Magical Realism Fiction

By a riverbank in Africa, two lovers meet for the first time. They make a promise to meet again the next day, same time, same place, but only one of them shows up. This sounds like the beginning of a love story, but it's more than that, for this breath-taking tale takes the listener into the heart of a vibrant world, a complex and intriguing civilization of warriors and kings, philosophers and artists, parents and lovers. A world and culture which is about to end, for glimpsed on the horizon, seen but unsuspected, beautiful ships with white sails are waiting.

Hers was the plight of a gothic heroine, banished from her home by a cruel brother and his heartless wife, the Dragon Sage. Misunderstood and maligned, Georgiana’s only hope of rescue were letters to aunts describing the medieval dungeon to which she had been sent.

Gemma Peters is doing fine. She’s making a name for herself in the L.A. music biz as a radio producer. She’s got a ride-or-die best friend in Lila, and she gets to come home to Rex, her loving Labrador, every night. But ever since her rock star ex-boyfriend used her to get a record deal from her rock legend dad, she’s made a “no musicians” rule when it comes to dating that’s becoming more like a “no dating” rule, period. So, when Gemma crashes (literally) into Jack one Thursday morning, at first she feels like fate might finally be doing her a favor. The truth is this is no ordinary Thursday.

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.

García Márquez construyó, en El otoño del patriarca, una maquinaria narrativa perfecta que desgrana una historia universal -la agonía y muerte de un dictador- en forma cíclica, experimental y real al mismo tiempo, en seis bloques narrativos sin diálogos, sin puntos y aparte, repitiendo una anécdota siempre igual y siempre distinta, acumulando hechos y descripciones deslumbrantes.

At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends with in The Dinner List. When Sabrina arrives at her 30th birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together.

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.

When psychic travel agent Leda Foley is approached by a man searching for his sister, she quickly agrees to help. The missing woman disappeared with a vintage orange car, a fat sack of her employer’s cash, and a grudge against her philandering husband—a man who never even reported her missing. Meanwhile, Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt has temporarily misplaced his dog. While he’s passing out bright pink “Lost” flyers at the Mount Rainier visitor’s center, the wayward pooch appears—with a human leg in his mouth.

Chancery may be the youngest ruler of the Evians, but she won her first battle. Thanks to her success, the powers ruling the rest of the Earth are aligning against her, and her supporters’ demands grow with every passing day. Her days of hiding are over.... A 5,000-year-old prophecy and a dull black rock ruined the life Chancery planned for herself. As she navigates the roiling waters of ancient prejudice, assassination, war, and refugees, she discovers how deeply unprepared she was to assume this unwanted role. But standing tall makes you a target.

In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his 13-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light.

On the eve of his 90th birthday, a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit - he has purchased hundreds of women - he asks a madam for her assistance. The 14-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known. Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to a master's work.

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?

When Nathan goes to visit his grandma, Nali, at her mobile summer home on the Navajo reservation, he knows he’s in for a pretty uneventful summer, with no electricity or cell service. Still, he loves spending time with Nali and with his uncle Jet, though it’s clear when Jet arrives that he brings his problems with him. One night, while lost in the nearby desert, Nathan finds someone extraordinary: a Holy Being from the Navajo Creation Story - a Water Monster - in need of help.

Welcome to Newford: to the music clubs, the waterfront, and the alleyways where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world. Gemmins live in abandoned cars and skells traverse the tunnels below, while mermaids swim in the gray harbor waters and fill the cold night with their song. Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering the fey and the wild and the poor and the lost.

Best friends Evie, Krista, and Willow are just trying to make it through their mid-twenties in New York. They're regular girls, with regular looks and typical quarter-life crises: making it up the corporate ladder, making sense of online dating, and making rent.

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.

London, 1861: Ten-year-old Nell belongs to a crew of mudlarks who work a stretch of the Thames along the Ratcliffe Highway. An orphan since her mother died four years past, leaving Nell with only broken dreams and a pair of satin slippers in her possession, she spends her days dredging up coals, copper and pieces of iron spilled by the river barges – searching for treasure in the mud in order to appease her master, Benjamin Murdstone. But one day, Nell discovers a body on the shore. It’s not the first corpse she’s encountered, but by far the strangest.

For Edie Lane, a recipe for disaster doesn’t require that many ingredients. Take an unhealthy amount of wishful thinking and a sprinkle of desperation and that’s how Edie left everything behind in Ireland for her dream job at a bakery in Paris. Except the bakery isn’t in Paris – and neither is Edie. This might not be where Edie intended to be but she soon realizes it's exactly where she needs to be.

Born in the Argentine town of Mina Clavero, Camila is designated male but begins to identify from an early age as a girl. She is well aware that she’s different from other children and reacts to her oppressive, poverty-stricken home life, with a cowed mother and abusive, alcoholic father, by acting out—with swift consequences. Deeply intelligent, she eventually leaves for the city to attend university, slipping into prostitution to make ends meet. And in Sarmiento Park, in the heart of Córdoba, she discovers the strange, wonderful world of the trans sex workers who dwell there.

Zac Riggs would not have survived on Ludus for very long without his adopted sister, Gazra-tam. Gazra-tam is an ocelot-race Mo'hali, and Riggs is an engineering student from Earth who was transported to Ludus. The two make an unlikely team. Riggs and his sister had been comfortable living in a trap-filled dungeon before bandits attacked. But now there are bodies all over the floor and it doesn't quite feel like home anymore.