Literary Realism

2015. Eighteen-year-old Boyd Montgomery returns from her grandfather’s wedding to find her friend Isaac missing. Drought-ravaged central Texas has been newly inundated with rain, and flash floods across the state have begun to sweep away people, cars, and entire houses as every river breaks its banks.

We first meet Zwazo Delalun, or Zo, during his childhood, in the 1990s, in a fishing village on the western tip of Haiti. An orphan, he learns to swim and fish, then to harvest almonds and cut cane. He travels the island in his youth, finding work wherever he can. One morning, while hauling cement in the broiling sun, he meets Anaya, a nursing student who is sipping cherry juice under a tree. Their attraction is instantaneous, fierce; what grows between them feels like the destiny-changinglove Zo has yearned for.

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.

A writer in a purgatory bar, an art-collecting housewife who time travels, a movie production assistant with stigmata, a codependent AA sponsor, a sex addict, a movie star with issues, a two-time liver transplant recipient, and an abusive TV costumer who gets what’s coming to her: All connected to one another but completely and utterly alone. 

The Magic Shop (Annotated) by HG Wells. Has an added analysis after the short story by Aery Media's Luis Angel. HG Wells takes you on a journey to see the life a father and son who enter into this mysterious magic shop.

An ailing farmer in rural Iran unearths an extraordinary find: two parsnips, grown together and looking for all the world like entwined lovers. For now, the sublime treasure is his secret. Wrapping it in a silk handkerchief, he nestles it away in a dresser drawer. Day after day, he gazes at their unmistakable rapture, reminded of the long-gone youthful passions he once shared with his wife. So, too, he mourns the inevitable - the eventual decay of the parsnips in love. When he decides to share his discovery with the world, his life and the lives of those around him connect and change.

Tens of thousands of crows invading Auburn, Pennsylvania, is a problem for everyone in town except 17-year-old Leighton Barnes. For Leighton, it’s no stranger than her house, which inexplicably repairs itself every time her father loses his temper and breaks things. Leighton doesn’t have time for the crows - it’s her senior year, and acceptance to her dream college is finally within reach. But grabbing that lifeline means abandoning her sisters, a choice she’s not ready to face.

Winner of the Icelandic Literary Prize, A Fist or a Heart is a gripping, artfully interwoven novel of power, secrets, and isolation by one of the most bracing and original voices of the author’s generation.

In this visionary novel framed as a hagiography, the ruminative, subjective memories of Gabriel’s witnesses - spiritual, familial, romantic, and political - converge to make sense of the man’s confounding works and message. As they do, a surprising portrait develops...not only of the deepening mystery of Gabriel Romero himself but also of a country in conflict and the faith it takes to fight the suspicion and fear that divide us.

In Apricot Eyes by Rohan Quine, a cat-and-mouse pursuit through the New York City night involves a preacher, a psychic and a dominatrix, broadcast live on air - until a horror is unearthed, bringing two of them together and the third to a sticky end. Having partially regained a power of second sight that he’d once possessed but lost, Jaymi Peek uses this ability in a live weekly television show online, where he channels onto the screen those unexpected places, hidden colors and hatching plans that he can perceive throughout New York City.

In a place where political posturing, bloody war, journalistic witness, and even patient negotiation have yielded so little understanding, we enter the cemetery of the orange trees, where urchins kite dead birds, goats utter wisdom, camels and donkeys huddle together, and merchandise magically passes underground through the tunnels of Gaza. But this is no fairy tale or bestiary. In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees is a waking, attentive dream-journal, leading us back to a place where hatred, strife, and even human language itself might sing.

Kimiko, giovane scrittrice di romanzi rosa, esce con Goro, che convive con Yukiko, una lontana parente molto più grande di lui. Una sera, dopo una visita all'acquario di Tokyo a vedere i delfini, Kimiko fa l'amore con Goro, ma capisce subito che la loro storia non ha futuro. Temendo di legarsi troppo a lui, decide allora di abbandonare Tokyo. Nel tempio vicino al mare in cui trova rifugio, conosce Mami, una ragazza con doti soprannaturali, e da lei viene a sapere di essere incinta.

There is a middle world between life and death, and Tess must navigate it to save her brother in this heart-wrenching story infused with the fractured and fantastical realms of Finnish mysticism. Axel and Tess are bewildered when a stranger shows up in their backyard accompanied by a giant brown bear, but before they can investigate the bizarre encounter, something more harrowing happens: their father is killed in a freak car accident.

Margaret O'Shea never thought she'd find herself praying for the life of an English soldier. But with her grandson Eoin fighting in Iraq, Margaret can't do anything but say the rosary and hope that he comes home unscathed. His fiancée Katarzyna is a good Catholic girl, even if she goes to Nottingham's Polish church rather than its Irish one. What Margaret doesn't know is that Kathy's way of coping with Eoin's absence goes beyond prayer or reading horoscopes.

When Sam falls in love with Deptford thug Derek, and Anne’s best friend Kathleen takes her own life, they discover they are linked not just by a world of drugs and revenge - they also share the friendship of the uncanny and enigmatic Deborah. Seamstress, sailor, storyteller and self-proclaimed centenarian immortal, Deborah slowly reveals to Anne and Sam her improbable, fantastical life, a history of hidden Deptford and ultimately the solution to their crises.

An American pilot crash-lands in the desert and finds himself on the outskirts of the very camp he was supposed to bomb. After days spent wandering and hallucinating from dehydration, Major Ellie is rescued by one of the camp's residents, a teenager named Momo, whose entrepreneurial money-making schemes are failing as his family is falling apart: his older brother, Ali, left for his first day of work at an American base and never returned; his parents are at each other’s throats; his dog, Mutt, is having a very bad day; and an earthy-crunchy aid worker has shown up....

In 1923, 17-year-old Esther arrives in Köln "with a hardened heart as her sole luggage.” Thus begins a 22-year journey, woven against the European Holocaust and the Hindu Kali Yuga (the “Age of Darkness” when human civilization degenerates spiritually), in search of a place of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, using cunning and shrewdness, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her Jewish heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India. Esther’s traveling companion and the novel’s narrator is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God....

All widow Akayla Okenfus cares about is finding mates for her daughters, beautiful Lolly and plain Leigh Ann. Young Jason Uptegrow could be a match for one of them, but when Akayla's late husband tries to help, the matchmaking takes an unexpected turn.

A parallel universe. South Texas. Narcotics are legal, and there’s a new contraband on the market: ancient Olmec artifacts, shrunken indigenous heads, and filtered animals - species of animals brought back from extinction to clothe, feed, and generally amuse the very wealthy. Esteban Bellacosa has lived in the border town of MacArthur long enough to know to keep quiet. But his simple life starts to get complicated when the swashbuckling investigative journalist Paco Herbert invites him to come to an illegal underground dinner serving filtered animals.

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.