Magical Realism 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.

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.

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.

Deep within the revered halls of the Smithsonian Museum lies the ancient Deceiver’s Casket—a small, intricately carved box rumored to possess the ability to unveil the darkest depths of a person’s soul. It is here that Ava’s journey begins. Entranced by the casket’s allure, it quickly draws her into a world where truth may be more terrifying than any lie. As truth and deception collide in a world of intrigue, will the Deceiver’s Casket ultimately serve as a tool of salvation or a harbinger of doom?

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.

Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.

The Ebony Tower, comprising a novella, three stories, and a translation of a medieval French tale, echoes themes from John Fowles' internationally celebrated novels as it probes the fitful relations between love and hate, pleasure and pain, and fantasy and reality.

What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart? These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado’s strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically.

In stories that evoke the haunting beauty of New England beaches and resonate with a bittersweet loneliness, Romero blurs the lines between life and death, reality and fantasy. A deceased woman counsels her son’s fiancée on how to be a good wife to him, with disastrous consequences. A mysterious cat appears in a young woman’s home, as inexplicable as the demise of her years-long relationship with her boyfriend. At turns humorous, sorrowful, and whimsical, this collection spans the familiar setting of a college town supermarket to eerie dystopias that are not just post-pandemic, but post-art.

In the world of speculative fiction… Your favorite authors… Have selected best new voices of the year.

Brighten your day and dive into Flat Spell Tales! The author, Tony Martello, transforms ordinary events in our lives into fiction based on half-realities. Drop in and surf stories about romance, revenge, treasure hunts, and humor. He invites you along with him on a variety of adventures that take you into extreme nature, complex human relationships, and animal allegories.

Ciera’s the best fairy godmother in all the land… …but she’s hiding a secret. Not only is she pregnant, but she’s magically pregnant with a human child. Humans are not allowed in the fairy realm. Period. That includes half-fairy/half-human babies. The only solution is to give the baby to its father before the Fairy Council finds out her secret. Finding the father will be easy. How many men named John could possibly live in a little town called Chicago? Scroll up and 1-click this romantic paranormal fairy tale now! (Also available for free through Kindle Unlimited) Other books in ...

Is what you see all there is? Look again. Playful, frightening, even shocking - the stories in this collection blur the lines between illusion and reality. This is a writer at the height of his power, making the listener think, making them laugh, and sometimes making them want to look away while holding their gaze. Stories here are set in London, in Byzantium, in the ghetto, in the Andes, in a printer's shop in Spain. The characters include a murderer, a writer, a detective, a man in a cave, a man in a mirror, two little boys, a prison door, and the author himself.

For former pushover Janet, her Sophie curls appear to be a balanced and beautiful new addition to her magical, life-changing wig collection. She’s positively beaming, has smoothed out the wrinkles in her personal life, and is embarking on a philanthropic new business venture. Everything is ideal until the unthinkable happens and she has to stand on her own - with a final push from Lady Miss Jacqueline, of course!

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close to her. Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books have delighted readers and listeners across the globe for more than 100 years. The Wonderland Collection presents three of Carroll's most famous works.

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.

A surreal love letter to this private side of the Met, Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. The result is a novel bursting with magic, humor, and energetic detail, but also a beautiful book about introspection, an ode to lives lived for art, ultimately building a powerful collage of human experience and the world of the imagination.

Nine stories. Infinite realities. From time-traveling assassins to cursed pianos, telepathic women to boring accountants, this genre-defying collection crashes through the borders of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure, and Literary Fiction. Inside, you'll meet: A detective chasing clues across timelines. A struggling dad fighting for one perfect day with his daughter. A jinn with a dark secret. A musician whose final song might cost him everything. And an astronaut hurtling toward the end of the world… or the beginning of something else. Smart, strange, and unforgettable, Nine Stories: Astronauts...

Unbridled whimsy in a short story. In the whimsical mind of author Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene, the psychedelic rock song by Jefferson Airplane ("White Rabbit") collided with Lewis Carroll’s novel. A modern slant on the idea went, well... down the rabbit hole, producing an urban fantasy. Carroll's quote, “We’re all mad here" takes on additional meaning for the young protagonist Liddie and her friends, Katty and Loco Hatley.

An exquisite new collection from a Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the short story, the culmination of a five-decade career: work that takes us beneath the placid surface of suburban life into the elusive strangeness of the everyday.