Metaphysical Fiction

The Long Form, Kate Briggs's long-awaited debut fiction, unmakes and remakes the novel to meditate on very real social issues, from housing to care-taking, laying bare the settings and support structures that make durational forms of co-existence first thinkable, then possible. At once acrobatic and deeply attentive, The Long Form insists on the creativity inherent in everyday life, showing how the acts of social composition (living arrangements) are continuous with the acts of artistic composition (page arrangements).

Beloved for the lens of the strange he places on small-town life, Steven Millhauser further reveals in Voices in the Night the darkest parts of our inner selves to brilliant and dazzling effect. Here are stories of wondrously imaginative hyperrealism, stories that pose unsettling what-ifs or that find barely perceivable evils within the safe boundaries of our towns, homes, and even our bodies.

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.

Действие романа происходит в то тяжелое время, когда на долю России разом выпали все испытания: Первая мировая и Гражданская войны, отречение царя, революция. Роман Бориса Пастернака - о судьбе его поколения, ставшего свидетелем, участником и жертвой этого безумия.

On the heels of Autumn and Winter comes Spring, the continuation 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.

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.

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.

Azrael-angel of death, grim reaper, destroyer of worlds-has messed up. Instead of taking Molly Molloy's soul, he patted her on the back and saved her from choking on a chicken wing. Now this extraordinarily ordinary New York City waitress can see him. Talk to him. Touch him. Say 'no' to him. And make him question every assumption he has about what it means to live.

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.

Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.

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.

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.

This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.

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.

Involved in a tragic accident under suspicious circumstances, award-winning journalist Jake Woods teams with detective Ollie Chandler to uncover the truth. This Randy Alcorn best seller finds Jake drawing upon all his resources in an ever-intensifying, dangerous murder investigation. Unaware of the imminent threat to his own life, Jake struggles for answers to the mystery at hand and is plunged into a deeper search for the meaning of his own existence.

A secret government unit is formed under the oversight of Adam Harrison, famed paranormal investigator. The case: In a historic mansion in New Orleans’ French Quarter, a senator’s wife falls to her death from a balcony. Most think she jumped, distraught over the loss of her young son. Some say she was pushed. And yet others believe she was beckoned by the ghostly spirits that inhabit the house - once the site of a serial killer’s grisly work.

Always Coming Home is Ursula K. Le Guin’s fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley. Having survived ecological catastrophe brought on by relentless industrialization, the Kesh are a peaceful people who reject governance and the constriction of genders, limit population growth to prevent overcrowding and preserve resources, and maintain a healthy community in which everyone works to contribute to its well-being. This richly imagined story unfolds through a series of narrated “translations” that illuminate individual lives.

When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her late grandfather's bookshop, she becomes fascinated by the story it tells of two young girls who mystified the world. But it is the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the fairy girls' lives intertwine with hers, connecting past to present and blurring her understanding of what is real and what is imagined. As she begins to understand why a nation once believed in fairies, can Olivia find a way to believe in herself?

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.

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.