Book recommendations

Since its release in 1949, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell's revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In these pages, Campbell outlines the Hero's Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation.

The dead wreak revenge on the living, paintings come alive, spectral brides possess mortal men and a priest devours human flesh in these chilling Japanese ghost stories retold by a master of the supernatural. Lafcadio Hearn drew on the phantoms and ghouls of traditional Japanese folklore and infused them with his own memories of his haunted childhood in nineteenth-century Ireland to create these terrifying tales of striking and eerie power.

An enlightening journey through occult history, this fascinating chronology explores such diverse topics as the earliest alchemists of ancient Egypt, the Philosopher's Stone, the Cabala, the original of the Tarot, the Knights Templar, the founding of the Hellfire Club, Aleister Crowley's "The Book of the Law", modern-day Wicca, and more.

Vampires are much more complex creatures than "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Twilight", "True Blood", or scores of other movies and television shows would have you believe. Even in America. American vampire lore has its roots in the beliefs and fears of the diverse peoples and nationalities that make up our country, and reflects the rich tapestry of their varied perspectives. The vampires that lurk in the American darkness come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can produce some surprising results.

Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places.

The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: Even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad, or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles and flaws, they proved to be tough survivors, far outlasting their original worshipers. Drawing on a wide range of literary and archaeological sources, "The Gods of Olympus" opens a new window on the ancient world and its lasting influence.

David Leeming here offers the first comprehensive narrative study of the mythology of the Middle East. Leeming begins with a brief, engaging history of the Middle East, spanning Neolithic cultures, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the invention of writing and the rise of Egypt and Babylonia, Israel and Roman rule, and the early history of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" succeeds like no other book in bringing to life the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths that are they keystones of Western culture -- the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.

The myths and legends in this collection have been selected both for their excellence as stories and because they illustrate the distinctive nature of Native American storytelling. They are drawn from oral traditions of the major culture areas of aboriginal North America, and include trickster tales, origin myths and stories of domestic sexual conflict.

Ghosts, psychics, communicating with the dead, UFOs, angels, ESP, astrology: these and other astounding phenomena are accepted as valid by a substantial proportion of the public. Why do so many members of our scientifically sophisticated society believe in assertions that scientists have roundly and almost unanimously rejected? And what does expressing such beliefs mean for the lives of those who do?

Spanning from the Hebrew scriptures to the Roman Empire, the Scandinavian sagas to medieval Europe, the Protestant Reformation to the Renaissance, this beguiling array of accounts charts our relationship with spirits and apparitions, wraiths and demons over fifteen hundred years, showing the evolution in our thinking about the ability of dead souls to return to the realm of the living -- and to warn us about what awaits us in the afterlife

"The Psychology of the Paranormal" explores some commonly held beliefs regarding experiences so strange they can defy an obvious scientific explanation. The book explains how psychologists have conducted experiments to provide insight into phenomena such as clairvoyance, astrology, and alien abduction, as well as teaching us fundamental truths about human belief systems.

Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal team up on this unprecedented and vibrant new framing of inexplicable events and experiences. Rather than merely document the anomalous, these authors deliver a fast-paced and exhilarating study of why the supernatural is neither fantasy nor fiction but a vital and authentic aspect of life. Their suggestion? That all kinds of "impossible" things, from extra-dimensional beings to bilocation to bumps in the night, are not impossible at all; rather, they are part of our natural world.