Fantasy Realism

It’s been three years since ICE raids and phone calls from Mexico and an ill-fated walk across the Sonoran. Three years since Sia Martinez’s mom disappeared. Sia wants to move on, but it’s hard in her tiny Arizona town where people refer to her mom’s deportation as "an unfortunate incident." Sia knows that her mom must be dead, but every new moon, Sia drives into the desert and lights San Anthony and la Guadalupe candles to guide her mom home. Then one night, under a million stars, Sia’s life and the world as we know it cracks wide open.

Set in the time of Charlemagne and narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. A challenge to his honor sends Agilulf on a search through France, England, and North Africa to confirm the chastity of a virgin he saved from rape years earlier.

A witty and whimsical sci-fi short story blending humor, adventure, and philosophical depth. Dive into a rollicking tale where order and chaos collide in the most unexpected ways. In the rigid city of Humanton, where every street is perfectly aligned, and life ticks like clockwork, Orderius thrives as a meticulous bureaucrat. That is until a mysterious orb shatters his orderly existence. Expelled for his chaotic tendencies, he ventures into a vibrant, unpredictable world teeming with fantastical races and bizarre challenges. Joined by the eccentric gnome explorer Cryptopher Columbus, ...

Grace, as her friends call her, has a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg and grease worked deep into her hands. She works at Sanchez Motorworks customizing hot rods. Finding the line in a classic car is her calling. Now Grace has to find the line in her own life. Grace loves John, and John loves her, and that would be wonderful, except that John, like Grace, has unfinished business: He's haunted by the childhood death of his younger brother. He's never stopped feeling responsible.

A magical novel, based on a Japanese folk tale, that imagines how the life of a broken-hearted man is transformed when he rescues an injured white crane that has landed in his backyard. George Duncan is an American living and working in London. At 48, he owns a small print shop, is divorced, and lonelier than he realizes. All of the women with whom he has relationships eventually leave him for being too nice. But one night he is woken by an astonishing sound - a terrific keening, which is coming from somewhere in his garden. When he investigates he finds a great white crane....

Echo Brown is a wizard from the East Side, where apartments are small and parents suffer addictions to the white rocks. Yet there is magic...everywhere. New portals begin to open when Echo transfers to the rich school on the West Side, and an insightful teacher becomes a pivotal mentor. Each day, Echo travels between two worlds, leaving her brothers, her friends, and a piece of herself behind on the East Side. There are dangers to leaving behind the place that made you.

The Pride is on the hunt! Vervain is preparing for the arrival of her third child, but not in the usual manner. Her daughter, Lesya, has been growing in a god-powered incubator, and the time has finally come to remove Lesya and take her home. But life is never smooth for the Godhunter, and as she dreams of holding her child at last, her enemies dream of destroying her. Vengeance draws near, and war threatens the realms. Will her Pride blind her to the truth, or will they save her from a fall? From the Author: Godhunter: Winner of the SpaSpa Book Award for Best Paranormal Romance 2014Get ...

Faeries are out and proud on Earth and things are finally settling down for them. Vervain and her husband, Azrael, have worked hard to open fey embassies around the world and require faeries to follow the laws of the lands they visit. But the Gods aren't happy. It's bad enough that humans forgot about most of them, but now, they're practically worshiping faeries. Many gods have started impersonating faeries to get a taste of the worship they once had, but one group of gods is too bitter for that. They're pretending to be fey but only to make the Fey look bad. As their assaults grow more and...

Even a Gargoyle can't soften a heart of stone. Eilener Tanager is one of the most notorious men in the Beneath—the only male Spellsinger in existence, able to make music into magic. They call him the Sinker of Continents and, perhaps not so loudly, a coldhearted killer. His looks are just as deadly and his appetite for life is ravenous. Entire civilizations have fallen prey to his whims. And I've been assigned the task of looking after him during his visit to the Oregon Zone. I'm a Gargoyle. I play rough and love rougher. But Eilener has been around for thousands of years. He has skills ...

The Fairy Underground... a place of enchantment and horror. Once it was secret, but its black market magic is beginning to find its way to the surface and into human hands. Ambassador Seren must find a way to stop the sale of such volatile merchandise, and to do so she must venture into the most dangerous den of fairies in existence. Seren believes that she's strong enough to face whatever she may find there, but she'll need more than magic to unearth the truth hidden there. Will she be able to navigate the maze of plots and pain, or will she become another victim of the Fairy Underground?

Welcome to Shadow Vale, where the locals bite, monsters are real and the witches play fast and loose with the rules. Kristen O’Mead left behind grief and the magical shenanigans of Shadow Vale ten years ago. Now she’s back, to dust off her magic and solve the riddle of her ex-husband’s ghost. Unfortunately he’s not the only ghost from her past she has to deal with. Shadow Vale isn’t your usual town tucked away amongst the rolling hills. It’s a haven for paranormals, protected by a Forget-Me spell, and the old stomping grounds of her teenage hormones. She’s barely settled into ...

The battle with the harpies is over, but some believe the harpy threat will never be over until the harpies are exterminated. If the Strix combatants pursue the harpies to their home in the caves of Golpa, can they end the war? Can Jordan and Juer save King Konig, or is devious Prince Diruk’s rise to the throne inevitable? And what of Jordan’s estranged family and her unbreakable promise to Sohne? When the elf princess turns up to collect, Jordan has to give her what she asks for or die. The truth is...she'd really rather die.

Hers was the plight of a gothic heroine, banished from her home by a cruel brother and his heartless wife, the Dragon Sage. Misunderstood and maligned, Georgiana’s only hope of rescue were letters to aunts describing the medieval dungeon to which she had been sent.

In "Books and Roses", one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers' fates. In "Is Your Blood as Red as This?", an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. "'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea" involves a "house of locks", where doors can be closed only with a key - with surprising unobservable developments. And in "If a Book Is Locked There's Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think", a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).

Following the birth of her second daughter, Vervain just wants to relax. But the Christian God has become insanely obsessed with her husband, Azrael. Consumed by fury, Jerry attacks the Faerie God in devious ways, all while he remains safely ensconced in Heaven. With every strike, it becomes more apparent that Jerry doesn't care who gets hurt by his vengeance; he's willing to sacrifice everyone and everything to destroy Azrael. The God Squad's goal of stopping a war between Heaven and Hell is soon replaced by another—killing Jehovah. Can they put an end to Jerry's tyranny once and for all...

The collected fantasy stories of World Fantasy Award winner S.P. Somtow — a half century of his acclaimed work brought together in a single volume. From rural America to exotic Bangkok, from ancient history to contemporary times — and sometimes both within the same story — Somtow's world betray a limitless imagination and the finely honed writing that has brought him numerous awards during his half-century writing career. Beginning with his first fantasy story from the 1970s, Fire from the Wine-dark Sea to his most recent tales, this collection is a a treasure chest.

Effie Edenson is many things: a bestselling author, a runaway bride, a woman who cannot see the gifts she possesses. Though she is an adult, her mother dominates her life to a point that she feels she will never be able to break free. But Effie lives in Middle Falls, where all things are possible. After an untimely death, Effie wakes up at a critical juncture in her life. The question is, what can she do with this second chance?

Cat hasn’t been to Montgomery Falls, the town her family founded, since she was 12 years old. Since the summer she discovered she could do things that no normal 12-year-old could do. Since she had her first kiss with Riley Fraser. Since she destroyed their friendship. Now, five years later, she’s back and Riley has disappeared. When Noah, Riley's brother, asks for help in discovering what happened, Cat is torn between wanting to learn the truth and protecting the secret that she’s been guarding ever since that summer she and Riley stopped speaking.

To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel's wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches.

Saint Petersburg, 1812. Russian forces have defeated Napoleon at great cost, and the tsar's empire is once again at peace. Sasha, a captain in the imperial army, returns home to Grand Duke Felix, the disgraced second son of the tsar and his irrepressibly charming lover, but their reunion is quickly interrupted by the arrival of Sofia, a mysteriously persuasive figure whose disruptive presence Sasha suspects to be something more than human. Felix, insisting that Sasha's old-fashioned superstitions are misplaced, takes Sofia into his confidence.