Books with category đŸȘ„ Magical Realism
Displaying books 49-96 of 183 in total

Heir of Novron

The New Empire intends to mark its victory over the Nationalists with a bloody celebration. On the high holiday of Wintertide, the Witch of Melengar will be burned and the Heir of Novron executed. On that same day the Empress faces a forced marriage, with a fatal accident soon to follow. The New Empire is confident in the totality of its triumph but there's just one problem - Royce and Hadrian have finally found the true Heir of Novron - and they have their own holiday plans.

When author Michael J. Sullivan self-published the first books of his Riyria Revelations series online, they rapidly became ebook bestsellers. Now, Orbit is pleased to present the complete series for the first time in bookstores everywhere. Heir of Novron is the final volume of The Riyria Revelations and includes Wintertide and - available for the first time - the final volume, Percepliquis.

A Court of Frost and Starlight

2018

by Sarah J. Maas

Hope warms the coldest night.

Feyre, Rhys, and their close-knit circle of friends are still busy rebuilding the Night Court and the vastly-changed world beyond. But Winter Solstice is finally near, and with it, a hard-earned reprieve. Yet even the festive atmosphere can't keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, she finds that those dearest to her have more wounds than she anticipated--scars that will have far-reaching impact on the future of their Court.

The Overstory

2018

by Richard Powers

The Overstory, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us.

This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

The Immortalists

2018

by Chloe Benjamin

A deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children -- four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness -- sneak out to hear their fortunes. Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco. Dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy. Eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate. Bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality. The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. 

The Black Tides of Heaven

2017

by Neon Yang

The Black Tides of Heaven is a captivating entry into Neon Yang's Tensorate Series. This standalone novella intertwines fantasy and science fiction with elements of Asian culture in a phenomenon known as 'silkpunk.' It introduces readers to Mokoya and Akeha, twin siblings with extraordinary abilities, who find themselves entangled in the politics and power struggles of their mother's Protectorate.

As a rebellion simmers, Akeha must navigate the dangerous terrain of independence and ideology, pulling away from Mokoya's prophetic visions and the life they once knew at the Grand Monastery. The story poses a poignant question: Can Akeha find peace and purpose within the rebellion without severing the deep bond with Mokoya?

The Stone Sky

2017

by N.K. Jemisin

This is the way the world ends... for the last time.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

The remarkable conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed trilogy that began with the multi-award-nominated The Fifth Season.

The Changeling

2017

by Victor LaValle

Mesmerizing... a dark fairy tale of New York, full of magic and loss, myth and mystery, love and madness. When Apollo Kagwa's father disappeared, he left his son a box of books and strange recurring dreams. Now Apollo is a father himself—and as he and his wife, Emma, settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Apollo's old dreams return and Emma begins acting odd.

At first Emma seems to be exhibiting signs of postpartum depression. But before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act and vanishes. Thus begins Apollo's quest to find a wife and child who are nothing like he'd imagined. His odyssey takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

NAMED ONE OF PASTE'S BEST HORROR BOOKS OF THE DECADE

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times, USA Today, The New York Public Library, NPR, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot

The thriller you won't be able to put down. —O: The Oprah Magazine

Intense, riveting... The story is a long, slow burn with a lingering sizzle. —Los Angeles Review of Books

A modern-day tale of terror rooted in ancient myth and folklore, brimming with magical revelation and emotional truth. —San Francisco Chronicle

The Shadow of What Was Lost

2017

by James Islington

As destiny calls, a journey begins. It has been twenty years since the god-like Augurs were overthrown and killed. Now, those who once served them - the Gifted - are spared only because they have accepted the rebellion's Four Tenets, vastly limiting their powers. As a Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war lost before he was even born. He and others like him are despised.

But when Davian discovers he wields the forbidden power of the Augurs, he sets into motion a chain of events that will change everything. To the west, a young man whose fate is intertwined with Davian's wakes up in the forest, covered in blood and with no memory of who he is... And in the far north, an ancient enemy long thought defeated begins to stir.

The Licanius Trilogy is a relentless coming-of-age epic from the very first page.

Crooked Kingdom

2016

by Leigh Bardugo

Welcome to the world of the Grisha. Kaz Brekker and his crew of deadly outcasts have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives.

Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties.

A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world.

Persona normal

2016

by Benito Taibo

Una grandiosa e increĂ­ble aventura para ser todo... excepto normal.

Tenía un par de padres divertidos y jóvenes, llenos de sueños y de planes. Pero a mis doce años, cinco meses, tres días y dos horas y cuarto, aproximadamente, me quedé sin ellos

Desde que el tĂ­o Paco se hizo cargo de Ă©l, SebastiĂĄn ha vivido aventuras increĂ­bles: tuvo un encuentro inesperado con un enorme felino, conociĂł a uno de los Ășltimos vampiros que viven en el DF; frente a su casa vio a un mĂ­tico personaje saltar de la gĂłndola en la que viajaba, para rescatar a una joven de una inundaciĂłn; consiguiĂł un mapa estelar para un pobre extraterrestre perdido en la Tierra, sobreviviĂł el embate de un enorme monstruo marino, peleĂł al lado de los sioux para defender su territorio de los colonizadores... ÂżQuĂ© pasa con SebastiĂĄn? ÂżAcaso no es una «persona normal»?

Summerlong

2016

by Peter S. Beagle

Beloved author Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) returns with this long-anticipated new novel, a beautifully bittersweet tale of passion, enchantment, and the nature of fate.

It was a typically unpleasant Puget Sound winter before the arrival of Lioness Lazos. An enigmatic young waitress with strange abilities, when the lovely Lioness comes to Gardner Island even the weather takes notice. And as an impossibly beautiful spring leads into a perfect summer, Lioness is drawn to a complicated family. She is taken in by two disenchanted lovers, dynamic Joanna Delvecchio and scholarly Abe Aronson, and visited by Joanna's previously-unlucky-in-love daughter, Lily. With Lioness in their lives, they are suddenly compelled to explore their deepest dreams and desires.

Lioness grows more captivating as the days grow longer. Her new family thrives, even as they may be growing apart. But lingering in Lioness's past is a dark secret - and even summer days must pass.

Saga, Volume 6

After a dramatic time jump, the three-time Eisner Award winner for Best Continuing Series continues to evolve, as Hazel begins the most exciting adventure of her life: kindergarten. Meanwhile, her starcrossed family learns hard lessons of their own. Collects: Saga #31-36.

The Lady of the Lake

After walking through the portal in the Tower of Swallows while narrowly escaping death, Ciri finds herself in a completely different world... an Elven world. She is trapped with no way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world.

But this is Ciri, the child of prophecy, and she will not be defeated. She knows she must escape to finally rejoin The Witcher, Geralt, and his companions - and also to try to conquer her worst nightmare. Leo Bonhart, the man who chased, wounded, and tortured Ciri, is still on her trail. And the world is still at war.

Translated from original Polish by David French, The Lady of the Lake is part of the New York Times bestselling series that inspired the hit Netflix show and the blockbuster video games, making it an essential read for fans of The Witcher universe.

The Rose & the Dagger

2016

by Renée Ahdieh

In a land on the brink of war, Shahrzad has been torn from the love of her husband Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan. She once believed him a monster, but his secrets revealed a man tormented by guilt and a powerful curse—one that might keep them apart forever. Reunited with her family, who have taken refuge with enemies of Khalid, and Tariq, her childhood sweetheart, she should be happy. But Tariq now commands forces set on destroying Khalid's empire. Shahrzad is almost a prisoner caught between loyalties to people she loves. But she refuses to be a pawn and devises a plan.

While her father, Jahandar, continues to play with magical forces he doesn't yet understand, Shahrzad tries to uncover powers that may lie dormant within her. With the help of a tattered old carpet and a tempestuous but sage young man, Shahrzad will attempt to break the curse and reunite with her one true love.

Every Heart a Doorway

2016

by Seanan McGuire

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

2016

by Fredrik Backman

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night, Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother's stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

Deep World Fire

2016

by C.M. Meridian

In the Twin Kingdoms, the Southern King declares war against his twin brother in the North to claim back what he believes is his by birthright. The Southern King's oldest son sets out to create a new, better world for his father where magic and religion reigns, and any who resist are cleansed in the fire.

ASH, a shargru, is considered a lowly creature, not much better then a dog, but despite great personal doubt, he sets out to lead his family to safety and escape the cruelty of the humans that enslave his race.

CAZON, a half demon child finds himself no longer welcome in the only home he has ever known. Attacked and outcast from the dwindling and suffering settlement he was raised in, he sets out across the stark wastes of the desert in the hope the he will find a place where he belongs.

Forced to follow his older brother which he detests, PRINCE SERION finds himself on the perilous road to war, having to fight against his own uncle for his father, the Southern King, who wishes to claim the Twin Kingdoms through magic, religion and fire.

Whether by coincidence or divine intervention, their paths meet and are tragically entangled as they try and find their destiny in the deep world.

Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego

Las autodenominadas «mujeres ardientes», que protestan contra una forma extrema de violencia doméstica que se ha vuelto viral; una estudiante que se arranca las uñas y las pestañas, y otra que intenta ayudarla; los años de apagones dictados por el gobierno durante los cuales se intoxican tres amigas que lo serån hasta que la muerte las separe; el famoso asesino en serie llamado Petiso Orejudo, que sólo tenía nueve años; hikikomori, magia negra, los celos, el desamor, supersticiones rurales, edificios abandonados o encantados... En estos doce cuentos el lector se ve obligado a olvidarse de sí mismo para seguir las peripecias e investigaciones de cuerpos que desaparecen o bien reaparecen en el momento menos esperado. Ya sea una trabajadora social, una policía o un guía turístico, los protagonistas luchan por apadrinar a seres socialmente invisibles, indagando así en el peso de la culpa, la compasión, la crueldad, las dificultades de la convivencia, y en un terror tan hondo como verosímil.

«El terror, en los cuentos de Mariana Enriquez, se desliza como un jadeo de agua negra sobre baldosas al sol. Como algo imposible que, sin embargo, podría suceder» (Leila Guerriero).

Six of Crows

2015

by Leigh Bardugo

Six of Crows is a fantasy novel written by the Israeli-American author Leigh Bardugo, published by Henry Holt and Co. in 2015. The story is set in the city of Ketterdam, loosely inspired by Dutch Republic-era Amsterdam, and follows a thieving crew.

The narrative unfolds from the third-person viewpoints of seven different characters. Kaz Brekker, a criminal prodigy, is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. However, he cannot pull it off alone and must rely on:

  • A convict with a thirst for revenge
  • A sharpshooter who cannot walk away from a wager
  • A runaway with a privileged past
  • A spy known as the Wraith
  • A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums
  • A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don't kill each other first.

Six of Crows is the first book in the Six of Crows Duology and is part of the larger Grishaverse.

Fifth Business

Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous.

Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

2015

by Leslye Walton

Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.

In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naĂŻve to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the Summer Solstice celebration.

That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo.

First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.

Kitchen

Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Banana Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart.

In a whimsical style that recalls the early Marguerite Duras, Kitchen and its companion story, Moonlight Shadow, are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a very special writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.

Sorcerer to the Crown

2015

by Zen Cho

Magic and mayhem collide with the British elite in this whimsical and sparkling debut. At his wit’s end, Zacharias Wythe, freed slave, eminently proficient magician, and Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers—one of the most respected organizations throughout all of Britain—ventures to the border of Fairyland to discover why England’s magical stocks are drying up.

But when his adventure brings him in contact with a most unusual comrade, a woman with immense power and an unfathomable gift, he sets on a path which will alter the nature of sorcery in all of Britain—and the world at large


The Fifth Season

2015

by N.K. Jemisin

This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

Uprooted

2015

by Naomi Novik

Uprooted weaves a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, echoing the rhythm of a Grimm fairy tale yet creating a fresh, original, and totally irresistible narrative.

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests, and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn't, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

The Wrath and the Dawn

2015

by Renée Ahdieh

#1 New York Times Bestseller A sumptuous and epically told love story inspired by A Thousand and One Nights Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch . . . she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend. She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all. *The book is a Rough Cut Edition (pages are deliberately not the same length).*

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. This novel gives us a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school, each of whom had a name that contained a color. The boys were Akamatsu, meaning 'red pine,' and Oumi, 'blue sea,' while the girls were Shirane, 'white root,' and Kurono, 'black field.' Tazaki's name was the only one without a color. One day, his friends suddenly announced that they did not want to see him or talk to him again. Since that day, Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that it is time to discover what happened all those years ago.

Tuck Everlasting

2015

by Natalie Babbitt

Tuck Everlasting explores the concept of immortality through the story of the Tuck family. The Tucks have a secret: they are doomed to - or perhaps blessed with - eternal life after drinking from a magic spring. They strive to live inconspicuously and comfortably, avoiding the complications of an unending existence.

When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles upon their secret, the Tucks bring her into their fold and share the harsh realities of living forever at one age. The idea of eternal life might seem desirable, but the Tucks reveal why it's not as great as it appears.

The plot thickens when Winnie is pursued by a stranger with nefarious intentions. This individual has learned about the spring and sees an opportunity to exploit its powers for a fortune. The Tucks must navigate this challenging situation, protecting both their secret and Winnie.

With lovely prose and thought-provoking themes, Tuck Everlasting is a compelling tale that delves into the universal human desire for eternal life and the important lessons found in the natural cycle of life.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Deep below the University, there is a dark place. Few people know of it: a broken web of ancient passageways and abandoned rooms. A young woman lives there, tucked among the sprawling tunnels of the Underthing, snug in the heart of this forgotten place. Her name is Auri, and she is full of mysteries.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a brief, bittersweet glimpse of Auri’s life, a small adventure all her own. At once joyous and haunting, this story offers a chance to see the world through Auri’s eyes. And it gives the reader a chance to learn things that only Auri knows...

In this book, Patrick Rothfuss brings us into the world of one of The Kingkiller Chronicle’s most enigmatic characters. Full of secrets and mysteries, The Slow Regard of Silent Things is the story of a broken girl trying to live in a broken world.

Radiant

Xhea has no magic. Born without the power that everyone else takes for granted, Xhea is an outcast—no way to earn a living, buy food, or change the life that fate has dealt her. Yet she has a unique talent: the ability to see ghosts and the tethers that bind them to the living world, which she uses to scratch out a bare existence in the ruins beneath the City's floating Towers.

When a rich City man comes to her with a young woman's ghost tethered to his chest, Xhea has no idea that this ghost will change everything. The ghost, Shai, is a Radiant, a rare person who generates so much power that the Towers use it to fuel their magic, heedless of the pain such use causes. Shai's home Tower is desperate to get the ghost back and force her into a body—any body—so that it can regain its position, while the Tower's rivals seek the ghost to use her magic for their own ends.

Caught between a multitude of enemies and desperate to save Shai, Xhea thinks herself powerless—until a strange magic wakes within her. Magic dark and slow, like rising smoke, like seeping oil. A magic whose very touch brings death.

With two extremely strong female protagonists, Radiant is a story of fighting for what you believe in and finding strength that you never thought you had.

The Eighth Life

Six romances, one revolution, the story of the century.

At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified- this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste... 

Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the centre of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia's is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century. 

Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends. 

Spirits Abroad

2014

by Zen Cho

If you live near the jungle, you will realize that what is real and what is not real is not always clear. In the forest, there is not a big gap between the two.

A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.

Straddling the worlds of the mundane and the magical, Spirits Abroad collects ten science fiction and fantasy stories with a distinctively Malaysian sensibility.

The Golem and the Jinni

2014

by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni is an intoxicating fusion of fantasy and historical fiction. Helene Wecker's debut novel tells the story of a chance meeting between two supernatural creatures in turn-of-the-century immigrant New York.

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay by a disgraced rabbi knowledgeable in the ways of dark Kabbalistic magic. She serves as the wife to a Polish merchant who dies at sea on the voyage to America. As the ship arrives in New York in 1899, Chava is unmoored and adrift until a rabbi on the Lower East Side recognizes her for the creature she is and takes her in.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert and trapped centuries ago in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard. Released by a Syrian tinsmith in a Manhattan shop, Ahmad appears in human form but is still not free. An iron band around his wrist binds him to the wizard and to the physical world.

Chava and Ahmad meet accidentally and become friends and soul mates despite their opposing natures. But when the golem’s violent nature overtakes her one evening, their bond is challenged. An even more powerful threat will emerge, however, and bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their very existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.

Compulsively readable, The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction, and magical fable, in a wondrously inventive tale that is mesmerizing and unforgettable.

MaddAddam

2013

by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam, the thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy, weaves together the tales of characters from Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. This novel confirms the ultimate endurance of humanity, community, and love.

Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the Painballers and return to the MaddAddamite cob house, now a fortress against threats both human and animal. Amidst the Crakers, the gentle species crafted by the late Crake, Toby takes up the mantle of religious overseer. As the Crakers' reluctant prophet, Jimmy, recovers from illness, Toby grapples with her own emotions, including jealousy over her lover, Zeb.

Zeb's quest to find Adam One, the founder of the God's Gardeners, unveils his tumultuous past involving a lost brother, a hidden murder, and a bear. With the Painballers looming, the MaddAddamites and their allies must prepare for a fierce confrontation.

Combining adventure, humor, romance, and Atwood's signature inventive storytelling, MaddAddam is an extraordinary tale set in a familiar yet fantastical world, offering a satirical reflection on our own potential future.

Keeper of the Lost Cities

Twelve-year-old Sophie Foster has a secret. She’s a Telepath—someone who hears the thoughts of everyone around her. It’s a talent she’s never known how to explain.

Everything changes the day she meets Fitz, a mysterious boy who appears out of nowhere and also reads minds. She discovers there’s a place she does belong, and that staying with her family will place her in grave danger. In the blink of an eye, Sophie is forced to leave behind everything and start a new life in a place that is vastly different from anything she has ever known.

Sophie has new rules to learn and new skills to master, and not everyone is thrilled that she has come “home.” There are secrets buried deep in Sophie’s memory—secrets about who she really is and why she was hidden among humans—that other people desperately want. Would even kill for.

In this page-turning debut, Shannon Messenger creates a riveting story where one girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world, before the wrong person finds the answer first.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

2013

by Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

Moonlight Shadow

Moonlight Shadow is a tale of love and loss, exploring the depths of human emotion and the powerful bonds that tie people together. In this story, Satsuki struggles to move on from the death of her beloved, a pain shared by Hiiragi, who dresses in his late sister's school uniform as a form of remembrance. The enigmatic Urara, with her unique ability to discern people's phone numbers with just one glance, believes that on one special day, under certain conditions, it is possible to reunite with lost loved ones. Could this be true for Satsuki and Hiiragi, who are haunted by the memories of those they cannot forget?

Days of Blood & Starlight

2012

by Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war. This is not that world.

Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?

Saga, Volume 1

Saga, Volume 1 is an audacious blend of fantasy and science fiction, presenting a unique drama that centers on a young family striving to carve out their existence in a vast and perilous universe. Authored by the New York Times bestselling writer Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by the critically acclaimed artist Fiona Staples, this graphic novel unfolds as a tale of love and conflict.

When two soldiers from opposing factions of an interminable galactic conflict fall deeply in love, they face the ultimate risk as they attempt to bring new life into a world filled with danger. This narrative is a sexy, subversive drama created for an adult audience, and it masterfully intertwines elements of fantasy and science fiction in a way that has rarely been seen before.

Saga, Volume 1 collects the first six issues of a series that has garnered widespread acclaim, described by The Onion A.V. Club as "the emotional epic Hollywood wishes it could make."

This Is How You Lose Her

On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover's washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness—and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own.

In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”

Seraphina

2012

by Rachel Hartman

Seraphina is a captivating tale set in a world where humans and dragons coexist precariously, with dragons capable of assuming human form. Seraphina, a young woman bearing a heavy secret, navigates through a life fraught with complexities following the death of her mother during childbirth. Amidst a climate of magical secrets and royal scandals, she battles with her identity while endeavoring to harness her exceptional musical abilities.

As the kingdom of Goredd approaches the anniversary of a peace treaty with the dragons, tension escalates. When a royal family member is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Seraphina finds herself embroiled in the investigation alongside the astute Prince Lucien. Their journey reveals a conspiracy threatening to shatter the fragile peace. Seraphina's struggle to protect her secret becomes a perilous endeavor, for its exposure could cost her everything.

With exquisite prose, Rachel Hartman weaves a story of self-discovery and intrigue, where the path to accepting oneself is as treacherous and complex as the political machinations that Seraphina must confront. This is a narrative of courage and the pursuit of identity in a world where survival often hinges on guarding one's truths.

Deathless

Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation. Catherynne M. Valente presents a modernized and transformed take on the legend of Koschei the Deathless, a menacing figure from Russian folklore equivalent to the devils or wicked witches of European culture.

The story unfolds in a mysterious version of St. Petersburg during the first half of the 20th century, following the life of Marya Morevna. She evolves from a clever child of the revolution to becoming Koschei's beautiful bride and ultimately, his undoing. Valente's tale is filled with Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy, bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. Deathless is a fierce story set against the backdrop of the history of Russia in the twentieth century and is, quite simply, unforgettable.

The Snow Child

2012

by Eowyn Ivey

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.

Narcopolis

2012

by Jeet Thayil

Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick with voices and ghosts: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. A young woman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. Here, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. In the broken city, there are too many to count.

Stretching across three decades, with an interlude in Mao's China, it portrays a city in collision with itself. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

Switched

2012

by Amanda Hocking

Switched - the first book in the Trylle Trilogy... When Wendy Everly was six-years-old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. It isn't until eleven years later that Wendy discovers her mother might have been right. With the help of Finn Holmes, Wendy finds herself in a world she never knew existed - a world both beautiful and frightening, and Wendy's not sure she wants to be a part of it.

As a special gift to readers, this book contains a new, never-before-published bonus story, "The Vittra Attacks," set in the magical world of the Trylle.

Octocéfalo

OCTOCÉFALO es un experimento. Unir a 8 escritores en torno a temáticas fantásticas, en un trabajo editorial que busca linkear los textos como perlas de un collar, o cabezas en una estaca, como gustes. La idea es unir la experiencia narrativa literaria con gráfica (el libro es ilustrado) en un todo más o menos integrado.

Relatos:
1. Dientes de Leche - I. C. Tirapegui
2. Terranova - Alberto Rojas
3. Piel de Uroboros - SebastiĂĄn Garrido
4. Martina y el FĂ©nnec - Sergio Alejandro Amira
5. África Arcangélica - Gabriel Mérida
6. Heartquake - Angela GonzĂĄlez
7. PĂĄjaro - JL Flores
8. Time Wars Lluscuma - Jorge Baradit

The Unwanteds

2011

by Lisa McMann

When Alex finds out he is Unwanted, he expects to die. That is the way of the people of Quill. Each year, all the thirteen-year-olds are labeled as Wanted, Necessary, or Unwanted. Wanteds get more schooling and train to join the Quillitary. Necessaries keep the farms running. Unwanteds are set for elimination. It’s hard for Alex to leave behind his twin, Aaron, a Wanted, but he makes peace with his fate—until he discovers that instead of a “death farm,” what awaits him is a magical place called ArtimĂ©. There, Alex and his fellow Unwanteds are encouraged to cultivate their creative abilities and use them magically. Everything Alex has ever known changes before his eyes, and it’s a wondrous transformation. But it’s a rare, unique occurrence for twins to be divided between Wanted and Unwanted, and as Alex and Aaron's bond stretches across their separation, a threat arises for the survival of Artim that will pit brother against brother in an ultimate magical battle.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

2011

by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. A horrific family tragedy sends sixteen-year-old Jacob on a journey to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow, impossible though it seems, they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, this novel will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

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