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The Mechanic's Curse brings together Clive Gilson's collected short stories in a single volume. These stories have been previously published in anthologies and online magazines. Clive's love of magical realism from writers such as Angela Carter, and the glories of traditional folk and faery tales shines through. These stories in particular mix the macabre and the fey and tradition with a loving touch.These are intimate tales, focusing on broad...

The Insomniac Booth continues many of the themes that first emerged in Clive Gilson's earlier collection of short stories, The Mechanic's Curse. This second collection continues with the investigation of magical realism and the glories of traditional folk and faery tales.As ever, these are intimate tales, focusing on broad but subtle themes and personal recollections. Clive Gilson's stories continue to link recurring themes of fantasy with urb...

Just how far will a father go to protect his daughter, especially when his 'protection' is so fundamentally flawed?Billy Whitlow, one time "Don of Doo Wop", has survived his days of drink, drugs and groupies, settling now into a more peaceful life centred on his blossoming seventeen year old daughter Bex. Revising for her 'A' Levels, Bex visits Billy one Easter but the longed-for simplicity of father-daughter happiness is shattered one night i...

A Solitude of Stars is disturbing and breathtaking in equal measure. It could be called a science-fiction dystopia, but I think the book goes much deeper than that. What interested me very much was how to tell the story of the Apparat and Dirigiste societies ranging across our local planetary system seeking peace by waging war to achieve it - much as we do today - while also weaving in elements of a wider galactic history, a history that links...

There are many sources & traditions within Native American storytelling & mythologies. These tales are a selection of those told by the tribes & peoples of the far north.Like all mythology, Inuit myths and legends are both entertaining and instructive. The Inuit designated the powers of good and evil to deities living in a spirit world closely entwined with the starkly beautiful northern landscape. These tales were intrinsically linked to Inui...

This collection covers a range of cultures and themes based around the California Basin and South Western nations. There is no single mythology of the Indigenous North American peoples. There are numerous traditions and narratives associated with religion, ethics and core beliefs. These stories are deeply based in nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons, weather, plants, animals, earth, water, fire, sky and the heavenly bodies. Commo...

Among many Native cultures, "storytelling" was normally restricted to the long winter evenings. The Cree were one culture with a strict belief in this regard: "During the summer, no stories founded on fiction were ever told, the Indigenous peoples believing that if any 'fairy' tales were told during that season when they were supposed to use their time to best advantage, the narrator would have his life destroyed by the lizard, which would suc...

There are many sources and traditions within Native American storytelling and mythologies. These tales are a selection of those told by the tribes and peoples of the Great Plains, but by no means does this book cover all aspects even within just this sub-group. It's been one of the absolute delights of the summer discovering just how deep and rich are the veins of folk and tribal lore across the Americas.There is a deep sense of nature, of the...

This is the second in a two volume collection of tales from Scandinavia. There is a clear and rich tradition of storytelling in the north, perhaps dictated by long winter nights and roaring fires. Whenever you read the sagas or pick up on the wandering collections of Hans Christien Andersen and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, amongst many others, you tap into a centuries old heritage wrapped in wonder and magic and outlandish heroism.In this second...

This is the second book in the Fireside series covering the English story-telling tradition. Listening to a story is like going on a journey. Only you can see the pictures in your mind. Only you can conjure the demons and the dragons and the heroes with such vivacity. As we travel through our story landscapes we are marked with wisdom and imagination. These are just some of the ingredients that make the wonder of storytelling.Once again, I hop...

This is a second volume of Irish tales, so rich are the story-mining seams taken from just the few Irish collections I have in my possession at the moment. Across the two volumes we have around one hundred and forty tales taken from pretty well every tradition, including classic tales of Irish legend, fairy and folk beliefs, and tales in the vernacular, oral tradition.For the most part these tales are as collected by my Victorian and Edwardian...

Tales From Germania, as with the collection of stories from France, Tales From Gallia, concentrates on those lesser known stories from the Brothers Grimm alongside other collectors such as Andrew Lang, Margaret Arndt and Logan Marshall. I also found some interesting but unattributed tales to add to the mix.Although the stories told by the brothers and Andrew Lang have become old and familiar friends, I have to say that the stories told by Marg...

In Tales from Gallia we have a collection of tales from the French & Gallic folk tradition. These tales were originally collected by Andrew Lang, Charles Perrault, Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, Comtesse de Sophie Ségur, Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy, Katharine Pyle and Edmund Dulac, representing some of the finest collectors working from the seventeenth century onwards.As ever it's been a delight working with ...

Folklore & Fairy Tales from the Magyars (Hungary) - Here we have a rich mine of folk and fairy tales from the Magyar tradition. I've taken the following extract from Wikipedia as a starting point for this introduction…"According to András Róna-Tas the locality in which the Hungarians, the Manicha-Er group, emerged was between the Volga river and the Ural Mountains. Between the 8th and 5th centuries BC, the Magyars embarked upon their independe...

It is said that a particular feature of Romanian culture is the relationship between folklore and classical education and the arts. This is, in part, attributed to the rural character of Romanian life that has produced an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Romanian folklore tales were the main literary genre until the 18th century, being both a source of inspiration for literary writers and a traditional way of framing story...

The worlds of folklore and traditional storytelling are fascinating places to visit wherever the land or the people may be Tales from different regions are often shaped by geography and by cultural and historical factors that have accumulated over the course of centuries. At their heart, though, is an ever present desire to explain and understand the world and the experience of living in it day by day.The Balkan Peninsula is a region in South-...

Mythology was at the heart of everyday life in Ancient Greece. Greeks regarded mythology as a part of their history, using myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace the descent of one's leaders from a mythological hero or a god. Few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey.Greek myths concern t...

Italian literature arguably began after the founding of Rome in 753 BC. Latin literature was, and still is, highly influential in the world, with numerous writers, poets, philosophers, and historians, such as Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid and Livy.Much later, following in the footsteps of Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, Italian Renaissance authors produced a number of important works such...

John A. Crow explains it perfectly in Spain, The Root and the Flower, University of California Press, 1985:Spain was first called Iberia, a name given to it by its Iberian inhabitants (from North Africa). The name was supposedly based on the Iberian word for river, Iber. They reached Spain around 6000 BCE. When the Greeks arrived on Spanish soil around 600 BCE. they referred to the peninsula as Hesperia, meaning "land of the setting sun." When...

And so we reach the final volume in this small collection of tales from the north. Originally I intended to complete the series with the Finnish volume, but as ever, there were just too many fabulous stories in my archive to call such an immediate halt.In this volume we have work collected by Jørgen Engebretsen Moe and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen taken from East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon and Norske Folkeeventyr, much of which I have adapte...