Visionary Fiction

"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.

Rescued from unscrupulous breeders who plan to destroy him because of his floppy ear, when the Queen’s littlest corgi arrives at Windsor Castle, he finds himself in a world of red carpets, gilded chambers - and not a pile of dirty laundry to be seen. Charming his way into the affections of the royal household, Nelson offers a dog’s-eye view of life with the Queen. He eavesdrops on her encounters with celebrities, philanthropists and advisers, catching rare insights into the secrets of a purposeful life.

Sudden Death begins with a brutal tennis match that could decide the fate of the world. The bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo battle it out before a crowd that includes Galileo, Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw Europe into the flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time.

Before Joe Hart can stop the murder of John Lennon, he must die himself. When Joe Hart dies after leading a wasted life, he chooses to use his second chance to make the world better. Even when he thinks he knows what is coming, changing the past is difficult. What would you do, if you could do it all again?

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.

On the same August day in 1969 that a crazed hippie "family" led by Charles Manson commits five savage murders in the canyons above Los Angeles, a young ex-communicated seminarian arrives with images of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift - "the two most beautiful people in the history of the movies" - tattooed on his head. At once childlike and violent, Vikar is not a cineaste but "cineautistic," sleeping at night in the Roosevelt Hotel where he's haunted by the ghost of D. W. Griffith.

A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness.

The Star Rover is a 1914 collection of science fiction short stories with the theme of reincarnation. It tells the story of Darrell Standing, an inmate of San Quentin’s death row. The narrator escapes the horror of prison life by withdrawing into altered states and the memory of past lives. Forming the body of the work, the accounts of these past lives are vivid but disconnected. They include a desert island survival story, one which involves a Roman perspective on Christ, a tale of medieval Korea, and one which takes place in a prehistoric era.

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.

As mensagens que o guerreiro da luz deixa neste livro podem ser lidas e relidas em qualquer situação, em especial quando é necessário encontrar forças para enfrentar os desafios diários. Em alguns momentos, o guerreiro observa o que se passa à sua volta como mero espectador e deixa que as coisas se acomodem naturalmente. Em outras ocasiões, procura se lembrar de que o Universo sempre conspira a seu favor e realiza seus desejos mais escondidos.

In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of serio-comic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin’s, who, he discovers, is Mary’s husband....

In The Matisse Stories, this Booker Prize-winning author offers three elegant tales that explore the subtle interplays between mind and eye, heart and hand. In the first, Medusa’s Ankles, a fashionable woman watches her life take on darker, more ominous shades in the mirror of a beauty salon.

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.

Broken bodies and bloody messages are appearing in the darkest corners of New York City. Infected werewolves are roaming the streets attacking innocents. The Dark Council demands answers. They summon Simon and Tristan to investigate. The evidence points to the work of a powerful mage, unfortunately, there is only one mage in the city powerful enough to cause this kind of infection - Tristan Montague. Now, Simon and Tristan must locate the source of the magical infection before the Dark Council declares Tristan a dark mage, destroys the werewolves, and shatters the fragile peace.

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.

A traveling prospector wandering around California looking for gold spends a few peaceful days with a man hiding a sad story.

In this spare novelette, acclaimed flash-fiction writers James Claffey and Tara Lynn Masih collaboratively create an original tale of loss and love, as The Bitter Kind deftly alternates between Stela, the daughter of a ship’s captain, burdened by her family secrets, and Brandy, a Chippewa orphan, haunted by ghost wolves and spirits. The authors cross genres and borders between historical and contemporary, speculative and realistic, presenting two unforgettable characters on a journey toward their inevitable, fateful destination.

Three-year-old Vangie is mute and unresponsive. She shows no interest in the people or world around her, much to the frustration of her callous foster parents. Little do they know, Vangie is otherwise occupied observing “ghosts”—an infinite number of versions of herself, in an infinite number of parallel universes. When a tornado hits their trailer and Vangie is severely injured, she makes a desperate leap into another timeline where she survives the tornado, but her foster parents do not.

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.

But these are no ordinary cards. This is the original tarot deck, from which all other tarot decks have sprung. Their fate is entwined with a set of gold figurines representing the Major Arcana, which continually dance around a tabletop much like a chess board—the archetypal forces of the universe in miniature. Whoever can bring the deck and the figurines together will wield power over heaven and earth.