Books like 'Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose'
Readers who enjoyed Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose by Ted Hughes also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary fantasy 20th century myths social-commentary retellings
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The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book by Neil Gaiman
Rated: 4.65 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsTHE QUITE NICE AND FAIRLY ACCURATE GOOD OMENS SCRIPT BOOK contains much that is new and revelatory and even several scenes that are not actually in the final television series...Categorized as:
myths retellings 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult angels apocalyptic -
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsJorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley... -
The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren, Jens Wawrczeck
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe Brothers Lionheart (Swedish: Bröderna Lejonhjärta) is a children's fantasy novel written by Astrid Lindgren. It was published in the autumn of 1973 and has been translated into 46 languages. Many of its themes are unusually dark and heavy for the children's book genre. Disease, death, tyranny, betrayal and rebellion are some of the dark themes that permeate the story...Categorized as:
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.The story "Omelas" was first published in New Dimensions 3, a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story...Categorized as:
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Incarnations Of Immortality by Piers Anthony
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratings...Categorized as:
myths retellings fantasy fiction young-adult urban-fantasy contemporary psychological -
The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsFull of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father’s “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house... -
Baptism of Fire by Andrzej Sapkowski
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 62 ratingsThe New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher The Wizards Guild has been shattered by a coup and, in the uproar, Geralt was seriously injured. The Witcher is supposed to be a guardian of the innocent, a protector of those in need, a defender against powerful and dangerous monsters that prey on men in dark times... -
The True Story Of The 3 Little Pigs! by Jon Scieszka, Lane Smith
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsFor those who think they know the story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big, Bad Wolf, here it is as they've never heard it before. In this highly acclaimed collaboration between Scieszka and Smith, Alexander T. Wolf tells his side of the incident. Was it premeditated swineacide or simply an accident? Readers can decide for themselves in this laugh-aloud tale that's sure to tickle the funny bone...Categorized as:
myths retellings 20th-century action-adventure animals anthropomorphism audiobook book -
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 95 ratings‘Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don’t let you go around again until you get it right.’People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day... -
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsJitterbug Perfume is an epic.Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time).It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle.The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god... -
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsThe award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present... -
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 71 ratings"Now, my dears," said old Mrs Rabbit one morning, "you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden."But what does Peter Rabbit do? Beatrix Potter's delightful 'Tale of Peter Rabbit' tells the story...Categorized as:
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Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 64 ratingsSusan had never hung up a stocking . She'd never put a tooth under her pillow in the serious expectation that a dentally inclined fairy would turn up. It wasn't that her parents didn't believe in such things. They didn't need to believe in them. They know they existed. They just wished they didn't.There are those who believe and those who don't. Through the ages, superstition has had its uses...Categorized as:
myths retellings 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children-books classics -
Perestroika by Tony Kushner
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe second half of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Angels in America, Perestroika steers the characters introduced in Millennium Approaches from the opportunistic eighties to a new sense of community in the nineties... -
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Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsLeaf by Niggle is a short story about a painter who is working on a picture leaf by leaf. Niggle, the painter, is a kind hearted soul and goes out of his way to help his friends and neighbours but eventually finds that this prevents him from completing his masterpiece. He has a hard decision to make; when engrossed in his work, his neighbour asks him to fix his roof using his art supplies... -
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSet in the mythical Polish village of Primeval, a microcosm of the world populated with eccentric, archetypal characters and guarded by four archangels, this novel from Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk chronicles the lives of the inhabitants over the course of the feral 20th century in prose that is forceful, direct, and the stylistic cousin of the magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez's One... -
Into the Woods (Vocal Score) by Stephen Sondheim
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsTitles include: Opening (Part I, II, IIA, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII) * Cinderella at the Grave * Hello Little Girl * Hello Little Girl (Underscore) * I Guess This Is Goodbye * Maybe They're Magic * Rapunzel * Baker's Reprise * Cinderella Coming from the Ball (Underscore) * A Very Nice Prince * First Midnight * Giants in the Sky * Underscore 9A * Agony * Agony Playoff (Underscore) and more... -
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe complete volume of Robertson Davies's acclaimed trilogy, featuring Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Fifth Business Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and...Categorized as:
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The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsAmber, the one real world of which all others – including our own Earth – are but Shadows...For untold millennia, the cosmic Pattern sustained order in Amber and all the known worlds. But now the forces of Chaos have succeeded in disrupting the Pattern, unleashing destructive forces beyond measure... forces meant to reshape the universe... -
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 58 ratingsA Discworld Novel. It's a hot Midsummer Night. The crop circles are turning up everywhere-even on the mustard-and-cress of Pewseyy Ogg, aged four. And Magrat Garlick, witch, is going to be married in the morning...Everything ought to be going like a dream... -
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident... -
Dialogues with Leucò by Cesare Pavese
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA series of dialogues between mythological figures, treating the question of human destiny as the personal content of myths. In his foreword, Pavese elaborates on his method in the Dialogues: "What is more acutely disturbing than to see familiar scenes troubled into new life? . . . A true revelation, I am convinced, can only emerge from stubborn concentration on a single problem... -
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLeaving behind her fashionable West Coast life, Maggie Black comes to the Southwestern desert to pursue her passion and her dream. Her mentor, the acclaimed poet Davis Cooper, has mysteriously died in the canyons east of Tucson, bequeathing her his estate and the mystery of his life--and death... -
The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAcross the worlds of Shadow, Corwin, prince of blood royal, heir to the throne of Amber, gathers his forces for an assault that will yield up to him the crown that is rightfully his. But, a growing darkness of his own doing threatens his plans, an evil that stretches to the heart of the perfect kingdom itself where the demonic forces of Chaos mass to annihilate Amber and all who would rule there... -
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The Grey King by Susan Cooper
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 42 ratings"Fire on the Mountain Shall Find the Harp of Gold Played to Wake the Sleepers, Oldest of the Old..." With the final battle between the Light and the Dark soon approaching, Will sets out on a quest to call for aid. Hidden within the Welsh hills is a magical harp that he must use to wake the Sleepers - six noble riders who have slept for centuries... -
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsBook Three of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea CycleDarkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. Despite being wearied with age, Ged Sparrowhawk -- Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord -- embarks on a daring, treacherous journey, accompanied by Enlad's young Prince Arren, to discover the reasons behind this devastating pattern of loss...Categorized as:
myths retellings 20th-century action-adventure audiobook bildungsroman book children -
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsRay Bradbury's second short story collection is back in print, its chilling encounters with funhouse mirrors, parasitic accident-watchers, and strange poker chips intact. Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss... -
Little Red Riding Hood by Trina Schart Hyman
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEveryone loves the little girl who wears a red-hooded cloak, but no one more than her grandmother. One day, Grandmother gets sick, and Little Red Riding Hood sets out to visit her, carrying a basket of food as a present... -
Imajica by Clive Barker
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsImajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension... -
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 53 ratings"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images...Categorized as:
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Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsOne of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are “a treasure” (Los Angeles Times)...Categorized as:
myths retellings 20th-century action-adventure anthologies audiobook children children-books -
Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsA fascinating novel that reworks elements of Shakespeare's The Tempest. On the island of Willow Springs, off the Georgia coast, the powers of healer Mama Day are tested by her great niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman endangered by the island's darker forces... -
The First Four Books Of Poems by Louise Glück
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe fierce, austerely beautiful voice that has become Glück's trademark speaks in these poems of a life lived in unflinching awareness. Includes "Firstborn", "The House on Marshland", "Descending Figure", and "The Triumph of Achilles"... -
Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLibrarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.The post of Diocesan Exorcist in the Church of England has changed to the preferred term Delivery Ministry. It sounds less sinister, more caring, so why not a job for a woman? When offered the post the Rev. Merrily Watkins cannot easily refuse, having suffered uncanny experiences of her own... -
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The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn epic tale of freedom and slavery, love and war, and the potential futures of humankind tells of a twenty-first century California clan caught between two clashing worlds, one based on tolerance, the other on repression...Categorized as:
social-commentary 20th-century action-adventure adult apocalyptic book contemporary dystopia -
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsClive Barker has made his mark on modern fiction by exposing all that is surreal and magical in the ordinary world --- and exploring the profound and overwhelming terror that results... -
Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsThe Dark is rising in its last and greatest bid to control the world. And Will Stanton -- last-born of the immortal Old Ones, dedicated to keeping the world free -- must join forces with this ageless master Merriman and Bran, the Welsh boy whose destiny ties him to the Light. Drawn in with them are the three Drew children, who are mortal, but have their own vital part in the story... -
The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsBe terrified. It's you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you'll go, betray me, stray from home. So better by far for me if you were stone. from "Medusa"Stunningly original and haunting, the voices of Mrs... -
Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsWelcome to Newford…Welcome to the music clubs, the waterfront, the alleyways where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world. Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering the fey and the wild and the poor and the lost...Categorized as:
myths retellings 20th-century action-adventure anthologies audiobook classics contemporary -
The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIn the second novel in Guy Gavriel Kay's critically acclaimed Fionavar Tapestry, five men and women from our world must play their parts in a colossal war, as the first of all worlds confronts an ancient evil...After a thousand years of imprisonment the Unraveller has broken free and frozen Fionavar in the ice of eternal winter... -
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsWhen a passenger check-in desk at London's Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the explosion is deemed an act of God... -
The Witch in the Broom Cupboard and Other Tales by Pierre Gripari
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAbsurd fairy tales, very sensibly told There once was a good little devil - did you read that right? Yes you did: not a wicked little devil but a good one, and boy, was he in a fix! Instead of doing bad things like forgetting his homework and playing tricks on his teachers, this little devil kept trying to be good... -
The Book of Night with Moon by Diane Duane
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWizards and sorcerers, some cats even can cast spells and become invisible. They are the guardians of the Gates, weaving and maintaining the magic threads between realities. But when an ancient evil conquers the mystical Gates beneath Grand Central Station, flooding New York with surreal horror from another dimension, a quartet of feline champions is called to defend Earth...Categorized as:
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The Eagle's Gift by Carlos Castaneda
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsCarlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical... -
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The China Garden by Liz Berry
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen Clare moves with her mother from London to Ravensmere, an historic English estate, she can't shake the feeling that the residents already know her, especially Mark, a maddeningly attractive biker. Clare also feels compelled to take midnight walks in Ravensmere's abandoned China Garden. Then her mother reveals that their own past is tragically linked to the estate... -
Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRupert Venables is a Magid.It's a Magid's job to oversee what goes on in the vast Multiverse. Actually, Rupert is really only a junior Magid. But he's got a king-sized problem. Rupert's territory includes Earth and the Empire of Korfyros. When his mentor dies Rupert must find a replacement. But there are hundreds of candidates...Categorized as:
myths 20th-century action-adventure alternate-universe audiobook book children comedy -
Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China by Ed Young
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"Not for the faint-hearted, Lon Po Po (Grandmother Wolf), is a tale of a menacing danger and courage....(Young's) command of page composition and his sensitive use of color give the book a visual force that matches the strength of the story and stands as one of the illustrator's best efforts." --Booklist. "Absolutely splendid." -- Kirkuse Reviews. "An extraordinary and powerful book...Categorized as:
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Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOnce upon a time there was an old man and an old woman who were very lonely. They decided to get a cat, but when the old man went out searching, he found not one cat, but millions and billions and trillions of cats! Unable to decide which one would be the best pet, he brought them all home... -
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernières
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe epic finale of the Latin American trilogy following The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts and Senor Vivo and the Coca LordWhile the economy of his small South American country collapses, President Veracruz joins his improbable populace of ex-soldiers, former guerrillas, unfrocked priests and reformed - though by no means inactive - whores, in a bizarre search for sexual fulfilment... -
The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 50 ratingsThis night will be bad and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.It's Midwinter's Eve, the day before Will's eleventh birthday. But there is an atmosphere of fear in the familiar countryside around him. This will be a birthday like no other. Will discovers that he has the power of the Old Ones, and that he must embark on a quest to vanquish the terrifyingly evil magic of the Dark...
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