Fantasy Realism

The story begins with a dark connection in Paddock’s ancestry and moves quickly into the criminal life of his mobster father, Bingo Bruce, and his father’s “Bonnie and Clyde” style mistress, who cast long shadows over the killer’s life. It is also the inspiring story of a girl named Theresa, and her best friend, both country music fans, who suddenly find themselves caught up in a life or death situation they never imagined. But will they survive?

Eleanor Zarrin has been distanced from her family for years. When she returns home after a violent incident at boarding school, trying to fit back into the space she left becomes even more difficult when their headstrong matriarch unexpectedly dies. Eleanor's bloodthirsty family is left unchecked for the first time in decades, and when her Grandmere arrives to help the family adjust, it's clear that something dark is lurking beneath her genteel exterior.

Fable Prescott believes two lies. The first, that she was chosen at random for the summer study abroad program at her university. And the second, that she came to the wind-whipped Isle of Skye to research her family's mysterious ancestry. She never expected to find herself embroiled in a cold case that's kept a tiny seaside village on edge for years. When another woman vanishes, Fable begins to wonder if there is more to the dark legends that cling to the island; and if her brooding, devastatingly handsome new neighbor is the only one that holds the key to her family's tragic past.

It’s 1987, and sixteen-year-old Gracie Byrne wishes her life were totally different. Shy and awkward, she has trouble fitting in at her new school, she’s still reeling from her parents’ divorce, and her grandmother Katherine’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse. So when Gracie finds a blank journal in Katherine’s vanity drawer, she begins writing stories about herself—a more popular version of herself, that is. But then the hot guy in her art class describes a dream he had about her—the exact scene she wrote about him in her journal—and Gracie realizes that she can create any reality she wants.

In 17th-century England, civil war rages and witches have become pawns in a plot to oust the king. Red-haired Evey does not want to be a witch, but she cannot deny the magick coursing through her veins. In a country seething with civil war, superstition, dread and dark forces are at work. A storm is coming. After witnessing the brutal murder of her mother by witch-hunters, Evey vows to avenge her and track down her killers. Fury burns in her bright and strong. But she has promised her mother that she will keep Dill, her little sister, safe.

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.

Listeners will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination. The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written.

It’s been six months since I died on Earth and was brought to the kingdom of Craesti. In that time, I’ve made friends, gained a family, and begun learning how to gather and channel Aether, aka magic. I started attending Azyl Academy, the premier magic school of the city, after it was discovered that my talent was exceptionally high. I am learning alchemy, inscription, and how to fight, all with the goal of expanding the kingdom and keeping the populace safe.

London, 1861: Ten-year-old Nell belongs to a crew of mudlarks who work a stretch of the Thames along the Ratcliffe Highway. An orphan since her mother died four years past, leaving Nell with only broken dreams and a pair of satin slippers in her possession, she spends her days dredging up coals, copper and pieces of iron spilled by the river barges – searching for treasure in the mud in order to appease her master, Benjamin Murdstone. But one day, Nell discovers a body on the shore. It’s not the first corpse she’s encountered, but by far the strangest.

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.

As the long-awaited invasion of human forces looms, Jason, Koren, and Elyssa struggle to alert the soldiers to an unforeseen menace on the planet of Starlight—a deadly illness has been released, one that already has Koren in its grip. Starlighter Cassabrie harbors a secret she believes can counter the devastation being unleashed by dragon king Taushin’s latest maneuverings, but she can disclose little of her risky plan. As Cassabrie fights to save her people, the dragon Magnar works to move the Starlight prophecy in his favor.

Chandrakanta is a romantic fantasy novel written by Devaki Nandan Khatri, a popular writer from the first generation of modern Hindi novelists. This book is considered to be one of his finest works, and it has spawned numerous sequels related to the original story. The story centres around a romantic couple, each of whom came from kingdoms at dissent with each other. Chandrakanta is the princess of Vijaygarh while Virendra Singh is the prince of Naugarh. Kroor Singh, one of the courtiers in the King’s court at Vijaygarh, is a schemester with grand plans of his own.

Emer is just a woman living in New York City who takes the subway, buys ice cream from the bodega on the corner, has writerly aspirations, and lives with her boyfriend, Con. But is this life she lives the only path she’s on?

Though published second after Altmann's Tongue, The Din of Celestial Birds (1997) consists of the best of Evenson's early stories. They take place in a country (perhaps several countries) that seems at once everywhere and nowhere, haunted by birds, ghosts, poverty, tyranny, and the permeability of the line between the living and the dead. These stories offer a heady mix of absurdity and bleakness on the one hand and exuberant magic realism on the other.

Sinai Tapestry, the brilliant first novel of the Jerusalem Quartet, is an epic alternate history of the Middle East in which the discovery of the original Bible links a disparate group of remarkable people across time and space. In 1840, Plantagenet Strongbow, the twenty-ninth Duke of Dorset, seven-feet-seven-inches tall and the greatest swordsman and botanist of Victorian England, walks away from the family estate and disappears into the Sinai Desert carrying only a large magnifying glass and a portable sundial.

In 1941, a hand grenade explodes in a Cairo bar, taking the life of Stern, a petty gunrunner and morphine addict. His death could easily go unnoticed as Rommel's tanks charge through the desert in an attempt to open the Middle East to Hitler's forces. Yet the mystery behind Stern's death is a top priority for intelligence experts. Master spies from three countries converge on Joe O'Sullivan Beare, who is closer to Stern than anyone, in an effort to unravel the disturbing puzzle.

On the last day of December 1921, three enigmatic men - Cairo Martyr, a blue-eyed African who controls the Middle East's supply of aphrodisiac mummy dust; O'Sullivan Beare, a former Irish patriot and gunrunner who has made a fortune selling spurious, phallic-shaped Christian artifacts; and Mark Szondi, a dedicated Zionist who wagers only fried fish futures - sit down to a fateful game of poker in the back room of a Jerusalem antiquities shop owned by a 3000-year-old knight errant.

Lou feels like she is stuck on the wrong path: alone, in a city far from home, watching other people be happy. When the man she’s in love with announces his engagement to someone else, Lou is consumed by what-ifs. That’s when she finds herself slipping back in time to a night two years ago, where one small decision changed everything …

Seventeen-year-old Xochi is on her own in San Francisco. On a visit to Golden Gate Park, she meets Pallas, a precocious 12-year-old with a rockstar family that lives in one of the city's storybook Victorian mansions. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas's live-in governess and quickly becomes part of the band's household. But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas perform a pagan ritual that unintentionally summons a pair of ancient creatures devoted to righting the wrongs of Xochi's adolescence.

Moss has lived with her pa on a remote island for as long as she remembers. The Old World has disappeared beneath the waves - only Pa's magic, harnessing the wondrous stormflowers on the island, can save the sunken continents. But a storm is brewing, promising cataclysmic changes. Soon, two strange boys wash up on the shore. As the clouds swell and the ocean churns, Moss learns to open her eyes to the truth about her isolated world....