Fiction Realism

Born in the Argentine town of Mina Clavero, Camila is designated male but begins to identify from an early age as a girl. She is well aware that she’s different from other children and reacts to her oppressive, poverty-stricken home life, with a cowed mother and abusive, alcoholic father, by acting out—with swift consequences. Deeply intelligent, she eventually leaves for the city to attend university, slipping into prostitution to make ends meet. And in Sarmiento Park, in the heart of Córdoba, she discovers the strange, wonderful world of the trans sex workers who dwell there.

2015. Eighteen-year-old Boyd Montgomery returns from her grandfather’s wedding to find her friend Isaac missing. Drought-ravaged central Texas has been newly inundated with rain, and flash floods across the state have begun to sweep away people, cars, and entire houses as every river breaks its banks.

Once upon a time, Ella had wished for more than her life as a lowly maid. Now forced to work hard under the unforgiving, lecherous gaze of the man she once called stepfather, Ella’s only refuge is in the books she reads by candlelight, secreted away in the library she isn’t permitted to enter. One night, among her beloved books of far-off lands, Ella’s wishes are answered. At the stroke of midnight, a fairy godmother makes her an offer that will change her life.

High school is hard enough for most teens but for Noble, Harlan, Argus and Tora, some days can be a real howl. Born wolves, the shape-shifting siblings have spent most of their lives in human form, taking to the woods to enjoy their animal strength in secret. But all that could change at any moment… For it’s only a matter of time before Harlan pounces on his high school nemesis, revealing his feral nature to all. Before Tora shares the pack’s secret with the classmate she’s got a major crush on.

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.

Listening to John Crowley's stories is to see almost-familiar lives running parallel to our own, secret histories that never quite happened, memories that might be real or might be invented. In the 13 stories collected here, Crowley sets his imagination free to roam from a 20th-century Shakespeare festival to spring break at a future Yale in his Edgar Award-winning story "Spring Break". And in the previously unpublished "Anosognosia", the world brought about by one John C.'s high-school accident may or may not exist.

"I am the unhinged...and the world is my asylum". Thirteen-year old Harper is in therapy for the death of her mother. And that's saying nothing of the trafficking victim she rescued from her next door neighbor's cellar. As her father becomes embroiled in a criminal case that threatens to destroy their lives, the despondent teenager is left to confide in her detached and aloof therapist Charlotte. If the woman who she began seeing to cope with Nancy's suicide can't help her through these harrowing events, Harper's shattered family stands to be permanently damaged.

Jon thought it was over...he was wrong. It was just the beginning. When he defeated the beast tide, he thought peace would come. But whatever he thinks never happens. The expansion he triggered attracted a much larger threat that he can't control.

Irreverently juggling magical realism, film noir, hip hop, and chicanismo, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway. Hemmed in by wildfires, it's a symphony conducted from an overpass, grandiose, comic, and as diverse as the city itself - from an author who has received the California Book Award and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, among other literary honors.

Dark Factory is a dance club: three floors of DJs, drinks, and customizable reality, everything you see and hear and feel. Ari Regon is the club's wild card floor manager, and Max Caspar is a stubborn DIY artist, both chasing a vision of true reality. And rogue journalist Marfa Carpenter is there to write it all down. Then a rooftop rave sets in motion a fathomless energy that may drive Ari and Max to the edge of the ultimate experience. Kathe Koja combines her award-winning writing and her skill directing immersive events to create a story that unfolds in the listener's creative mind.

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.

Eight-year-old Kahu craves her great-grandfather's love and attention. But he is focused on his duties as chief of a Maori tribe in Whangara, on the East Coast of New Zealand - a tribe that claims descent from the legendary 'whale rider'. In every generation since the whale rider, a male has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir - there's only Kahu. She should be the next in line for the title, but her great-grandfather is blinded by tradition and sees no use for a girl. Kahu will not be ignored.

Everyone at Redstone High is talking about the strange Brock kids. How they keep to themselves at school—and spend way too much time in the woods. But Noble, Argus, Harlan and Tora aren’t normal teens—they were born with the power to become wolves. And the more the siblings try to hide their secret identity, the greater they struggle to fit in. Then Noble falls mysteriously ill, leaving the pack without a leader just when he’s needed the most…

When Dana and Nigel got married, they had such promise. After sixteen years, the cracks are showing. Dana is a burned-out ER nurse, and Nigel is a recently unemployed stay-at-home dad whose professional identity is disappearing. Questioning the directions their lives have taken, Dana and Nigel are each granted a wish from a mysterious stranger. For one week they can escape the pressure of their lives in favor of ones in which they never married.

Mystic Caravan Circus is heading to Charleston and - per usual - trouble is not far behind. For Poet Parker, who is grappling with saying good-bye to her assistant, she’s looking forward to quiet nights on the beach and quality time with her boyfriend. All that changes when the sea starts giving up its dead...and they appear to be hungry. Under normal circumstances, zombies wouldn’t be a big deal. They’re slow, lumbering, and easy to dispatch. This infestation is different...and they appear to be controlled by a strange creature long since thought extinct.

A groundbreaking book in the tradition of The Alchemist and The Celestine Prophecy, The Mosaic, by marketing expert and activist Daniel Bruce Levin, invites you to see the world from a new point of view - one that focuses on what connects us to each other and brings us happiness. The Mosaic follows the journey of Mo, a boy who loses his parents two years apart on the same day.

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.

The downtown core of Toronto is being consumed by Elysium, a drug that allows its users to slip through the permeable edges of this world into the next, before consuming them utterly. Peddled by the icy Srebrenka, few have managed to escape the drug and its dealer. But Maggie has. Years after beating her addiction, Maggie is dismayed by the reappearance of Srebrenka in her life. Although she resists temptation, she quickly learns her brother, Kyle, has been ensnared by Srebrenka's beguiling.

In her 13th life, Aven has settled into the now witchcraft-friendly Salem where she has found true happiness and friendship, maybe even love. Despite her contentment, the truth of Aven's existence haunts her. When she dies, her Spirit is forced from the Veil to live again in the body of a stranger. Does the elusive white raven, who has shadowed Aven through each of her lives, hold the secret to her release - or is it the cause?