Literary Realism

In 1995 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores is saved from drowning by a shiver of sharks. His family, struggling to make ends meet amidst the collapse of the sugar cane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favour from ancient Hawaiian gods. But as time passes, this hope gives way to economic realities, forcing Nainoa and his siblings to seek salvation across the continental United States, leaving behind home and family.

The downtown core of Toronto is being consumed by Elysium, a drug that allows its users to slip through the permeable edges of this world into the next, before consuming them utterly. Peddled by the icy Srebrenka, few have managed to escape the drug and its dealer. But Maggie has. Years after beating her addiction, Maggie is dismayed by the reappearance of Srebrenka in her life. Although she resists temptation, she quickly learns her brother, Kyle, has been ensnared by Srebrenka's beguiling.

Èkó, the spirit of Lagos, and his loyal minion Tatafo weave trouble through the streets of Lagos and through the lives of the ‘vagabonds’ powering modern Nigeria: the queer, the displaced and the footloose. With Tatafo as our guide we meet these people in the shadows. Among them are a driver for a debauched politician, a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work, a mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her reality.

Dans la Maison, vous allez perdre vos repères, votre nom et votre vie d'avant. Dans la Maison, vous vous ferez des amis, vous vous ferez des ennemis. Dans la Maison, vous mènerez des combats, vous perdrez des guerres. Dans la Maison, vous connaîtrez l'amour, vous connaîtrez la peur, vous découvrirez des endroits dont vous ne soupçonniez pas l'existence, et même quand vous serez seul, ça ne sera jamais vraiment le cas. Dans la Maison, aucun mur ne peut vous arrêter, le temps ne s'écoule pas toujours comme il le devrait, et la Loi y est impitoyable.

In northern Japan, overlooking the spectacular view Hakodate Port has to offer, Cafe Donna Donna has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than 100 years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. Translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot and featuring signature heart-warming characters and wistful storytelling, in Before Your Memory Fades, Kawaguchi once again invites the listener to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

A blue girl lives in the woods, eating secrets baked into moon pies and shaking up a small lakeside town. In this small lakeside town, mothers bake their secrets into moon pies they feed to a silent blue girl. Their daughters have secrets too - that they can’t sleep, that they might sleep with a neighbor boy, that they know more than they let on. But when the daughters find the blue girl, everyone’s carefully held silences shake loose.

A year after his dad's death, 12-year-old Lincoln wonders whether his strait-laced but clearly struggling mom will ever tell him what really happened the night of the car accident. How did she walk away, and his dad didn't? When would life return to normal? As it turns out, never again.

In the not-too-distant future, a young spy named Elísabet Eva finds herself mentally unraveling following an assignment in Paris. Everything in Elísabet’s life in the city—her friends, social engagements, and late nights—revolved around her work as a spy with the Special Unit. To regain her mental balance, Elísabet finds herself taking long solitary walks near the lake.

Brought to you by Penguin. Every slave plantation is a house of spies and intrigue. No slave walks a straight line or has a single story - deep within their hearts is betrayal and insurrection. But against whom? Hiram Walker is a man with a gift and a curse. He was born between worlds: his father a white plantation master, his mother a black slave. And, unbeknown even to himself, he was born with a special power. When he is sold to a new mistress as punishment for attempting escape, Hiram discovers her home is a secret hub of the underground railroad: a training ground for its agents.

For weeks, Rachel has been noticing the same golden-haired young man sitting at her Brooklyn bus stop, staring off with a melancholy air. When, one day, she finally musters the courage to introduce herself, the chemistry between them is undeniable: Thomas is wise, witty, handsome, mysterious, clearly a kindred spirit. There's just one tiny problem: He's dead. Stuck in a surreal limbo governed by bureaucracy, Thomas is unable to "cross over" to the afterlife until he completes a 90-day stint on earth, during which time he is forbidden to get involved with a member of the living.

Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating chronic back pain, a failed marriage and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theatre director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised, and cost, her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hell-bent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.

All Jared Martin had ever wanted was to be normal, which was already hard enough when he had to cope with Maggie, his hard-partying, gun-toting, literal witch of a mother, Indigenous teen life and his own addictions. When he wakes up naked, dangerously dehydrated and confused in the basement of his mom's old house in Kitimat, some of the people he loves - the ones who don't see the magic he attracts - just think he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety. The truth for Jared is so much worse.

Calamity is confronting two big transitions: the death of her beloved father and the beginning of menopause, a physical shift that has rekindled her gift for finding lost things. Suddenly, she is getting hot flashes that seem to forge objects out of thin air, most notably a four-year old boy. As Calamity takes the child into her care, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Then, Calamity must reawaken to the mysteries surrounding her own childhood and the early disappearance of her mother.

Ten short stories, different tastes, various shades are what make Ghost Runner & Others. Ghosts, lesbians, rapists, optimists, myths, achievers, mothers, lovers all are part of the short stories in Ghost Runner & Others. It travels through serene forests and mountains, obscure towns and burgeoning cities, even through imaginary landscape, imaginary time frames, yet it remains rooted in reality. It speaks of humans thriving through odds of politics, corruption and natural disasters. It connects history and mythology to the present and the future. In nutshell, Ghost Runner & Others narrates ...

In this last story of the Orisha series, The Queen’s Ascension, Queen Palina must navigate a web of secrets, betrayals, and shifting power dynamics to secure her rightful place as ruler of the Oyonan Empire. With her mother, High Priestess Tengdana by her side, Palina uncovers long-buried truths about her lineage, the empire's past, and her own role in its future. As rebellion brews and alliances are tested, Palina faces the ultimate challenge: to unify the empire under a new order or see it fall into chaos. Love, loyalty, and legacy collide in a gripping tale of ambition and redemption, ...

Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his tiny Mediterranean town for his music, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days. Then one night, Busi is viciously attacked by an intruder in his own courtyard - bitten and scratched. He insists his assailant was neither man nor animal. Soon, Busi’s account of what happened is being embellished to fan the flames of old rumor - of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest.

En la década de 1950, las tensiones en la ciudad de La Frontera son palpables. Las camisas de boliche y las chaquetas de cuero compiten con las guayaberas y los huaraches. Los convertibles corren al lado de las motocicletas. Sin embargo, en medio de la discordia, el amor joven florece a primera vista entre Fulgencio Ramírez, hijo de inmigrantes empobrecidos, y Carolina Mendelssohn, la hija del farmacéutico local. Pero como pronto descubrirán, sus lazos serán deshechos por una fuerza más poderosa de lo que podrían haber imaginado.

In each story in this collection, Haruki Murakami sidesteps the real and sprints for the surreal. Everyday events are transcended, leaving the reader dazzled by this master of his craft. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is Murakami's most eclectic collection of stories to date, spanning five years of his writing.

In 1969, in the wake of Malaysia's deadliest race riots, a woman named Du Li An secures her place in society by marrying a gangster. In a parallel narrative, a critic known only as The Fourth Person explores the work of a writer also named Du Li An. And a third storyline is in the second person; "you" are reading a novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Floundering in the wake of "your" mother's death, "you" are trying to unpack the secrets surrounding "your" lineage.

30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces. When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell?