and waves crash. This fascinating book covers English sailor superstitions and shape-shifting pink dolphins of the Amazon, Scylla and Charybdis, the many guises of Mami Wata, the tale of the Yoruba River spirit, the water horses of the Scottish lochs, the infamous mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, and much more.

Accompanied by stunning woodcut illustrations, popular authors Dee Dee Chainey and Willow Winsham explore the deep history and enduring significance of water folklore the world over, from mermaids, selkies and sirens to ghostly ships and the fountains of youth.

With this book, Folklore Thursday aims to encourage a sense of belonging across all cultures by showing how much we all have in common.

Perhaps no other stories have ever been told so often or listened to with so much pleasure as the classic tales of ancient Greece. For many ages they have been a source of delight to young people and old, to the ignorant and the learned, to all who love to hear about and contemplate things mysterious, beautiful, and grand. They have become so incorporated into our language and thought, and so interwoven with our literature, that we could not do away with them now if we would. They are a portion of our heritage from the distant past, and they form perhaps as important a part of our intellectual life as they did of that of the people among whom they originated.

This is an engaging account of the world of the Vikings and their gods. As the Vikings began to migrate overseas as raiders or settlers in the late eighth century, there is evidence that this new way of life, centred on warfare, commerce and exploration, brought with it a warrior ethos that gradually became codified in the Viking myths, notably in the cult of Odin, the god of war, magic and poetry, and chief god in the Norse pantheon. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when most of Scandinavia had long since been converted to Christianity, form perhaps the most important era in the history of Norse mythology: only at this point were the myths of Thor, Freyr and Odin first recorded in written form. Using archaeological sources to take us further back in time than any written document, the accounts of foreign writers like the Roman historian Tacitus, and the most important repository of stories of the gods, old Norse poetry and the Edda, Christopher Abram leads the reader into the lost world of the Norse gods.

The distinguished Russian archeologist Aleksei P. Okladnikov's study reveals how a field archeologist goes about determining and writing prehistory. Over the course of his career, Okladnikov and his wife Vera Zaporozhskaya travelled across Siberia from the Lena River in the north to the Amur River in the south excavating archaeological sites. During that time Aleksei and Vera found and interpreted the rock art of the vast region from the Paleolithic Era to the present day. Relying on petroglyphs and pictographs left on cliffs and boulders, Okladnikov lays out in detail and straightforward language the prehistory of Siberia by "reading" these artifacts. This book permits the past to be told in its own words: the art portrayed on the cliffs of Siberia.

Alexander Nefedkin's highly original new book, translated by the noted American scholar Richard L. Bland, is devoted to the understudied topic of the military and military-political history of Chukotka, the far northeastern region of the Russian Federation, separated from Alaska by Bering Strait. This study is based on primary sources, including archeological, folkloric, and documentary evidence, dating from ancient times to the cessation of conflict in the territory in the nineteenth century. Nefedkin's analysis surveys the military history of these eras, reassessing well known topics and bringing to light previously unknown events.

In his captivating study of faith and class, John Hayes examines the ways folk religion in the early twentieth century allowed the South's poor - both white and black - to listen, borrow, and learn from each other about what it meant to live as Christians in a world of severe struggle. Beneath the well-documented religious forms of the New South, people caught in the region's poverty crafted a distinct folk Christianity that spoke from the margins of capitalist development, giving voice to modern phenomena like alienation and disenchantment. Through haunting songs of Death, mystical tales of conversion, grassroots sacramental displays, and an ethic of neighborliness, impoverished folk Christians looked for the sacred in their midst and affirmed the value of this life in this world. From Tom Watson and W. E. B. Du Bois over a century ago to political commentators today, many have ruminated on how despite material commonalities, the poor of the South have been perennially divided by racism. Through his excavation of a folk Christianity of the poor, which fused strands of African and European tradition into a new synthesis, John Hayes recovers a historically contingent moment of interracial exchange generated in hardship.

Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard, two sister-writers born and raised in Jamaica, re-create imagined and lived homelands in their literature by commemorating the history, culture, and religion of the Caribbean. Velma Pollard was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica. By the time she was three, her parents had moved to Woodside, St. Mary, in northeast Jamaica, where her sister, Erna, was born. Even though they both travel widely and often, the sisters both still live in Jamaica. The sisters write about their homeland as a series of memories and stories in their many works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They center on their home village of Woodside in St. Mary Parish, Jamaica, occasionally moving the settings of their fiction and poetry to other regions of Jamaica and various Caribbean islands, as well as other parts of the diaspora in the United States, Canada, and England. The role of women in the patriarchal society of Jamaica and much of the Caribbean is also a subject of the sisters' writing. Growing up in what Brodber calls the kumbla, the protective but restrictive environment of many women in the Anglo-Caribbean, is an important theme in their fiction. In her fiction, Pollard discusses the gender gaps in employment and the demands of marriage and the special contributions of women to family and community. Many scholars have also explored the significance of spirit in Brodber's work, including the topics of "spirit theft," "spirit possession," and spirits existing through time, from Africa to the present. Brodber's narratives also show communication between the living and the dead, from Jane and Louisa (1980) to Nothing's Mat (2014). Yet, few scholars have examined Brodber's work on par with her sister's writing. Drawing upon interviews with the authors, this is the first book to give Brodber and Pollard their due and study the sisters' important contributions.

By analysing the folk stories and personal narratives of a cross-section of Palestinians, Sirhan offers a detailed study of how content and sociolinguistic variables affect a narrator's language use and linguistic behaviour. This book will be of interest to anyone engaged with narrative discourse, gender discourse, Arabic studies and linguistics.

A captivating, magical and haunting debut novel of breathtaking imagination, from the winner of the 2014 Costa Short Story Award

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 INTERNATIONAL DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE

'That rare thing: genuinely unique' OBSERVER

'Will win you over ... Magical' THE TIMES

'Absolutely stunning. I loved it' MADELINE MILLER, AUTHOR OF CIRCE

On the remote island of Neverness, the villagers' lives are entwined with nature: its enchantments, seductions and dangers. There is May, the young fiddler who seeks her musical spirit; Madden Lightfoot, who flies with red kites; and Verlyn Webbe, born with a wing for an arm. Over the course of a generation, their desires, gossip and heartbreak interweave to create a staggeringly original world, crackling with echoes of ancient folklore.

Why does Mulla Nasruddin spoon yoghurt into the river? What is the reason he rides his donkey backwards? Why does he paint a picture that is blank? And is he crazy to move into the house of the man who's just burgled him? Find out all about the amazing antics of Nasruddin in these twenty-one hilarious stories and riddles, famous throughout the Middle East for their jokes, riddles and wisdom.