Historical Magical Realism

These are the final days of the tsars and Alexei Shafirov, an infirm skeptic, is bedridden after a fall. Throughout the long recovery his loved ones speak to him of fables, uprisings, and a royal family under house detention. At the heart of their stories is Alexei Romanov, the heir apparent. Like him, the Romanov boy is a hemophiliac, near the center of a decades-old political cabal. Both children are prone to mischief, self-indulgence, and illness. But some insist their connection runs deeper than that.

A pause-resisting novel about a traveling salesman who arrives to sell dreams to a town rocked by a child's disappearance, both a thoughtful mediation on grief and a magical exploration of our innermost desires.

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 Venice in 1566, Francesco paints a portrait of the woman he loves. In 1916, Edward Jamison returns to England from the trenches of the Western Front. Believing that the most life-changing events are behind him, he soon encounters something profoundly more powerful: the portrait of the painted lady. Partly deaf from his injuries in the trenches, he begins to hear the strangest things. But Edward Jamison is not the only person who has become a part of these mysterious happenings. From Renaissance Venice to the French Huguenots settling in England to the American Revolution in Virginia and beyond, the painted lady has touched the lives of many.

Inspired by the life of legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, Mauricio Segura’s Oscar evokes periods across time, from the Depression-era Montreal neighbourhood of Little Burgundy to the swinging cabarets of the 1950s, while offering a reflection on the bonds between an artist and the Caribbean diaspora from which he comes. But above all, Oscar is a poignant homage to a musical giant, a man who changed the face of jazz forever.

The late Nobelist's masterpiece takes a candid look into the lives of Holocaust survivors during the late 40s. Set in New York City, Shadow on the Hudson, Volume 4, the fourth in a four volume audiobook series, draws us into the intertwined lives of circle prosperous Jewish refugees. At the center is Boris Makaver, a pious and wealthy businessman. His greatest trial is his daughter, Anna.

At the dawn of the 20th century, a young Lebanese adventurer leaves the Levant to explore the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan.

The late Nobelist's masterpiece takes a candid look into the lives of Holocaust survivors during the late 40s. Set in New York City, Shadows on the Hudson, Volume 2, the second in a four volume audiobook series, draws us into the intertwined lives of a circle of prosperous Jewish refugees.

In late 19th-century British India, the Swordsman is called to duty. His mission: battle a deadly and cunning enemy. At stake are India’s cultural heritage and the fight for its independence. Against the backdrop of the third-highest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga, The Early Years chronicles the transformative journey of a sheltered boy of unknown origin becoming the formidable Swordsman who wields his sword against General Dier, a mass murderer. Follow the epic journey as the Swordsman and a nation are put to the ultimate test and pushed to their breaking point.

Renowned healer Lisbeth Vos concocts a cunning revenge against her childhood friend Hannah Brouwer for a wrong committed decades ago. The audacious scheme requires a marriage between Lisbeth's granddaughter and Hannah's widowed son. Desperate for her grandmother's attention and approval, Mila agrees to wed a man she doesn't know.

To the Chicome people, an eclipse is a time of terror. When darkness falls, the barrier separating the heavens and the earth becomes unstable. Then come the ravening Tzitzimime - the star demons who thirst for human blood. Mayana and Ahkin know the full extent of the coming danger, but they must gather support or the Chicome Empire is doomed.

Finna is about to be taken on a journey that will change her life forever. Little does she know that when her mother appears on her doorstep it will begin a chain of events that will eventually impact even the baby she carries. How can she believe the wild stories her mother tells her: A parallel world right next to this one? Gods and goddess, druids? But for some reason she finds herself following the amazingly convincing Catriona, who has an uncanny way of eliminating her fears.

Imagine you looked up at just the right moment and saw something completely unexpected. What if it was something so marvelous that it transformed time and space forever? The Body in the Clouds tells the story of one such extraordinary moment - a man falling from the sky and surviving - and of the three men who see it, in different ways and at different times, as they stand on the same piece of land.

Now that Prohibition has ended, what the townspeople of Twisted Tree, Kentucky, need most is the revival of the Old Sam Bourbon distillery. But William McFee knows it'll take a miracle to convince his father, Barley, to once more fill his family's aging house with barrels full of bourbon. When a drifter recently buried near the distillery begins to draw crowds of pilgrims, the McFees are dubious, but miracles seem to come to those who once interacted with the deceased and to those now praying at his grave.

May 1959. From one side of St. Brigid's Island, the mountains of Connemara can be glimpsed on the distant mainland; from the other, the Atlantic stretches as far as the eye can see. This remote settlement, without electricity or even a harbor, has scarcely altered since its namesake saint set up a convent of stone huts centuries ago. Those who live there, including sisters Rose and Emer, are hardy and resourceful, dependent on the sea and each other for survival.

From the author of The Palace of Curiosities and Vixen comes a bold new novel exploring questions of identity, sexual equality and how well we really know ourselves. Rich are the delights of late 19th-century Manchester for young siblings Edie and Gnome. They bicker, banter, shout and scream their way through the city's streets, embracing its charms and dangers. But as the pair grow up, it is Gnome who revels in the nighttime while Edie wakes exhausted each morning.

In this grand saga of love, war, and magic set in the tenth century, young Sigrid is destined to be the mother of the king of the Nordic lands that would become Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England. A devout believer in the old Nordic gods, Sigrid is visited regularly in her dreams by the goddess Freya, who whispers to her of the future. Though Sigrid is beautiful, rich, arrogant, and matchlessly clever, her uncanny ability to foresee the future and manipulate the present guides her through dangerous politics.

In The Campaign, a witty and enthralling saga of revolutionary South America, Carlos Fuentes explores the period of profound upheaval he calls "the romantic time". His hero, Baltasar Bustos, the son of a wealthy landowner, kidnaps the baby of a prominent judge, replacing it with the black baby of a prostitute. When he catches sight of the baby's mother, though, he falls instantly in love with her and sets off on an anguished journey to repent his act and win her love.

The Alehouse at the End of the World is an epic comedy set in the 16th century, where bawdy Shakespearean love triangles play out with shapeshifting avian demigods and a fertility goddess, drunken revelry, bio-dynamic gardening, and a narcissistic, bullying crow, who may have colluded with a foreign power.

It is the late 1800s, and a shameful time in American history. The US Government has mandated native tribes send their young people to Indian schools where they are stripped of their native heritage by people they think of as The Others. Otter and Sun Song are betrothed to be married when they turn 18. But when they are sent east to school, Otter, renamed Gideon, tries to adapt, while Sun Song does not, resulting in brutal attacks from the school headmaster. Gideon turns for comfort to Wendy Thatcher, the daughter of a wealthy school patron.