Metaphysical Fiction

Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In “Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors”, two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. Plus much more.

They've infiltrated homes in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of in Sierra Leone, town squares in Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Indiana. They're everywhere. They're here. They're us. They're not pets, or ghosts, or robots. They're real people, but how can a person living in Berlin walk freely through the living room of someone in Sydney? How can someone in Bangkok have breakfast with your children in Buenos Aires, without your knowing? Especially when these people are completely anonymous, unknown, unfindable.

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 Magic Mala (pronounced mah-lah) is the story of Robby Robertson, a down-on-his-luck writer who realizes that he doesn't know as much about life as he once believed. His desperate financial circumstances lead him to open his mind to new ways of living. After finding some mala beads, Robby is taken on a magical journey that teaches him the secrets to personal manifestation and happiness.

Henry is a middle-aged, happily married man in the 20th century. After suffering a sudden heart attack, Henry finds himself in the unknown realm of the afterlife. Lost, alone, and confused, he meets Croton. As they embark on their journey together, Croton opens Henry’s eyes to all the beauty of his new reality and all the exploring that awaits him. But not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Henry eventually learns who Croton really is—and that’s when their adventure truly begins.

“As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.” So begins Alan Lightman’s playful and profound new novel, Mr. g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr. g creates time, space, and matter - then moves on to stars, planets, consciousness, and finally intelligent beings with moral dilemmas.

Eden Martin had the perfect life in New York City: amazing job as a professor, successful fiance, great apartment on the Upper West Side. But in one night her whole world comes crashing down. So, she does what any sensible woman would do; she abandons her life and moves to a tiny village in England, leaving everyone and everything behind. Lost and confused, a new life emerges as she follows her dream to write a book.

The Book of Strange New Things is a mind-blowing work that fearlessly tackles the search for meaning in an unfathomable universe. It concerns Peter and Beatrice, whose marriage is tested when Peter travels as a missionary, spreading the Gospel to a faraway land, and Beatrice is left to deal with troubles at home. In the most extraordinary and spellbinding ways, it deals with faith - religious faith, to be sure, but also faith in oneself, faith in salvation and faith in those we love.

Both an ancient, "found" wisdom text and a sumptuous, epic novel, Gaia Codex reveals the hidden histories of a world long forgotten, the secret wisdom of an ancient lineage of women, the Priestesses of Astera. Set in a near future of impending societal and environmental collapse, the novel is a tale of hope and remembrance, as well as an inspired vision of humanity's origins and of the potential we hold for conscious evolution.

When a woman begins finding notes from her comatose father, miracle fever takes over the town. This touching story explores the strength of a father’s love. An enchanting follow-up to Siple’s award-winning debut, The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride, The Town with No Roads is a story of forgiveness and redemption that explores whether unconditional love should hold us close or set us free.

When Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, meet each other and the Serpent in a mysterious park, the story of the Garden of Eden gets re-examined. This is a dramatic fiction dealing with the man's first disobedience against god, according to the Bible. This compelling, philosophical novel encourages the real growth of mankind, breaking out of psychological slavery imposed by outside forces. The unique style of the novel goes beyond the boundary of the traditional literary genres.

After the death of his estranged father, Amit takes his parent's ashes to the Ganges to fulfill a deathbed promise. Instead of returning home, he wanders, his pain and grief leaving him confused about his future. Almost broke, unsure about his direction in life, and running from memories, he is led by fate to the Camino de Santiago, an ancient 550-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

It’s the year 2022. Dani Peterson has been walking in the west of Ireland, conducting historical research for her dissertation. But when she seeks shelter from a storm in Aideen O’Brien’s car, she gets more history than she bargained for. Aideen is a Time Link, with secret access to time travel technology. She sends Dani to 1978 to meet a younger version of herself. The two fall in love and Dani joins Aideen in her work. Their boss is a man from 2253 named Charles Burke, who says his mission is to save the future.

A crew of men are embarking on a voyage up a turbulent river through the rainforests of Guyana. Donne, their wild, domineering leader, is obsessed with hunting for a mysterious woman and exploiting Indigenous people as plantation labour. But their expedition is plagued by tragedies, haunted by drowned ghosts: spectres of the crew themselves, inhabiting a blurred shadowland between life and death. As their journey into the interior—their own hearts of darkness—deepens, it assumes a spiritual dimension, guiding them towards a new destination: the Palace of the Peacock.

On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her...despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort.

When the enigmatic billionaire founder and CEO of Tetration, the world's most powerful tech company, is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, he hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. This tech mogul, known only as "Principal", takes Josh deep into his own mind, and outlines the history of Tetration, which started by revolutionizing the search engine and later ventured into smartphones, computer manufacturing, and the surveillance of American citizens.

Jonathon Hunter's world grows darker each day. Assassins, pirates, bounty hunters, mercenaries, and retros, all want a piece of him. Each trap leads to yet another trap. When the unthinkable happens, the prey becomes the predator. The hunted goes hunting. But how does a young spiritual warrior cope as the kills mount?

A moving story of one man, deeply troubled by the circumstances of his life, who travels to the islands of Hawaii hoping to find peace. Here, he is befriended by two intriguing people who speak in ways that mystify yet fascinate him. Thus begins a spiritual journey into a world of extraordinary feelings, which bring him understanding and an answer beyond anything he had ever dreamed possible. In this novel, set in a world of soft tropical beauty, the author shares his quiet philosophical knowledge in a comprehensible yet profound manner.

In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-cheol was a running prodigy and a contender for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. But he would have had to run under the Japanese flag. Nearly a century later, his granddaughter is living in Japan and training to run a marathon herself. She summons Korean shamans to hold an intense, transcendent ritual to connect with Lee Woo-cheol.

Emmanuel Carrère is a renowned writer. After decades of emotional upheaval, he has begun to live successfully—he is healthy; he works; he loves. He practices meditation, striving to observe the world without evaluating it. In this state of heightened awareness, he sets out for a ten-day silent retreat in the French heartland, leaving his phone, his books, and his daily life behind. But he’s also gathering material for his next book, which he thinks will be a pleasant, useful introduction to yoga. Four days later, there’s a tap on the window: something has happened.