Magical Realism Fiction

Ray Shackleford is trying to deal with the death of his father and the collapse of his marriage when the impossible happens: Music that no one has ever heard before begins to play from his stereo speakers. It is only the first step on a journey that will take him to Los Angeles, London, Cozumel, and points far beyond, and that will bring him face to face with Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix—and his own mortality.

Wilson Moss entered the town’s top-secret contest in the hopes of resurrecting her ex-best friend Annie LeBlanc, but that doesn’t mean she thought she’d actually win. Now Annie’s back and Wil’s ecstatic—does it even really matter that Annie ghosted her a year before she died…? But like any contest, there are rules, and the town’s resurrected dead can only return for thirty days. When Wil discovers a loophole that means Annie might be able to stay for good, she’s desperate to keep her alive. The potential key? Their third best friend, Ryan.

One year ago, a tragic car accident killed 22-year-old Laine’s parents and left her 18-year-old sister, Alyssa, paralyzed and nonverbal. Now Laine is struggling with predatory banks, unscrupulous health care organizations, and rude customers at the coffee shop where she works. That’s why when Lake Forest Adult Day Center offers to take care of Alyssa, free of charge, Laine is relieved. Alyssa isn't relieved, though. After all, in her mind, there was never a car accident. Instead, she and her parents—the king and queen of Mirendal—were attacked one year ago in the forest.

In Shajarpur, everyone is always happy. The weather is always perfect. But newcomer Savi, a lonely teenager, doesn’t know what happiness means anymore. If she were to make a list of things that were the absolute worst, moving to Shajarpur would be right on top. Well, right after missing her father, who just died of a heart attack. As Savi grapples with loss in a strange new town, she discovers something startling. Not only can she communicate with her father’s plants—all forty-two of them—she can talk to the giant ficus tree behind her school.

In 1969, in the wake of Malaysia's deadliest race riots, a woman named Du Li An secures her place in society by marrying a gangster. In a parallel narrative, a critic known only as The Fourth Person explores the work of a writer also named Du Li An. And a third storyline is in the second person; "you" are reading a novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Floundering in the wake of "your" mother's death, "you" are trying to unpack the secrets surrounding "your" lineage.

Iris, desperate to escape her unhappy marriage to her beautiful but controlling wife Claude, flees New York City for the remote Catskill Mountains. When she was a child, Iris and her father found solace in the beauty and wilderness of the forest, and now Iris needs time and space to clear her head and come to terms with the mistakes which have led her here. But what Iris doesn't expect in this journey of survival and self-discovery is to find herself - quite literally.

Lottie lives in Vivelle, a vibrant city where life exists in brilliant technicolor and nearly everyone is born with magic, including Lottie. But when tragedy strikes, color is stripped from Lottie’s heart and from the world around her. Taken in by her reclusive uncle, Lottie moves into Forsaken, a vast manor located in the gray wasteland between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead. There, Lottie discovers more secrets and mysteries than she ever dreamed possible. Even so, she is filled with nothing but despair.

Tiwanda Harris’s thirtieth birthday is a turning point. Gifted her late mother’s journal, Tiwanda is finally getting a glimpse of who her mother was as an adult. Shortly after, the budding entrepreneur receives a grant to jump-start a delicious business opportunity—and her sweet dreams don’t end there. Tiwanda’s been sent a dating app called Met that promises four matches, and among them, her soul mate. All Tiwanda has to do is tap “Yes”...

Kai Sosa is so passionate about swimming he is practically a fish. This summer, he's determined to become the athlete he once was on an elite invitational team. But something invisible holds him back. His race times are off. Dreams of his sister Cali haunt him. And he hasn't found her missing gold cuff, her last request. When Kai discovers a library book Cali had checked out multiple times-about an underwater realm and a mysterious place called the Library of Despair and Sorrow—details from the story begin to appear in his own life.

It's 2017, and the crisis of forced disappearances has reached a tipping point after forty-three docent students disappeared and are feared dead. Aureliano Más the Second is a fledgling writer at a lucrative fellowship in Mexico City chaired by his aunt, Rose.

Ten-year-old Lola has always been touched by magic. In her Mexico City home, built around a towering tree, she is accustomed to enchanted blooms that change with the seasons, a sandbox that spits out mysterious treasures, and mischievous chaneques that scuttle about unseen by all but her. Magic has always been a part of her life, but now she must embrace the extraordinary as never before. Ever since The Thing That Happened, Lola's brother Alex has been sick. As his condition worsens, something begins eating away at the tree, causing its leaves and blossoms to crumble like ash.

Greta Goodwin’s life is changing. On top of moving to a new neighborhood far away from her best friend, Lotti, she’s also starting middle school. Greta isn’t totally ready for boys, bras, and the chaotic cafeteria. She still feels like a little kid compared to those female classmates who have suddenly matured over the summer. Girls who are now the talk of the school—unlike Greta, who would rather fly under the radar, especially after a bad haircut that makes her look less “effortlessly beautiful” and more “triangle with legs.”

Casper dreams of swimming the Channel. Surely, he was born to use his webbed toes... Instead, he’s strictly forbidden to go near water. When his parents have an unlucky accident, Casper is sent to stay with a grandmother he’s never met – where he discovers his special tie to the sea.

Set in the early 1950s, this latest novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army veteran Buddy Ray Guy as he embodies the fate of Black soldiers who return, not in glory, but into their Jim Crow communities. A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he’s a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he is a true self-educated intellectual and a classic seeker: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love.

Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with twins to help support and a mortgage to pay—and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has never known the identity of his father—a mystery that his wife insists he must solve to move forward with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband, Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman.

Under Cancún’s hard blue sky, a beach boy provides a canvas for tourists’ desires, seeing deep into the world’s underbelly. An enigmatic encounter in Copenhagen takes an IT consultant down a rabbit hole of speculation that proves more seductive than sex. The collapse of a love triangle in London leads to a dangerous, hypnotic addiction. In the Nevada desert, a grieving man tries to merge with an unearthly machine.

When Annabel loses the love of her life, she is swept on a cross-continental search to find meaning. Undertaking an epic journey spanning Vienna, London, San Francisco, Provence, and the depths of the fjords in Norway, she travels to the American desert, where an ayahuasca-induced shamanic journey reveals that her only way forward is by healing her past. As Annabel treks to the lands of her American ancestors, she begins to awaken deeper roots within herself that reveal where true love really lies.

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.

Tarot reader Sara Wilde has spent her whole life finding the lost with the use of her trusty cards. But when her newest assignment sends her straight to Hell, she discovers more than she bargained for. The journey through Dante's playground forces Sara to endure a client's bitter loss, fall victim to a vicious betrayal by her own kind, and come face-to-face with the woman she might have been. Not even Sara's blossoming love for the darkly sensual Magician is safe in the underworld. She's tested in ways she never fathomed, ways that could drive her mad or utterly destroy her.

Dove Jarrod was a renowned evangelist and faith healer. Only her granddaughter, Eve Candler, knows that Dove was a con artist. In the eight years since Dove’s death, Eve has maintained Dove’s charitable foundation - and her lies. But just as a documentary team wraps up a shoot about the miracle worker, Eve is assaulted by a vengeful stranger intent on exposing what could be Dove’s darkest secret: murder.... Tuscaloosa, 1934: a wily young orphan escapes the psychiatric hospital where she was born.