Fantasy Realism

Saint Petersburg, 1812. Russian forces have defeated Napoleon at great cost, and the tsar's empire is once again at peace. Sasha, a captain in the imperial army, returns home to Grand Duke Felix, the disgraced second son of the tsar and his irrepressibly charming lover, but their reunion is quickly interrupted by the arrival of Sofia, a mysteriously persuasive figure whose disruptive presence Sasha suspects to be something more than human. Felix, insisting that Sasha's old-fashioned superstitions are misplaced, takes Sofia into his confidence.

Hidden behind back doors of bars and restaurants and theaters and shops all over New York City are shortcuts—secret passageways that allow you to jump through time and space to emerge in different parts of the city. No one knows where they came from, but there are rules—you can only travel through them one way and only at night. When Jean’s work friend Iggy introduces her to the shortcuts, it’s to help shorten her commute between her night shifts bartending and her work at an upscale bakery.

Acclaimed fantasist Mary Robinette Kowal has enchanted many fans with her beloved novels featuring a Regency setting in which magic--known here as glamour--is real. In Valour and Vanity, master glamourists Jane and Vincent find themselves in the sort of a magical adventure that might result if Jane Austen wrote Ocean's Eleven. After Melody's wedding, the Ellsworths and Vincents accompany the young couple on their tour of the continent. Jane and Vincent plan to separate from the party and travel to Murano to study with glassblowers there, but their ship is set upon by Barbary corsairs while en route. It is their good fortune that they are not enslaved, but they lose everything to the pirates and arrive in Murano destitute.

In the burned-out, futuristic city of Empire Island, three young people navigate a crumbling metropolis constantly under threat from a pair of dragons that circle the skies. When violence strikes, reality star Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the spoiled scion of the metropolis' last dynasty; Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, his tempestuous, death-obsessed betrothed; and Abby, a feral beauty he discovered tossed out with the trash; are forced to flee everything they've ever known.

In the wake of World War I in the small, Southern town of Bellhaven, South Carolina, the town folk believe they've found a little slice of heaven in a mysterious chapel in the woods. But they soon realize that evil can come in the most beautiful of forms. The people of Bellhaven have always looked to Ellsworth Newberry for guidance, but after losing his wife and his future as a professional pitcher, he is moments away from testing his mortality once and for all. Until he finally takes notice of the changes in his town...and the cardinals that have returned.

In a world where vampires and witches live in secrecy, 16-year-old Larissa Norton's life is turned upside down when her vampire parents are murdered and a dark presence begins pursuing her. Forced to flee into hiding, Larissa discovers she is not who she thought she was. She learns her real name is Larissa Dubois, a powerful witch born in 1920s New Orleans.

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

Wrapped in the fierce love of Draego Darkpaw, The Wolf King of the Warrior Kingdom, Noel Featherclaw is finally coming to terms with the thought of forever-ever-after. Or at least she thought… When a startling truth strains the relationship between Draego and Noel, she’s forced to evaluate Mineartha and everything she's ever known in a new light. As Drusilla, the evil maid of Draego’s younger brother, casts a spell over Castle Blackstone in retaliation for perceived wrongs, she’s intent on making Noel pay for Killian’s disappearance.

After unexpected adventures while helping DPREM determine the fate of a research submersible lost off the coast of a Hawaiian island, Logan returns home. With two demons and a homicidal elf still at large, Logan certainly has enough to worry about. After a day of exploring other worlds with his friends, he heads west with his leprechaun mentor to pursue an emergent clue that might lead to one of the demons. While the evidence is slight, it can't be ignored. Luckily for Logan, he finds groups of magic users eager to help him at every turn in his journey.

The tales in Mark Haddon's lyrical and uncompromising new collection take many forms - Victorian adventure story, science fiction, morality tale, contemporary realism - but they all showcase his virtuoso gifts as a stylist and the deep well of empathy that made his three best-selling novels so compelling. The characters here are often isolated physically or estranged from their families, yet they yearn for connection.

The search for the Holy Grail has been going on for countless centuries. Science and religion have both sought to answer humanity's thirst for the ultimate knowledge, the power over life and death and the key to immortality. Sometimes, however, great discoveries occur by complete accident.

​​​Yet Delta Wilding and her sister Bee are familiar with the peculiar. Raised by an eccentric father always on the hunt for the spectacular, they’re used to following weather patterns that twirl onto strange paths, a car that refuses to play any artist but one, and living in a sentient house with whims of its own. But when a mysterious boy falls from the stars into the woods behind the Wilding sisters’ farmhouse, nothing can prepare them for the extraordinary turn their lives are about to take.

Benson and Jensen treat a number of crucial ways in which anti-realism—popularly known as social constructivism—pervades and ultimately corrodes American culture, everything from soccer to more serious matters such as scientific objectivity and moral realism. Establishment elites in academia, the judiciary, and the media increasingly determine the acceptability of various kinds of political and social views, moral beliefs, even the language we use.

Fifteen year old Kai lived a mundane and unsatisfied life—no friends, no family. Even worse, he had no memory of his life before being dropped off at Hope Street School for Boys ten years ago. When the chance to discover his past presents itself in the form of a disheveled man wearing tattered sneakers, Kai sets aside his common sense and follows his heart to an underground village. At The Sanctuary, he meets people like him; those with unique abilities. The government has labeled them as too dangerous for society and has spent the past decade hunting them down.

Uncle Chip Proctor thought he had it all under control. After years of protecting Sadie and Addy, two royal half-Fae teens, he’s starting to believe they might just make it to Sadie’s coronation after graduation. But when a fiery portal erupts on the soccer field, his quiet role as their stay-at-home human guardian is about to be put to the ultimate test.

According to the ultrasounds, everything is fine with Jacinda and Luke’s expected baby, but as Jacinda’s dreams turn increasingly bizarre, she fears something is very wrong with their growing child. When the big day finally arrives, Jacinda’s worst fears lie cradled in her arms. But there’s only one way to save this youngling, and the cost could not only be high, it could be everything....

All Anna wants is to grieve her sister in peace. But peace is the last thing she'll get. After the tragic accident shatters her world, her life takes an even darker turn when her father is imprisoned in the castle and her mother is summoned by the ruthless queen. Terrified of losing what's left of her family, Anna demands to go with them, despite the dangerous path ahead. As a shapeshifter who can't transform, she's already a target under the queen's brutal laws—and the castle is the last place she wants to be.

14 year old Emilia and her family live and work on a coffee plantation in a small Mexican village. When she uncovers a corrupt scheme that threatens to turn their way of life into a tourist theme park, it puts Emilia at odds with her father, but also puts her in life-threatening danger! Meanwhile, Emilia turns to her grandfather to help unravel a recurring dream about a giant bear. What she discovers cracks her village life wide open, taking them both on an epic adventure through time where she discovers incredible secrets of the past and the power of dreams.

A year after finding her voice and her coven, Thrash is ready to make memories with her best friends Cresca, Saki, and Em. But everyone seems to have their own vision for the trip: Em is on a mission to find summer love, Saki’s dodging romance entirely, and Cresca… might be falling into something darker. Determined to keep their coven together, Thrash signs them up for an apprenticeship at the famed Wainwood Academy under the eccentric Fae architect Fernicus Wainwood.

Still grieving her father's recent death and the loss of her comfortable biracial nuclear American family life, fourteen-year-old Ari struggles to adjust to her new life in Portland, Oregon, with a loving but unfamiliar extended Indian family. When Ari steals her mother's necklace and escapes to the forest, she accidentally plunges into a terrifying world of wild birds in the underbelly of Portland's Forest Park trails.