Magical Realism Short Stories

In the tradition of narrativa de lo inusual (narrative of the unusual), The Only Sound Is the Wind combines the fantastic with the everyday, weaving elements of magical realism and surrealist twists to sharpen our view of human (and animal) connection. In the title story, the arrival of a mail-order clone complicates a burgeoning romance; a lonely librarian longing for her homeland strikes up an unusual relationship in the award-winning “The Moth”; when humans start giving birth to puppies and kittens in “This New Turn,” a realignment of the natural order ensues.

From the undisputed Queen of Vampire Literature, Anne Rice, The Master of Rampling Gate is a chilling tale of vampiric seduction. Set in the gasslit streets of 1888 London and the wild moors of the countryside beyond, The Master of Rampling Gate tells the story of Julie, a young woman who...

The short fiction of Colum McCann documents a dizzying cast of characters in exile, loss, love, and displacement. There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the...

The tremors were faint, but grew stronger, releasing a swarm of quakes when a cataclysmic super-volcano erupts in North America, killing 100,000 souls instantly. Summer turns into a long winter, lasting more than a decade. Food shortages result in widespread famine. Humanity hadn’t fared well. Looting and riots killed more humans than even the Creator predicted.

An astonishing fiction debut from a UC Irvine MFA graduate and recent contributor to The New Yorker. Bewitching and playful, with its feet only slightly tethered to the world we know, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover explores hope, love, and loss across a series of surreal landscapes and wild...

Out of time and place, Wreaker walks into a coffee shop on Long Island. They do not take gold bullion for payment. They do not hand pluck their tea leaves from the tree of life. Their tables can't even support the weight of Öfugr, his sacred ancient weapon. So how will he ever get his coffee?

When their world crashes, will their love meet the test? A woman who flees from love and a man who can’t keep it. These two lonely people couldn’t picture a life where love ever stayed. A legacy of painful secrets and wounds unspoken. Set in New Zealand, The Lightkeeper's Lover is a beautifully moving story of love, loss and betrayal, and what we have to do to heal our hearts. A delightful mystical romance with a dream-like quality that weaves fantasy and myth into everyday life.

I need answers only my father can provide. Separated from birth, we’ve only recently connected. Still, I have no one else to turn to. The Deltites are hunting me and they’re close now. We’ll fight our final battle soon. Needing more information, I force him to tell me a story about the beginning, my beginning. He sheds new light on my mom, on my grandfather Sicheii, and on how I started down this path. He spins a tale about love, a recent murder, and mysterious strangers who come to town looking for a medicine man, my grandfather.

Cuentos telúricos es una antología de cuentos casi fantásticos, o una colección de relatos mágicos por poco. En Cuentos telúricos caben los califas venerables, los hombres reptil, las niñas listas, los personajes atrapados dentro de personajes, las cartas llegadas del futuro, los círculos en los campos de cereal, los volcanes furibundos, las declaraciones de amor cuántico, los gatos, las abducciones, los calamares gigantes, las fábulas sin moraleja, las emanaciones invisibles surgidas del corazón de la tierra, los curas inmateriales, las mujeres del tiempo.

"Олеся", "Гранатовый браслет", "Суламифь", "Поединок" — произведения Александра Куприна охватывают множество разных тем: социальную, военную, любовную. Но этот сборник открывает читателю другого Куприна — проводника в таинственный мир, где переплелись и стали неразличимы реальность и мистика. Молодой незаметный мелкий чиновник Иван Степанович Цвет случайно разгадывает таинственную головоломку и овладевает "тайной, которой больше тридцати столетий". Отныне все, о чем бы он ни подумал, начинает сбываться. Цвет становится богат, успешен, знаменит — но счастлив ли? Ведь у каждого исполненного желания есть последствия.

If you eat while lying down, you will turn into a snake. If you don’t polish off all the rice on your plate you will marry a man full of pimples and pockmarks.Looking After the Ashes is a semi-biographical fiction of Kopi Soh’s childhood stories. Growing up in a large extended Taoist...

A young man wakes up in a mysterious land, injured and not knowing who he is. He finds a group of shepherds who he must accompany on their annual journey to the Great Forest to see the Great Star. On this journey, he will discover not only who he is, but where his home really lies.

A spellbinding story collection from Booker Prize finalist Ruth Ozeki, about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget, and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki...

The stories in Animal Husbandry all deal in some way with mythology, from animal fables to imaginary friends to the myths people tell themselves. In some cases, the myths are fantastical: a farmer finds his cow has given birth to a surprising offspring; a guitarist tries to improve his skills with a visit to the crossroads; or a young girl meets with a visitor in the woods to plot against her neighbors. Others concern everyday mythology: a small-town ballplayer struggles to earn a nickname; or a man's clean bill of health arrives at the worst possible time.

Whisper is a collection of stories that center around the rural Tennessee town of Kaden Hollow. The first, a short novel, follows the experiences of Samuel "Sketch" Thibodeaux as he navigates the odd world of human interaction and morality following the death of his adoptive mother. The subsequent three short stories focus on other characters in this quaint, troubled town.

"You should be here; he's simply magnificent." These are the final words a biologist hears before his Margaret Mead-like wife dies at the hands of Godzilla. The words haunt him as he studies the kaiju (Japan's giant monsters) on an island reserve, attempting to understand the beauty his wife saw. Every story in the collection turns to the fantastic, the mysticism of the past, and the absurdities of the future to illuminate the spaces we occupy when we are at our most vulnerable."

Eyes of a Blue Dog (sp. Ojos de perro azul) is a collection of twenty-two death-themed short stories from the Colombian Nobel-winning novelist, screenwriter, and journalist, Gabriel García Márquez. These early stories of the late Nobel Prize winner were written and published between 1947 and 1955, although, as a book, Blue Dog Eyes would not appear until 1974, when the writer had already published two other books of short stories and four novels, of which the last, One Hundred Years of Solitude, would provide him with his first great international success.

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

A demon who runs story time at the local library. A robot that guards nuclear waste. A vampire who gives relationship advice. Death’s personal lawyer. The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales is a collection of stories that mix the mundane and bizarre, that both disturb and delight. From the creator of The Stench of Adventure comes a set of mystifying stories with an undercurrent of warmth and heart.

In stories that evoke the haunting beauty of New England beaches and resonate with a bittersweet loneliness, Romero blurs the lines between life and death, reality and fantasy. A deceased woman counsels her son’s fiancée on how to be a good wife to him, with disastrous consequences. A mysterious cat appears in a young woman’s home, as inexplicable as the demise of her years-long relationship with her boyfriend. At turns humorous, sorrowful, and whimsical, this collection spans the familiar setting of a college town supermarket to eerie dystopias that are not just post-pandemic, but post-art.