Fiction Realism

Harper Harlow, ghost hunter extraordinaire, has seen it all. Ghosts, back-from-the-dead boyfriends, and parents ping-ponging between divorce and reconciliation are the norm for her. Finally, though, she’s about to get everything she’s ever wanted - if the ghosts don’t get in the way first. Join Harper and her motley crew of friends, as they solve mysteries, and have a heck-of-a lot of fun!

Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to Western European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories that have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the 20th century.

The Russell women have always lived in a house that is as special as they are—a century-old Victorian with a radio that tunes itself to the listener’s mood and a pantry that rearranges to provide just the right ingredients for any baking need. Lilith Russell was the exception. She left the family home in Ivy Ridge, Georgia, and has been flitting like a hummingbird from place to place with her daughter, Mattie, in the decades since, only returning each summer to drop Mattie off with Lilith’s sister, Penelope.

Henry and Jason somehow survived being kidnapped to Ludus, a monster-filled, sword and sorcery world. They managed to make friends, pay their rent, and they even founded their own adventuring business, Delvers LLC. Unfortunately, by overcoming the odds and creating a reputation for themselves in such short time, monarchs and nobles have taken notice of the two men from Earth. Foreign, deadly struggles may be unavoidable for Delvers LLC.

In Jordan Castro’s inventive, funny, and surprisingly tender first novel, we follow a young man over the course of a single morning as he tries and fails to write an autobiographical novel, finding himself instead drawn into the infinite spaces of Twitter, quotidian rituals, and his own mind. The Novelist: A Novel pays tribute to Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Thomas Bernhard’s Woodcutters, but in the end is a wholly original novel about language and consciousness, the internet and social media, and addiction and recovery.

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 this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjurer who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours. It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root.

Every night, as Faye puts her daughters to bed, she thinks of her own mother, Jeanie, who died when Faye was eight. The pain of that loss has never left her, and that’s why she wants her own girls to know how very much they are loved by her — and always will be, whatever happens. Then one day, Faye gets her heart’s desire when she’s whisked back into the past and is reunited not just with her mother but with her own younger self.

Jon successfully killed Belphegor...but he forgot that everything comes with a cost. The cost may need to be paid with money...or life. With his archenemy alive in the game, Jon's days are going to be troublesome. But killing Kurush in-game is not simple as killing Kurush was in real life. Here, Kurush holds power. The power of a whole second-tier guild. With his puny prowess, can Jon go against a second-tier guild and complete his mission that put him in prison in real life? Find out where Jon's life will take him next.

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....

When Leona Warlon heads across the city to meet her husband, David, for a rare dinner out, she hopes they can share a moment of relief after their year of loss. But Leona quickly realizes this is no ordinary date night. She hasn’t just stepped into an upscale ristorante; she’s stepped into a different version of her life. One in which her marriage is no longer tender, in which her days are pressured by her powerful in-laws, and in which her precious baby girl lived.

When a pediatric oncology nurse receives a devastating prognosis—she has just weeks left to live—she finds unexpected comfort from a patient. Her young friend shares a life- and death-changing secret: it is possible to live the same day over and over again until she’s experienced a truly full life. Thus begins a heartbreaking and joyful journey of love, friendship, and self-discovery, as the brave nurse only truly learns how to live in the face of death.

Set in Denmark in the here and now, The Quiet Girl centers around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities in return for his help safeguarding a group of children with mystical abilities - abilities that Krone also shares.

Effie Edenson is many things: a bestselling author, a runaway bride, a woman who cannot see the gifts she possesses. Though she is an adult, her mother dominates her life to a point that she feels she will never be able to break free. But Effie lives in Middle Falls, where all things are possible. After an untimely death, Effie wakes up at a critical juncture in her life. The question is, what can she do with this second chance?

Love, be it wild or tender, often defies logic. In fact, at times, the only rationale behind the instant connection of two souls is plain magic. Bibiña Aranda, runaway bride, wakes up in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao still wearing her wedding dress, draped in the loving arms of a naked man whose name she doesn’t know. She and the man with no clothes, Indar Zubieta, attempt to explain to the authorities how they got there. It’s a story of love at first sight and experience beyond compare, one that involves a dreamlike journey through the museum.

American chef Georgia May Jackson has one goal—to run her own restaurant in Paris. After a grueling decade working in Parisian kitchens, she is on the cusp of success. But in one disastrous night, Georgia loses her sous-chef position, her French boyfriend, and her sense of taste! Renowned for her refined palate and daring use of bold flavors to create remarkable dishes, Georgia is devastated to discover her culinary gift has simply...vanished. When she receives a surprising invitation from her estranged mother, Georgia flees to a small island near Seattle.

Caitlyn is settling into life as a novice witch in an English village chocolate shop - although she's finding the hardest magic to master is making caramel sauce without burning it! When two men are murdered, and a ghostly black hound is seen haunting the countryside, the village gossips are sure dark witchcraft is to blame.

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared - or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied.

In prison, accused of murder, Tully Truegood begins to write her life story. A story that takes her from a young girl in the backstreets of 18th-century London to her stepmother Queenie's Fairy House - a place where decadent excess is a must. Trained by Queenie to become a courtesan and by Mr. Crease - a magician who sees that Tully holds similar special powers to his own - Tully soon becomes the talk of the town.

In the small Tuscan town of Collodi, a lonely woodcarver longs for the companionship of a son. One day, "as if the wood commanded me", Giuseppe - better known as Geppetto - carves for himself a pinewood boy, a marionette he hopes to take on tour worldwide. But when his handsome new creation comes magically to life, Geppetto screams...and the boy, Pinocchio, leaps from his arms and escapes into the night.