Metaphysical Fiction

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.

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.

Following the acclaimed Secrets of the Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, this is an expansive lyrical novel in the tradition of Indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, Stealing Benefacio's Roses interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the political horrors of civil war with lyric retellings of sacred Mayan myths.

Jesus is a fresh and inspirational re-imagining of a young man's transformational journey from carpenter's son to revolutionary leader to the man many believe to be the savior of the world. Very little is known or recorded about Jesus in his formative years. In the Gospel stories, we witness the birth of Jesus and then see him as a young boy of 12 intensely questioning the Rabbis in the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

For Dr. Siena Dupont and her ambitious team, the Alpenglow glacier expedition is a career-defining opportunity. But 30 miles into the desolate Deadswitch Wilderness, they discover a missing hiker dangling from a tree, and their satellite phone fails to call out.

The Magic Mala (pronounced mah-lah) is the story of Robby Robertson, a down-on-his-luck writer who realizes that he doesn't know as much about life as he once believed. His desperate financial circumstances lead him to open his mind to new ways of living. After finding some mala beads, Robby is taken on a magical journey that teaches him the secrets to personal manifestation and happiness.

A young musician in England who has been suffering from depression and a nervous ailment goes on holiday in order to recuperate. While abroad, she meets an Italian artist, Cellini, who gives her a special draught for relaxation. The young woman has divine visions under the influence of the strange potion which she longs to have again. Cellini takes her to a doctor who describes himself as an “electric physician,” and with his help she is able to experience more visions. With each vision she learns more about religion and the destiny of mankind, but it is not enough.

Julian Barnes pens a kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar’s search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert and the obsession of this detective, whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert’s characters.

The Star Rover is a 1914 collection of science fiction short stories with the theme of reincarnation. It tells the story of Darrell Standing, an inmate of San Quentin’s death row. The narrator escapes the horror of prison life by withdrawing into altered states and the memory of past lives. Forming the body of the work, the accounts of these past lives are vivid but disconnected. They include a desert island survival story, one which involves a Roman perspective on Christ, a tale of medieval Korea, and one which takes place in a prehistoric era.

Allison Moore is making it. Barely. The Seattle area architecture firm she started with her best friend is struggling, but at least they’re free from the games played by the corporate world. She’s gotten over her divorce. And while her dad’s recent passing is tough, their relationship had never been easy. Then the bomb drops. Her dad had a secret life and left her mom in massive debt. As Allison scrambles to help her mom find a way out, she’s given a journal, anonymously, during a visit to her favorite coffee shop.

கோடிப் பிரதிகள் விற்றுச்சாதனை படைத்துள்ள நூல் ஆன்மாவிற்குப் பரவசமூட்டுகின்ற ஞானத்தை உள்ளடக்கிய எளிய, சக்திவாய்ந்த இப்புத்தகம், ஆன்டலூசியா பகுதியைச் சேர்ந்த, சான்டியாகோ என்ற செம்மறியாட்டு இடையன் ஒருவனைப் பற்றியது.

In Vita Nostra, Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers’ expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail.

Also sprach Zarathustra was conceived and written by Friedrich Nietzsche during the years 1881-1885; the first three Parts were published in 1883 and 1884. The book formed part of his "campaign against morality", in which Nietzsche explored the ethical consequences of the "death of God".

An apocalyptic cult member carries out a gas attack on a rush-hour metro, but what connects him to a jazz buff in Tokyo? A woman on a holy mountain talks to a tree, and the tree talks back. Add to this a Mongolian gangster, an English spy, a despondent "zookeeper", a nuclear scientist, a ghostwriter, a ghost, and a late night New York DJ. All of them have tales to tell, and all must play their part as they are caught up in the inescapable forces of cause and effect.

New York City, New Year's weekend, 2001. Jillian Guthrie, a troubled young journalist, stumbles onto a tantalizing mystery: the same man, unaged, stands alongside Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gandhi in three different photographs spanning eighty-five years of history.

A curious thing happened when Larry Lizer woke up this morning. When he opened his eyes, he did not recognize his surroundings. Most people would have been put out by such a significant inconvenience, but it was not a feeling unfamiliar to Larry Lizer. In fact, he had been dealing with this particular interdimensional peculiarity for a long time.

This lyrical novel sweeps listeners away to an ignoble period from Japanese history, when lives were shattered by intolerance - and for one group of societal outcasts, survival hinged on the determination of the human spirit. In 1948, a 19-year-old pearl diver with leprosy is forced to erase her name from family records and move to an island leprosarium. Mere miles from the home she can never return to, she must accept that her life will never be the same.

The God Matrix is a spiritual thriller that blends mystery, suspense, military intrigue, and maybe even Alien abductions, with spiritual principles and quantum physics. It will captivate you and keep you on the edge of your seat, as you are swept up in an adventure that leaves you wondering at the truth of you own existence, and even more so, wondering whether the story is indeed fact or fiction.