Fiction Realism

The hero of The Invisibility Cloak lives in contemporary Beijing—where everyone is doing their best to hustle up the ladder of success while shouldering an ever-growing burden of consumer goods—and he’s a loser. Well into his forties, he’s divorced (and still doting on his ex), childless, and living with his sister (her husband wants him out) in an apartment at the edge of town with a crack in the wall. He gets by just by making customized old-fashioned amplifiers for the occasional rich audio-obsessive. Then an old friend tips him off about a special job....

Born to a family of elegant yet shallow Beige Witches, 17-year-old Hazel loves brightly colored cupcakes. Her Beige game is so weak, she can't even pull off a proper messy bun spell, a level one hair glamour. Hazel 's resigned to never being good enough...till she discovers she was never meant to be a Beige Witch at all. But when her magical abilities take off, not everyone in Hazel's orbit is thrilled to see the forgotten middle sister finally owning her power.

Two years after the death of her husband, Julie Duncan is still buried in layers of grief and guilt. Each night she feels the cold spot where Greg once lay and wonders if she'll ever fill it. When her mother dies on New Year’s Eve, Julie feels more lost than ever—a 50-year-old widow with no purpose and a house full of ghosts.

Rebecca Angelos has always liked animals more than people. The abandoned pets who pass through Cloverleaf Critters animal shelter understand her better even than her friends at her Friday night cocktail club. Elvis the pug never judges as he helps her swipe through dating profiles on a Saturday night, and Paul Rudd the doberman has the sweetest heart despite all he’s been through.

Un homme se retrouve en prison. Brutalisé dans sa mémoire et dans sa chair, il décide avant de mourir de nous livrer le récit de son destin. Écrit dans un élan vertigineux, porté par une langue aussi fulgurante que bienveillante, Le Démon de la Colline aux Loups raconte un être, son enfance perdue, sa vie emplie de violence, de douleur et de rage, d’amour et de passion, de moments de lumière... Il dit sa solitude, immense, la condition humaine. Le Démon de la Colline aux Loups est un premier roman.

The lines between Light and Dark blur when Alder and Lily assume their crowns as the new King and Queen of the Fae Kingdom. The goal of their reign is to fulfill Gideon’s wishes of uniting the fairy Kingdoms, but something sinister stands in their way. Determined to find Bennett and retrieve the stolen book, Lily’s attention strays from her duties, making her rely on her sisters more than ever before.

On a streetcar, on Christmas Day, 1950, clutching the chrome rail in front of him, Martin Radey looks at the woman seated beside him, a stranger, and utters his last words: "I can't breathe." Like millions, billions before him, it is his turn to die. But death is not what he expected. The journey has only begun. From 1880 to 1950, time happens to the world around him, not to memory, because memory, he discovers, is beyond time, traveling forward with him, shaping the earth, the sky, the heart.

Feisty Dr. Siri Paiboun is no respecter of persons or party; at his age he feels he can afford to be independent. In this, the second novel in the series, he travels to Luang Prabang, where he communes with the deposed king who is resigned to his fate: it was predicted long ago. And he attends a conference of shamans called by the Communist Party to deliver an ultimatum to the spirits: obey party orders or get out.

Published in 1980 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Pnball, 1973 is the second book in the "Trilogy of the Rat" series. It is preceded by Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and followed by A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), and is the second novel written by Murakami...

Hers was the plight of a gothic heroine, banished from her home by a cruel brother and his heartless wife, the Dragon Sage. Misunderstood and maligned, Georgiana’s only hope of rescue were letters to aunts describing the medieval dungeon to which she had been sent.

When ballet dancer Clara Campbell arrives in New Orleans, lonely and homesick, she is immediately captivated by the story of Windisle Plantation and the tragic tale that is said to have transpired beyond its gate. Legend has it that it is abandoned by all living souls, but to Clara’s great surprise, it is not a ghost she hears through the stone wall surrounding the property, but a flesh and blood man: a scarred stranger with a pain deeper and darker than the churning waters of the Mississippi river that flows beside his self-imposed prison.

In the tradition of George Saunders and Aimee Bender, an exuberantly imagined debut that chronicles an ordinary world marked by unusual phenomena. The eighteen stories of Manuel Gonzales’s exhilarating first book render the fantastic commonplace and the ordinary extraordinary, in prose that...

The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism....

To break out of a 24-hour time loop, all Jack needs is for Gemma to fall in love with him in a single day. All Gemma needs is to remember him first . . . Gemma Peters is doing fine. She’s making a name for herself in the L.A. music biz as a radio producer. She’s got a ride-or-die best...

The Death Gate is down and Izzy Sage is at a crossroads. What will happen when they throw the switch and bring it back? She’s all atwitter on the big day...and then things only get more twisted when Zoe Lake-Winters, a powerful mage, walks through the door with her husband and daughter in tow. Two very different worlds are colliding, and Izzy and Zoe are at the center of it. The mystery of the other side is dark and deep and Zoe finds she’s intrigued...even if her methods are a bit extreme for the Grimlocks.

Il Natale si avvicina e il Caffè della Luna Piena si prepara a offrire ai propri clienti una serata speciale: di solito sono le notti di plenilunio a rivelare la sua presenza agli umani, ma nel mese di dicembre, quando la luna è particolarmente bella, l'enorme chef tigrato, responsabile del locale, è pronto a fare un'eccezione e a regalare a chi ne ha bisogno un momento di riflessione, accompagnato da piatti e bevande indimenticabili.

The second sun has returned as our Bone Throwers foresaw—casting the nine realms into war. My name is Ash, and I fell in the battle for Baiseen. But I'm awake now, slowly putting the pieces back together. My Heir has lost his throne. My sailor is gone. And there is an emptiness inside me I can't explain. Amid the chaos, someone must collect the original twelve whistle bones from all corners of the world.

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed. Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives.

On the highest point of an island, in a house clinging to the edge of a cliff, live Mary Rose and Harold Grapes, a retired couple still mourning the death of their son thirty-five years before. Weighed down by decades of grief and memories, the Grapeses have never moved past the tragedy. Then they’re uprooted by a violent storm. The disbelieving Grapeses and their home take a free-fall slide into the white-capped sea and float away. As the past that once moored them recedes and disappears, Mary Rose and Harold are delivered from decades of sorrow by the ebb and flow of the waves.

A woman learns to expand the boundaries of her small world and let love inside it in this sparkling and unforgettable novel by Audrey Burges. From her attic in the Arizona mountains, thirty-four-year-old Myra Malone blogs about a dollhouse mansion that captivates thousands of readers worldwide...