Fantasy Realism

From the very first hour Cayden had set foot inside the massive, real-life game that was the Tower of Babel, nothing had gone according to plan. A unique skill, a handful of new friends, and the wrath of an ultra-wealthy, patricidal lunatic were just some of the complications to his best laid plans.
So why was he even surprised when a special event trapped him, his companions, and dozens of other players inside the tower, squaring them off against a murderous army of stone-faced warriors?

In 1995, the physical and social landscape of Japan was transformed by two events: the Kobe earthquake, in January, which destroyed thousands of lives, and the poison-gas attacks in the Tokyo subways in March, during the morning rush hour. Following these twin disasters, Haruki Murakami...

In this new standalone novel, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin. A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Fall 2024 SF&F pick A demon. An angel. A city. The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the...

Jo, the firstborn, The General to her 11 sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of their father's townhouse and into cabs that will take them to the speakeasy. Together they elude their controlling father. Meanwhile, they continue to dance, until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn't seen in almost 10 years.

The student witches are growing increasingly reckless, preying on the mundanes below the mountains as their tutors plot and scheme to take advantage of the chaos. And no one seems to know why. Emily is in no condition to intervene. But she cannot refuse. Heading to Laughter, Emily finds herself dragged into a world of schoolgirl games, staffroom politics, and a deadly plot aimed at the heart of the Allied Lands themselves.

Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean 11 years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.

Battling a wolf to save a little girl’s life makes Argus Brock a local hero. But what the small town of Redstone doesn’t know is that the tough teenager is a secretly a werewolf, which means the wolf Argus bit during the fight is now a werewolf, too. But unlike Argus and his wolf pack siblings, this wolf man is far from tame.

In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.

Around midnight, under a lonely street lamp in a provincial town in Japan, lies a white woman, a blonde, alone, robbed of all four limbs, yet undead. Indeed, a rumor's been circulating among the local girls that a vampire has come to their backwater, of all places. Koyomi Araragi, who prefers to...

Ofelia Archer has a full life...which only gets fuller when a dead body lands in her backyard. As owner of New Orleans’ premier supernatural speakeasy, Ofelia is always in the thick of things when the witch hits the fan. Zach Sully has a colorful background. As a panther shifter, he keeps his true origins secret while walking the colorful streets of the French Quarter keeping law and order. Ofelia and Sully will be forced to get over their inner misgivings and unite if they want to solve the crime...and stay alive in the process.

When 38-year-old Conner O’Rourke returns to Ireland, he’s running from his past. His advertising agency in Sydney is going broke, the bank is foreclosing on his mortgage, and he’s hearing voices in his mind urging him to return to Inis Mór. His grandmother, whom he hasn’t seen in years, has contacted him saying she's critically ill and must speak with him, but when he arrives on Inis Mór, a wild, windswept, rocky little island some 30 miles off the West Coast of Ireland, she’s already passed, leaving him a cottage and a dilapidated sailing boat.

Hidden away from the world by his mother, the powerful sorceress Heloise Oliver, Pierce has grown up working in her restaurant in Desolation Point. One day, unexpectedly, strangers pass through town on the way to the legendary capital city. "Look for us," they tell Pierce, "if you come to Severluna. You might find a place for yourself in King Arden's court."

When James O'Sullivan returns to his hometown of Cuanmore to settle his estranged father's estate, he uncovers a life-altering secret: his family's pub holds a portal to a magical speakeasy, one that connects to worlds James once thought only existed in fantasy stories. Now James must learn how to manage a bar, deal with being trapped in a town he's tried to escape his entire life, plus handle a steady stream of patrons that include orcs, dwarves, gnomes and dragon riders, who are all seeking rest from their own adventures.

"Weaves a spell of darkness that’s mysterious and magical, and binds it with a knot of deathless love." —New York Times bestselling author Susanna Kearsley on A Lullaby for Witches In post–World War I England, a young woman inherits a mysterious library and must untangle its powerful...

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.

Miss Posterity's Academy for Practical Magic is the best kindling school in New York City - and wealthy 12-year-old Emma Harris is accustomed to the best. But when her father dies, leaving her penniless, Emma is reduced to working off her debts to Miss Posterity alongside Izzy, a daring servant girl who refuses to let her magic be snuffed out, even if society dictates she must. Emma and Izzy reluctantly form a pact: If Izzy teaches Emma how to survive as a servant, Emma will reveal to Izzy what she knows about magic.

A ship. A garden. A library. A key. In Kaleidoscope, the incomparable Brian Selznick presents the story of two people bound to each other through time and space, memory and dreams. At the center of their relationship is a mystery about the nature of grief and love which will look different to each listener. Kaleidoscope is a feat of storytelling that illuminates how even the wildest tales can help us in the hardest times.

When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family’s possibly magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their hometown, in Anna-Marie McLemore's The Mirror Season....

Evelyn Thorne thought her summer would be boring. Then she discovered a book hidden away for almost 60 years, and everything changed. Instead of rainy days and dusty books, Evelyn finds herself caught up in a whirlwind of hidden secrets, talking gadgets, and a mystery waiting for her to solve. Why does the book react to her? Why are strange things happening around the castle? And what does any of it have to do with her family? With new friends (and one grumpy robot), a crumbling Scottish castle, and a very big secret, Evelyn is about to discover she’s more extraordinary than she ever imagined.

Outlander meets Dan Brown Das Zeitreisen ist für sie nur ein Job. Bis er auftaucht ... Mitch lebt in Rom und arbeitet für das ITR, das Institute of Timetravel and Research des Vatikans – ein gefährlicher und schlecht bezahlter Job ohne Karriereaussichten. Aber hey, nur noch fünf Zeitreisen, bis sie sich mit einer fetten Abfindung zurückziehen und endlich ihr eigenes Café aufmachen kann. Doch dann bekommt sie einen neuen Partner – ein Typ, der sich um Vorschriften und Zeitreisegesetze so wenig schert wie um den berühmten Sack Reis in China.