Visionary Fiction

For weeks, Rachel has been noticing the same golden-haired young man sitting at her Brooklyn bus stop, staring off with a melancholy air. When, one day, she finally musters the courage to introduce herself, the chemistry between them is undeniable: Thomas is wise, witty, handsome, mysterious, clearly a kindred spirit. There's just one tiny problem: He's dead. Stuck in a surreal limbo governed by bureaucracy, Thomas is unable to "cross over" to the afterlife until he completes a 90-day stint on earth, during which time he is forbidden to get involved with a member of the living.

Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary chronicles the career of Otto Binder, from pulp magazine author to writer of Supergirl, Captain Marvel, and Superman comics. As the originator of the first sentient robot in literature ("I, Robot," published in Amazing Stories in 1939 and predating Isaac Asimov's collection of the same name), Binder's effect on science fiction was profound.

Inspired by his own childhood experience as a patient at Primary Children’s Hospital, the late Roy Bates leaves us a tale of courage, forgiveness, and love. Katherine Wilson struggles to believe that God’s love is within her reach, until her daughter is diagnosed with leukemia. Distraught and desperate, Katherine finds understanding and peace from the most unexpected places.

Stanley cannot find meaning in his life. Work is an endless drudgery serving only to pay bills. After being unemployed for six months, he can’t even do that. Religion doesn’t make sense. His family is the only thing that has any meaning in his life, but even that gets turned upside down when he is offered a two-month contract on the other side of the country and he has to leave his family behind. His cross-country road trip gets strange right away as he reluctantly picks up an enigmatic hitchhiker who takes him on a difficult but soul-fulfilling road trip of self-discovery.

Barely recovered from his previous divine mission, former contract killer Toby O'Dare is once again summoned by the angel Malchiah to investigate the poisoning of a prominent nobleman and stop the haunting of a diabolical dybbuk. Together, they travel back to fifteenth-century Italy—the age of Michelangelo, the Holy Inquisition, and Pope Leo X—and this time Malchiah has Toby pose as a lute player sent to charm and calm this troublesome spirit.

With an eye for rendering the timely in a timeless way and enchanting audiences with lyrical prose and grace, Ali Smith's ambitious Seasonal Quartet—a series of four stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected—artfully guided us through #MeToo, Brexit, the refugee crisis, a global pandemic, and more. Now, Smith's highly anticipated Companion Piece looks to the future and builds upon this "time-sensitive project". This new novel stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself.

A lifelong struggle to unravel the great mystery of life leads the author on a mystical journey in search of the knowledge and wisdom that he hopes will bring him spiritual peace. Through this timeless rite of spiritual passage he finally comes to understand the nature of existence, and in the process, discovers his own place in the universal dance of life. It is a spellbinding chronicle of revelation and discovery that rises to the level of mythic reality. Out of this journey comes a profoundly personal view of creation, of life and death, and of all that lies beyond the stars.

The year is 2117. In the farthest reaches of Earth's territorial space, a spree of depraved murders has local cattle ranchers fearing for their families. A fear, they will soon discover, that is more than justified. Apparently, John Gallic's reputation proceeded his arrival to the fringe-world of Muleshoe. A reputation suggesting he be given a wide berth. As the new Territory Abettor, commonly referred to as a Frontier Marshal, Gallic would be there for the long haul.

Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men—Calvert, an ex-soldier traumatized by his experience in the Falklands War, and his affable friend Redbone—set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, they traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, painstakingly avoiding damaging the wheat to yield designs so intricate that their overnight appearances inspire awe amongst a mystified public.

Dans son appartement de Rio, une femme commence sa journée, seule face à une tasse de thé. Sa bonne l'a quittée le matin même. Il y a une première rupture du rythme quotidien de cette femme. C'est pourquoi elle entame une interrogation sur le cours habituel de ses jours. Après avoir décidé de faire le ménage dans la chambre de la bonne, elle découvre qu'elle a vécu de longs mois à côté de quelqu'un resté totalement étranger.

Christopher Martin, the sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer, is stranded upon a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the brutal cold and the aching terror of his isolation. To drink, there is a pool of rainwater; to eat, seaweed and anemones, preyed upon by feathered reptiles. As he descends into the abyss of his consciousness, weathering lightning strikes of memory, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate - piece by terrible piece.

It was that transitional time of the world when man first brought the clang of iron and the reek of smoke to the lands which before had echoed only with fairy voices. In that dawn of man and death of magic, there yet remained one last untouched place - the small forest of Ealdwood - which kept the magic intact and protected the old ways. And there was one who dwelt there, Arafel the Sidhe, who had more pride and love of the world as it used to be than any of her kind.

A fast-paced adventure and mystery to satisfy children, parents, teachers, and librarians all over the world. Jake’s Quest for the Five Stones empowers and teaches children the value of self-worth, hope, trust, and how important it is to know one’s own character and feelings. When Jake’s community turns its back on him, he goes on a secret quest to find a rare flower that can help him solve his challenges. Along this journey, Jake learns how to connect with crystals and use their unique properties and extraordinary abilities to help teach him some of life’s lessons.

From the acclaimed PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-winning author of A Naked Singularity, a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America’s most popular sport and its criminal justice system. From Paterson, New Jersey, to Rikers Island to the streets of New York, Sergio de la Pava’s Lost Empress introduces listeners to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, a lonely pastor and others on the fringes of society - each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate.

Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard.

The discovery of an ancient cuneiform guides an unlikely group to a secret portal buried in the desert long ago. A near-death experience in the Iraq desert transforms the lives of the FBI’s most wanted terrorist and his young disciple and alters the fate of a Pulitzer Prize-winning female journalist and a decorated US Marine about to be executed. Guided by a visionary young girl from Peru, they become aware of an ancient past and an energy force placed deep under the desert sand thousands of years ago.

سميت هذه الأوراق "الرجل النبيل" لأنه عليه السلام أنبل رجل عرفته البشرية، ولأن النبل ظاهر في تفاصيل حياته، في رضاه وغضبه، في حزنه وفرحه، قبل نبوته وبعدها، فهو بحق الرجل النبيل.

"It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air." This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the mountains of Germany - a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics.

Travel from a Land of Skies isolated in space to civilisations flourishing underground, from a chaos curtain to sacred sites and more, in this epic fantasy/sci-fi omnibus. Lore of Arcana Omnibus includes The Infinity Mantle, The Kinfire Tree, The Drowned Throne, and The Dragon Circle and delves from the deep and forgotten past into a speculative future, knowing time cannot be truly measured. Time moves between realms and reality in a fashion contradictory to our present, and exposes creatures of myth and legend.

After one death-defying adventure after another, he's ready for some well-deserved downtime. So he's gone to a hot beach in Mareta, a sleepy fishing village in southern Portugal. The year is 1964. He hopes only to flirt with bikinied tourists and drink cold Sagres beers. But two things seem to follow Matt wherever and whenever he goes. A chance to help someone in need, and trouble-trouble-trouble.