Fantasy Realism

Thirty-six-year-old Irene Dunphy didn't plan on dying any time soon, but that's exactly what happens when she makes the mistake of getting behind the wheel after a night bar-hopping with friends. She finds herself stranded on Earth as a ghost, where the food has no taste, the alcohol doesn't get you drunk, and the sex...well, let's just say "don't bother". To make matters worse, the only person who can see her - courtesy of a book he found in his school library - is a 14-year-old boy genius obsessed with the afterlife.

In the second book of the gripping Into the Mists Trilogy, a new relationship with her grandmother is opening Carlie's soul to the energy and power of the earth. A new friend is opening her mind to the magic and potential within her. And a new love is opening her heart to the sweetest enchantment of all. Yet betrayal hovers around her, and she will face an ultimatum, a sacrifice and a cruel choice that might just break her.

Having lost his mother and been shunned by his father, Zabor grows up in the company of books, which teach him a new language. Ever since he can remember, he has been convinced that he has a gift: If he writes, he will stave off death; those captured in the sentences of his notebooks will live longer. Like a kind of inverted Scheherazade saving his fellow men, he experiments night after night with the delirious power of the imagination.

Lottie lives in Vivelle, a vibrant city where life exists in brilliant technicolor and nearly everyone is born with magic, including Lottie. But when tragedy strikes, color is stripped from Lottie’s heart and from the world around her. Taken in by her reclusive uncle, Lottie moves into Forsaken, a vast manor located in the gray wasteland between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead. There, Lottie discovers more secrets and mysteries than she ever dreamed possible. Even so, she is filled with nothing but despair.

Nyx is the ruler of the banished Angels. When her flock returns home, she's stuck on Earth with none other than the Son of God. Surprisingly, God's son tells her he was tricked into sacrificing himself for a cause he doesn't believe in - mankind's redemption. As his mortal body dies, the Son of God offers the Queen of Hell a paradise on Earth if she completes a single mission: helping him obliterate humanity.

Ten-year-old Lola has always been touched by magic. In her Mexico City home, built around a towering tree, she is accustomed to enchanted blooms that change with the seasons, a sandbox that spits out mysterious treasures, and mischievous chaneques that scuttle about unseen by all but her. Magic has always been a part of her life, but now she must embrace the extraordinary as never before. Ever since The Thing That Happened, Lola's brother Alex has been sick. As his condition worsens, something begins eating away at the tree, causing its leaves and blossoms to crumble like ash.

In the wake of World War I in the small, Southern town of Bellhaven, South Carolina, the town folk believe they've found a little slice of heaven in a mysterious chapel in the woods. But they soon realize that evil can come in the most beautiful of forms. The people of Bellhaven have always looked to Ellsworth Newberry for guidance, but after losing his wife and his future as a professional pitcher, he is moments away from testing his mortality once and for all. Until he finally takes notice of the changes in his town...and the cardinals that have returned.

In isolated British Columbia, girls, mostly native, are vanishing from the sides of a notorious highway. Leo Kreutzer and his four friends are barely touched by these disappearances-until a series of mysterious and troublesome outsiders come to town. Then it seems as if the devil himself has appeared among them.

Listening to John Crowley's stories is to see almost-familiar lives running parallel to our own, secret histories that never quite happened, memories that might be real or might be invented. In the 13 stories collected here, Crowley sets his imagination free to roam from a 20th-century Shakespeare festival to spring break at a future Yale in his Edgar Award-winning story "Spring Break". And in the previously unpublished "Anosognosia", the world brought about by one John C.'s high-school accident may or may not exist.

When a mysterious entity grants a man who died a chance to be a hero in another life in a fantasy world, he cannot believe his luck. The one condition: he must fight the demon king if he shows up during his new iteration. He accepts and…Wakes in the body of a young female wolf beastkin named Lucia haunted by the memory of orcs ravaging her town. Not the rebirth he was hoping for.

Sage Sassafras’ life is cursed! No, really. Since birth, Sage has been plagued by the Contrarium Curse that’s set her at odds with classmate Priscilla Petty. Every time something goes right for Priscilla, it goes terribly, horribly wrong for Sage. And things always go well for Priscilla. Sage blames the curse for all her middle school misery - from losing a friend to failing gym to gaining a reputation as the girl whose daddy’s in trouble.

Just because Jenny was born without a head doesn't mean she isn't still annoying to her older brother, and just because the Man of the Future's carefully planned extramarital affair ends in alien abduction and network fame doesn't mean he can't still pine for his absent wife. Romping through the fantastic with big-hearted ease, these stories cut to the core of what it means to navigate family, faith, and longing.

In a time when magic rules the sea, she only trusts her sword. Abbey has always been an outsider in Holdgate. While the people of her adopted city dominate the seas with their weather-controlling storm magic, she prefers the work in her father's blacksmith shop - besting any foolish enough to question her skills with a sword.

Protector of Light, Fiona Farrow, has just survived a near blood sacrifice, and now another of the Sacred Scrolls has been stolen. This time from the head of the Ancient Order of Vampires. But her target isn't just borderline invincible - he's incredibly alluring, too. Her investigation leads her to New York City, where she teams up with two other Protectors to hunt down the vampire faction. Soon, however, Fiona discovers she isn't the only one looking for the Scroll, and she needs to get to it first...before someone dangerous unlocks its magical powers.

Protector of Light, Fiona Farrow, is finally reunited with her parents, but the country has been demolished and humans are flocking to a new city to worship an all-powerful demon mage by the name of Cagliostro. When Fiona discovers Cagliostro's plan to destroy the Monarchy, her only choice is to try and stop him. But this won't be easy. She can't use her magical Armor without being detected and hunted down, and must overcome alluring vampires, forceful demons and a traitor in her midst if she wishes to reach her target.

The slumbering dragon has awakened. Ten years ago in a demonic underworld, my enemies almost killed me. With the help of a disguised demon serving his own agenda, I survived. Barely...After a decade off the supernatural grid, I needed to sip from Goibniu's Chalice of Agelessness to restore my eternal youth. What started as a quick trip changed dramatically when Goibniu uttered those two magic words...Retirement was fun while it lasted.

Viviane Rose has lived with auditory hallucinations all her life. Despite this, she has a good job as the manager of the laundry at Vince Malum Residential Living Center, a long-term care facility for the mentally ill. She works there to be near her catatonic mother and amnesiac fiance, and she lives with her grumpy grandfather. Family is her top priority. Viviane has all aspects of her life running like clockwork until one of her hallucinations manifests and begins killing the patients at the Center.

All Sadie Salt ever wanted was to make smiles whiter...and to track down the creature that murdered her parents. She spends her days as a dental assistant to the humans in her small town of Grimloch and her nights doctoring to its, well, not-so-human residents. Unfortunately, the nightlife doesn't know how to stay in the shadows where it belongs. Sadie's working tirelessly to pay off a nasty debt to a fairy she doesn't want to cross, coping with magic she can't use, and dreaming of a relationship with the local Sheriff - not that that's going to happen.

Viv risks her life to fix the trouble she caused. Her new powers are blossoming, and she's beginning to understand what it means to live with magick. It's unclear, however, whether the benefit outweighs the cost. The secrets she uncovers have sharp edges. Can Viv divert a war, or does her very existence herald the end of an era?

Manhattan Walker’s family is epically large and loud (and as odd as the name they gave him). But when his mother dies, generations of closely-held family secrets unravel, and he realizes that no one is ever who they appear to be, including them. Burdened with the power to see the past, and a talisman no one understands, Manhattan is thrust into the clandestine world of magic. There are murders the police can’t know about, dangerous spells that force him to face the darkness of his past, and a man without a face who wants him dead.