Fantasy Realism

In 1986, humanity experienced the Reaping - a nationwide slaughter of six-year-old children by their parents - one of the country's most horrific tragedies. From that day forward, the world would never trust another cryptid. Now, Delilah Marlow and a rogue group of cryptids are on the run. One morning, Delilah wakes up with dried blood all over her hands. Though she has no memory of it, she obviously went somewhere - and possibly killed someone - in her sleep. More killings follow, and there is something connecting her victims - perhaps something as dangerous as another Reaping.

Jason Masters doubted the myths that told of people taken through a portal to another realm and enslaved by dragons. But when he receives a cryptic message from his missing brother, he must uncover the truth and find the portal before it’s too late. At the same time, Koren, a slave in the dragons’ realm, discovers she has a gift that could either save or doom her people. As Jason and Koren work to rescue the enslaved humans, a mystic prophecy surrounding a black egg may make all their efforts futile.

Surviving the training program was dangerous - even the first challenge to gain entrance to the school could get you killed. But the training was the easy part. Staying alive afterward was the hard part. Kazaks guarded individuals whose lives were deemed critical to the security of the United States. As such, Kazaks attracted fanatics and the best professional assassins money could buy - liars who could tell lies you believed, ghosts who could become nearly invisible, and Illusionists who could appear to be anyone.

For Thaniel Steepleton, an unexpected posting to Tokyo can’t come at a better moment. The London fog has made him ill and doctor’s orders are to get out. His brief is strange: the staff at the British Legation have been seeing ghosts, and his first task is to find out what’s going on. But staying with his closest friend, Keita Mori, in Yokohama, Thaniel starts to experience ghostly happenings himself. For reasons he won’t say, Mori is frightened. Then he vanishes.

Scott McKenzie's father killed his mother and himself. Scott vowed to do anything in his power to stop similar murders. He longed to be a police officer, but a tour in Vietnam in 1970 derailed that career. Two years later, wounded in body and soul, Scott died. He didn't go on to what was next, though. Instead, he woke up with a chance to live his life over and over until he got it right. Murderers will never see him coming. But, by using violence to save others, is he losing his own soul?

A new threat arises, stirring the beasts in its wake. A primordial beast so powerful all the gatherers in the nation have little hope of defeating it. Aiden must find a way to stand and prevent the destruction of Craesti City, the capital of the Kingdom.

Claire became the Devil’s PA five years ago when her mother tried to weasel out of her deal by dying. In this job, the retirement package blows. And a pink slip is a one-way ticket to Hell. When Claire’s accused of murdering the Boss’s immortal son, it’s clear someone’s setting her up, leaving her no choice but to run - and try to figure out why there’s a target on her back.

After her mother dies, Hannah doesn’t know how to exist without her. Literally. In fact, Hannah’s not even certain that she does exist. No one seems to see or hear her, and she finds herself utterly alone. Grief-stricken and confused, her sense of self slowly slipping away, Hannah sets out to find new purpose in life—and answers about who (and what) she really is.

Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now, at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother. That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects’ doppelgängers from parallel universes.

The gateways linking the great libraries of the world don’t require a library card, but they do harbor incredible dangers. And it’s not your normal bump-in-the-night kind. The threats Gia Kearns faces are the kind with sharp teeth and knifelike claws - the kind that includes an evil wizard hell-bent on taking her down.

A startlingly remarkable novel set in 1984 where a group of teenagers begin to discover powerful secrets about themselves, and learn that the only way to create their own future is to break away from previous generations.They call it the plague. A generation of children born with extreme genetic mutations. They call it a home. But it's a place of neglect and forced labor. They call him a freak. But Dog is just a boy who wants to be treated as normal. They call them dangerous. They might be right.

Tiana Hanover, the sheltered daughter of Lost Vegas’ leader, has spent her life hidden away from everyone. She’s deformed, like the people her father routinely burns at the stake. Her only friends are her brother and her new guardian, Aveline, neither of whom understand the depths of her forbidden magic. Distressed by premonitions of her brother’s death, she leaves the safety of the tiny room where she has resided her entire life and ventures out into a world unwelcoming of the deformed and resentful of her powerful father.

There's a catfish under Japan, and when it rolls, the land rises and falls. At least, that's what Sora was told after she lost her mother to an earthquake so powerful that it cracked time itself. Sora and her father are some of the few who still live near the most powerful of these "zones"—the places where time has been irrevocably sped up, or slowed down.

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.

Cat hasn’t been to Montgomery Falls, the town her family founded, since she was 12 years old. Since the summer she discovered she could do things that no normal 12-year-old could do. Since she had her first kiss with Riley Fraser. Since she destroyed their friendship. Now, five years later, she’s back and Riley has disappeared. When Noah, Riley's brother, asks for help in discovering what happened, Cat is torn between wanting to learn the truth and protecting the secret that she’s been guarding ever since that summer she and Riley stopped speaking.

In 17th-century England, civil war rages and witches have become pawns in a plot to oust the king. Red-haired Evey does not want to be a witch, but she cannot deny the magick coursing through her veins. In a country seething with civil war, superstition, dread and dark forces are at work. A storm is coming. After witnessing the brutal murder of her mother by witch-hunters, Evey vows to avenge her and track down her killers. Fury burns in her bright and strong. But she has promised her mother that she will keep Dill, her little sister, safe.

Sure, jumping through books into the world's most beautiful libraries to protect humans from mystical creatures is awesome. No one knows that better than Gia Kearns, but she could do without the part where people are always trying to kill her. Oh, and the fact that she and Pop had to move away from her friends and life as she knew it.

Chancery may be the youngest ruler of the Evians, but she won her first battle. Thanks to her success, the powers ruling the rest of the Earth are aligning against her, and her supporters’ demands grow with every passing day. Her days of hiding are over.... A 5,000-year-old prophecy and a dull black rock ruined the life Chancery planned for herself. As she navigates the roiling waters of ancient prejudice, assassination, war, and refugees, she discovers how deeply unprepared she was to assume this unwanted role. But standing tall makes you a target.

The end of the era of humanity was marked by the appearance of the World Dungeon and the system of power it provided. No one gained more power than the tyrant known as the Black Seraph, the Angel of Genocide. Surviving at the expense of the rest of humanity, Seraph was able to complete the World Dungeon upon reaching the Altar of the End. A hollow victory, as he was cursed by the spirit of the dungeon for ruthlessly focusing on his empowerment.

Deep beneath the sea, off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father. On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. She longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice? Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans.