Fantasy Realism

Click your heels three times and say, "There's no place like Bloomies!" Katie Chandler's life is pure magic - literally. As an executive assistant at Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., she's seen more than her share of fantastical occurrences. A mere Manhattan mortal, Katie is no wizard, but she's a wiz at exposing "hokum" pocus, cloaked lies, and deceptive enchantments. And she's fallen under the all-too-human spell of attraction to Owen, a hunky wizard and coworker. Owen, however, is preoccupied. Someone has broken into his office and disrupted top-secret files, and it reeks of an inside job.

I put out fires. He ignites them. When a naked man stumbled out of the wildfire we'd been battling for over a week, I figured he'd escaped from some psych ward in the middle of nowhere. We all did. Who else walks barefoot through hell with a grin on his face? But then Kaspian did the impossible. He stopped the fire—snapped his fingers, and it died. You save a firefighter’s life, and you become more than a mystery. You become family. After that, I didn’t care if he was a lunatic, an alien, or the Dragon he claimed to be. Family is family. So I brought the naked man home. And slowly, ...

It's late summer, war is raging, and families are torn apart by divided loyalties and deadly secrets. In this complex and dangerous time, a young French Canadian lieutenant is captured and billeted with a Long Island family, an unwilling and unwelcome guest. As he begins to pitch in with the never-ending household tasks and farm chores, Jean-Philippe de Sabran finds himself drawn to the daughter of the house. Slowly, Lydia Wilde comes to lean on Jean-Philippe, true soldier and gentleman, until their lives become inextricably intertwined.

Sarah... "She looked almost like any typical teenage girl that you might see congregating at the mall or movie theater. She had an innocent ‘girl next door’ beauty with a smattering of tiny freckles across her nose overlooked by sparkling gem-like sapphire blue eyes. It was only when you looked closer that the Barbie image wavered a bit. First of all, this girl was ripped. She had the muscle tone of an Olympic athlete. The long legs barely covered by her brief pink pleated skirt rippled with muscle. And the arms shown off by her short sleeved white silk blouse displayed the hard, dense ...

Carrie Morgan ran from Woodsmoke ten years ago, and the decision has haunted her ever since. Spending a decade painting and drifting around Europe, she tries to forget her family’s legacy and the friends she left behind. But the Morgan women have always been able to harness the power of the mountains surrounding the town, and their spells—and curses—are sewn into the soil. The mountains, they say, never forget. Sure enough, when Carrie’s grandmother dies and leaves behind her dilapidated cottage, she returns to renovate—certain she will only be there for one winter.

A Spellbinding Contemporary Cozy Fantasy Full of Surprising (What Could Have Been) Romances and Suspense. When Cassie Harris steps into The Four Guardians, she’s merely chasing hope—a flicker of a future better than the life she’s been living. But what the mysterious shopkeepers offer is far more than she ever imagined: a chance to experience the lives she could have had… if only she’d made different choices. Each day for seven days, Cassie emerges from her shower not into her own world—but into an alternate reality where love, danger, and destiny collide. Some lives shimmer ...

The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers.

Grieving, she’s raising the next Alpha alone. He’s evading arranged marriage. Can destiny unite a werewolf and an alien? Marika Edgewater has refused to shift since her husband’s tragic death. A brutal biker attack forces her into wolf form, leaving her gravely injured. When a mysterious, handsome stranger heals her, their unexpected connection threatens her community’s carefully held secret. Evan wants to live on his own terms. Fleeing his home realm and rejoicing in his newfound freedom on Earth, he’s stunned when he stumbles across a woman who’s been fatally stabbed. And ...

Following the birth of her second daughter, Vervain just wants to relax. But the Christian God has become insanely obsessed with her husband, Azrael. Consumed by fury, Jerry attacks the Faerie God in devious ways, all while he remains safely ensconced in Heaven. With every strike, it becomes more apparent that Jerry doesn't care who gets hurt by his vengeance; he's willing to sacrifice everyone and everything to destroy Azrael. The God Squad's goal of stopping a war between Heaven and Hell is soon replaced by another—killing Jehovah. Can they put an end to Jerry's tyranny once and for all...

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone - and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything....

Fille de l'esclave Abena violée par un marin anglais à bord d'un vaisseau négrier, Tituba, née à la Barbade, est initiée aux pouvoirs surnaturels par Man Yaya, guérisseuse et faiseuse de sorts. Son mariage avec John Indien l'entraîne à Boston, puis au village de Salem au service du pasteur Parris. C'est dans l'atmosphère hystérique de cette petite communauté puritaine qu'a lieu le célèbre procès des sorcières de Salem en 1692. Tituba est arrêtée, oubliée dans sa prison jusqu'à l'amnistie générale qui survient deux ans plus tard.

As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Haruki Murakami's protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls, plays chaperone to a lovely teenaged psychic, and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man. Dance Dance Dance is a tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through the cultural Cuisinart that is contemporary Japan, a place where everything that is not up for sale is up for grabs.

Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to Western European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories that have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the 20th century.

Heroes rise from the most unlikely places. For, what others might view as unusual or irrelevant, just might be the surprising weapons needed to defeat an enemy. If Ruby existed in today's world, she would possibly be labeled with learning disabilities and perhaps a slight case of social anxiety. She is unusual in many ways. With radiant pink wings and unruly hair, Ruby stands out. But never in the way she wanted to. It is the peculiarity that draws attention to her; from her vivid imagination to her misunderstood sense of humor; Ruby is a rare fairy indeed. But even in a mysterious world ...

An epic adventure steeped in Hawaiian lore, this enchanting novel explores the connection between our world and that of the spirits of the wood, from bestselling author Nikki Van De Car.

Necropolis follows Sajan Dayal, a detective in pursuit of a serial (though nonlethal) collector of fingers. He encounters would-be vampires and werewolves, and a woman named Razia who may or may not be centuries old.

This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Welcome to Shadow Vale, where the locals bite, monsters are real and the witches play fast and loose with the rules. Kristen O’Mead left behind grief and the magical shenanigans of Shadow Vale ten years ago. Now she’s back, to dust off her magic and solve the riddle of her ex-husband’s ghost. Unfortunately he’s not the only ghost from her past she has to deal with. Shadow Vale isn’t your usual town tucked away amongst the rolling hills. It’s a haven for paranormals, protected by a Forget-Me spell, and the old stomping grounds of her teenage hormones. She’s barely settled into ...

“At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who goes unnamed. “In the mid-seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century.

Two strangers in a foreign city, Thora and Santi meet in a chance encounter. At once, they recognize in each other a kindred spirit - someone who is longing for more in life than the cards they’ve been dealt. Before their friendship can blossom, though, a tragic accident cuts their story short.