Showing results for "The Contemporary Novel" in Magical Realism

A nameless narrator awakens to the muddle of middle age, no longer certain who or what he is. He finds himself at a party talking to a woman he doesn't know who proves to be his wife. Soon separated but still living in the same apartment, he is threatened by a litigious dachshund and saddled with a stubborn case of erectile dysfunction in a world that seems held together by increasingly mercurial laws and elusive boundaries.

Jailbird. Klepto. Spectacular failure to launch. Nicole Wood’s sticky fingers have earned her many names, but it’s not that she’s stealing—some objects just need to be moved elsewhere, and the universe has chosen her to do it. Still, being a relocator of objects isn’t easy. With her marriage on the rocks, no real-world skills, and the threat of prison hanging over her head, Nicole is determined to change her ways.

Click your heels three times and say, "There's no place like Bloomies!" Katie Chandler's life is pure magic - literally. As an executive assistant at Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., she's seen more than her share of fantastical occurrences. A mere Manhattan mortal, Katie is no wizard, but she's a wiz at exposing "hokum" pocus, cloaked lies, and deceptive enchantments. And she's fallen under the all-too-human spell of attraction to Owen, a hunky wizard and coworker. Owen, however, is preoccupied. Someone has broken into his office and disrupted top-secret files, and it reeks of an inside job.

Everything's bigger in Texas - including romance, magic, and danger! Katie Chandler has fled fast-paced Manhattan and returned home to a simpler life, working at her family's feed-and-seed store in Cobb, Texas. In a painfully selfless gesture, Katie had left the sexy wizard Owen Palmer to battle his demons in the magical realm–after all, Katie just seemed to attract evil, which only made Owen's job a lot harder.

The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers.

Annie Beyers has everything - a beautiful house, a loving husband, and an adorable daughter. It’s a day like any other when she takes Hannah to the pediatrician…until she wakes hours later from a car accident. When she asks for her daughter, confused doctors tell Annie that Hannah never existed. In fact, nothing after waking from the crash is the same as Annie remembers. Five happy years of her life apparently never happened.

Five years ago, Nora Wilder disappeared. The older of her two daughters, Zadie, should have seen it coming, because she can literally see things coming. But not even her psychic abilities were able to prevent their mother from vanishing one morning. Zadie’s estranged younger sister, Finn, can’t see into the future, but she has an uncannily good memory, so good that she remembers not only her own memories, but the echoes of memories other people have left behind. On the afternoon of her graduation party, Finn is seized by an “echo” more powerful than anything she’s experienced before.

They say Mackerel Sky was founded when Captain Burrbank first saw Nimuë the mermaid and forgot the sea. Stricken by love, he moored his tall ship and made camp on the highest cliff, hoping to forever gaze upon her beauty. That camp became a settlement, the settlement a town, the town a community both blessed and cursed by their tempestuous affair.

Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean 11 years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.

When Bridget indulges her urge to break free from her monotonous existence for an afternoon, she unleashes the tragic memories that she had successfully numbed out. As she relives her past, Bridget awakens to her family’s Celtic ancestry and a bloodline of empowered Matriarchs. She must choose whether or not to embrace her prophesied potential to master the Craft of The Tinaru, an ancient skill to wield the elements of earth, water, air, fire, and spirit.

It’s been two years since Celine lost her daughter Libby. Desperate to escape her grief, Celine throws herself into her work, determined to be the strong, capable woman the world believes her to be. But there’s no fooling her family. A shocking intervention brings an impossible choice: confront her grief or risk losing the family she still has. Reeling, Celine wonders what her life would have been like if she’d chosen her first love instead of her husband and avoided this pain altogether.

Ray Shackleford is trying to deal with the death of his father and the collapse of his marriage when the impossible happens: Music that no one has ever heard before begins to play from his stereo speakers. It is only the first step on a journey that will take him to Los Angeles, London, Cozumel, and points far beyond, and that will bring him face to face with Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix—and his own mortality.

A quirky owner of a store for used books gives bookworm Coral a messenger bag that appears to actually pull her into novels. Jumping from one genre to the next, she sees, hears, and even smells the action, interacting with characters and literally getting lost in the world of books. It seems like the ultimate escape, yet each novel Coral enters brings her closer to understanding the truth behind a family tragedy and the secret she forgot she was keeping.

The Realms of Arrika had endured the deadly consequences of the Deathless invasion for years. Now it was our turn to suffer.

This is the year Emily Ross takes control of her destiny and learns to deliberately shape the future. Emily has always known she is different. She attracts spirits, has prophetic dreams, and can sense people's thoughts. Longing to fit in, she hides her true self. But this changes when she takes a job at the fabulous curio shop owned by Henry Paradis, an occult scholar who becomes her spiritual mentor. Recognizing her talents as the valuable gifts they are, Henry teaches Emily to accept her magical nature and "look forward".

Is death really the end? On the night of his 35th birthday, Jared November sits with a shotgun under his jaw and hopes beyond hope that it is. He is a man in pain, chasing intoxication and distraction in a tightening spiral. The mask he wears to pretend he’s a regular person is slipping, and he’s arrived at a state of grim resolve. But when he pulls the trigger he finds himself cast into an endless void. There, a singular voice tells him: You are not finished! Now, Jared is forced to examine his life with new eyes.

Can an artist’s imagination alter reality during the magic of the holiday season? Can something in the heart manifest in the real world? Artist Miranda Jones might have agreed that dreams sometimes come true. But she’d never presume to believe something could leap from her canvas into the life of someone she hardly knows. Until now, that is. Over-scheduled during the busy holiday season, she none the less can’t help bu follow the imperative to paint an unlikely image on one of her small gift canvases.