Arachne's Daughter: A tale of murder, mayhem and madness is a modern day Greek tragedy, with multiple threads weaving a strange, yet familiar pattern. In this spellbinding story, a beautiful young witch named Antigone finds herself constantly vilified by religious bigotry, superstition and ignorance that feed off 17th-century witch paranoia. One day a mysterious parcel arrives. It is a powerful and magical gift from the past, one that keeps cropping up at unexpected moments with strange outcomes. Antigone's story is one of being discriminated against, and of being sexually abused and tortured, but the day comes when Antigone the victim becomes Antigone the ruthless assassin. In her deadly wake, she leaves communities cringing, the authorities baffled, and the mental health system in chaos. Amid the murder, mayhem and madness, Antigone must also battle her own demons of mental illness and a deeply scarred childhood. From Mount Olympus in ancient Greece to Mount Wellington in 20th-century Tasmania, and places in-between, Arachne's Daughter is a journey fraught with madness, danger, death and sacrifice. About the Author: Dannii Lane was one of thirty-five alternate personalities (alters) in a multiple personality system (MPD). Dannii was also a witch. Inspiration for the book came from a love of Greek history and myths, and a background of child abuse and mental illness. When not writing, Dannii worked tirelessly advocating for mental health reform. Sadly, due to spontaneous integration, Dannii did not survive to see her novel published. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/DanniiLane

After being released from a Toronto psych ward, Evie decides that her life needs a drastic change. Moving 500 miles east to stay with her aunt in Montreal, however, is not turning out as expected. Though she loves the city, she can’t outrun the problems that drove her to the edge in the first place. Recovery might be a little easier if not for Micha. Handsome, kind, always willing to help Evie or cheer her on--and completely invisible to everyone else. He seems to think he’s some kind of guardian angel, and she might need one now that things have gone from bad to just plain weird. It started with the spiders--ghostly spiders that showed up out of nowhere, swarming over Evie while she was home alone. Then the owls started following her. Her search of answers dredges up past lives, secret societies, and one very angry goddess. She’s going to need help from some very powerful friends if she wants to make it to her next birthday, but when one of those friends is the goddess of the underworld, she might need more help than a guardian angel can provide.

'The power of McSweeney's work cannot be separated from its association with forms of oracle and soothsaying, and so it is uncanny that it should arrive in the middle of a global pandemic... Frightening and brilliant' Dan Chiasson, New Yorker How does the body gestate grief? How does toxicity birth catastrophe? In the months leading up to her daughter Arachne's birth, US poet Joyelle McSweeney set out to write a quiver of poems like a quiver of poison arrows: formally and sonically virtuosic, laced with the poet's obsessive concerns with contamination, decay and the sublime, featuring a crown of 'toxic sonnets' for the tuberculosis bacterium that killed Keats. But when Arachne was born with an unexpected birth defect, lived briefly and died, the poet was visited by a second welter of poems, odes of love, grief, perplexity and rage. These two books, Toxicon & Arachne, form a double collection of poems weighing love, grief, art and survival in increasingly toxic days. Toxicon & Arachne is the culmination of eight years of engagement with lyric under a regime of global and personal catastrophes.

Reception studies have transformed the classics. Many more literary and cultural texts are now regarded as 'valid' for classical study. And within this process of widening, children's literature has in its turn emerged as being increasingly important. Books written for children now comprise one of the largest and most prominent bodies of texts to engage with the classical world, with an audience that constantly changes as it grows up. This innovative volume wrestles with that very characteristic of change which is so fundamental to children's literature, showing how significant the classics, as well as classically-inspired fiction and verse, have been in tackling the adolescent challenges posed by metamorphosis. Chapters address such themes as the use made by C S Lewis, in The Horse and his Boy, of Apuleius' The Golden Ass; how Ovidian myth frames the Narnia stories; classical 'nonsense' in Edward Lear; Pan as a powerful symbol of change in children's literature, for instance in The Wind in the Willows; the transformative power of the Orpheus myth; and how works for children have handled the teaching of the classics.

The influence on Ovid of Hesiod, the most important archaic Greek poet after Homer, has been underestimated. Yet, as this book shows, a profound engagement with Hesiod's themes is central to Ovid's poetic world. As a poet who praised women instead of men and opted for stylistic delicacy instead of epic grandeur, Hesiod is always contrasted with Homer. Ovid revives this epic rivalry by setting the Hesiodic character of his Metamorphoses against the Homeric character of Virgil's Aeneid. Dr Ziogas explores not only Ovid's intertextual engagement with Hesiod's works but also his dialogue with the rich scholarly, philosophical and literary tradition of Hesiodic reception. An important contribution to the study of Ovid and the wider poetry of the Augustan age, the book also forms an excellent case study in how the reception of previous traditions can become the driving force of poetic creation.

A woman’s envy is very much alive even in the olden times! Case and point, you have the story of Minerva and Arachne. The tale has a disturbing ending so you might want to read this one with your child, just in case questions are asked. The end goal is to introduce new life lessons to your little one. Grab a copy today!