Fiction Realism

Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents’ friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. Alfred and the Professor encounter towns where Black residents speak only in sign language and towns that hold indigenous parades; it is a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches.

Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean 11 years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.

In this explosive sequel to Blessed Child, Jewish soldier-turned-archaeologist Rebecca Soloman leads a team deep into the Ethiopian desert to find the one man who may know the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Such a discovery would bring hope back to her people. Her search brings excitement and danger - including unexpected love and a discovery far more powerful than even the holy artifact.

A crew of men are embarking on a voyage up a turbulent river through the rainforests of Guyana. Donne, their wild, domineering leader, is obsessed with hunting for a mysterious woman and exploiting Indigenous people as plantation labour. But their expedition is plagued by tragedies, haunted by drowned ghosts: spectres of the crew themselves, inhabiting a blurred shadowland between life and death. As their journey into the interior—their own hearts of darkness—deepens, it assumes a spiritual dimension, guiding them towards a new destination: the Palace of the Peacock.

The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story.

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.

García Márquez retrata con pulso magistral la figura de Simón Bolívar, que transmutó el destino de América. Aclamado por el pueblo como Libertador, blanco de numerosas conjuras políticas y militares, héroe romántico y hasta libertino para sus detractores y sus partidarios, idealista íntegro y abandonado que contempla las ruinas de su sueño de unidad de los pueblos americanos, tras la independencia del dominio español Simón Bolívar emprende - enfermo, con un menguado séquito - el que será su viaje final. Parte desde Bogotá para seguir el curso del río Magdalena.

An exquisite new collection from a Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the short story, the culmination of a five-decade career: work that takes us beneath the placid surface of suburban life into the elusive strangeness of the everyday.

For Thaniel Steepleton, an unexpected posting to Tokyo can’t come at a better moment. The London fog has made him ill and doctor’s orders are to get out. His brief is strange: the staff at the British Legation have been seeing ghosts, and his first task is to find out what’s going on. But staying with his closest friend, Keita Mori, in Yokohama, Thaniel starts to experience ghostly happenings himself. For reasons he won’t say, Mori is frightened. Then he vanishes.

This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaka, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard. Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time.

De retour de vacances, sur le parvis d'une gare, Édouard laisse derrière lui sa femme et sa valise. Un départ sans préméditation. Une vieille romancière anglaise en est le déclic, la forêt de Brocéliande, le refuge. Là, dans une chambre d'hôtes environnée d'arbres centenaires, encore hagard de son geste insensé, il va rencontrer Gaëlle la douce, son fils Gauvain, enfermé dans le silence d'un terrible secret, Raymond et ses mots anciens, Adèle, jeune femme aussi mystérieuse qu'une légende.

It was supposed to be my first summer on my own, but then I meet Seth, Axel, Jasper, and Cody. There's something about them that drew me closer, and they seemed hell-bent on protecting me. I didn't think I needed protecting until people started showing up dead in the woods.

It is 1618 in the German duchy of Württemberg. Plague is spreading, the Thirty Years’ War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler, an illiterate widow, is accused of being a witch.

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim and using her charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret: once, they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang dynasty China. A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together.

Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the tangled history that binds the two sides of his family. For generations, the men of the al-Raqb family have served as watchmen of the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, built at the site where the infant Moses was taken from the Nile. Joseph learns of his ancestor Ali, a Muslim orphan who became enchanted by the legendary - perhaps magical - Ezra Scroll.

The Russos look like an average family: Mom and Dad run a Manhattan deli, while their kids, Alex, Justin, and Max, deal with school, friendships, and first dates. But things are not exactly as they seem because these kids are all wizards in training! To make things more complicated, only one of them will remain a wizard after the age of 18. Talk about sibling rivalry! This collection includes the first four books in the Wizards of Waverly Place series.

What if, one day, Europe was to crack along the length of the Pyrenees, separating the Iberian peninsula? In Saramago's lovely fable, the new island is sent spinning, like a great stone raft, towards the Azores. While the authorities panic and tourists and investors flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by portents that burden them with a bemusing sense of responsibility.

The novel follows the adolescent Arturo through his days on the isolated Neapolitan island of Procida, where - his mother long deceased, his father often absent, and a dog as his sole companion - he roams the countryside and the beaches or reads in his family's lonely, dilapidated mansion. This quiet, meandering existence is upended when his father brings home a beautiful 16-year-old bride, Nunziatella.

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.

A 300-year-old mystery, four magical sisters and a cat. The Blackmoore sisters discover their paranormal powers as they find themselves scrambling to find a real killer while they battle a crooked Sheriff, planted evidence, and a long list of suspects that all had a reason to kill. This is a box-set of the first five books in the Blackmoore Sisters Cozy Mystery series.