Visionary Fiction

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.

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.

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.

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.

“At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who goes unnamed. “In the mid-seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century.

Nyriaana and Juaan are no longer protected by the might of the Hunting Bear Clan. Alone and on the run, they need to choose their allies and enemies wisely if they are to evade the vengeful clutches of their former chief, Eldrax. But with nowhere to hide, can they truly run forever? Tormented by visions of the fabled Last Kamaali, Nyriaana must now decide if she is ready to sacrifice everything in order to fulfil her ultimate destiny. In doing so, she may not only lose those she loves most, but unwittingly awaken ancient powers that will jeopardise the very existence of humanity.

After losing his wife and two young sons in an airplane crash, professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then, watching television one night, he sees a clip from a lost film by the silent comedian Hector Mann. Zimmer soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to study the works of this mysterious figure who vanished from sight in 1929.

Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving, genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths, and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real--and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

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

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.

"Le directeur a été très gentil avec moi le jour de mon embauche. J'ai eu la permission de gérer ma parfumerie toute seule. Ça marchait bien. Seulement, quand les premiers symptômes sont apparus, j'ai dû quitter la parfumerie. Ce n'était pas une histoire de décence ni rien ; c'est juste que tout devenait trop compliqué. Heureusement, j'ai rencontré Edgar, et Edgar, comme vous le savez, est devenu président de la République. C'était moi, l'égérie d'Edgar. Mais personne ne m'a reconnue."

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.

Quelques années après la révolution, Evgueni Zamiatine, auteur reconnu et familier des milieux d'avant-garde, écrit "Nous", un roman d'anticipation. Traduit à l'étranger et circulant sous le manteau dans son pays, il ne sera jamais édité en russe du vivant de Zamiatine. Pire, cet "infect pamphlet contre le socialisme" sera la principale pièce à conviction de sa mise à l'écart, de sa "mort littéraire".

For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman have featured a recurring character—an alter ego of sorts, a shape-shifting, time-travelling elemental being named Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. Though we have glimpsed her across the years, and on countless canvases, it is finally time to hear her story, in her own words. And, in doing so, to hear the whole history of Turtle Island anew.

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.

The Dalai Lama’s Cat is confronted by a most unpleasant truth: she is getting old. A routine visit to the vet confirms this. But is a future of decrepitude and senior cat biscuits inevitably a cause for despair? As it happens, she soon finds that a startling reminder of life’s transience is exactly what’s needed to renew our gratitude for life. To lighten up, accept ourselves and value what truly matters.

“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.

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.

The Actual Star takes listeners on a journey over thousands of years and six continents—collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle. An epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

Книга Две жизни — мистический роман, который популярен у людей, интересующихся идеями Теософии и Учением Живой Этики. Первая часть романа повествует о глубоких духовных поисках героев, горьких разочарованиях, а также дальних путешествиях в поисках истины... Этот текст был написан известной оперной певицей, ученицей К.С. Станиславского, солисткой Большого театра Конкордией Евгеньевной Антаровой (1886–1959). Как вспоминала сама Кора Антарова, книга писалась под диктовку во время Второй мировой войны и являлась знанием, переданным через общение с действительным Автором посредством яснослышания.