Fiction Realism

A floundering second-generation teenager growing up in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, Neil Narayan is funny and smart but struggles to bear the weight of expectations of his family and their Asian American enclave. He tries to want their version of success, but mostly, Neil just wants his neighbor across the cul-de-sac, Anita Dayal.

With a singular voice in the narrative-bending tradition of Kafka, Cortázar, and Bulgakov, Lima speaks to Brazilian-American immigrant experiences—of ambition, fear, heartbreak, and home—with equal parts warmth and agitation. Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is a powerful experience: once listened to, you’re as much a part of the stories as they’re a part of you.

After disappearing amidst a spray of bullets, antiques dealer Sarah Lester leaves behind no body, only questions. Sarah’s friends are left dealing with the aftermath of her disappearance, including an investigation into the provenance of her antiques, which threatens to crush The Old Curiosity Shop. As Sarah struggles to reunite with her father, she continues the search for her mother, unaware the violent colonial past has followed her home, putting herself, and those she loves in danger.

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.

A 30-something painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist. When he discovers a strange painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious 13-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors.

When your mother disappears without a trace, it carves a gash that bleeds a long time. Jordan has never given up hope that her mother is alive. So when Jordan's old nanny shows up with a mysterious locket containing a portrait of Jordan's mother, Jordan believes her hope was not in vain. When the locket opens a portal to an alternate universe and a stranger hurtles through to Earth, it's not her first clue that something very strange is at play.

One phone call, five words, and I’m back in the town I swore I’d never return to. Going home was never part of the plan, but when my dad calls because he needs help to solve a murder, I can’t say no. Running into the three men I thought I would spend my entire life with has me questioning why I ever picked up the phone.

This is mankind’s last chance. Centuries of greed, pride, and hate have sent humanity hurtling toward disaster, and far from its original purpose. There is only one solution that can reset the compass and right the ship, and it is only two words. With time running out, it is up to David Ponder and a cast of history’s best and brightest minds to uncover this solution before it is too late. The catch? They are allowed only five tries to discover the answer. Andy Andrews combines a riveting narrative with astounding history in order to show us the one thing we must do when we don’t know what to do.

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.

Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered. There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic and the odds of survival are never equal. Once you’re inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate or you die. El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the school’s many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions - never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school. Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students, too.

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?

In a bravura feat of storytelling, Mark Haddon calls upon narratives ancient and modern to tell the story of Angelica, a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship with her father. When a young man named Darius discovers their secret, he is forced to escape on a boat bound for the Mediterranean. To his surprise, he finds himself travelling backward over 2,000 years to a world of pirates and shipwrecks, of plagues and miracles and angry gods.

It's been one year since graduation, and Beatrice Hartley has mixed feelings about joining her friends a weekend reunion. She's right to be worried. After a night out, they narrowly avoid a collision with a car on a deserted road. Or so they believe... Back at the mansion where they are staying, a mysterious man knocks on the door during a raging storm. He tells them that they must make a choice: one of them will live, and the rest will die. And the decision must be unanimous.

Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.

There is bad luck in New Felicity. The people of the small coastal village have taken in Milagros, an eleven-year-old Venezuelan refugee, just as Trinidad's government has begun cracking down on undocumented migrants—and now an American journalist has come to town asking questions. New Felicity's superstitious fishermen fear the worst, certain they've brought bad luck on the village by killing a local witch who had herself murdered two villagers the year before.

Eighty-two-year-old Etta has never seen the ocean. So early one morning she takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 3,232 kilometers from rural Canada eastward to the coast. Her husband Otto wakes to a note left on the kitchen table. "I will try to remember to come back," Etta writes to him. Otto has seen the ocean, having crossed the Atlantic years ago to fight in a far-away war. He understands. But with Etta gone, the memories come crowding in and Otto struggles to keep them at bay.

Machado de Assis’ classic novel, the precursor of Latin American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly relevant work for 21st-century audiences. In eloquent, contemporary prose, Costa and Patterson breathe new life into the dynamic character of Brás Cubas and reveal the vivid, tempestuous Rio de Janeiro of his time. The recently deceased Cubas narrates his life story, admitting glibly: “I am not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write.”

Singer's famous and never-before-recorded novel about a passionate, forbidden love affair between Jew and Gentile in 17th century Poland.

Can she go from broken mid-life wreck to badass mid-life warrior? Beginning a new career at forty-four was difficult, but as Siobhan is about to find out things can be worse. After her marriage implodes and she moves back to her childhood home, Siobhan learns that everything she thought she knew about her family was a lie and the creatures of myth and legend are real living hidden among the “normal” human world. Then she learns that she is the last of her family line who has a sworn duty to aid supernatural creatures who request help. As a Custodian for the Golden Assembly, Siobhan ...

In Smoke and Mirrors, Gaiman's imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders - where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a thrift store, where assassins advertise their services in the Yellow Pages under "Pest Control," and where a frightened young boy must barter for his life with a mean-spirited troll living beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks.