Fantasy Realism

Living in a peaceful, prosperous African-American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home. Discovered abandoned in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and goes from family to family, a boy who is surrounded by boisterous characters and yet deeply alone.

Every time violence erupts in the Middle East, Ida knows what's coming next. Some of her classmates treat her like it's all her fault—just for being Palestinian! In eighth grade, Ida is forced to move to a different school. But people still treat her like she'll never fit in. Ida wishes she could disappear. One day, dreading a final class project, Ida hunts for food. She discovers a jar of olives that came from a beloved aunt in her family's village near Jerusalem. Ida eats one and finds herself there—as if her parents had never left Palestine!

The battle with the harpies is over, but some believe the harpy threat will never be over until the harpies are exterminated. If the Strix combatants pursue the harpies to their home in the caves of Golpa, can they end the war? Can Jordan and Juer save King Konig, or is devious Prince Diruk’s rise to the throne inevitable? And what of Jordan’s estranged family and her unbreakable promise to Sohne? When the elf princess turns up to collect, Jordan has to give her what she asks for or die. The truth is...she'd really rather die.

An introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock is trying to make sense of the world. Living alone in an old house, he spends his time reading comic books, collecting birds’ eggs, and playing with marbles. When one day a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker appears on a horse and cart, offering a cure-all medicine, a mysterious friendship develops and the young boy is introduced to a world beyond his wildest imagination.

Tiana Hanover, the sheltered daughter of Lost Vegas’ leader, has spent her life hidden away from everyone. She’s deformed, like the people her father routinely burns at the stake. Her only friends are her brother and her new guardian, Aveline, neither of whom understand the depths of her forbidden magic. Distressed by premonitions of her brother’s death, she leaves the safety of the tiny room where she has resided her entire life and ventures out into a world unwelcoming of the deformed and resentful of her powerful father.

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?

Katie Chandler had always heard that New York is a weird and wonderful place, but this small-town Texas gal had no idea how weird until she moved there. Everywhere she goes, she sees something worth gawking at and Katie is afraid she's a little too normal to make a splash in the big city. Working for an ogre of a boss doesn't help. Then, seemingly out of the blue, Katie gets a job offer from Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., a company that tricks of the trade to the magic community. For MSI, Katie's ordinariness is an asset.

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.

Emily Braden has stopped believing in fairy tales and happy endings. When her fascinating but unreliable cousin Harry invites her on a holiday to explore the legendary town of Chinon, and promptly disappears - well, that's Harry for you. As Emily makes the acquaintance of Chinon and its people, she begins to uncover dark secrets beneath the charm.

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.

There's a catfish under Japan, and when it rolls, the land rises and falls. At least, that's what Sora was told after she lost her mother to an earthquake so powerful that it cracked time itself. Sora and her father are some of the few who still live near the most powerful of these "zones"—the places where time has been irrevocably sped up, or slowed down.

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?

In the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, Yui, fleeing her violent husband, and Hiyori, a young orphan, are taken in by a strange but kind old lady named Kiwa in the small town of Kitsunezaki​​. The newly formed family finds refuge in a mayoiga, a lost house, perched atop a beautiful cape overlooking the sea. While helping to rebuild Kitsunezaki, the three adapt to their new lives and supernatural new home, slowly healing from their troubled pasts.

Cat hasn’t been to Montgomery Falls, the town her family founded, since she was 12 years old. Since the summer she discovered she could do things that no normal 12-year-old could do. Since she had her first kiss with Riley Fraser. Since she destroyed their friendship. Now, five years later, she’s back and Riley has disappeared. When Noah, Riley's brother, asks for help in discovering what happened, Cat is torn between wanting to learn the truth and protecting the secret that she’s been guarding ever since that summer she and Riley stopped speaking.

Claire became the Devil’s PA five years ago when her mother tried to weasel out of her deal by dying. In this job, the retirement package blows. And a pink slip is a one-way ticket to Hell. When Claire’s accused of murdering the Boss’s immortal son, it’s clear someone’s setting her up, leaving her no choice but to run - and try to figure out why there’s a target on her back.

Air spirits carry the wind, nymphs and dryads supervise the trees and animals, and great stone creatures turn the world on its axis. The World of Order, our world, operates by the hard work and dedication of fairies and other mythical creatures working behind the scenes. Among them, a young elf woman named Kyla Nim leaves home for Equinox to seek her own role. This proves more challenging than expected, and she struggles to find her strengths until she falls into the wrong end of a plot by Erebus, the god of darkness, to rid the world of light.

A powerful, eerily unsettling story collection from a major international literary star. Unearthly and unexpected, the stories in Mouthful of Birds burrow their way into your psyche and don't let go. Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary, masterful collection. Schweblin's stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line between the real and the strange blur.

Florrie Buckley is an orphan living on the wind-blasted moors of Cornwall. It's a hard existence, but Florrie is content; she runs wild in the mysterious landscape. She thinks her destiny is set in stone. But when Florrie is 14, she inherits a never-imagined secret. She is related to a wealthy and notorious London family: the Graces.

Heather is sleeping peacefully after the birth of her twin daughters when the sound of the world ending jolts her awake. Stumbling outside with her babies and her new husband, Brendan, she finds that their city has been destroyed by falling meteors and that her little family is among only a few who survived. But the mountain that looms over the city is still green - somehow it has been spared the destruction that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Heather is one of the few who know the mountain, a place city-dwellers have always been forbidden to go.

In 1976, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he comes upon a creature he doesn’t expect: a mermaid by the name of Aycayia. Once a beautiful young woman, she was cursed by jealous wives to live in this form for the rest of her days. But after the mermaid is caught by American tourists, David rescues and hides her away in his home, finding that, once out of the water, she begins to transform back into a woman. Now David must work to win Aycayia's trust while she relearns what it is to be human.