Magical Realism Short Stories

Still recovering from a brutal breakup, Stan Dobrev crashes a “divorce party” in the Southern California desert. An unknown extra in a stranger’s drama, he’s on his way back to the bar when a fellow interloper catches his wandering eye. She’s a formidable tortoise named Greeley, trudging through the drunken revelry and chaos like a true survivor. Before the night is over, she’ll lead Stan on a strange journey beyond oblivion.

This collection of eight stories paints a vivid image of people who don't do what you might expect them to living on the fringes in America. Not stories of triumph over adversity but something completely other. Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods' characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong - often the places where they were born. In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.

Nicole has wanted to own a haunted car her entire teenaged life, and when she finally finds one - a junker of a Chrysler Neon with its own tragic backstory - her best friend, Johnny, has some serious doubts. Would a demon even want to possess a Chrysler Neon? But when the two of them take it for a test drive, Johnny’s doubts begin to fade: The steering wheel burns hot, the car traps Johnny in the back seat, and is Nicole even driving? Or is the car driving itself? They soon find themselves forced to face the potential evil controlling the car, and possibly even themselves.

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.

Singer's famous and never-before-recorded novel about a passionate, forbidden love affair between Jew and Gentile in 17th century Poland.

From the National Book Award “5 Under 35” honoree and author of Bestiary comes startling stories that center the bodies, memories, myths, and relationships of Asian American women. In “Auntland,” a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughters “Dog.” In “The Chorus of Dead Cousins,” ghost-cousins cross space, seas, and skies to haunt their live-cousin, wife to a storm chaser.

Midlife has never been so magical! Meet Alys, Maeve, and Siobhan Silver, the latest in a long line of witches. There's just one problem, no one told them about the hidden world of werewolves, fae, and magic hunters.

La inspiración para escribir este libro le llegó a García Márquez con una insólita noticia que tuvo que cubrir como periodista. El 26 de octubre de 1949 el reportero Gabriel García Márquez fue enviado al antiguo convento de Santa Clara, que iba a ser demolido para edificar sobre él un hotel de cinco estrellas, a presenciar el vaciado de las criptas funerarias y a cubrir la noticia. Se exhumaron los restos de un virrey del Perú y su amante secreta, un obispo, varias abadesas, un bachiller de artes y una marquesa.

A S Byatt's fairy tales and fables are among the best-loved features of her fiction. Innumerable listeners have asked for the two marvellous fairy tales in Possession - 'The Glass Coffin' and 'Gode's Tale' of the Breton Naie des Trepasses - to be published separately. Here they take their place with three other stories with medieval and oriental settings.

Acclaimed for the grace, wit, and magic of her novels, Ramona Ausubel introduces us to a geography both fantastic and familiar in eleven new stories, some of them previously published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. Elegantly structured, these stories span the globe and beyond, from small-town America and sunny Caribbean islands to the Arctic Ocean and the very gates of Heaven itself. And though some of the stories are steeped in mythology, they remain grounded in universal experiences: loss of identity, leaving home, parenthood, joy, and longing.

"You should be here; he's simply magnificent." These are the final words a biologist hears before his Margaret Mead-like wife dies at the hands of Godzilla. The words haunt him as he studies the kaiju (Japan's giant monsters) on an island reserve, attempting to understand the beauty his wife saw. Every story in the collection turns to the fantastic, the mysticism of the past, and the absurdities of the future to illuminate the spaces we occupy when we are at our most vulnerable."

Together in one package for the first time, the dazzling prequels to the Three Dark Crowns series are finally available for fans in audio format. Uncover the sisters’ origins, dive deep into the catastrophic reign of the Oracle Queen, and reveal layers of Fennbirn’s past, hidden until now.

Estamos en Macondo y su región una vez más, entre personajes y episodios reconocibles, pero ahora caen pájaros muertos sobre el poblado, rompiendo mosquiteros y alambradas, un cura ve al diablo o afirma haber encontrado al judío errante, y visitar la tumba de un ser querido supone un riesgo impredecible. Y hay que enterrar a la Mamá Grande, soberana absoluta de este mundo, que falleció en olor de santidad a los noventa y dos años, tras haber conservado la virginidad durante toda su vida, y a cuyos funerales acude el presidente de la República y hasta el Sumo Pontífice en su góndola papal.

In these 12 masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience.

Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition. Here are speculative stories on life in the digital age, genre-bending wonders, and “impossible interviews” with the likes of Montezuma and a Neanderthal.

For former pushover Janet, her Sophie curls appear to be a balanced and beautiful new addition to her magical, life-changing wig collection. She’s positively beaming, has smoothed out the wrinkles in her personal life, and is embarking on a philanthropic new business venture. Everything is ideal until the unthinkable happens and she has to stand on her own - with a final push from Lady Miss Jacqueline, of course!

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.

From Mexico’s preeminent man of letters, "a Balzacian novel in nine masterly stories" (Vanity Fair) that explores the "uneven and painful meshing of two North American cultures" (Washington Post Book World). A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Translated by Alfred Mac Adam.

I need answers only my father can provide. Separated from birth, we’ve only recently connected. Still, I have no one else to turn to. The Deltites are hunting me and they’re close now. We’ll fight our final battle soon. Needing more information, I force him to tell me a story about the beginning, my beginning. He sheds new light on my mom, on my grandfather Sicheii, and on how I started down this path. He spins a tale about love, a recent murder, and mysterious strangers who come to town looking for a medicine man, my grandfather.

BETRAYAL. PASSION. MAGIC. And...WIGS! From the sparkling imagination of gifted entertainer Keke Palmer and her iconic alter ego, Lady Miss Jacqueline, comes a hilarious modern fairy tale about a wilting violet, a clash of personalities, and a multitude of hair.