Literary Realism

On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be listened to one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence. The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl.

Róisín and François are immediately drawn to each other when they meet at a remote research base on the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica. At first glance the pair could not be more different. Older by a few years, Róisín, a daughter of Ireland and a peripatetic astronomer, joins the science team to observe the fracturing of a comet overhead. François, the base's chef, has just left his birthplace in Bayeux, France, for only the second time in his life.

Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now, at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother. That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects’ doppelgängers from parallel universes.

In a Seoul slum marked for demolition, residents’ shadows have begun to rise. No one knows how or why—but, they warn each other, do not follow your shadow if it wanders away. Employees of a small electronics repair shop, Eungyo and Mujae can only watch their tight-knit community begin to fade as the landscape of their lives is torn apart, building by building. Their growing connection with one another provides solace, but against an uncaring ruling class and the inevitability of the rising shadows, their relationship may not be enough.

In 1967, the dancer Marta Becket and her husband were traveling through Death Valley Junction when they came across an abandoned theater. Marta decided it was hers. She painted her ideal audience on its walls and danced her own dances until her death five decades later. In the present day, Gia has ended a relationship and taken a leave from her job in film studies at a university. She is sleeping fifteen hours a night and ignoring calls from her mother.

A fablelike debut for fans of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove, in which a boy with an uncanny ability to find lost objects must embark on his most important search yet in order to save his mother's enchanted dessert shop, the only place he's ever called home.

On a streetcar, on Christmas Day, 1950, clutching the chrome rail in front of him, Martin Radey looks at the woman seated beside him, a stranger, and utters his last words: "I can't breathe." Like millions, billions before him, it is his turn to die. But death is not what he expected. The journey has only begun. From 1880 to 1950, time happens to the world around him, not to memory, because memory, he discovers, is beyond time, traveling forward with him, shaping the earth, the sky, the heart.

One of Carlos Fuentes’s greatest works, The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa’s soldiers, particularly his encounter with General Tomas Arroyo. In the end, the incompatibility of the two countries (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both men, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of two cultures in conflict.

On a hot, insomniac night at the Hotel Metropol, the novelist Carlos Fuentes steps onto his balcony only to find another man on the balcony next door. The other man asks for news of the social strife turning into revolution in the unnamed city below them. He reveals himself as the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, permitted to revisit Earth once a year for 24 hours based on his theory of eternal return.

The Years with Laura Diaz is Carlos Fuentes' most important novel in several decades. Like his masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz, the action begins in the state of Veracruz and moves to Mexico City - tracing a migration during the Revolution and its aftermath that was a feature of Mexico's demographic history and that is a significant element in Fuentes' fictional world. Now the principle figure is not Artemio Cruz (who, however, makes a brief appearance) but Fuentes' first major female protagonist, the extraordinary Laura Diaz.

"We'd had to be cut free of our mother's womb. Abby and I were fused, you see. But here's the real kicker; Abby had the magic, I didn't." Now adults, Makeda and Abby still share their childhood home. The surgery to separate the two girls left Makeda with what feels like an even worse deformity: no mojo. The daughters of a celestial demigod and a human woman, Makeda and Abby were raised by their magical father. Today, Makeda has decided it's high time to move out and make her own life.

For weeks, Rachel has been noticing the same golden-haired young man sitting at her Brooklyn bus stop, staring off with a melancholy air. When, one day, she finally musters the courage to introduce herself, the chemistry between them is undeniable: Thomas is wise, witty, handsome, mysterious, clearly a kindred spirit. There's just one tiny problem: He's dead. Stuck in a surreal limbo governed by bureaucracy, Thomas is unable to "cross over" to the afterlife until he completes a 90-day stint on earth, during which time he is forbidden to get involved with a member of the living.

From the author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated novel The Incident Report comes a hypnotic novel following Heinrich Schlögel from Germany to Canada, where he sets out on a solo hike into the interior of Baffin Island. His journey quickly becomes surreal, full of strange encounters, inexplicable visions, and the shifting of time. After returning back to civilization, Heinrich discovers inexplicably that many years have passed.

Lauren Pailing is born in the '60s, and a child of the '70s. She is 13 years old the first time she dies. Lauren Pailing is a teenager in the '80s, becomes a Londoner in the '90s. And each time she dies, new lives begin for the people who loved her - while Lauren enters a brand new life, too. But in each of Lauren’s lives, a man called Peter Stanning disappears. And, in each of her lives, Lauren sets out to find him. And so it is that every ending is also a beginning. And so it is that, with each new beginning, Peter Stanning inches closer to finally being found....

Thomas is a young boy growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with a French-Canadian father, Albert, and an American mother, Laura. But beyond the fact that he lives between two cultures and languages, there’s something else about Thomas that sets him apart: He was born on February 29. Before Albert goes on a strange quest to find out more about their mysterious relative, Aimé Bolduc, he explains to Thomas that he will age only one year out of every four, and he will outlive all of his loved ones.

Estamos en Macondo y su región una vez más, entre personajes y episodios reconocibles, pero ahora caen pájaros muertos sobre el poblado, rompiendo mosquiteros y alambradas, un cura ve al diablo o afirma haber encontrado al judío errante, y visitar la tumba de un ser querido supone un riesgo impredecible. Y hay que enterrar a la Mamá Grande, soberana absoluta de este mundo, que falleció en olor de santidad a los noventa y dos años, tras haber conservado la virginidad durante toda su vida, y a cuyos funerales acude el presidente de la República y hasta el Sumo Pontífice en su góndola papal.

Al pueblo ha llegado «la mala hora» de los campesinos, la hora de la desgracia. La comarca ha sido «pacificada» después de tanta guerra civil. Han ganado los conservadores, que se dedican a perseguir cruel y pertinazmente a sus adversarios liberales. Al alba de una mañana, mientras el padre Ángel se dispone a celebrar la misa, suena un disparo en el pueblo. Un comerciante de ganado, advertido de la infidelidad de su mujer por un pasquín pegado a la puerta de su casa, acaba de matar al presunto amante de ésta.

Cherry has a hidden talent. She can see things other people can't, and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others. As far as the rest of the town is concerned, she's simply the kind-hearted young woman who runs the local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful, the townspeople start to feel better about their lives.

Iris Harper has lived in Pendleford for decades. The local witch is mistrusted by the townsfolk, but that doesn't stop some coming to her begging for potions, spells and quick-fixes. As time has marched on suddenly Iris is aware that her days are beginning to fade. Her sumptuous garden is turning against her, the sweet scent of rot potent and now a young girl has come begging for a solution at her door. Yet, the problem she brings causes Iris to remember a man from long ago - the man she loved, the man she could never trust.

What if the drink you just spilled, the train you just missed, or the lottery ticket you just found was not just a random occurrence? What if it's all part of a bigger plan? What if there's no such thing as a chance encounter? What if there are people we don't know determining our destiny? And what if they are even planning the fate of the world? Enter the Coincidence Makers - Guy, Emily, and Eric - three seemingly ordinary people who work for a secret organization devoted to creating and carrying out coincidences. What the rest of the world sees as random occurrences, are, in fact, carefully orchestrated events.