Books with category 🪄 Magical Realism
Displaying 11 books

The Life Impossible

2024

by Matt Haig

The remarkable next novel from Matt Haig, the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Midnight Library, with more than nine million copies sold worldwide.

"What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…"

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

Chlorine

2023

by Jade Song

In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies. It is a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming.

Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life. But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs.

Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she's always longed to become: mermaid.

Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine—the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.

Love in Colour

2020

by Bolu Babalola

Discover love from times long ago... Join Bolu Babalola as she retells the most beautiful love stories from history and mythology in this stunning collection. From the homoromantic Greek myths, to magical Nigerian folktales, to the ancient stories of South Asia, Bolu brings new life to tales that truly show the vibrance and colours of love around the world.

The anthology is a step towards decolonising tropes of love, and celebrates in the wildly beautiful and astonishingly diverse tales of romance and desire that already exist in so many cultures and communities. Get lost in these mystical worlds and you will soon realise that humanity - like love - comes in technicolour.

House of Earth and Blood

2020

by Sarah J. Maas

House of Earth and Blood begins the tale of half-Fae and half-human Bryce Quinlan as she seeks vengeance in a world filled with magic, danger, and intense romance. Bryce's ideal life is shattered when a demon takes the lives of her closest friends, leaving her to grieve and recover on her own. Even with the suspect imprisoned, the crimes persist, plunging Bryce into the heart of a harrowing investigation.

Hunt Athalar, a formidable Fallen angel bound to servitude, is skilled in assassination. Yet, faced with the city's demonic chaos, he is given an alluring proposition: aid Bryce in her quest for the killer, and earn his long-sought freedom. As they delve into the city's dark underbelly, Bryce and Hunt uncover a menacing power that endangers all they cherish, discovering an intense passion between them that could liberate them both—if they allow it.

With memorable characters, fiery romance, and thrilling suspense, Sarah J. Maas's new fantasy series explores the depths of loss, the cost of liberty, and the strength of love.

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 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.

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.

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 - Sebastián Garrido
4. Martina y el Fénnec - Sergio Alejandro Amira
5. África Arcangélica - Gabriel Mérida
6. Heartquake - Angela González
7. Pájaro - JL Flores
8. Time Wars Lluscuma - Jorge Baradit

Magic for Beginners

The nine stories in Kelly Link's second collection are the spitting image of those in her acclaimed debut, Stranger Things Happen: effervescent blends of quirky humor and pathos that transform stock themes of genre fiction into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy.


In "Stone Animals," a house's haunting takes the unusual form of hordes of rabbits that camp out nightly on the front lawn. This proves just one of several benign but inexplicable phenomena that begin to pull apart the family that's just moved into the house.


The title story beautifully captures the unpredictable potential of teenage lives through its account of a group of adolescent school friends whose experiences subtly parallel events in a surreal TV fantasy series.


Zombies serve as the focus for a young man's anxieties about his future in "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and offer suggestive counterpoint to the lives of two convenience store clerks who serve them in "The Hortlak."


Not only does Link find fresh perspectives from which to explore familiar premises, she also forges ingenious connections between disparate images and narrative approaches to suggest a convincing alternate logic that shapes the worlds of her highly original fantasies.

Dragon's Winter

Born to the shape-shifting dragon king of Ippa, twin brothers Karadur and Tenjiro share an ancestry, but not a bloodline. Only Karadur carries dragon blood, destined to one day become a dragon and rule the kingdom. In an act of jealous betrayal, Tenjiro steals the talisman that would allow Karadur to take his true dragon form and flees to a distant, icy realm.

Now, years later, Tenjiro has reappeared as the evil sorcerer Ankoku. His frozen stronghold threatens to destroy Dragon Keep, and Karadur must lead his shape-shifting warriors on a journey to defeat his brother and reclaim his destiny. With Dragon's Winter, World Fantasy Award-winning author Elizabeth A. Lynn returns with the kind of richly drawn characters and intricate worlds her fans, both old and new, will love.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

1994

by Haruki Murakami

Japan's most highly regarded novelist, Haruki Murakami, vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon. It includes three books in one volume: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, and The Birdcatcher. This translation by Jay Rubin is in collaboration with the author.

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