A Short History of Myth:

What are myths? How have they evolved? And why do we still so desperately need them?

Heralding a major series of retellings of international myths by authors from around the world, Karen Armstrong's characteristically insightful and eloquent book serves as a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense - and why we dismiss it only at our peril.

The Penelopiad:

In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story of Penelope and Odysseus, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged Maids, asking: "What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?" In Atwood’s dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing.

Weight:

In ancient Greek mythology, the victorious Olympians force Atlas, guardian of the Garden of Hesperides and its golden apples of life, to bear the weight of the earth and the heavens for eternity.

With her typical wit and verve, Jeanette Winterson brings Atlas into the twenty-first century. Simultaneously, she asks her own difficult questions about the nature of choice and coercion, and how we forge our own destiny.

Karen Armstrong is a bestselling author noted for her memoirs and her books about religion. She majored in English at St. Anne’s College in Oxford while living in a convent, an experience she wrote about in Through the Narrow Gate, which was published to laudatory reviews. She became an independent writer and has since published twenty-five books. In great demand as a public speaker, she is also the founder of the Charter for Compassion, which was funded with a TED grant. In 2015 she was awarded the OBE for Services to Literature and Interfaith Dialogue in Queen Elizabeth’s Birthday Honours List.

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Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than fifty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson. 

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Jeanette Winterson is the author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award in 1985. Her second novel, The Passion, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize in 1987, and was followed by Sexing the Cherry, which won the 1989 EM Forster Award. Her other works include The Powerbook, Written on the Body, Arts and Lies, Boating for Beginners, The World and Other Places, and a collection of eassays, Art Objects. She lives in Oxfordshire, England.

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Laural Merlington has recorded well over one hundred audiobooks, including works by Margaret Atwood and Alice Hoffman, and is the recipient of several AudioFile Earphones Awards. An Audie Award nominee, she has also directed over one hundred audiobooks. She has performed and directed for thirty years in theaters throughout the country. In addition to her extensive theater and voice-over work, Laural teaches college in her home state of Michigan.

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As a Golden Voice (so honored by Audiofile Magazine), winner of 3 Audies and dozens of Earphone Awards, Dick Hill brings his own personal touch of vocal creativity to every project.

He brings stories to life with a wide variety of characterizations, dialects, and accents...reviewers have compared his work to a full cast recording.  His rich baritone and insightful interpretations have also earned him praise for his many non-fiction titles.

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Susie Breck's work has garnered awards both as narrator and director. She won an Audie Award, the audiobook industry's top honor, for her narration of Sharyn McCrumb's Ghost Riders.

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