Visionary Fiction

In Winter, life force matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to Ali Smith's sensational Autumn, Smith's shape-shifting quartet of novels casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory, and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter. It's the season that teaches us survival.

A young musician in England who has been suffering from depression and a nervous ailment goes on holiday in order to recuperate. While abroad, she meets an Italian artist, Cellini, who gives her a special draught for relaxation. The young woman has divine visions under the influence of the strange potion which she longs to have again. Cellini takes her to a doctor who describes himself as an “electric physician,” and with his help she is able to experience more visions. With each vision she learns more about religion and the destiny of mankind, but it is not enough.

Following the acclaimed Secrets of the Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, this is an expansive lyrical novel in the tradition of Indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, Stealing Benefacio's Roses interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the political horrors of civil war with lyric retellings of sacred Mayan myths.

Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is the bestselling writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father.

In the heart of 19th century Tsarist Russia an orphaned boy born of both Jewish and Cossack blood desperately seeks to find a place in a dangerous world. Sergei Ivanov’s (Socrates') journey from a military academy to America is a spellbinding and tragic odyssey of courage and love. This riveting novel reveals how a boy became a man, how a man became a warrior, and how a warrior discovered peace. From his birth, this boy - Sergei Ivanov - is destined to become the peaceful warrior and sage who changed the life of Dan Millman and millions of readers and listeners worldwide.

Une femme se raconte en sept nuits : de la première alors qu'elle veille sa mère qui va mourir et que lui revient le souvenir de ses 7 ans à Berlin en 1943 quand avec cette mère jeune, belle et intrépide elle traverse la ville en ruines pour rencontrer dans une prison ce père qu'elle ne connaissait pas, à la presque dernière ce sont des nuits nourries par la passion, l'attente ou le désespoir, il lui faudra la dernière pour connaître l'apaisement. Une initiation en sept étapes, un roman porté par un souffle de poésie et une interrogation profondément contemporaine.

“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.

Ninety-Three is the story of the Marquis de Lantenac, an exiled French nobleman snuck back into France to raise a Royalist army which will make the English invasion possible, Gauvain, Lantenac's great-nephew leading the Republican army to thwart him, and Cimourdain, a former priest and Gauvain's teacher and mentor, tasked to keep Gauvain on the right path. And in the end, who will face the guillotine?

When novice monk Tenzin Dorje is told by his lama that the Red Army is invading Tibet, his country's darkest moment paradoxically gives him a sense of purpose like no other. He accepts a mission to carry two ancient, secret texts across the Himalayas to safety. Half a century later, in a paradox of similarly troubling circumstances, Matt Lester is called upon to convey his own particular wisdom as a scientist, when Matt's nanotech project is mysteriously moved from London to a research incubator in Los Angeles.

Best-selling author Carlos Ruiz Zafón conceived of this collection of stories as an appreciation to the countless admirers who joined him on the extraordinary journey that began with The Shadow of the Wind. Comprising 11 stories, most of them never before published in English, The City of Mist offers the listener compelling characters, unique situations, and a gothic atmosphere reminiscent of his beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet.

Hay quien obedece sus propias reglas porque se sabe en lo cierto; quien expresa un especial placer en hacer algo bien; quien adivina algo más que lo que sus ojos ven; quien prefiere volar a comprar y comer. Todos ellos harán amistad duradera con Juan Salvador Gaviota. Habrá también quienes volarán con Juan Gaviota por lugares de encanto y aventura, y gozarán como él de una luminosa libertad. Para unos y otros será una experiencia inolvidable.

Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China - dubbed the true Shangri-La - and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers.

Aria Abbott has never had a home. Drifting through the foster system for most of her life, she finally finds herself in a situation so unbearable that she has no choice but to run away. Sleeping on the streets pushes Aria beyond any suffering she has felt before; the only thing worse than seeing no escape is the knowledge that no one in the world cares enough to try and find her. Enter Taylor, a homeless young man with a charismatic smile and a dream of fame, fortune, and the sunshine of LA. Swept up in his energy, Aria and Taylor board a greyhound bus and never look back.

Paul is a top business executive hoping to be the next CEO of Ascendant - a New York-based tech giant. His fast-paced life is interrupted when he travels to Glastonbury, England, to visit friends in a village rich in history and mysticism. When he returns to New York, his wife, Mary, is skeptical. His journey both scares and intrigues her as she watches him struggle to navigate between the business and spiritual worlds. A series of events draws Paul closer to Glastonbury and Christine, compelling him and a reluctant Mary to return, unaware that their lives will never be the same.

All residents of the City have recently died, and they will remain in the City only as long as someone still living on Earth remembers them. On Earth, however, the population has been devastated by a terrible pandemic. Laura Byrd, isolated at an Antarctic research station, may be the only person to have survived the pandemic. But she's running out of time and supplies, and her memories are fading.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The best-selling author of Second Nature, Illumination Night and Turtle Moon now offers her most fascinating and tantalizingly accomplished novel yet -- a winning tale that amply confirms Alice Hoffman's reputation not only as a genius of the vivid scene and unforgettable character but as one of America's most captivating storytellers.