Fantasy Realism

Claire Walker has always had her life in perfect order, including her high-powered job at one of Manhattan’s top corporate law firms. Yet the one thing she cannot seem to find is a perfect love to complete it, until fate pushes Matías de León into her path. Matías is a Spanish artist who is everything that Claire is not: free-spirited and creative, chaos to her order. She falls for him, hard—and he for her. A year later, however, Claire begins to question everything about their relationship.

One stormy Irish summer night, Olive and her best friend, Rose, begin to lose things. It starts with simple items like hairclips and jewelry, but soon it's clear that Rose has lost something much bigger, something she won't talk about, and Olive thinks her best friend is slipping away. Then seductive diary pages written by a girl named Laurel begin to appear all over town. And Olive meets three mysterious strangers: Ivy, Hazel, and her twin brother, Rowan, secretly squatting in an abandoned housing estate.

A spellbinding work of literature, Latitudes of Longing follows the interconnected lives of characters searching for true intimacy. The novel sweeps across India, from an island, to a valley, a city, and a snow desert, to tell a love story of epic proportions. We follow a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who speaks to them; a geologist working to end futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a mother struggling to free her revolutionary son; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who transforms first into a boat and then a woman.

Supernaturals are real. And so are monsters. I’m Paul Riordan, son of Siobhan Riordan, and I will never forget that my father was murdered. Twenty years have passed since terror swept through Ballynagual. But that doesn’t mean that evil is gone for good. There’s a serial killer running loose in town, not to mention I’m in love with a woman I can’t have, and she's in the crosshairs of the murderer. Some people will die to protect their secrets. Others will kill to expose them. Me? No worries. I just have to worry about dealing with the undead.

Scott McKenzie's father killed his mother and himself. Scott vowed to do anything in his power to stop similar murders. He longed to be a police officer, but a tour in Vietnam in 1970 derailed that career. Two years later, wounded in body and soul, Scott died. He didn't go on to what was next, though. Instead, he woke up with a chance to live his life over and over until he got it right. Murderers will never see him coming. But, by using violence to save others, is he losing his own soul?

By a riverbank in Africa, two lovers meet for the first time. They make a promise to meet again the next day, same time, same place, but only one of them shows up. This sounds like the beginning of a love story, but it's more than that, for this breath-taking tale takes the listener into the heart of a vibrant world, a complex and intriguing civilization of warriors and kings, philosophers and artists, parents and lovers. A world and culture which is about to end, for glimpsed on the horizon, seen but unsuspected, beautiful ships with white sails are waiting.

Late at night our friend wanders a little and ponders quite a lot on a long walk along a river looking for a reason to keep on living. He meets up with a troll and a few other all-night ghouls as he drifts along, searching for purpose. They all find it amazing our friend can negotiate his way through the day posing as a teacher.

James is living the life he always wanted. He has his own rustic cabin in the countryside, peace, quiet, and some lovely companions to share his joy with. But there is much left to do! James will need to expand his cabin to make it more comfortable for his—ahem—lady friends. Also, harvest is coming up for the redheaded farm girl, and she might need a hand or two around the farm.

When their Ukrainian grandmother is lost on a trans-Atlantic Flight, two sisters are swept into a quest across eastern Europe to find the woman who had always told more tales than truths. From Poland to Slovakia to Hungary and beyond, Larissa and Ira navigate the steps of Ukrainian folk dance, the cliff-side paths of Slovak Paradise National Park, and the stark realities of war, folktales, and feminism, all for the sake of chasing who they're starting to believe is a true Baba Yaga. Understanding their family's roots has never been more clear.

Though everyone in the village of  Tres Montes thinks Sonia Ocampo is blessed, she knows she is nothing but a fraud. She’s spent her life listening to the hopes and wishes of her neighbors and family, but when a classmate dies despite her prayers, she is forced to realize that she has no special powers - no way to prevent bad things from happening.

Vira, Ronak, Kaleb, and Riya may be siblings, but they've never been close or even liked each other that much. Torn apart by the different paths their lives have taken, only one thing can bring them back together: the search for the Ivory Key, a thing of legend that will lead the way to a new source of magic. Magic is Ashoka's biggest export and the only thing standing between them and war with the neighboring kingdoms—as long as their enemies don't find out that the magic mines are nearly depleted.

A ship. A garden. A library. A key. In Kaleidoscope, the incomparable Brian Selznick presents the story of two people bound to each other through time and space, memory and dreams. At the center of their relationship is a mystery about the nature of grief and love which will look different to each listener. Kaleidoscope is a feat of storytelling that illuminates how even the wildest tales can help us in the hardest times.

Salem, Massachusetts. Henry Trank usually has his feet firmly on the ground. But the dedicated nurse’s rational world upends when he wakes from a terrifying dream to find pine needles in his hair. And after he films himself sleeping, he’s shocked to see himself reliving the final brutal moments of a murdered woman. Finding it hard to make sense of what he’s just witnessed, he turns to the charming witch he’s been dying to date. But his skepticism shatters when a web of deadly magic and immortal menace leads him down a road that could end in death.

Sam Green thinks her life is pretty normal. Almost. She does have a strange affinity for animals, weird dreams, and a mysterious staff in her closet. But Sam’s calm life is shattered when a dragon poisons her father and the mother of her best friend Jake. She is further shocked when a shapeshifting giant cat and powerful faerie ask her to fulfill a prophecy.

Penniless and stranded in France after a bid to escape her cruel uncle goes awry, Cornelia Shaw is far from the Parisian life of leisure she imagined. Desperate and out of options, she allows herself to be recruited to Napoleon’s Grande Armée. As a naturalist, her mysterious ability to heal any wound with herbal mixtures invites awe amongst the soldiers…and suspicion.

Aila Quinn's mother, Juliet, has always been a mystery. Vibrant yet guarded, she keeps her secrets beyond Aila's reach. When Juliet dies, Aila and her younger brother, Miles, are sent to live in Sterling, a rural town with mysteries of its own. In Sterling, the experiences that weave life together - scents of flowers and food, reflections from mirrors and lakes, even the ability to dream - vanish every seven years. No one knows what causes these Disappearances or what will slip away next.

Warning: Contains intense action, adult situations, threesomes, and untraditional relationships. After slaying a leviathan of the deep, and gaining a magic he barely understands, an ordinary fisherman finds himself entangled in a magical game of the gods with the fate of his planet as the prize. Dean becomes Oakley's champion, competing in the Minotaur's Maze. He travels through a portal to Mixonia, a city of wonders, filled with magic and monster girls of all sorts.

Every night, as Faye puts her daughters to bed, she thinks of her own mother, Jeanie, who died when Faye was eight. The pain of that loss has never left her, and that’s why she wants her own girls to know how very much they are loved by her — and always will be, whatever happens. Then one day, Faye gets her heart’s desire when she’s whisked back into the past and is reunited not just with her mother but with her own younger self.

Cursed. Maisie Cothay has never known the feel of human flesh: born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch, she has spent her childhood sequestered in her family’s manor at the edge of a mysterious forest. Maisie’s father, an anthropologist who sees her as more experiment than daughter, has warned Maisie not to venture into the wood. Locals talk of men disappearing within, emerging with addled minds and strange stories.

When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family’s possibly magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their hometown, in Anna-Marie McLemore's The Mirror Season....