Magical Realism Anthology

Spanning Gaiman’s career to date, The Neil Gaiman Reader: Selected Fiction is a captivating collection from one of the world’s most beloved writers, chosen by those who know his work best: his devoted fans. A brilliant representation of Gaiman's groundbreaking, entrancing, endlessly imaginative fiction, this captivating volume includes excerpts from each of his five novels for adults—Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane—and nearly fifty of his short stories.

Equal parts fantastical—a pair of talking dolls help twins escape a stifling home, a heart boils on the stove as part of an elaborate cure for melancholy, a fox demon contemplates avenging her sister's death—and true to life—a mother and daughter try to heal their rift when the daughter falls unexpectedly pregnant, a woman reexamines her father's legacy after his death—the stories in this collection are hopeful and heartbreaking, full of danger and full of joy.

Midlife has never been so magical! Meet Alys, Maeve, and Siobhan Silver, the latest in a long line of witches. There's just one problem, no one told them about the hidden world of werewolves, fae, and magic hunters.

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.

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.

This magical realist short tale was inspired by the Latin American myth of El Sombrerón, the nighttime guardian of peace and justice. El Sombrerón arrives in a sleepy town to find that a young girl has stolen a golden necklace. El Sombrerón must convince the girl to return the necklace so she can avoid El Sombrerón’s justice…and before the sun rises.

Fairies, elves, demons... Secrets and desire... Dark humour, magic, wonder... Twelve stories that will transport you into other worlds, or twisted versions of our own. If you had magic, what would you do with it? If you loved someone, how far would you go?

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

An ailing farmer in rural Iran unearths an extraordinary find: two parsnips, grown together and looking for all the world like entwined lovers. For now, the sublime treasure is his secret. Wrapping it in a silk handkerchief, he nestles it away in a dresser drawer. Day after day, he gazes at their unmistakable rapture, reminded of the long-gone youthful passions he once shared with his wife. So, too, he mourns the inevitable - the eventual decay of the parsnips in love. When he decides to share his discovery with the world, his life and the lives of those around him connect and change.

Listeners will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination. The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written.

In this singular and imaginative story collection, Cecelia Ahern explores the endless ways in which women blaze through adversity with wit, resourcefulness, and compassion. Ahern takes the familiar aspects of women's lives—the routines, the embarrassments, the desires—and elevates these moments to the outlandish and hilarious with her astute blend of magical realism and social insight.

El 26 de octubre de 1949 el reportero Gabriel García Márquez fue enviado al antiguo convento de Santa Clara, que iba a ser demolido para edificar sobre él un hotel de cinco estrellas, a presenciar el vaciado de las criptas funerarias y a cubrir la noticia. Se exhumaron los restos de un virrey del Perú y su amante secreta, un obispo, varias abadesas, un bachiller de artes y una marquesa.

In the 12 unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: A group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman.

From the internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami comes a mind-bending new collection of short stories, all touching beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory...all with a signature Murakami twist. The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world.

Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges’s most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father’s “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house.

Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In “Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors”, two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. Plus much more.

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.

Lady Miss Jacqueline swears that hair makes a difference. And it does! Now Janet is taking charge on the job and making moves on a local barista she’s always shied away from. But when her brash new Lady Miss drawl gets all the wrong attention, Janet realizes that she needs to change her style - and her wig. It’s all a matter of finding the perfect fit.

BETRAYAL. PASSION. MAGIC. And...WIGS! From the sparkling imagination of gifted entertainer Keke Palmer and her iconic alter ego, Lady Miss Jacqueline, comes a hilarious modern fairy tale about a wilting violet, a clash of personalities, and a multitude of hair.

After her latest life-altering wig switch, Janet slips into leather leggings, quits her job, goes full advance on her barista crush, and makes a career commitment to her bestie, Candace. The follow-through? Not pretty. With guilt and betrayal hanging over her head (not to mention that dangerous, if fetching, wig), Janet must comb out the mess she’s made. And there’s only one way to do it.