Fiction Realism

In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.

In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness - save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.

Dissatisfied with his empty, Sisyphus-like existence in New York City, where he has abandoned his creative dreams for a job in corporate advertising, a highly cultured aspiring composer wants nothing more than to tear his life up from the root. He soon finds his escape hatch: a university-sponsored mission to South America to look for indigenous musical instruments in one of the few areas of the world not yet touched by civilization. Retracing the steps of time, he voyages with his lover into a land that feels outside of history.

Eliza Paladin is disillusioned with normal life. She and her talking cat, Pal, discover a world where magic is as real as taxes. Even as all her fantasies come true, Eliza discovers a sinister plot that could result in losing the very powers that have given her life meaning.

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.

Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales, because she couldn't imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults Imogen and her sister, Marin, are accepted to an elite postgrad arts program - Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there's more to the school than meets the eye.

A winter’s night, Venice, 1815. A 217-year-old dog is searching for his lost master. So begins the journey of Tomorrow, a dog who must travel through the courts and battlefields of Europe - and through the centuries - in search of the man who granted him immortality. His adventures take him to the London Frost Fair, the strange court of King Charles I, Versailles, the golden age of Amsterdam, and to 19th-century Venice. Tomorrow befriends both animals and humans, falls in love (only once), marvels at the human ability to make music, despairs at their capacity for war....

The House of Rust is an enchanting novel about a Hadrami girl in Mombasa. When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking scholar’s cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters. After she survives a final confrontation with Baba wa Papa, the father of all sharks, she rescues her own father and hopes that life will return to normal. But at home, things only grow stranger.

Deep in gambling debt, the celebrated Brazilian writer Beatriz Yagoda is last seen holding a suitcase and a cigar and climbing into an almond tree. She abruptly vanishes. In snowy Pittsburgh, her American translator, Emma, hears the news and, against the wishes of her boyfriend and Beatriz's two grown children, flies immediately to Brazil. There, in the sticky, sugary heat of Rio, Emma and her author's children conspire to solve the mystery of Yagoda's curious disappearance and staunch the colorful demands of her various outstanding affairs.

On the eve of his 90th birthday, a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit - he has purchased hundreds of women - he asks a madam for her assistance. The 14-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known. Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to a master's work.

The future has amazing technology. Our alien allies have magic. Together, we are building a training system to teach the best of humanity to go to the stars. But the training is monumentally expensive. Stephanie Morgana is a genius, she just doesn't know it. The artificial intelligence that runs the virtual world is charged with testing Stephanie, a task it has never performed before. Will Stephanie pass the test and be moved to the advanced preparatory schools, or will the system miss her?

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.

Despite his warriors' lineage, Erroh would rather waste his potential stumbling alone from one tavern to the next, drinking and gambling. Fate, however, has greater plans for him. After decades of peace, a great war draws near, and though he doesn't know it, he is standing in the way of the first wave. What is more, and very much to his dismay, he's about to find out he's not entirely alone either. But Erroh has a plan, a simple plan.

Un volumen excepcional que reúne por primera vez en un solo volumen todos los cuentos del Premio Nobel de Literatura Gabriel García Márquez.

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.

A girl born in a small unnamed pueblo is blessed—or cursed—with the ability to produce valuable gems from her bodily fluids. A tired wife and mother escapes the confines of her oppressive life and body by shapeshifting into a cloud. A girl reckons with the death of her father and her changing familial dynamics while slowly, mysteriously losing her physical senses. Infused with keen insight and presented in startling prose, the stories in this dark, magnetic collection by newcomer Rebecca Hirsch Garcia invite the listener into an uncanny world out of step with reality.

Eyes of a Blue Dog (sp. Ojos de perro azul) is a collection of twenty-two death-themed short stories from the Colombian Nobel-winning novelist, screenwriter, and journalist, Gabriel García Márquez. These early stories of the late Nobel Prize winner were written and published between 1947 and 1955, although, as a book, Blue Dog Eyes would not appear until 1974, when the writer had already published two other books of short stories and four novels, of which the last, One Hundred Years of Solitude, would provide him with his first great international success.

Un hombre regresa al pueblo donde ocurrió un asesinato desconcertante 27 años atrás, con la determinación de descubrir la verdad. Todos parecen estar de acuerdo en que Bayardo San Román, sólo unas horas después de su matrimonio con la bella Ángela Vicario, la devuelve por deshonrada a la casa paterna. La atribulada familia fuerza a la novia a revelar el nombre de su primer amante; y los hermanos gemelos de ella anuncian su intención de matar a Santiago Nasar por haber deshonrado a su hermana.

Cole Harper is struggling to settle into life in Wounded Sky First Nation. He may have stopped a serial killer, but the trouble is far from over. A creature lurks in the shadows of Blackwood Forest, the health clinic is on lockdown by a mysterious organization, and long-held secrets threaten to bubble to the surface. Can Cole learn the truth about his father's death? Why won't Choch give him a straight answer? Where the heck is Jayne? Oh, and high school sucks.

After her mother dies, Hannah doesn’t know how to exist without her. Literally. In fact, Hannah’s not even certain that she does exist. No one seems to see or hear her, and she finds herself utterly alone. Grief-stricken and confused, her sense of self slowly slipping away, Hannah sets out to find new purpose in life—and answers about who (and what) she really is.