Showing titles in Magical Realism

Thirty-two-year-old Jess Abbot has lost everything: her job, her apartment, and - most heart-wrenching - her eight-year-old son, Chance, to a tragic accident. Haunted by memories and grief, Jess packs what’s left and heads for the small mountain town of Pine Lake, where she takes a position as caregiver to an eccentric old woman. A rumored clairvoyant, Lucy is strange but welcoming and immediately intuits Jess as a “loose end” in need of closure. But Jess isn’t the only guest in Lucy’s large Victorian home.

Gemma Turner once dreamed of stardom. Now the actress is on the cusp of obscurity. When she’s offered the lead in a radical new horror film, Gemma believes her luck has changed—but her dream is about to turn into a nightmare. One night, between the shadows of an alleyway, Gemma disappears on set and is never seen again. Yet, Gemma is alive. She’s been pulled into the film. And the script—and the monsters within it—are coming to life. Gemma must play her role perfectly if she hopes to survive.

How do you grieve, if your family doesn’t talk about feelings? This is the question the unnamed protagonist of GhostForest considers after her father dies. One of the many Hong Kong “astronaut” fathers, he stays there to work, while the rest of the family immigrated to Canada before the 1997 Handover, when the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China. As she revisits memories of her father through the years, she struggles with unresolved questions and misunderstandings.

Richard III is trapped in the afterlife, waiting with his guide, Raven, for an angel to take his soul to Heaven. Though he's been between worlds for hundreds of years, up in the real world it's 2013 and Molly Stern has a broken heart from losing her father and a recent breakup. Leaving London, Molly goes home to seek solace from her Aunt Peggy and Uncle Frank in Oxenbridge. But there are strange noises in the basement of her childhood house and nothing feels right, not even between Peggy and Frank. When the angel encounters Molly—and Raven at last finds the angel—life and the afterlife meet.

Interior designer Kat is broke and desperately needs this commission restoring the Edwardian mansion of Fownhope Priors, but her employer Scott's wife and mother-in-law are a nightmare. Yet when they are killed in suspicious circumstances, and she is the last person to see him, she can't help but be drawn in to the family's feuds. Where has Scott Hawkesmoor vanished to? Is it back to Yorkshire where his wife and mother-in-law died? Or is it somewhere far stranger? And how can she ever explain it to anyone–especially the police–let alone how she knows?

A cryptic note leads the Blackmoore sisters to a haunted island in the Atlantic Ocean. Many have looked for the treasures reported to be buried there by pirates decades ago, but precious few treasures have been found. And certainly not the powerful energy-infused jewel the Blackmoores are looking for. Abandoned for decades following several mysterious fatal accidents, the sisters have the island to themselves...or so they think.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. In the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, this hand-game song contains a history - centuries of inexplicable tiger sightings. It also reveals a frightening prophecy, one that only a small circle of players envisions. After Never-Again becomes the scene of unimaginable violence, a researcher uncovers the truth about the game, right down to its final chilling verse.

An English nurse becomes possessed with unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of a Syrian woman in the twilight town of King's Lynn, stumbling along the way upon a history and present replete with magic and mysticism. A Syrian professor escapes Damascus only to find himself in another surreal and dangerous setting, uncovering a conspiracy that places his life in even greater peril. An Oxford scholar and an eccentric Syrian journalist embark on an adventure through Portugal and Spain, seeking to decipher an ancient manuscript, and uncover a religious conspiracy.

Late one night, fate brings together DJ Aspirin and 10-year-old Alyona. After he tries to save her from imminent danger, she ends up at his apartment. But in the morning sinister doubts set in. Who is Alyona? A young con artist? A plant for a nefarious blackmailer? Or perhaps a long-lost daughter Aspirin never knew existed? Whoever this mysterious girl is, she now refuses to leave.

Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the tangled history that binds the two sides of his family. For generations, the men of the al-Raqb family have served as watchmen of the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, built at the site where the infant Moses was taken from the Nile. Joseph learns of his ancestor Ali, a Muslim orphan who became enchanted by the legendary - perhaps magical - Ezra Scroll.

Henry and Jason somehow survived being kidnapped to Ludus, a monster-filled, sword and sorcery world. They managed to make friends, pay their rent, and they even founded their own adventuring business, Delvers LLC. Unfortunately, by overcoming the odds and creating a reputation for themselves in such short time, monarchs and nobles have taken notice of the two men from Earth. Foreign, deadly struggles may be unavoidable for Delvers LLC.

Training to become a therapist, Marissa discovers an unforeseen talent for helping others, and for a while at least, puts her own needs and concerns to one side. An unexpected windfall prompts a spontaneous trip to Peru, and an encounter while she is there triggers an astonishing series of events.

God of Mercy is set in Ichulu, an Igbo village where the people's worship of their gods is absolute. Their adherence to tradition has allowed them to evade the influences of colonialism and globalization. But the village is reckoning with changes, including a war between gods signaled by Ijeoma, a girl who can fly.

When Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train to mark their new commitment - and to get them out of her house. Setting off with their pet mongoose, Otto and Xavier arrive at their sleepy local train station, but quickly deduce that The Lucky Day is no ordinary locomotive. Their trip on this former tea-smuggling train has been curated beyond their wildest imaginations, complete with mysterious and welcoming touches, like ingredients for their favourite breakfast.

It is 1980, and the Democratic People's Republic of Laos is proud to be competing in its first-ever Olympics. Of course half the world is boycotting the Moscow Summer Olympic Games to protest Russia's recent invasion of Afghanistan, but that has made room for athletes from countries that are usually too small or underfunded to be competitive-countries like Laos.

In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl is married off to a near stranger, and the match quickly turns sour. Shortly thereafter, the country is torn apart by war and they flee to Finland, where her son Bekim grows up to become a social outcast, a foreigner, and a gay man in an unaccepting society. His only true companion is a boa constrictor that he lets roam around his apartment.

Five octogenarian witches gather as an angry mob threatens to demolish Moonshyne Manor. All eyes turn to the witch in charge, Queenie, who confesses they’ve fallen far behind on their mortgage payments. Still, there’s hope, since the imminent return of Ruby—one of the sisterhood who’s been gone for thirty-three years—will surely be their salvation. But the mob is only the start of their troubles. One man is hellbent on avenging his family for the theft of a legacy he claims was rightfully his.

When their Ukrainian grandmother is lost on a trans-Atlantic Flight, two sisters are swept into a quest across eastern Europe to find the woman who had always told more tales than truths. From Poland to Slovakia to Hungary and beyond, Larissa and Ira navigate the steps of Ukrainian folk dance, the cliff-side paths of Slovak Paradise National Park, and the stark realities of war, folktales, and feminism, all for the sake of chasing who they're starting to believe is a true Baba Yaga. Understanding their family's roots has never been more clear.

Un viejo periodista decide festejar sus noventa años a lo grande, dándose un regalo que le hará sentir que todavía está vivo: una jovencita. En el prostíbulo de un pintoresco pueblo, ve a la jovencita de espaldas, completamente desnuda, y su vida cambia radicalmente. Ahora que la conoce se encuentra a punto de morir, pero no por viejo, sino de amor.

Is what you see all there is? Look again. Playful, frightening, even shocking - the stories in this collection blur the lines between illusion and reality. This is a writer at the height of his power, making the listener think, making them laugh, and sometimes making them want to look away while holding their gaze. Stories here are set in London, in Byzantium, in the ghetto, in the Andes, in a printer's shop in Spain. The characters include a murderer, a writer, a detective, a man in a cave, a man in a mirror, two little boys, a prison door, and the author himself.