American Magic

At the crossroads of his life, Lipsha Morrissey is summoned by his grandmother to return to the reservation. There, he falls in love for the very first time—with the beautiful Shawnee Ray, who’s already considering a marriage proposal from Lipsha’s wealthy entrepreneurial boss, Lyman Lamartine. But when all efforts to win Shawnee’s affections go hopelessly awry, Lipsha seeks out his great-grandmother for a magical solution to his romantic dilemma—on sacred ground where a federally sanctioned bingo palace is slated for construction.

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.

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared - or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied.

Hugo Contreras’s world in Miami has shrunk. Since his wife died, Hugo’s debt from her medical bills has become insurmountable. He shuffles between his efficiency apartment, La Carreta (his favorite place for a cafecito), and a botanica in a strip mall where he works as the resident babaláwo.

Minerva Soledad Miranda is determined to reach her goals, despite shouldering more responsibility than the other kids at school—like caring for her two sisters while her mom works two jobs. But one night, Minerva's mom doesn't come home, and Minerva has to figure out what to do. Was Mamá snapped up by immigration enforcement? Will the girls be sent to foster homes or holding centers for migrant kids? Minerva and her sisters can't let anyone know Mamá has disappeared. They'll just pretend everything is normal until she comes back.

The Cloud Runners live on a patch of grassland between the mountains and the desert. Many years ago, the Goddess created a path through the clouds to bring them here, fleeing death and destruction. With game in the grasslands and woodlands and safe from any enemies, the Cloud Runners prospered. Now overhunting has killed all the game, and foragers have stripped the woodland clean. It would seem the Goddess has turned her back on them, and as the last tribal treasures are traded away for food, starvation threatens. Jermyn, a youth of only ten and five years, is fed up with watery stew. ...

The Princess and the Prophet tells the story of the Black Broadway performer who, among the world of Arabian acrobats and equestrians, Muslim fakirs, and Wild West shows, discovered in Islam a greater measure of freedom and dignity, and a rebuttal to the racism and parochialism of white America.

Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and also, devastatingly, from within. When her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, Betty has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.

Blue’s daughter, Tsitra, is dying a horrific death. Thousands of miles away, Blue feels time slowing and hears voices, followed by an 18-month stillness. More than a century before, Blue’s grandparents, Amanda and Palmer, attend a salon party in New Orleans. It’s a veritable array of who’s-who within pre-Civil War social circles.

What happens when you finally meet the girl you've been dreaming about your entire life? For pro football player Colin Schaeffer, the answer is as easy as his entire life has been. Since childhood, Colin Schaeffer has been destined for greatness. Descended from a line of football stars, Colin was born to play the game. And despite the tragic death of his mother and his subsequent picture-perfect family, everything in life had gone pretty much according to plan. There was only one thing that stumped him, and that was the dreams he had of a mystery girl, one that he assumed was a part of his ...

On the eve of the new millennium, in a city in southern Japan that progress has forgotten, sixteen-year-old Anna Obata looks to the stars for solace. An outcast at school, and left to fend for herself and care for her increasingly senile grandfather at home, Anna copes with her loneliness by searching the night sky for answers. But everything changes the evening the Low Earth Orbit satellite (LEO for short) returns her gaze and sees her as no one else has before.

For Talib Ware, the past is simply what happened yesterday. Talib “Kalim” spent centuries falling in love with the same woman, Hagar. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Hagar, despite them changing name and form, have been drawn together. And he remembers it all. Talib has “the memory”. The ability to recall past lives and recognize souls of those he's previously known. It is a gift and a curse. For all the times he and Hagar have been drawn together throughout history, she's found some way to break his heart, tearing them painfully and sometimes fatally ...

Black women are doing it all, and it's not just the Oprahs and Beyonces. There's an entire group of us that are just, well, regular. We're handling things like figuring out if this is the right time to speak up in that work meeting and risk our opinion now being the "voice" for all Black women at our job or if this is the right night to introduce our silk hair bonnet to our nighttime routine in the relationship that is just getting serious. These experiences range from impactful to trivial life decisions, but they shape who are.

Born of parents who traveled through time ensuring the birth of a great legend, Raven Kangee has her own destiny to fulfill. Her disbelief in fairy tales is shattered when four books mysteriously appear. Conceived over a century ago and born in the 21st century, Raven’s purpose for the Real People would manifest in unexpected and extraordinary ways. She would witness a world fading back to the past, as she effortlessly moved between eras, ensuring the safety of future prominent Native American figures. Unlike her mother’s purpose, her destiny extended far beyond the boundaries of the ...

When Lu and George Barnes drop their only daughter, Pippa, off at college, they return to their Sonoma home to find that their paths have diverged. Confronted with an empty nest, Lu’s increasing dissatisfaction with their materialistic lives becomes impossible to ignore. She is most content outdoors, finding the animals in her backyard far superior company to her pretentious neighbors. In contrast, George is eager to throw himself into his business, a local winery with an elite clientele, as well as his art collection.

Canisia Lubrin's debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure is deceptively simple: it departs from the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.

A group of women contemplate violence after they’re sent into foreign territory to make husbands of the enemy. A support network of traumatized joggers meets to discuss the bodies they’ve found on their runs. And a town replaces its Confederate monument with a rotating cast of local residents. Slippery but muscular, sly but electric, this stunning debut collection moves from horror to magical realism to satire with total authority. In these stories, characters build and remake their sense of home, be it with one another or within themselves.

Eleven-year-old Josephine knows that no one is good enough for her daddy. That's why she makes a habit of scaring his new girlfriends away. She's desperate to make it onto her school's cricket team because she'll get to play her favorite sport and use the cricket matches to distract Daddy from dating. But when Coach Broomes announces that girls can't try out for the team, the frustrated Josephine cuts into a powerful silk cotton tree and accidentally summons a bigger problem into her life.

And what if in each universe there reigned other Black woman gods? One million versions of god, and one million saints to watch over us? And what if this Black woman god were placed here on earth? These are just a few of the questions Anastacia-Reneé asks in this daring and mind-bending hybrid collection. Hers is a universe of striking variety—monsters, nontraditional saints, witches, zombies, the couple in the apartment next door, the wise elders from down the block, and gods watching over us all—as well as community and connectedness.

El intenso relato del regreso clandestino del director de cine Miguel Littín a Chile, su patria.