Magical Realism Fiction

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.

Nestled among the cobblestone streets of Compiègne, there existed a bakery unlike any other. Rumours were whispered through the town that its pastries offered a taste of magic, chasing away the darkest of sorrows. Just one bite of a croissant might bring luck, unlock a precious memory or reveal hidden longings. But dark clouds were looming on the horizon…

May Rosevere has reached the grand old age of 110, thanks to several slices of toast with butter every morning, a glass (or two) of port, and the wonders of the Cornish sea air - or so she tells everyone. But there’s much more to May than her remarkable age. She has a secret. One that no one has ever discovered....

Eine Frau will mit ihrer Cousine und deren Mann ein paar Tage in einem Jagdhaus in den Bergen verbringen. Abends unternimmt das Paar noch einen Gang ins Dorf. Am Morgen stellt sich heraus, dass die beiden in der Nacht nicht zurückgekehrt sind. Zusammen mit dem Hund macht die Frau sich auf den Weg, um sie zu suchen. Doch plötzlich kehrt der Hund mit blutender Schnauze zu ihr zurück, und dann stößt sie selbst an ein unsichtbares Hindernis.

In publishing-speak, here's what we at the LQ office sometimes describe as the Queer lovechild of Sholem Aleichem and Philip Roth: Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

The student witches are growing increasingly reckless, preying on the mundanes below the mountains as their tutors plot and scheme to take advantage of the chaos. And no one seems to know why. Emily is in no condition to intervene. But she cannot refuse. Heading to Laughter, Emily finds herself dragged into a world of schoolgirl games, staffroom politics, and a deadly plot aimed at the heart of the Allied Lands themselves.

There's a catfish under Japan, and when it rolls, the land rises and falls. At least, that's what Sora was told after she lost her mother to an earthquake so powerful that it cracked time itself. Sora and her father are some of the few who still live near the most powerful of these "zones"—the places where time has been irrevocably sped up, or slowed down. When high school ends, and her best friend leaves for university, Sora finds herself stuck and increasingly alone. She begins secretly conducting her own research, tracking down a time expert in Tokyo.

A groundbreaking book in the tradition of The Alchemist and The Celestine Prophecy, The Mosaic, by marketing expert and activist Daniel Bruce Levin, invites you to see the world from a new point of view - one that focuses on what connects us to each other and brings us happiness. The Mosaic follows the journey of Mo, a boy who loses his parents two years apart on the same day.

In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures. In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bissected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. The two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, fight a bloody duel, and achieve a miraculous resolution.

In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness - save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.

Calvino è stato uno degli scrittori italiani degli ultimi decenni più amati e conosciuti nel mondo. Nato a Cuba e cresciuto a San Remo, Italia, cominciò la sua carriera come scrittore di opere realistiche e impegnate politicamente nel clima degli sconvolgimenti del dopoguerra italiano.

It’s been six months since I died on Earth and was brought to the kingdom of Craesti. In that time, I’ve made friends, gained a family, and begun learning how to gather and channel Aether, aka magic. I started attending Azyl Academy, the premier magic school of the city, after it was discovered that my talent was exceptionally high. I am learning alchemy, inscription, and how to fight, all with the goal of expanding the kingdom and keeping the populace safe.

As a little girl, Jane has no one. Her mother, Vivienne Margaux, the powerful head of a major New York theater company has no time for her. She does have one friend - Michael - but no one can see him except her. When Jane is in her 30s, working for her mother's company, she is just as alone as she was as a child. Then she finds Michael again - handsome and just the same as she remembers him, only now he's not imaginary.

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.

The second sun has returned as our Bone Throwers foresaw—casting the nine realms into war. My name is Ash, and I fell in the battle for Baiseen. But I'm awake now, slowly putting the pieces back together. My Heir has lost his throne. My sailor is gone. And there is an emptiness inside me I can't explain. Amid the chaos, someone must collect the original twelve whistle bones from all corners of the world.

It’s 1987, and sixteen-year-old Gracie Byrne wishes her life were totally different. Shy and awkward, she has trouble fitting in at her new school, she’s still reeling from her parents’ divorce, and her grandmother Katherine’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse. So when Gracie finds a blank journal in Katherine’s vanity drawer, she begins writing stories about herself—a more popular version of herself, that is. But then the hot guy in her art class describes a dream he had about her—the exact scene she wrote about him in her journal—and Gracie realizes that she can create any reality she wants.

As daughters of the impoverished King of Montenegro, Militza and Stana must fulfill their duty to their father and leave their beloved home for St. Petersburg to be married into senior positions in the Romanov court. For their new alliances to the Russian nobility will help secure the future of the sisters’ native country. Immediately, Militza and Stana feel like outcasts as the aristocracy shuns them for their provincial ways and for dabbling in the occult. Undeterred, the sisters become resolved to make their mark by falling in with the lonely, depressed Tsarina Alexandra.

Though published second after Altmann's Tongue, The Din of Celestial Birds (1997) consists of the best of Evenson's early stories. They take place in a country (perhaps several countries) that seems at once everywhere and nowhere, haunted by birds, ghosts, poverty, tyranny, and the permeability of the line between the living and the dead. These stories offer a heady mix of absurdity and bleakness on the one hand and exuberant magic realism on the other.

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.

Eva Luna is a young woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and love. Lying in bed with her European lover, refugee and journalist Rolf Carlé, Eva answers his request for a story "you have never told anyone before" with these 23 samples of her vibrant artistry. Interweaving the real and the magical, she explores love, vengeance, compassion, and the strengths of women, creating a world that is at once poignantly familiar and intriguingly new.