Metaphysical Fiction

Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.

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.”

Author and philosopher Sydney Banks once again brings to life his wise and simple gardener as a voice through which Banks presents more implications of the Three Principles that create human reality, calling on us to realize that to fully understand the Principles is to liberate one's spirit. In this sequel to Sydney Banks’ book The Enlightened Gardener, two colleagues return to England to meet once again with the remarkable gardener whose simple yet profound philosophy made such a difference to their lives.

Oliver Dalrymple, nicknamed Boo because of his pale complexion and staticky hair, is an outcast at his Illinois middle school - more interested in biology and chemistry than the friendship of other kids. But after a tragic accident, Boo wakes up to find himself in a very strange sort of heaven: a town populated by only 13-year-old Americans.

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.

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.

A veteran of the Iraq war is appointed undersecretary of defense in order to penetrate a secret government purposely black-shelving zero-point energy, a clean, abundant energy source reverse-engineered from downed UFOs. Steve Alten's Undisclosed is a mind-opening thriller of "faction" that incorporates testimonials from military and intelligence personnel who were actual eyewitnesses and participants involved in the greatest secret in history.

Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Procházka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo mission to Venus offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown.

The novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O’Dare—a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases—just now: Lucky the Fox—and takes his orders from “The Right Man.”

In a remote, Himalayan monastery, Matt Lester has devoted five years of spiritual preparation for this moment: it is his destiny to open an ancient, sealed scroll containing prophetic wisdom the world urgently needs. But when his time comes, violent assailants steal the scroll. Matt is caught up in a dangerous, high-stakes hunt to recover it, turning him from the pursuer to the pursued. On the other side of the world, the results of scientist Alice Weisenstein’s mind-body healing research are about to be revealed.

New York City, New Year's weekend, 2001. Jillian Guthrie, a troubled young journalist, stumbles onto a tantalizing mystery: the same man, unaged, stands alongside Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gandhi in three different photographs spanning eighty-five years of history.

Newly elected President John Harrison Henry is fighting to save the nation from nefarious forces that are hell-bent on chaos and destruction. While a brave few fight against the might of the Global Meteor Response Council that rules the world with an iron fist, in distant lands old forces shift and new powers arise, for word has it that something is coming that is going to change everything....

The countdown has begun. The Tenth Protocol has been activated, and the evacuation of the surface is about to begin. Millions of lives will be saved, but billions more will be lost. As the old world crumbles, there are some on the surface who seek to save those doomed to die a gruesome death. But are they willing to sacrifice themselves to achieve it?

Julian Barnes pens a kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar’s search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert and the obsession of this detective, whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert’s characters.

The Essential Revolution by Michael McGinnis is a transformative tale that will not only leave you questioning how you perceive the issues in your life but the ones the whole world is facing right now. Follow the story of Marcus Ogabi, a policeman whose life is turned upside down when he shoots a young man, Dimitri Tanomeo, in the toughest part of town known as the Pit. Little did he know, this encounter would lead him to join forces with Zach Markland, a technological genius, and Dimitri himself, to start a movement that would change the course of humanity.

The best-selling author of Second Nature, Illumination Night and Turtle Moon now offers her most fascinating and tantalizingly accomplished novel yet -- a winning tale that amply confirms Alice Hoffman's reputation not only as a genius of the vivid scene and unforgettable character but as one of America's most captivating storytellers.

The author of Breakfast with Buddha brings his characteristic whimsy to a new novel about New York book editor Otto Ringling and Mongolian monk Volya Rinpoche, who embark on a road trip from Rinpoche's meditation center in North Dakota to the glitter and glitz of the Las Vegas strip.

In Winter, life force matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to Ali Smith's sensational Autumn, Smith's shape-shifting quartet of novels casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory, and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter. It's the season that teaches us survival.

Humans call them Monument-Makers. An unknown race, they left stunning alien statues scattered on distant planets throughout the galaxy, encoded with strange inscriptions that defy translation. Searching for clues about the Monument-Makers, teams of 23rd century linguists, historians, engineers and archaeologists have been excavating the enigmatic alien ruins on a number of planets, uncovering strange, massive false cities made of solid rock. But their time is running out.

In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: A comet will obliterate life on Earth in 36 years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age in rural Maine grappling with the question: Does anything I do matter? While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises his choices, Junior's loved ones emerge with parallel stories - his anxious mother.