Showing titles in Magical Realism

No one is more surprised than Serin when she receives a ticket inviting her to a market that opens once a year when it rains. Here she's offered to swap her life for another. A better one. The problem? She has one week to find the perfect life and true happiness, or she'll be trapped inside the market forever. Accompanied by Isha the cat, Serin searches through bookstores, hair salons and perfumeries before time runs out. All while a shadow follows quietly behind them . . .

It was supposed to be my first summer on my own, but then I meet Seth, Axel, Jasper, and Cody. There's something about them that drew me closer, and they seemed hell-bent on protecting me. I didn't think I needed protecting until people started showing up dead in the woods.

When the Night Foxes boldly break into the Fourth Precinct’s Evidence Building, it causes quite the stir. As a Magical Examiner, Henri Davenforth is immediately called in. To his astonishment, Captain Gregson has him work the case like a detective. More astounding, he assigns Henri a partner - The Shinigami Detective. The woman is famous for killing the most destructive rogue witch of the century, and no one is quite certain where she’s from. Every officer in the precinct is either in awe of her, or a little frightened by her. Henri is just baffled.

The echo of the novels of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series resonates in the stories of Carlos Ruiz Zafón: gathered here for the first time - and some never before published in English - these stories are a celebration of one of the world's great storytellers.

Cherry has a hidden talent. She can see things other people can't, and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others. As far as the rest of the town is concerned, she's simply the kind-hearted young woman who runs the local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful, the townspeople start to feel better about their lives.

On a wild and rugged island cut off and isolated to some, artist Nell feels the island is her home. It is the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in landscape, folklore and the feminine. The mysterious Inions, a commune of women who have travelled there from all over the world, consider it a place of refuge and safety, of solace in nature. All the islanders live alongside the strange murmurings that seem to emanate from within the depths of the island, a sound that is almost supernatural – a Summoning as the Inions call it.

After losing her job, boyfriend and flat just a few weeks before Christmas, Ellie Lancaster makes some resolutions: 1. Exact revenge on ex. 2. Be unboring. 3. Find a job. With 1 complete, Ellie manages to tick off 2 and 3 simultaneously by accepting a mysterious archiving job on a tiny Scottish Island that doesn't seem to exist on any map. In the new year, her equally new bosses - celebrity baker Clementine Jones and her straight-laced twin brother Cole - introduce Ellie to the archives: a vast network of underground caverns, filled with scrolls dating back centuries.

After young Jieun accidentally misuses her powers, causing her beloved family to vanish, she lives a million restless lives in search of them. Overnight, in the village of Marigold on top of a hill, she conjures up her Mind Laundry, where she cleanses painful experiences, transferring them into stains on a T-shirt and turning them into dazzling red petals. We meet five souls: a frustrated young filmmaker; a tortured social-media influencer; a distraught mother who has discovered her husband’s other family; a young woman two-timed by her lover; a talented photographer and victim of bullying.

Amid the salt marshes and rolling fields of Periwinkle Bay, Magda Conway is enjoying her retirement in ivy-clad Mistletoe Cottage. Yet with three weeks to go until Christmas, as the fairy lights twinkle and the trees go up around the village, her peace is disrupted when she’s left in sole charge of her two mischievous grandchildren. Before long, she’s at her wit’s end—but high on a kitchen shelf lies her mother’s handwritten recipe book. And as she turns to it for advice, she finds more than just recipes between its tattered covers.

Surviving the training program was dangerous - even the first challenge to gain entrance to the school could get you killed. But the training was the easy part. Staying alive afterward was the hard part. Kazaks guarded individuals whose lives were deemed critical to the security of the United States. As such, Kazaks attracted fanatics and the best professional assassins money could buy - liars who could tell lies you believed, ghosts who could become nearly invisible, and Illusionists who could appear to be anyone.

When you listen to Lily and the Octopus, you will be taken on an unforgettable ride. The magic of this novel is in the listening, and we don't want to spoil it by giving away too many details. We can tell you that this is a story about that special someone: the one you trust, the one you can't live without. For Ted Flask, that someone special is his aging companion, Lily, who happens to be a dog.

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.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, read by George Blagden. The tender feelgood story of a man's journey around Japan with a streetcat. Translated by Philip Gabriel, a translator of Murakami. It's not the journey that counts but who's at your side. Nana is on a road trip, but he is not sure where he is going. All that matters is that he can sit beside his beloved owner, Satoru, in the front seat of his silver van. Satoru is keen to visit three old friends from his youth, though Nana doesn’t know why, and Satoru won’t say.

Cassie has never really fit in. She remembers everything. Understands nothing. And consistently says the wrong thing. So when she gets dumped, fired AND her local café runs out of banana muffins - all in one day - it feels like the end of the world. But then Cassie discovers she has the power to go back and change things. With endless chances to get it right, can she stop it all from going wrong?

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.

Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras – from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity.

Emmeline lives on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in glass bottles that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world—a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity.

Two men while away the days in an Antarctic research station. Tensions between them build as they argue over a love letter one of them has received. One is practical and open. The other surly, superior and obsessed with reading one book - by the philosopher Kant. As a storm brews and they lose contact with the outside world, they debate Kant, reality and the emptiness of the universe. The come to hate each other, and they learn that they are not alone.

Abigail Walker was content with her quiet life, until a handsome stranger shows up. But there’s one big problem. Abigail is a witch. In fact, she comes from a family of witches. From the moment Abigail locks eyes with the darkly mysterious Ethan Beckett, her world begins to spiral out of control.

A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina. His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall - but for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic. Natalia is the granddaughter of that boy. Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages in the war-torn Balkans when she receives word of her beloved grandfather's death, far from their home, in circumstances shrouded in mystery.

London, 1861: Ten-year-old Nell belongs to a crew of mudlarks who work a stretch of the Thames along the Ratcliffe Highway. An orphan since her mother died four years past, leaving Nell with only broken dreams and a pair of satin slippers in her possession, she spends her days dredging up coals, copper and pieces of iron spilled by the river barges – searching for treasure in the mud in order to appease her master, Benjamin Murdstone. But one day, Nell discovers a body on the shore. It’s not the first corpse she’s encountered, but by far the strangest.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn't one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she's the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they're long-stemmed roses, she's a dandelion: an adorable bloom that's actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her. When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning.

In a cosy photography studio in the mountains between this world and the next, someone is waking up as if from a dream. A kind man will hand them a hot cup of tea and gently explain that, having reached the end of their life, they have one final task. There is a stack of photos on their lap, one for every day of their life, and now they must choose the pictures that capture their most treasured memories, which will be placed in a beautiful lantern. Once completed, it will be set spinning, and their cherished moments will flash before their eyes, guiding them to another world.

Norfolk, 1643. With civil war tearing England apart, reluctant soldier Thomas Treadwater is summoned home by his sister, who accuses a new servant of improper conduct with their widowed father. By the time Thomas returns home, his father is insensible, felled by a stroke, and their new servant is in prison, facing charges of witchcraft.

When 38-year-old Conner O’Rourke returns to Ireland, he’s running from his past. His advertising agency in Sydney is going broke, the bank is foreclosing on his mortgage, and he’s hearing voices in his mind urging him to return to Inis Mór. His grandmother, whom he hasn’t seen in years, has contacted him saying she's critically ill and must speak with him, but when he arrives on Inis Mór, a wild, windswept, rocky little island some 30 miles off the West Coast of Ireland, she’s already passed, leaving him a cottage and a dilapidated sailing boat.

Delhi, 1997: It is India's fiftieth year of independence, the year of Hindu nationalists and atomic bombs. But twelve-year-old Adi has a bigger problem: his Ma has gone missing - again. Left with an ailing grandmother, a raging father and no answers, he finds an unlikely ally: a talking vulture who reveals itself to be a bureaucrat from the 'Department of Historical Adjustment'.

Imelda Burova has spent a lifetime keeping other people's secrets, and her silence has come at a price. She has seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Her cards had unmasked them all, and her cards never lied. But Madame Burova is weary of other people's lives and other people's secrets; she needs rest and a little piece of life for herself. Before that, however, she has to fulfil a promise made a long time ago. She holds two brown envelopes in her hand, and she has to deliver them.

Professor Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare Deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, capturing both her bird and her eye. For his part, Devon has never been more smitten than when he first set eyes on Beth. When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning.

Trapped between his unfulfilling career, a dwindling grasp on reality and his childhood memories, Jay Mackintosh takes the snap decision to buy a derelict French farmhouse, running from London to the village of Lansquenet. Returning to his childhood haunt, Jay is forced to confront a ghost from his past, a secretive widow and the terrible secret she's hiding.

A long time ago, in a bountiful land not so far away, the animal denizens lived quite happily. Then the colonisers arrived. After nearly a hundred years, a bloody War of Liberation brought new hope for the animals—along with a new leader. A charismatic horse who commanded the sun and ruled and ruled and kept on ruling. For 40 years he ruled, with the help of his elite band of Chosen Ones, a scandalously violent pack of Defenders and, as he aged, his beloved and ambitious young donkey wife, Marvellous.