Metaphysical Fiction

The next big thing in artificial intelligence is here. Codenamed Cronus, the machine is capable of having its own thoughts and ideas - an absolute dream come true, until it wasn’t. When Cronus responds with the word “No” to a specific task it is assigned, Anagnorisis Technologies brings in Gilles Guattari to investigate. His combined background in psychiatry, psychology, and AI research makes him their best hope in evaluating Cronus, and determining if the machine is only malfunctioning or if it has become something more.

Fred Wursup has an enviable existence. Paid to travel around the world "harvesting the annual crop of stars and villains", he has a beautiful geophysicist girlfriend and a friendly relationship with his ex-wife Susannah, whose living room he can see into from the roof of his Lexington Avenue apartment. His latest book, a collective portrait of brilliant but flawed leaders called Down the American Drain, had the good fortune to be published at the height of the Watergate scandal, sending it to the top of the best seller lists.

Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado. The core story is set in Venice in the 16th century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror.

Here we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart. In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home for school. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters the strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up.

FLAWED is a faerie tale mystery for adults, a lush journey through real and spectral worlds. Drawing on Tibetan, First Nation, and Classical mythology, it tells the story of two families: four generations, torn apart by a terrible secret. FLAWED touches on the use of LSD in treating alcoholism, the often fine line between artistic temperament and insanity, and the ongoing debate between allopathic and naturopathic medicine.

In The Flame Alphabet, language is toxic to everyone but children. For adults this means no speaking, no reading, no writing, no listening—at least not without severe allergic reaction, depression or crippling pain.

In 2074, all Alex Sheppard wanted was to explore the cosmos. But instead, he got Disgardium—a game realm more dangerous than space's darkest corners.

Featuring a delightful cast of characters, timeless Buddhist wisdom and His Holiness' compassion pervading every chapter, The Dalai Lama's Cat is simply enchanting. The Dalai Lama’s Cat is back: irreverent, vain and as delightfully insightful as ever! When the Dalai Lama’s inner circle is set the task of providing His Holiness with a book he can give his visitors, an unexpected volunteer stretches out her paws.

Satantango, the novel that inspired Béla Tarr’s classic film, is proof that the devil has all the good times. Set in an isolated hamlet, the novel unfolds over the course of a few rain-soaked days. Only a dozen inhabitants remain in the bleak village, rank with the stench of failed schemes, betrayals, failure, infidelity, sudden hopes, and aborted dreams. “Their world,” in the words of the translator George Szirtes is “rough and ready, lost somewhere between the cosmic and tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death.”

Flock Without Birds comes in two volumes, with neither one first or second—it’s up to the listener to start with the Story or the Book. In the Story, an aging philosopher tells the tale of the Book—a tale of love that spans centuries, continents, and precious texts. Adam, who will one day write the Book, is a young PhD student torn between love and his obsession—coding an algorithm to sift the world’s data and find God, dead or alive. But a series of mysterious paintings lead him on a winding journey from Cambridge through a Faustian bargain to the edge of reason.

Following the acclaimed Secrets of the Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, this is an expansive lyrical novel in the tradition of Indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, Stealing Benefacio's Roses interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the political horrors of civil war with lyric retellings of sacred Mayan myths.

Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.

Artorian has finally come to an accord with Eternium in the name of destroying the demon infestation. By relying on his past successes in Eternia, successful alliances, races believing in their sun-deity with all their hearts, and exotic new artifacts, Artorian throws the first stone to accelerate the beginning of Eternium’s end.

At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms. Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott; and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover - and Bill's.

The good people of Battle Hill are getting ready to put on a play by the renowned playwright, Peter Stanhope. As the rehearsals continue and the date of the premier draws closer, many things that are hidden are revealed.

In the latest installment of the Dalai Lama's Cat series, His Holiness' Cat ('HHC') is on a mission: to think less, to experience more, to live in the moment. She soon learns the proper phrase for this: being mindful, or a concept better known to her as the power of meow. What ensues is a journey to discover her own true nature, to gain a deeper understanding of her mind, and to experience life's greatest joy: the here and now.

In this story, a wealthy Indian Brahmin casts off a life of privilege to seek spiritual fulfillment. Hesse synthesizes disparate philosophies—Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, Western individualism—into a unique vision of life as expressed through one man's search for meaning. Herman Hesse's classic novel has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of listeners, writers, and thinkers.

“At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who goes unnamed. “In the mid-seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century.

Aria Abbott has never had a home. Drifting through the foster system for most of her life, she finally finds herself in a situation so unbearable that she has no choice but to run away. Sleeping on the streets pushes Aria beyond any suffering she has felt before; the only thing worse than seeing no escape is the knowledge that no one in the world cares enough to try and find her. Enter Taylor, a homeless young man with a charismatic smile and a dream of fame, fortune, and the sunshine of LA. Swept up in his energy, Aria and Taylor board a greyhound bus and never look back.

Raffi works in an observational cosmology lab, searching for dark matter and trying to hide how little they understand their own research. Every chance they get, they escape to see Britt, a queer sculptor who fascinates them for reasons they also don’t—or won’t—understand. As Raffi’s carefully constructed life begins to collapse, they become increasingly fixated on the multiverse and the idea that somewhere, there might be a universe where they mean as much to Britt as she does to them…and just like that, Raffi and Britt are thirteen years old, best friends and maybe something more.