Metaphysical Fiction

"The Masters" is a thought-provoking short story by Ursula K. Le Guin that delves into the complexities of power, control, and the nature of humanity. Set in a distant future on a planet where a group of elite individuals known as the Masters exert their influence over the rest of the population, the narrative explores themes of oppression and rebellion. The story follows a young protagonist who grapples with the oppressive societal structures imposed by the Masters and begins to question the ethics of their rule.

Emmanuel Carrère is a renowned writer. After decades of emotional upheaval, he has begun to live successfully—he is healthy; he works; he loves. He practices meditation, striving to observe the world without evaluating it. In this state of heightened awareness, he sets out for a ten-day silent retreat in the French heartland, leaving his phone, his books, and his daily life behind. But he’s also gathering material for his next book, which he thinks will be a pleasant, useful introduction to yoga. Four days later, there’s a tap on the window: something has happened.

When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is transformed. Vultures invade rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations toward an apocalyptic climax. In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that has established him as one of the 20th century’s most visionary writers.

On her 21st birthday Katie Harper has only one wish: to become a real Harper woman. Mystical powers are passed down her family generation after generation - some even call them witches - yet every spell Katie attempts goes disastrously wrong. When her magic does appear, it’s in a form nobody expected, and suddenly Katie is thrown into a dangerous new world with shadowy consequences. For the realm of the deceased is not as peaceful as she once thought. The dead are buried with their secrets, and only Katie can help the ghosts of the past finally find peace.

Alice’s commune seems a small hippie utopia in a dreamlike forest, but the utopian surface begins to crack when strange things start happening. A small deformed creature with a bowling ball head appears out of nowhere and turns to Alice for support. Her trips to the pond start to bring transcendental omens and strange visitors. Thus begins a journey in which Alice wanders away from her idyllic home to find another world and to slowly connect the dots of her own world’s missing history. This post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale is comic, poignant, thoughtful, and sparkling, a magical...

What do you do when pirates kidnap you for a ransom and a mad scientist injects you with a powerful and inevitably fatal concoction of aether? You get revenge. Matilda Katrine Myra is no one special, but her pirate abductors don’t know that. When they boldly kidnap her from an airship and sweep her away into the deadly wasteland of mutants and poisonous radiation, her life becomes a day to day battle to evade death. And she’s much closer to death than ever. A mad scientist has injected her with toxic condensed aether, the air of the gods, and now she’ll need frequent doses just to ...

Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in different eras. During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and alternate lives in 1918, where she is a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, which transforms her into a devoted mother and wife. As her final treatment looms, questions arise: What will happen once each Greta learns how to remain in one of the other worlds?

Prime Minister Aeon goes on a rampage……and sovereign planets fall like dominoes. The attacks are swift and brutal. The only choice is total submission. Citizens who resist are rounded up, never to be seen again. Other planets look on in horror, knowing their time is coming. On the far side of the Central Authority Zone, the Samson Corporation bides their time. They build spacecraft and develop new weapons, as they struggle to find allies. Chances are they’ll be discovered before they’re ready. They keep working anyway, determined to preserve the spark of liberty in the Universe. A ...

When Nostradamus is hired to find a foreign spy by Venice's ruling Council of 10, the only clues they can offer him are the spy's intercepted messages, encoded in a seemingly unbreakable cipher. Nostradamus turns to his able apprentice, the young swordsman Alfeo Zeno, whose unique talents may prove essential to unraveling the truth.

TWO BROTHERS ON A JOURNEY OF HOPE AND HEALING! In book two of the MADONNA DIARIES, Dory's story continues. After being infected with a deadly virus, he’s managed to hang on to life with the help of his twin brother, Milton. Milton is a doctor and a dedicated researcher, but as Dory edges towards death, Milton knows that Dory’s only chance of survival hinges on being given an experimental drug and being put into a medically induced coma. Dory encourages Milton to try the drug. After Dory is put into a coma, he’s surprised to find that his mind is quite lucid. He can’t see or feel ...

Skylar had it all - riches, success, and fame - until he traded it all for Enlightenment. Skylar Seequn's wife and true love has just asked him to leave home. He can afford only a flophouse room. No one wants to buy the obsolete computers he is selling. But the magic of time travel takes him back to the first days of love, to school, and to delightful memories. As he wanders through the circus that is North Beach, San Francisco, Skylar struggles to rediscover his lost bliss. Remembering Eternity: The Sun Inside - Seekers in a New Land is the second book in an inspiring series of spiritual ...

THE FINAL CHAPTER IN A HEALING JOURNEY OF TWO BROTHERS In book three, Dory’s life continues to shift in unexpected ways. After having a disease that kills without exception, he’s the lone recipient of a scientific miracle. In the midst of his triumph over a deadly virus, he also discovers that he has a chance at love. Crystal Hutchins, a doctor who helped to care for him, lets him know that she would like to explore a romantic relationship. In a daze of wonderful possibilities for his future, Dory is broadsided by a deeply disturbing event. He finds out that his father has been infected...

With an eye for rendering the timely in a timeless way and enchanting audiences with lyrical prose and grace, Ali Smith's ambitious Seasonal Quartet—a series of four stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected—artfully guided us through #MeToo, Brexit, the refugee crisis, a global pandemic, and more. Now, Smith's highly anticipated Companion Piece looks to the future and builds upon this "time-sensitive project". This new novel stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself.

Ishvari, an angry and spirited girl, is plucked out of rural poverty to be meticulously groomed by tantric monks and elected to serve as spiritual consort to Takshak, powerful monarch of Melukhha. Her tumultuous journey - from terrified peasant to glamorous High Tantrika of Melukhha - hurls her into an abyss of addiction. As she sinks into depravity, Ishvari violates the ancient Melukhhan code of honor, infuriating Rudra-Shiva, the Wild God, and calling forth Takshak's sadistic revenge.

In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap tower blocks. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative, among its saints, kings, prostitutes and derelicts, a different kind of human time is happening. Through the labyrinthine streets and minutes of Jerusalem tread ghosts that sing of wealth and poverty, of Africa, hymns and our threadbare millennium.

Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) is one of Japan's most beloved writers and poets, known particularly for his sensitive and symbolist children's fiction. This volume collects stories which focus on Miyazawa's love of space and his use of the galaxy as a metaphor for the concepts of purity, self-sacrifice and faith which were near and dear to his heart.

Jesus of Nazareth has been dead for some 65 years. The eyewitnesses to this extraordinary life have died, often as martyrs, and only a scattered handful remain. Might anyone have resolved to interview those last few before it was too late, it being a matter of mind-boggling importance? What if someone had? Mysterium I: Rome presents the story of a young Roman scholar who determines to do precisely that.

Nathaniel Moon is the reluctant messiah. He has powers that define the word miraculous. But when he used those powers to help others, he brought about a world of trouble. Now Nathaniel lives a life of quiet obscurity, performing anonymous miracles. But, his anonymity has to end, because evil is coming to Middle Falls, Oregon, and threatens the people Nathaniel loves most. It's going to take a reluctant messiah to put things right.

In 1953, at an isolated boys’ school in the Yorkshire moors, is a young teacher, Alexander Wedderburn, whose imagination had been captured by the Queen Elizabeth of Shakespeare and Spenser and who has written an historical verse play about her. Now, suddenly, his play has been taken up by a wealthy patron of the arts who envisions its production on the most magnificent scale, for it is to be the climax of a local festival honoring the new Queen Elizabeth.

Are there Clan Battleships in the Central Authority Zone?Things are not adding up.Simone’s story doesn’t jibe with the facts.Prime Minister Aeon is publishing lies as he arrests dissenters.The Central Authority Fleet has disappeared.Hamilton Zenos is on the run, members of his family held hostage.The Science Vessel which disappeared near Valla Cappos is the subject of debate and more lies. Phony pictures of a debris field are published by the Central Authority.Captain Trey Clarke, Chairman Vermillion, and Drake must sort this out, but time is short. If the Clan has infiltrated the ...