Magical Realism Fiction

Home is where we love, suffer and learn. Some homes we chose, others are inflicted upon us and still others are bodies we are born into. In this astounding collection of stories, human and more-than-human worlds come together in places we call home.

Paris, 1925: To enter the Secret Circus is to enter a world of wonder - a world where women weave illusions of magnificent beasts, carousels take you back in time, and trapeze artists float across the sky. Bound to her family's circus, it's the only world Cecile Cabot knows until she meets a charismatic young painter and embarks on a passionate affair that could cost her everything. Virginia, 2004: Lara Barnes is on top of the world until her fiancé disappears on their wedding day.

Vega Jones escapes an abusive relationship with nothing but her two-month-old baby and the van she grew up in. Her destination is a small Ohio town her late vagabond mother left years ago. It’s one full of nobodies, her mother warned. That makes it the ideal refuge for Vega to lie low, feel safe, and maybe learn more about a past her mother never spoke of.

Surtout n'arrêtez jamais de danser... À la suite d'une série de rêves, un journaliste free-lance désabusé part à la recherche d'une ex-petite amie, pourvue des oreilles les plus parfaites que la terre a jamais portées, mystérieusement disparue. Sa quête le mène à l'hôtel du Dauphin de Sapporo, où il va devenir le chaperon d'une adolescente paumée, et recevoir des instructions cryptiques de la part d'un homme-mouton, caché dans une chambre miteuse d'un étage fantôme, dont la principale est de : " continuer à danser ".

October 1840. A young woman staggers alone through a forest in the English countryside as a huge pair of impossible wings rip themselves from her shoulders. In London, rumors of a fallen angel cause a frenzy across the city, and a surgeon desperate for fame and fortune finds himself in the grips of a dangerous obsession, one that will place the women he seeks in the most terrible danger.

Seventeen years after falling from a stolen car into a remote northern town, Billie Jean Fontaine is still an outsider. She may follow the stifling rules of this odd place, but no one will forget that she came from elsewhere. When Billie Jean vanishes one cold October night in her bare feet and track suit with only her truck keys, those closest to her begin a frantic search. Her daughter, Pony, a girl struggling against being a teen in the middle of nowhere; her killer dog to whom she cannot tell a lie; her husband, The Heavy, a man haunted by his past; and more....

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents.

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.

Zaire. Late 90's. Mobutu's thirty-year reign is tottering. In Lubumbashi, the stubbornly homeless Sanza has fallen in with a trio of veteran street kids led by the devious Ngungi. A chance encounter with the mysterious Monsieur Guillaume seems to offer a way out . . . Meanwhile in Angola, Molakisi has joined thousands of fellow Zairians hoping to make their fortunes hunting diamonds, while Austrian Franz finds himself roped into writing the memoirs of the charismatic Tshiamuena, the "Madonna of the Cafunfo Mines."

De acordo com um mito japonês, os gatos são um símbolo de boa sorte. E, se você for gentil com eles, um dia esse favor será retribuído. Mas, se for gentil com o gato certo, talvez você seja convidado para conhecer um misterioso café que surge em noites de lua cheia em Quioto...

Hiromi Goto’s acclaimed debut novel is a feminist examination of the Japanese Canadian immigrant experience. Focusing on the lives of three generations of women in modern day Alberta, Goto uses their stories to examine the impacts of privilege and cultural identity on Asian Canadian immigrants.

On Tommy Llewellyn’s first birthday, his doting parents awoke in a home without baby blankets and bottles in the fridge, without the photos of their newborn once scattered about, and without any idea that the one-year-old sleeping in their home was their child. That’s because Tommy Llewellyn is a boy who, in the very cosmic sense of things, will never be remembered—stuck in a universal Reset that causes everyone to forget he exists when the clock strikes midnight on his birthday each year.

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.

Amy Hilton, born Wu Aimee in the tiny Chinese village of Eternal Spring, has been living and working as a photographer in New York City for so long she’s started to dream in English. When in the fall of 1999 she receives a letter from her sister, written in her birth tongue of Manchu, she needs to take it to a Chinatown produce vendor to get it translated. And so it is this stranger who tells Amy that her mother has died of a broken heart.

Lyman Frank Baum was an American children's book writer best-known for creating the popular Wizard of Oz series. Baum was a prolific writer who wrote 14 novels in the Oz series, plus 41 other novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and about 42 scripts. He often wrote under pseudonyms. Of all the books, the one that made Baum a household name was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Dissatisfied with his empty, Sisyphus-like existence in New York City, where he has abandoned his creative dreams for a job in corporate advertising, a highly cultured aspiring composer wants nothing more than to tear his life up from the root. He soon finds his escape hatch: a university-sponsored mission to South America to look for indigenous musical instruments in one of the few areas of the world not yet touched by civilization. Retracing the steps of time, he voyages with his lover into a land that feels outside of history.

Warlock Anna Atticus Stone is on her final year at the academy. As head of student council, academic prodigy, and champion arena dueler, she seems the perfect pupil. In reality, Anna is grieving, overwhelmed, and so lonely she talks to herself. Above all, she fears assassination if people find out her father’s dying gift to her was a scion. Only seven of these powerful artifacts exist, one in each kingdom—a precarious balance that maintains peace.

After the mysterious disappearance of her fiancé, Alma Hughes moves to a remote island in the North Atlantic, where she hopes to weather her grief and nurture her ailing dog. But the strange town of Violette has mysteries as well. Townsfolk say that the radio tower overlooking their town broadcasts messages through their home appliances, their dreams, even the sea itself. When lightning strikes the tower, illuminating the sky in a brilliant flash, Alma finds herself caught in the unexplainable aftermath of one of Violette’s deadliest storms.

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.

Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate.