Written in the middle of the 14th century as the Bubonic Plague decimated the population of Europe, "The Decameron" is a satirical and allegorical collection of stories by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. Constructed as a series of "frame stories," or stories within a story, the narrative follows seven young women and three young men who take refuge in a secluded villa outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death. During ten evenings of their...

Little Red Chicken wants Papa to read her a bedtime story, but interrupts him almost as soon as he begins each tale.

"When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns iut into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried but failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a nysterious sanctuary for their true narratives."--Provided...

When Little Red Chicken comes home excited about what she learned in school, she explains to Papa that every story has "an elephant of surprise."

"In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of a sun-drenched summer of his youth, and of the killer that stalked the small New England town. And of the terrible tragedy that forever bonded him with his friends Nat and Harper in unknowable ways. Decades later, Wilder returns to the town in an attempt to recount that summer's events in his memoirs. But as he writes,...

Cleaner Janice knows that it is in people's stories that you really get to know them. From recently-widowed Fiona and her son Adam; to opera-singing Geordie; and the awful Mrs 'YeahYeahYeah' and her fox terrier, Decius, Janice has a unique insight into the community around her. When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B - a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties - she finally meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the...

Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. Now Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life's complex social problems-just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations....

Illustrations and rhyming text introduce an increasing, then decreasing, cast of characters sharing a boat in a moat with a pig in an enormous wig.

"In his first work of nonfiction, the creator of the multimillion-selling Jack Reacher series explores the endurance of heroes from Achilles to Bond, showing us how this age-old myth is a fundamental part of what makes us human. He demonstrates how hero stories continue to shape our world - arguing that we need them now more than ever. From the Stone Age to the Greek Tragedies, from Shakespeare to Robin Hood, we have always had our heroes. The hero...

Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Elfhame, visits the mortal world to face the troll woman, Aslog of the West.