Fiction Realism

The one that got away... Six years ago, Tacitus Everard, the Marquess of Dare, made the worst mistake of his life: courting vibrant, sparklingly beautiful Lady Calista Chance - until she broke his heart. Is the only one she wants. Six years ago, Calista Holland made the biggest misstep of her life: begging handsome, wealthy Lord Dare to help her run away from home - then marrying someone else.

Fed up with playing the normal game, recent university graduate, ex-cum laude, ex-soccer star, ex-popular, and mostly broke Kera MacDonagh changed her life when she read How to be a Badass Witch and shockingly, the spells worked. She barely made it out of the first few weeks of on-the-job training before her powers got her in trouble. Hunted as a magical vigilante, the Kims sacrificed to keep her safe. Kera hunts criminals in the darkness of LA, but will she be able to hide the signature of her powers, too?

In a world on the brink of the next Great Dying, no amount of training can prepare us for what is to come.... A young heir will raise the most powerful phantom in all of Baiseen. A dangerous High Savant will do anything to control the nine realms. A mysterious and deadly Mar race will steal children into the sea. And a handsome guide with far too many secrets will make me fall in love. My name is Ash. A lowly scribe meant to observe and record. And yet I think I'm destined to save us all.

One hundred years ago, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate fairy stories from Irish to English. But all is not as it seems and Anna soon finds herself at the heart of a mystery that threatens her very way of life. In New York in the present day, Sarah Harper boards a plane bound for the West Coast of Ireland. But once there, she finds she has unearthed dark secrets – secrets that tread the line between the everyday and the otherworldly, the seen and the unseen.

Miss Posterity's Academy for Practical Magic is the best kindling school in New York City - and wealthy 12-year-old Emma Harris is accustomed to the best. But when her father dies, leaving her penniless, Emma is reduced to working off her debts to Miss Posterity alongside Izzy, a daring servant girl who refuses to let her magic be snuffed out, even if society dictates she must. Emma and Izzy reluctantly form a pact: If Izzy teaches Emma how to survive as a servant, Emma will reveal to Izzy what she knows about magic.

Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring.

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure, and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

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?

Amber Sand's matchmaking business is threatened by a YouTube star with a flair for showbiz, but when she meets Jane, the fairy behind the new fad, Amber finds a kindred spirit. Jane never got her wings and, like Amber, feels like an outsider in her family. Meanwhile, the gang is enjoying the summer after senior year and gearing up for college. They team up with Jane to track down the rare and difficult-to-obtain fairy dust and try to restore Ivy's siren powers. Perhaps most risky of all, Jane offers to tell Amber who her match truly is.

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

When Maximilian Ophuls is murdered outside his daughter's home by his Kashmiri Muslim driver, it appears to be a political killing. Ophuls is the former U.S. ambassador to India and America's leading figure in counter-terrorism. But there is much more to Ophuls and his assassin, a mysterious man calling himself "Shalimar the Clown", than meets the eye. One woman is at the center of their shared history, a history of betrayal and deception.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

Nicole has wanted to own a haunted car her entire teenaged life, and when she finally finds one - a junker of a Chrysler Neon with its own tragic backstory - her best friend, Johnny, has some serious doubts. Would a demon even want to possess a Chrysler Neon? But when the two of them take it for a test drive, Johnny’s doubts begin to fade: The steering wheel burns hot, the car traps Johnny in the back seat, and is Nicole even driving? Or is the car driving itself? They soon find themselves forced to face the potential evil controlling the car, and possibly even themselves.

Nestled among the cobblestone streets of Compiègne, there existed a bakery unlike any other. Rumours were whispered through the town that its pastries offered a taste of magic, chasing away the darkest of sorrows. Just one bite of a croissant might bring luck, unlock a precious memory or reveal hidden longings. But dark clouds were looming on the horizon…

In her 11th adventure, following Undead and Undetermined, Betsy’s up to her fangs in paranormal trouble. Still heartbroken over her friend Marc’s sacrifice, Betsy is further plagued by nagging suspicions that her half-sister Laura is up to no good. It seems that Laura has received an offer to assume her mother’s duties overseeing Hell - but only if she first kills Betsy.

The replacement of humans has begun. It starts with the voices ... It is war-ravaged China in the 1930’s. John Powers and his fellow group of pilgrims are trying to evade Nationalist forces, communist rebels and the invading Japanese army, all while carrying a strange golden statue and searching for a mysterious woman known as Her. At the same time, John begins hearing voices insisting that he conceive a son with another of the travelers. Who is Her? Why do the voices want John to have a son? Are the voices evidence that John has schizophrenia, as he fears? Or are they something else ...

Ten months. That’s the longest Elisa has stayed anyplace, constantly propelled by her fear that if she puts down roots, a family curse will turn her into a tree. But she’s grown tired of flitting from town to town and in and out of relationships. When she discovers a small town in Massachusetts where mysterious forces make it impossible for the residents to leave, she hopes she can change her fate.

The next step in Ellie Baker’s marriage: divorce. She and her husband, Jonah, are heading to Florida to break it to the family. No great drama to share. After twenty years of marriage, they’ve just fallen out of love. Simple. Not to their college-age daughter, Maggie, who is devastated. Or to Ellie’s father, Frank, who grows as cold as a retiree can get in Orlando. As for Ellie’s mother, Bunny: no, no, no. She doesn’t want to hear it. After a dreadful weekend, Ellie and Jonah return home to New Jersey with hearts and minds still set on a split.