Blurb Old Mother Frost is a Yuletide story of an ancient Norse goddess who sleeps all year long, waking only to make sure children are happy, healthy and festive during the longest and coldest nights of the year (the 12 days of Yuletide). Background Old Mother Frost is a Yuletide book based on the Norse pagan origins of the holidays. It focuses on the folklore and mythologies surrounding the pre-Christian goddess named Frau Holle. For the purpose of the children's book she goes by her English names: Old Mother Frost and Mother Hulda. The illustrations show that ALL children are included in the holidays. Bonus Page: After the story ends there is an educational 'Fun Fact' page briefly highlighting some of the modern holiday traditions that are traced back to pagan customs.

This edition contains the English translation and the original text in German. "Mother Hulda" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in 1812 as part of "Children's and Household Tales". It was originally known as "Frau Holle" and is tale number 24. "Frau Holle" ist eine mitteleuropäische Sagengestalt und Figur im gleichnamigen Märchen der Brüder Grimm (siehe Grimms Märchen, Nr. 24). Das Märchen gehört nach Aarne und Thompson zu Märchentyp 480D: "Geschichten von artigen und unartigen Mädchen".

A tender, humorous and compelling tale of Viking adventure by multi-award-winning author Neil Gaiman.

In 1814, three cousins-Gretchen, Emma, and Penelope-discover their family lineage of witchcraft when a binding spell is broken, allowing their individual magical powers to manifest. Now, beyond the manicured gardens and ballrooms of Regency London, an alluring underworld available only to those with power is revealed to the cousins. By claiming their power, the three cousins have accidentally opened the gates to the underworld. Now ghouls, hellhounds-and most terrifying of all, the spirits of dark witches known as the Greymalkin Sisters-are hunting and killing young debutante witches for their powers. And, somehow, Emma is connected to the murders...because she keeps finding the bodies. Can the cousins seal the gates before another witch is killed...or even worse, before their new gifts are stripped away?

International bestseller: Kurt Wallander and his daughter join forces to hunt for a ritual killer in this “gripping, beautifully orchestrated” mystery (The New York Times Book Review). Linda Wallander is bored. Having just graduated from the police academy, she’s waiting to start work with the Ystad police and move into her own apartment. In the meantime, she’s staying with her father and, like fathers and daughters everywhere, they are driving each other crazy. Nor will they be able to escape each other when she moves out. Her father is Inspector Kurt Wallander, a veteran of the Ystad police force, and the two of them are about to find themselves working a case that couldn’t be closer to home. Linda’s childhood friend Anna has disappeared. As the investigation proceeds, she makes a few rookie mistakes that are both understandable and life-threatening. But as the case her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more dangerous, and chillingly calculated, begins to emerge. A “powerful” and “thoroughly engaging” thriller from “a master storyteller,” Before the Frost introduces an unforgettable new heroine to the acclaimed series that is the basis for the BBC television show starring Kenneth Branagh (San Francisco Chronicle).

In this magical debut, a couple's lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep. Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart -- he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone -- but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

"1843 is 'the last year of the world'--according to Elias Fitcher, a charismatic preacher in upstate New York. There he's established a utopian community on an estate outside the town of Jeckyll's Glen, where the faithful wait, work, and pray for the world to end. Vernelia, Amy, and Catherine Charter are three young townswomen whose father falls under the Reverend's hypnotic sway. In their old house, where ghostly voices whisper from the walls, the girls are ruled by their stepmother, who is ruled by the fiery preacher in turn. Determined to spend Eternity as a married man, Fitcher casts his eye on Vernelia, and before much longer the two are wed. But living on the man's estate, separated from her family, it's not long before Vern learns the extent of her husband's dark side ... Inspired by the classic fairy tales "Bluebeard" and "The Fitcher Bird", this dark fantasy is a story of faith gone wrong, and evil countered by one brave, true soul."--Back cover.