By Paulo Coelho
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, September 10, 2013. 7:30 PM.

A fable about undauntingly following one's dreams, listening to one's heart, and reading life's omens features dialogue between a boy and an unnamed being.

By Tim Manley
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Favorite fairy tale characters are depicted as living in the 21st century and find themselves braving creeps on dating sites, gluten allergies, and Facebook stalkers.

By Thomas J. Craughwell

All the rumors that have passed through office e-mail networks, the fantastic stories that have "happened to a friend" and the horrifying tales told around campfires are gathered here for the first time in one fascinating, unbelievable collection. Organized by subject, chapters include: "Naked at His Own Surprise Party and Other Sexual Escapades", "The Stolen Kidney and Other Medical Disasters", "The Gulf War Computer Virus and Other High Tech Scares", "Roswells's Area 51 and Other Extraterrestrial Encounters", "Elvis's Motorcycle and Other Celebrity Rumors", and many more. Each story runs one-to-two-pages long. Many of the stories have been told with a different twist and variations are included at the end of each tale.

By Neil Gaiman
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Wednesday, April 25. 7:30 PM

“On the plane home to attend the funerals of his wife and best friend, Shadow, just released from prison, encounters Mr. Wednesday, an enigmatic stranger who seems to know a lot about him, and when Mr. Wednesday offers him a job as his bodyguard, Shadow accepts and is plunged into a dark and perilous world, where the soul of America is at stake (From the Publisher).”

By Neil Gaiman

His past marked by his father’s embarrassing taunts and untimely death, Fat Charlie meets the brother he never knew and is introduced to new and exciting ways to spend his time.

By George Orwell
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, July 14, 2015. 7:30 PM.

A satire on totalitarianism in which farm animals overthrow their human owner and set up their own government.

Became the movie: Animal Farm.

By Cathy Spagnoli

More than 30 stories from the rich Asian cultural panorama illuminate the wisdom and humor of Eastern cultures. In her search for stories, Cathy Spagnoli has slid through Indian rice fields, sipped sake with Japanese epic singers, met with monks in Thailand and Korea, and hiked the Himalayas with Tibetan dancers.

By A.N. Roquelaure

The Prince awakens Sleeping Beauty and brings her to his castle, where she has a series of erotic adventures.

By Jen Jones

When people die, do they leave part of themselves behind? Throughout history, people have heard and seen ghostly evidence of a world beyond the grave. Read about a doomed English queen, a creepy talking doll, and a shape-shifting wolf. Then whistle past the graveyard if you dare.

By Shannon Hale

Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.

By Helen Oyeyemi

A reimagining of the Snow White story recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity set in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s.

By Paulo Coelho

Follows the journey of Brida, a beautiful young Irish girl, on a quest for knowledge and understanding as she encounters a wise man who teaches her how to overcome her fears and a woman who introduces her to the hidden music of the world.

By Peadar Ó Gulin

One by one, the teenagers of Ireland are called to the nightmarish Grey Land of the Sídhe (wicked fae). The teens reappear after only three minutes, but with magically misshapen bodies – or dead. Readers follow a class of fourteen–year–olds, including Nessa, with polio–twisted legs, as they experience the Call in a grisly and gripping plot.

By Olga Grushin
Recommended By Nathalie Levin, Children's Services Librarian

Thirteen years after marrying Prince Charming and having two children, a dissatisfied Cinderella sneaks out to obtain the services of a witch known to provide love potions to disgruntled housewives, but instead of rekindled romance, she wants her husband dead.

By Pallavi Aiyar

A fable set in contemporary Beijing and told from the perspectives of two cats from disparate backgrounds who are adopted by foreigners traces how their newly pampered lives are threatened when cats are blamed for the spread of a mysterious virus.

By Nora Roberts

As the powerful vampire Lilith prepares to quench her thirst for destruction by unleashing her fury in battle, a medieval sorcerer, one of the circle of six charged by the goddess Morrigan, must travel through time to stop her.

By Gregory Maguire

A retelling of the classic fairy tale of Cinderella, told from the point of view of one of the ugly stepsisters, turns the entire legend around in a thoughtful look at what it means to be beautiful.

By Sophie Goldstein
Recommended By Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist, Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

It’s tough living in the 21st century, when mythical beings not only roam the earth, but camp out on your sofa and raid your refrigerator. Jobs are scarce; angels infest Brooklyn (the demons have taken all the good property in Manhattan) and minor gods bus tables at the local diner. The mortals of New York must balance not only their checkbooks but keep a close eye on their souls’ karmic account.

By A.S. Byatt

The title story of this collection of fairy tales for adults describes the strange and uncanny relationship between its extravagantly intelligent heroine - a world renowned scholar of the art of story-telling - and the marvelous being that lives in a mysterious bottle, found in a dusty shop in an Istanbul bazaar.

By Danielle Page
Series Dorothy Must Die

Amy Gumm, the other girl from Kansas, has been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked to stop Dorothy who has found a way to come back to Oz, seizing a power that has gone to her head -- so now no one is safe!

By Karl Shuker

An overview of the world of dragons, from ancient Greece and medieval Europe to pre-Columbian America and ancient China, features lore about the origins, feats, and histories of these mysterious beasts.

By C. Robert Cargill
Recommended By Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist

“Long ago, friends Ewan and Colby pierced the veil between their world and a supernatural realm, and while trying to lead normal lives, soon discover that fate can never be outrun as they are called back to the Limestone Kingdom (From the Publisher).”

By Mark Dunn

Recounts what happens when the citizens of an island must rely on all their ingenuity to communicate in an increasingly limited language when the goverment progressively bans letters from the alphabet.

By Chris Knopf

As a strong storm approaches the shore, residents interact and clash with each other on the island of Elysiana, New Jersey during the summer of 1969.

By Bill Willingham
Series Fables
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

This elaborate fantasy series begins as a whodunit, but quickly unfurls into a much larger story about Fabletown, a place where fairy tale legends live alongside regular New Yorkers.

By Bill Willingham
Series Fables

Travel to upstate New York, where the non-human Fable characters have found refuge on a farm, miles from mankind. But all is not well on the farm and a conspiracy to free them from the shackles of their perceived imprisonment may lead to a war that could wrest control of the Fables community away from Snow White.

By Mercedes Lackey

In the mystical realm of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, the newest Fairy Godmother is introduced.

By Tom Payne

In a comparison of modern celebrity culture to the classics, the author draws parallels between the society’s perception of such celebrities as Britney Spears and Michael Jackson and figures from Greek mythology.

By Adam Ardrey

Chronicles the author’s unlikely quest to discover evidence of legendary King Arthur’s Scottish heritage, tracing his exploration of a notable clan and his discoveries about the real and accessible Highlands locations of such familiar symbols as the Round Table and the Sword in the Stone.

By Mercedes Lackey
Series Fairy Tale

A young nobleman glimpses the legendary Firebird as it steals cherries from his father's orchards, and he journeys through a fantastical version of Old Russia to find the Firebird and fall in love.

By Stephen C. Lundin

The book draws lessons aimed at combating dysfunctional workplaces from the happy fishmongers at Seattle's Pike Place Market.

By John Gruen

A collection of fourteen short fables each of which describes a different flower.

By Kerriann Flanagan Brosky

Through extensive research and interviews Brosky tells of ghostly encounters, legends and tales of the inexplicable.

By Kerriann Flanagan Brosky

From the Gold Coast to Montauk Point, this book by Long Island author/photographer and historical researcher Kerriann Flanagan Brosky recounts 30 ghostly legends and stories, as well as the histories of these haunted sites. The stories range from the humorous to the spiritual, and include startling eyewitness accounts of paranormal experiences by credible mainstream suburbanites, causing even confirmed skeptics to think twice.

By Caroline B. Cooney

Taken from her home on an Aegean island as a six-year-old girl, Anaxndra calls on the protection of her goddess while she poses as two different princesses over the next six years, before ending up as a servant in the company of Helen and Paris as they make their way to Troy.

By Marie Phillips
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

"British blogger Phillips's delightful debut finds the Greek gods and goddesses living in a tumbledown house in modern–day London and facing a very serious problem: their powers are waning, and immortality does not seem guaranteed. In between looking for work and keeping house, the ancient family is still up to its oldest pursuit: crossing and double–crossing each other (From Publishers Weekly)."

By Helene Wecker
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Chava, a golem brought to life by a disgraced rabbi, and Ahmad, a jinni made of fire, form an unlikely friendship on the streets of New York until a fateful choice changes everything.

By Cheri Revai

From the ghost of a British soldier at Fort Ontario to Champ, the monster of Lake Champlain, and an alien abduction at the Brooklyn Bridge, a colorful look at supernatural and other inexplicable phenomena presents more than sixty stories covering all regions of the Empire State.

By Margaret George
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Married at a tender age to the remote Spartan king Menelaus, the beautiful Helen bears him a daughter and anticipates a passionless marriage in spite of her divine origins before falling in love with the Trojan prince Paris, with whom she flees to Troy, with devastating consequences.

By David Duchovny

When cow Elsie Bovary sneaks out of her pasture, she makes a discovery that shakes her very world to its core, forcing her, along with a motley crew of fellow animals, to escape to a better, safer world in search of mutual understanding and acceptance.

By Kevin Hearne
Series Iron Druid Chronicles
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager

“Atticus O’Sullivan, the last of the Druids, finds his peaceful life in Arizona shattered by the arrival of an angry Celtic god who wants Atticus’s magical sword, forcing Atticus to call upon some unlikely allies for help (From the Publisher).”

By Colm Tóibín
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, May 8, 2018. 7:30 PM.

A retelling of the story of Clytemnestra and her children in the legendary Greek city of Mycenae, describes how at the side of her lover she plots to murder her long-absent husband for his betrayals and infidelities.

By Jordanna Max Brodsky
Series Olympus Bound Series

When a woman's mutilated body washes up in Riverside Park wearing a laurel wreath, Selene DiSilva, who has been defending Manhattan's women in secret for years, is forced to come out of the shadows and embrace the name she's tried to forget--Artemis.

By Nancy Werlin

When seventeen–year–old Lucy discovers her family is under an ancient curse by an evil Elfin Knight, she realizes to break the curse she must perform three impossible tasks before her daughter is born in order to save them both.

By Catherynne Valente
Series Orphan's Tales

“A collection of interconnected fairy tales for adults journeys into a fantastical world populated by living stars, wild horsewomen, snake-gods, and beast-princesses, in the first of a two-volume set by the author of The Labyrinth (From the Publisher).”

By John Banville

Attending the deathbed of a renowned mathematician, his second wife and adult children reflect on their personal demons, including the son’s pretty wife, who has caught the attention of the mischievous god Zeus.

By Stephen Sondheim

A baker and his wife journey into the woods in search of a cow, a red cape, a pair of golden slippers and some magic beans to lift a curse that has kept them childless.

By Kevin Hearne

The last of the Druids, Atticus O'Sullivan finds his peaceful life in Arizona shattered by the arrival of a very angry Celtic god who wants Atticus's magical sword, forcing Atticus to call upon his friends--and some good old-fashioned luck of the Irish--to deliver himself from evil.

By Richard Bach

More concerned with the dynamics of his flight than with gathering food, Jonathan is scorned by the other seagulls.

By Chris Colfer
Series Land of Stories Series

Using a mysterious book to travel to a land of wonder and magic, twins Alex and Connor meet a host of classic fairy tale characters and nefarious monsters before discovering that returning back home will be more difficult than anticipated. Genres: Adventure Stories (Fiction); Fantasy; Folk & Fairy Tales; Series