Fantasy Realism

One stormy Irish summer night, Olive and her best friend, Rose, begin to lose things. It starts with simple items like hairclips and jewelry, but soon it's clear that Rose has lost something much bigger, something she won't talk about, and Olive thinks her best friend is slipping away. Then seductive diary pages written by a girl named Laurel begin to appear all over town. And Olive meets three mysterious strangers: Ivy, Hazel, and her twin brother, Rowan, secretly squatting in an abandoned housing estate.

Beneath the serene facade of Twin Pines, an ancient evil waits in the shadows. For Emma Flowers, a troubled teenager grappling with her father's mysterious disappearance and her mother's overbearing nature, life has become a labyrinth of bad moods and unanswered questions. Then, after a night of bad storms, Emma finds her neighbor’s dog dead in the middle of the street. As the mystery intensifies, teenagers around town begin falling into coma-like, nightmare states. As the creature moves in on Emma, she begins to uncover the evil’s origins, discovering dark parts of her own past in the ...

There hasn’t been a winner of the Miss Meteor beauty pageant who looks like Lita Perez or Chicky Quintanilla in all its history. But that’s not the only reason Lita wants to enter the contest or her ex-best friend Chicky wants to help her. The road to becoming Miss Meteor isn’t about being perfect; it’s about sharing who you are with the world - and loving the parts of yourself no one else understands.

Forced to become an Honourbound soldier in the Everlasting King's army, Huon struggles to do what is right when his actions are completely out of his control. He attained Knighthood, and is the strongest he's ever been, but his advancement means nothing while oathbound.

This fierce and beautiful story charts the histories of two women: Rae, young, unmarried, and far from home, awaits the birth of her first child. Lila, a fortune-teller with no interest in the future, lost her own daughter more than a quarter of a century earlier in New York. When these two women meet in Southern California, it's earthquake weather - the time when unexpected things happen.

The Kingdom of Virgo has lived in peace for thousands of years...until now. The humans from Terran have always been real assholes to the witches of Virgo. Now a silent war is brewing, and the timing couldn’t be worse. Princess Azure will soon be crowned queen of the Kingdom of Virgo. In the Dark Forest, a powerful potion-maker has been murdered. Charmsgood was the only wizard who could stop a deadly virus plaguing Virgo.

It all starts on the morning the letter D disappears from language. First, it vanishes from Dhikilo’s parents’ conversation at breakfast, then from the road signs outside and from her school dinners. Soon the local dentist and the neighbor’s dalmatian are missing, and even the Donkey Derby has been called off. Though she doesn’t know why, Dhikilo is summoned to the home of her old history teacher Professor Dodderfield and his faithful Labrador, Nelly Robinson. And this is where our story begins.

Getting whisked off to an alternative dimension is bad enough, but when you’re not exactly in the first flush of youth it adds another, um… dimension. Say hello to Maisie and Doris! Maisie has long believed in the kind of things most people never think about. Her sister Doris shakes her head and tries to ignore her belief in stuff that goes bump in the night… perhaps hoping it’s just a phase which one day will simply fade away. They both spent much of their lives in Scraggy Bottom after all! Sadly for Doris, late one night everything changes. Any slight hope of phases fading ...

Lou feels like she is stuck on the wrong path: alone, in a city far from home, watching other people be happy. When the man she’s in love with announces his engagement to someone else, Lou is consumed by what-ifs. That’s when she finds herself slipping back in time to a night two years ago, where one small decision changed everything …

Deep beneath the sea, off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father. On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. She longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice? Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans.

When a mysterious entity grants a man who died a chance to be a hero in another life in a fantasy world, he cannot believe his luck. The one condition: he must fight the demon king if he shows up during his new iteration. He accepts and…Wakes in the body of a young female wolf beastkin named Lucia haunted by the memory of orcs ravaging her town. Not the rebirth he was hoping for.

The mages push Earth closer to a war that no one can win. Kristen and her team are all that stands between them and the utter annihilation of everyone she loves. But the mages may not be the worst threat she has to face! In the shadows, someone lurks, manipulating others for his own gain. The Mage assassins are no longer content to hide in the shadows. Their day has arrived, and they will rise to remake the world into a place without dragons.

When hell breaks loose, heaven needs a bounty hunter. James Thomas kills demons, cavorts with imps, and doesn’t let Heaven tell him what to do. To pay the bills he works as a bounty hunter, bringing in scum bags who fail to show up at their court dates. It’s bad enough that he has to try and keep his quasi apprentice and secretary, Rainah, from sticking her nose in business where it doesn’t belong, but it seems that a quiet neighborhood has been primed with demonic shrines whose only purpose is to blow everything to hell and back. James, once again, must figure out who and what is ...

Jolie Lam, a high school sophomore in San Jose, is known for two things: her bizarre freakout at last year’s swim meet and her fortuneteller grandfather with visions of dragons and earthquakes. Friendless and ostracized, Jolie's life takes a dramatic turn for the better when she saves the school's it-girl, Huong Pham, during a haunting vision of her own. Taken under Huong's wing, Jolie's world transforms, in more ways than one.

Ophelia Castellan will never be just another girl at Elsinore Academy. Seeing ghosts is not a skill prized in future society wives. Even when she takes her pills, the bean sidhe beckon, reminding her of a promise to her dead mother. Now, in the wake of the Headmaster's sudden death, the whole academy is in turmoil, and Ophelia can no longer ignore the fae. Especially once she starts seeing the Headmaster's ghosts - two of them - on the school grounds.

Listening to John Crowley's stories is to see almost-familiar lives running parallel to our own, secret histories that never quite happened, memories that might be real or might be invented. In the 13 stories collected here, Crowley sets his imagination free to roam from a 20th-century Shakespeare festival to spring break at a future Yale in his Edgar Award-winning story "Spring Break". And in the previously unpublished "Anosognosia", the world brought about by one John C.'s high-school accident may or may not exist.

Every night, as Faye puts her daughters to bed, she thinks of her own mother, Jeanie, who died when Faye was eight. The pain of that loss has never left her, and that’s why she wants her own girls to know how very much they are loved by her — and always will be, whatever happens. Then one day, Faye gets her heart’s desire when she’s whisked back into the past and is reunited not just with her mother but with her own younger self.

Stagmother is a savage road warrior nomad who battles the bloodthirsty scavengers that stalk the desert of a world beyond imagination. In the wake of a hard kill she comes to the rescue of a wandering man that has lost his memory and who bears a wound the shape of a powerful symbol in his chest that never seems to heal. The pair find themselves pursued by deadly enemies wearing haunting crow masks. After several violent encounters they must seek answers in the depths of a vibrant underground city where the last survivors of this blasted world gather for safety and community. Journey to a ...

The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister’s memory. Their dream of leaving Southtown now seems out of reach.

Grace, as her friends call her, has a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg and grease worked deep into her hands. She works at Sanchez Motorworks customizing hot rods. Finding the line in a classic car is her calling. Now Grace has to find the line in her own life. Grace loves John, and John loves her, and that would be wonderful, except that John, like Grace, has unfinished business: He's haunted by the childhood death of his younger brother. He's never stopped feeling responsible.