Fantasy Realism

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dance hall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for. Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master’s dying wish: that Ren find the man’s finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master’s soul will wander the earth forever.

The fantasy novel you’ve always wished Jane Austen had written. When Jane realizes that one of Melody’s suitors is set on taking advantage of her sister for the sake of her dowry, she pushes her skills to the limit of what her body can withstand in order to set things right—and, in the process, accidentally wanders into a love story of her own.

God Mode on! In the wake of the withdrawal of wild faerie magic from most of the world, Faeries have become the new celebrities, and the most adored is the Faerie God himself. To capitalize on his popularity an online game called Lore has been created and has attracted the interest of none other but Lucifer, Azrael's father. But the Devil's noticed something odd about the game; his gaming friends are disappearing and there's a powerful monster that just won't die. When he calls in the Godhunter to help, she's pulled into an online world that may be more real than anyone thought. Will ...

We all have inner demons. We fight them all the time. Some of us achieve inner peace by coming to terms with them. But how do you come to terms with inner demons that tear free and become outer demons? Eric has been a vampire for nearly a century, and his demons are more than metaphors. While they controlled him, he was the Demon King. Now he has to avoid the monsters in his own mind, as well as angry nobles, fanatical religions, assassins, magi, other vampires, criminal organizations, and more.

June O'Donnell - aka Junior, aka Jack, aka Jonathan O'Donnell IV, aka the first female O'Donnell firstborn - has always been haunted by her family's mythic but complicated legacy. As she prepares to begin her final year of high school, June is itching to leave behind her ghosts in Five Fingers, Michigan, and travel the world. And then, just like it always happens to the O'Donnells, a painful glimmer from her past returns to mess everything up. Enter Saul Angert, the eldest son of Eli Angert, aka June's late father's mortal enemy.

I’m a thief. Look, it wasn’t my first career choice, okay? But my weird little power makes it insanely easy. Samira doesn’t know why she can manipulate the air around her. It’s just something she can do. And it makes picking pockets a breeze. Literally. Snarky and irreverent, Sam doesn’t give much of a damn for anyone except her next rich target. But then she runs into trouble, the serious kind, and has to be rescued by a charming prince, no less. Wealthy and attractive, he's just her type. Except for one thing: he has an insufferable older brother who sees right through her. Dhav...

The Dragons of Serai Series continues in another magical kingdom where cities rise above the clouds and love is as wild as the Dragons who rule. As a Dragon King, I should have little to complain about, but my life has become a monotony. I feel shackled to the throne, trudging through every day hoping for something to change. And then it did. While hunting a monster, I came across Shye. Utterly misnamed, Shye is anything but. He's vivacious, bold, hungry for life, and never hides what he feels. He makes me laugh. I can't remember when I've laughed so much or when I last looked upon my ...

Somewhere far away - or maybe right nearby - lies an archipelago called Popisho. A place of stunning beauty and incorrigible mischief, destiny, and mystery, it is also a place in need of change. A storm is brewing. Before it comes, before the end of the day, this wildly imaginative narrative will take us across the islands, their history, and into the lives of unforgettable characters.

In publishing-speak, here's what we at the LQ office sometimes describe as the Queer lovechild of Sholem Aleichem and Philip Roth: Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

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 ...

Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him.

Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean 11 years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.

Fairies are being turned to stone! Seren is faced with a ruthless enemy who seems to have discovered a way to steal magic from fairies. All evidence points to Lana Clach—ex-queen of the Colorado Underground—but the Councils aren't convinced. Can Ambassador Seren prove Lana's guilt before it's too late? Or is the future already etched in stone?

Present day. As a love affair comes to an end, and with it her dreams for her future, artist Selena needs a retreat. The picture-postcard Sloe Cottage in the Somerset village of Ashcombe promises to be the perfect place to forget her problems, and Selena settles into her new home as spring arrives. 1682: Grace Cotter longs for nothing more than a husband and family of her own. Separated by three hundred years, two women are drawn together by a home bathed in blood and magic.

Warlock Anna Atticus Stone is on her final year at the academy. As head of student council, academic prodigy, and champion arena dueler, she seems the perfect pupil. In reality, Anna is grieving, overwhelmed, and so lonely she talks to herself. Above all, she fears assassination if people find out her father’s dying gift to her was a scion. Only seven of these powerful artifacts exist, one in each kingdom—a precarious balance that maintains peace.

When my evil stepfather sold me into slavery, I thought my life was over. Sent to work in the kitchens at Darkstone Academy for the Magical Arts, an isolated reform school filled with dangerous young mages, I quickly learned that survival meant embracing the darkness. Danger shadowed my every step—until I found myself unexpectedly soul-bonded to four powerful men.

On Tommy Llewellyn’s first birthday, his doting parents awoke in a home without baby blankets and bottles in the fridge, without the photos of their newborn once scattered about, and without any idea that the one-year-old sleeping in their home was their child. That’s because Tommy Llewellyn is a boy who, in the very cosmic sense of things, will never be remembered—stuck in a universal Reset that causes everyone to forget he exists when the clock strikes midnight on his birthday each year.

Charlie Tannehill and her twin sister, Maggie, are just eight years old when an unfortunate scientific discovery upends their world—and the world order. The revelation? Extinction, encoded in every creature’s DNA. The expiration date for humans? Only four generations away. A decade later, unsure of what tomorrow holds, Charlie and Maggie enroll as counselors in a government-run human-husbandry program.

One spring afternoon after school, Amber arrives home on her bike. It’s just another perfectly normal day. But when Amber’s mom sees her, she screams. Because Amber died seven years ago, hit by a car while on the very same bicycle she’s inexplicably riding now. This return doesn’t only impact Amber. Her sister, Melissa, now seven years older, must be a new kind of sibling to Amber. Amber’s estranged parents are battling over her. And the changes ripple farther and farther out.

The third novel in the international bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, following four new customers in a cafe where customers can travel back in time. On the hillside of Mount Hakodate in northern Japan, Cafe Donna Donna is fabled for its dazzling views of Hakodate port. But that’s not all. Like the charming Tokyo cafe Funiculi Funicula, Cafe Donna Donna offers its customers the extraordinary experience of travelling through time.