Metaphysical Fiction

Henry is a middle-aged, happily married man in the 20th century. After suffering a sudden heart attack, Henry finds himself in the unknown realm of the afterlife. Lost, alone, and confused, he meets Croton. As they embark on their journey together, Croton opens Henry’s eyes to all the beauty of his new reality and all the exploring that awaits him. But not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Henry eventually learns who Croton really is—and that’s when their adventure truly begins.

Fred Wursup has an enviable existence. Paid to travel around the world "harvesting the annual crop of stars and villains", he has a beautiful geophysicist girlfriend and a friendly relationship with his ex-wife Susannah, whose living room he can see into from the roof of his Lexington Avenue apartment. His latest book, a collective portrait of brilliant but flawed leaders called Down the American Drain, had the good fortune to be published at the height of the Watergate scandal, sending it to the top of the best seller lists.

The countdown has begun. The Tenth Protocol has been activated, and the evacuation of the surface is about to begin. Millions of lives will be saved, but billions more will be lost. As the old world crumbles, there are some on the surface who seek to save those doomed to die a gruesome death. But are they willing to sacrifice themselves to achieve it?

The Dalai Lama’s Cat is confronted by a most unpleasant truth: she is getting old. A routine visit to the vet confirms this. But is a future of decrepitude and senior cat biscuits inevitably a cause for despair? As it happens, she soon finds that a startling reminder of life’s transience is exactly what’s needed to renew our gratitude for life. To lighten up, accept ourselves and value what truly matters.

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.

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".

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.

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.

"It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air." This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the mountains of Germany - a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics.

An Ojibwe boy runs away from a North Ontario Indian School, not realizing just how far away home is. Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and ultimately offering him a type of comfort on his difficult journey back to the place he was so brutally removed from.

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.

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.

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.

After losing his wife and two young sons in an airplane crash, professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then, watching television one night, he sees a clip from a lost film by the silent comedian Hector Mann. Zimmer soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to study the works of this mysterious figure who vanished from sight in 1929.

Groom? Check. Dress? Check. Cake? Check. More cake? Double Check. Even more cake? Triple check. (Seriously, who left Lethe alone with Grier's credit card?) Anything that can go wrong has, but all the deposits have been paid, and the menus are set. Mostly. There's always room for more cake, right? All that's left is for Grier and Linus to exchange vows and set off on their honeymoon. Their happily ever after awaits, so close they can taste it.

Curious? This thought-provoking and original novel blends humor, philosophy, science, and history into a captivating story that celebrates the beautiful mess of being human. A novel that promises to touch your heart, make you laugh, and leave you thinking.

After the death of his beloved Queen Lostris, Taita retreats into the forbidding deserts of North Africa to become a hermit. He devotes himself to the study of the occult and, armed with extraordinary powers, he gradually transforms himself into a warlock. After years of study, he discovers the divine purpose of his bereavement when he is called upon to save the dynasty of Lostris from the clouds of evil that loom over Egypt.

In the Before, humankind is created with a hole in its heart, the designers not realizing their mistake—if it was a mistake—until too late. Elliot Chance is just a boy, and knows nothing of this. All he knows is that he doesn’t feel at home in this world, and his desire for escape becomes more urgent as he grows into adulthood, where the turbulence of life seems to offer no cure for the emptiness. Desperate and lost, he stumbles upon a support group on the edge of Manhattan. There he meets two other drifting souls and launches into the business of life, determined to be happy.

The Actual Star takes listeners on a journey over thousands of years and six continents—collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle. An epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

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.