Metaphysical Fiction

C'est l'histoire d'un livre sur le yoga et la dépression. La méditation et le terrorisme. L'aspiration à l'unité et le trouble bipolaire. Des choses qui n'ont pas l'air d'aller ensemble, et pourtant : elles vont ensemble.

The best-selling author of Second Nature, Illumination Night and Turtle Moon now offers her most fascinating and tantalizingly accomplished novel yet -- a winning tale that amply confirms Alice Hoffman's reputation not only as a genius of the vivid scene and unforgettable character but as one of America's most captivating storytellers.

A girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.

Deep beneath the mountains of Mexico lies an abandoned underworld: an ancient and enormous archaeological wonder that dwarfs anything ever created by humanity. Trying to flee from its clutches with a stolen artifact, Sarah Morgan holds the key to exposing an extinct species, once capable of extraordinary cultural and scientific advances. But an unknown terror awaits her in the abyss, something distinctly...inhuman.

On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her...despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort.

In the city of Verdholm, canals separate the highborns in the center sections of the city from the lowborns along the outer sections. The city is isolated, surrounded by a deadly swamp and steam fields which should protect the people of the city from the dangerous outside world. Until it doesn't. For Sam, an orphaned thief who wants only to protect her brother, protection means stealing enough so she can one day buy her way into a better section. She's a skilled thief, and when she's offered a job that can change everything for her, what choice does she have but to take it?

Lune Tatum, adopted daughter of the Supreme Elite, has lived within her father's walled city for 11 years. But she wants out. Except she can't leave, and not because of the clans and mutated beasts that roam beyond the impenetrable, electrified walls protecting her life. Her plan has always been to win the Elite Trials and earn Title of Choice - her only chance at freedom. And the only way to return home to her mother. Then a boy from her past arrives on her 18th birthday. His presence threatens Lune's carefully laid plans and exposes memories she's desperate to forget.

Aria Abbott has never had a home. Drifting through the foster system for most of her life, she finally finds herself in a situation so unbearable that she has no choice but to run away. Sleeping on the streets pushes Aria beyond any suffering she has felt before; the only thing worse than seeing no escape is the knowledge that no one in the world cares enough to try and find her. Enter Taylor, a homeless young man with a charismatic smile and a dream of fame, fortune, and the sunshine of LA. Swept up in his energy, Aria and Taylor board a greyhound bus and never look back.

"All good heroes are insane." Was that really a joke? Jonathon Hunter hasn't the time to ponder the labels people try to put on him. The war shifts from defensive to offensive. The stakes get higher, as the means to fight the aggressors finally become available. But has he risen too high? Or are the consequences of his own actions interfering with his judgement? As fast as you move, the past is faster and always catches up with you when you least expect it. This is not a game, and being a hero has its own price tag.

It was that transitional time of the world when man first brought the clang of iron and the reek of smoke to the lands which before had echoed only with fairy voices. In that dawn of man and death of magic, there yet remained one last untouched place - the small forest of Ealdwood - which kept the magic intact and protected the old ways. And there was one who dwelt there, Arafel the Sidhe, who had more pride and love of the world as it used to be than any of her kind.

Azrael-angel of death, grim reaper, destroyer of worlds-has messed up. Instead of taking Molly Molloy's soul, he patted her on the back and saved her from choking on a chicken wing. Now this extraordinarily ordinary New York City waitress can see him. Talk to him. Touch him. Say 'no' to him. And make him question every assumption he has about what it means to live.

Rescued from unscrupulous breeders who plan to destroy him because of his floppy ear, when the Queen’s littlest corgi arrives at Windsor Castle, he finds himself in a world of red carpets, gilded chambers - and not a pile of dirty laundry to be seen. Charming his way into the affections of the royal household, Nelson offers a dog’s-eye view of life with the Queen. He eavesdrops on her encounters with celebrities, philanthropists and advisers, catching rare insights into the secrets of a purposeful life.

After living in the city of Orphalese for 12 years, a prophet is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a seeress and the people of the city, who ask him for his insights into life. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

Following the tragic death of his sister, 1-year-old Dill's life changes forever. In an attempt to escape their grief, Dill and his parents move to his grandmother's remote cottage in the countryside. Isolated from his family, who are struggling to come to terms with their loss, Dill spends his time exploring the wild landscape with his trusty spaniel, Bramble. He soon learns that life in his new home, the Dip-n-Dells, is anything but lonely.

Yuki Hirano is just out of high school when his parents enroll him, against his will, in a forestry training program in the remote mountain village of Kamusari. No phone, no internet, no shopping. Just a small, inviting community where the most common expression is “take it easy.” At first, Yuki is exhausted, fumbles with the tools, asks silly questions, and feels like an outcast. Kamusari is the last place a city boy from Yokohama wants to spend a year of his life. But as resistant as he might be, the scent of the cedars and the staggering beauty of the region have a pull.

Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of European literature. What happens when his idiosyncratic imagination meets some of the greatest literary minds writing in English across the globe today? From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting.

Plunged into darkness, the Earth's surface is shrouded in dust from the impact of asteroid AG5. Whilst the cloud threatens to choke the very fabric of civilization, Sarah Morgan is being held prisoner. In the depths of a subterranean facility, she has uncovered a deadly weapon; the truth behind the enormous structure buried beneath the Earth. Elsewhere, Professor Steiner and Robert Goodwin may be humanity's greatest hope, but they must struggle against monumental adversity as an internal battle rages within the Global Meteor Response Council.

On the occasion of the centenary of Mata Hari's execution for espionage in 1917, Paulo Coelho reconsiders her life and character in a fictional memoir. In a series of letters written from prison on the eve of her death, Mata Hari reflects on the choices she has made to always pursue her own truth - from her childhood in a small Dutch town to unhappy years as the wife of an alcoholic diplomat in Java to her calculated and self-fashioned rise to celebrity in Paris and across Europe as an exotic dancer.

In The Archer we meet Tetsuya, a man once famous for his prodigious gift with a bow and arrow but who has since retired from public life, and the boy who comes searching for him. The boy has many questions, and in answering them Tetsuya illustrates the way of the bow and the tenets of a meaningful life. Paulo Coelho's story suggests that living without a connection between action and soul cannot fulfill, that a life constricted by fear of rejection or failure is not a life worth living.

When a repairman accidentally finds a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of the crack are sent scrambling to discover their motives. Will these parallel humans come in peace, or are they just as corrupt and ill-intentioned as the people of this world?