Review of The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890)
James George Frazer (writer).
I believe the edition I read was a Wordsworth Reference paperback, just the first volume (about 400 pages) and certainly abridged.
References here: 1 Samuel (ca. 620–500 BCE), Reasons to invent Jesus, “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926), “Operation of the Laws of Sympathetic Magic in Disgust and Other Domains” (1986), Children of the Mind (1996), Hogfather (1996), Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011).