Showing results for "We" in Magical Realism

In the fifth book in the sensational Before the Coffee Gets Cold series translated from Japanese, the mysterious café where customers arrive hoping to travel back in time welcomes four new guests. They must follow the café's strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold. Another moving and heartwarming tale from Toshikazu Kawaguchi, in Before we forget kindness our new visitors wish to go back into their past to move on their present, finding closure and comfort so they can embark on a beautiful future.

The regulars at the magical Cafe Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary, secret menu time travel offering. Many patrons have reunited with old flames, made amends with estranged family, and visited loved ones. But the journey is not without risks and there are rules to follow. Travellers must have visited the cafe previously and most importantly, must return to the present in the time it takes for their coffee to go cold.

Darwin is a down-on-his-luck gravedigger, newly arrived in the Trinidadian city of Port Angeles to seek his fortune, young and beautiful and lost. Estranged from his mother and the Rastafari faith she taught him, he is convinced that the father he never met may be waiting for him somewhere amid these bustling streets. Meanwhile in an old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide's mother is dying.

Gemma lives with her mother in an isolated antique shop in Michigan, near a small patch of woods that conceals an enchanted gateway to fairyland. She knows she's not supposed to go into the woods - her mother Virginia has warned her multiple times about the monsters that lurk there - and yet defiantly, curiously, she goes anyway. Virginia understands her daughter's defiance. She knows the lure of the woods all too well. Her mother warned her about the monsters that resided there, and she also did not listen. Until a witch cursed her true love, Ash - Gemma's father - into the form of a beast.

"You should be here; he's simply magnificent." These are the final words a biologist hears before his Margaret Mead-like wife dies at the hands of Godzilla. The words haunt him as he studies the kaiju (Japan's giant monsters) on an island reserve, attempting to understand the beauty his wife saw. Every story in the collection turns to the fantastic, the mysticism of the past, and the absurdities of the future to illuminate the spaces we occupy when we are at our most vulnerable."

At first the townspeople of Cherryvale welcome the rising medium Kate Bender and her family. Kate's messages from the Beyond give their tedious dreams hope and her mother's potions cure their little ills—for a price. No one knows about their other business, the shortcut to a better life. And why shouldn't their family prosper? They're careful. It's only from those who are marked, those who travel alone and can easily disappear, that the Benders demand their pound of flesh. But even a gifted seer like Kate can make a misstep.

Buying into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself, gets on welfare rolls, and talks her way into college. But once she's there, phallocratic narratives permeate every subject, and creative writing professors depend heavily on Freytag's pyramid to analyze life. So Ariel turns to a rich subcultural canon of resistance and failure, populated by writers like Audre Lorde, Tillie Olsen, and Kathy Acker. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother.

In the same week, Marlen and Hilda’s family receives two significant pieces of news: One, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm could be everyone’s last. Preparing for the inevitable, they navigate the time they have left together. Marlen and Hilda channel their energy into improbably prophetic works of art. Hilda’s elderly father receives a longed-for visitor from his past.

Luna Lark used to love her name, but that was before people started saying it differently. Luna doesn't want pity, what she wants is a fresh start. Somewhere she can make headway on her next novel, mend her broken heart and - most importantly - keep herself to herself. For that Luna needs the most remote place she can find: Ondingside, a magical little island off the wild coast of Scotland. And when the town is cut off on her first night by a freak July snowstorm it feels like fate.

I grew up logical. No fairy tales, no romantic notions, no expectations. Life is unfair. I knew this. I bled it. Lived it. But the damage…that was unexpected. Because it was all a lie. Every moment, every story, every ideal I held onto, was a lie.

It’s been two years and two months since trauma shattered hospital chaplain Isabel Myles’s world. Since that day, she has stopped answering calls. She’s shut out her family, friends, and coworkers. Even her faith seems to have faded. Except for her connection with her younger sister, Chantel, Isabel copes by forgetting. Then she takes on a summer job as a home caregiver for Opal, a dementia patient who is struggling to remember.

A heatwave in Southern California is bad news, and when Amanda’s air conditioning unit breaks down, things quickly go from bad to worse. It’ll take a full day to repair, sending Amanda on a desperate mission to keep cool.

Teresa Sanchez has always known who she was: a professor, a wife, a mother, and a friend. But when her husband dies unexpectedly, she finds herself completely broken. Taking a leave from the university, Teresa hopes that she can mourn her husband and get back on her feet, but instead, she spends a year consumed by grief. Until the day she levitates.

With nature reclaiming cities and mountainous tides drowning islands, a group of individuals—known collectively as the We—find themselves ravaged by hunger and struggling to survive. When another community—the They—promise them luxurious meals, the We are unable to decline. After following the They to their farm, the We begin to notice some mysterious habits: odd sacrifices, talk of flames, and a strange book. Follow along as the We uncover the truth behind the secretive group and learn the most important part of being human.

In this new collection of flights of the imagination follow a space shuttle crew as they venture sixty million miles from home, discover what happens when a writer 'with the future's eye' believes his friend to be writing stories aboard a UFO, and listen in on a couple talking themselves backward through time to the moment when they first held hands.

A man who receives life-changing financial advice from the talking fruit in his breakfast bowl...a girl whose thoughts incinerate her family over and over again...a house that wants nothing more than to please its occupants, and will do anything at all to make sure they’re happy. From enchanting to troubling to downright disturbing, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things explores the notion that sometimes even the most promising of magic can go askew, through an array of characters whose outcomes can be horrifying, hilarious, or heartbreaking.

En Manhattan, un joven estudiante de posgrado sale del tren y se da cuenta de que no recuerda quién es, de dónde viene ni su nombre. Pero sí que es capaz de sentir el latir del corazón de la ciudad, ver su historia y percibir su poder. En el Bronx, la directora lenape de una galería de arte encuentra unos extraños grafitis que adornan toda la ciudad, tan maravillosos y poderosos que se podría decir que la pintura la llama, literalmente. En Brooklyn, una madre y política descubre que oye las canciones de la ciudad, que resuenan al ritmo de los tacones de sus Louboutin.