Metaphysical Fiction

With an eye for rendering the timely in a timeless way and enchanting audiences with lyrical prose and grace, Ali Smith's ambitious Seasonal Quartet—a series of four stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected—artfully guided us through #MeToo, Brexit, the refugee crisis, a global pandemic, and more. Now, Smith's highly anticipated Companion Piece looks to the future and builds upon this "time-sensitive project". This new novel stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself.

A post-apocalyptic human resistance sci-fi fantasy novel A lone hiker isolated on the trail, encounters a blinking light in the forest. His curiosity overtakes him. He leaves the trail to investigate the blinking light and encounters a trail of dead soldiers in the woods whose deaths cannot be explained. They appear to have fallen dead where they stood. The trail of dead bodies leads him to a seemingly deserted military bunker where he learns that the military has been conducting a project in artificial intelligence in secret. As he enters further into the compound, he comes to realize that...

In searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard's extraordinary narrative tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces, before our rapt ears, his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more dependent on the loved ones who are caring for him. The narrator's memories and preoccupations often echo those of our current moment - for here are stories of immigration and community, inclusion and exclusion, suspicion and trust.

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.

Grace Berney is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Food and Drug Administration, a woman who once brimmed with purpose but somehow turned into a middle-aged single mom with a dull government job and a melancholy sense that life has passed her by. Until the night a strange photo comes across her desk, of a young woman in a hospital bed who has been subjected to a mysterious procedure.

What do you do when pirates kidnap you for a ransom and a mad scientist injects you with a powerful and inevitably fatal concoction of aether? You get revenge. Matilda Katrine Myra is no one special, but her pirate abductors don’t know that. When they boldly kidnap her from an airship and sweep her away into the deadly wasteland of mutants and poisonous radiation, her life becomes a day to day battle to evade death. And she’s much closer to death than ever. A mad scientist has injected her with toxic condensed aether, the air of the gods, and now she’ll need frequent doses just to ...

In einem Café mitten im Nirgendwo wird John mit 3 Sinnfragen konfrontiert. "Die Möwe Jonathan für das neue Jahrtausend." Ein kleines Café mitten im Nirgendwo wird zum Wendepunkt im Leben von John, einem Werbemanager, der stets in Eile ist. Eigentlich will er nur kurz Rast machen, doch dann entdeckt er auf der Speisekarte neben dem Menü des Tages drei Fragen: "Warum bist du hier? Hast du Angst vor dem Tod? Führst du ein erfülltes Leben?" Wie seltsam - doch einmal neugierig geworden, will John mithilfe des Kochs, der Bedienung und eines Gastes dieses Geheimnis ergründen.

Hundreds of thousands of people have totally lost the ability to sleep. Run by the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers, the Slumber Corps is at the forefront of the fight against this deadly new disease. But when Trish is confronted by "Baby A", the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious "Donor Y", whose horrific, infectious nightmares are threatening to sweep through the precious sleep supply, her faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter.

A Brida, una joven irlandesa de veintiún años, le interesa la magia, pero quiere ir más allá y profundizar en sus poderes. Para ello, irá en busca de personas de gran sabiduría, y conocerá al Mago, quien la guiará en su camino. En la exploración de su destino, Brida descubrirá, junto al lector, el poder transformador del amor y tratará de encontrar el equilibrio entre sus relaciones y el deseo de convertirse en bruja.

At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends with in The Dinner List. When Sabrina arrives at her 30th birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together.

The novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O’Dare—a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases—just now: Lucky the Fox—and takes his orders from “The Right Man.”

Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) is one of Japan's most beloved writers and poets, known particularly for his sensitive and symbolist children's fiction. This volume collects stories which focus on Miyazawa's love of space and his use of the galaxy as a metaphor for the concepts of purity, self-sacrifice and faith which were near and dear to his heart.

Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China - dubbed the true Shangri-La - and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers.

The mind is a maze. Your memories are its key. A detective tasked with solving the seemingly impossible murder of an influential scientist finds a clue that leads him to Credence, a corporation that uses mass beliefs to change reality, enabling space travel. In a not-so-distant future, the murder of a notorious neuroscientist threatens the closure of Credence, a federal corporation where the powerful minds of exceptional individuals—the Believers—are harnessed into mass beliefs capable of teleporting spaceships to the other side of the universe. To avoid the deaths of the colonists in ...

Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted from spending eternity doing her job, and now she seeks someone to unburden her conscience to. Wolf Willeford, a troubled young writer, is well acquainted with death but until now hadn't met Death in person - a Black, working-class woman who shape-shifts and does her work unseen. Enthralled by her stories, Wolf becomes Mrs Death's scribe and begins to write her memoirs. Using their desk as a conduit, Wolf travels across time and place with Mrs Death to witness deaths of past and present and discuss what the future holds for humanity.

Dans le champ où il vient d’atterrir pour offrir des baptêmes de l’air à trois dollars les dix minutes, Richard aperçoit un autre zinc tout semblable au sien. Adossé à sa carlingue, un personnage sympathique et mystérieux cherche à fuir le rôle de maître à penser à qui les foules demandent toujours plus. Il lui apprendra que chaque être humain peut se libérer des barrières qu’il a lui-même construites comme autant d’illusions sur sa propre existence. Il lui suffit pour cela de suivre une idée simple...

The Future is Scary! Anthony’s marriage to Susan is unraveling. She’s cold, distant, and always away on long business trips. What Anthony sees as a fading love is just the surface of something far more ominous. Beneath the cracks in their relationship lies a much larger truth—one that goes beyond their personal struggles. At Norworld, a tech giant revolutionizing the future, artificial intelligence promises to eliminate pain and extend life. But the price of progress may be more terrifying than anyone imagined.

Ethan McQuarry is a young lighthouse keeper on a tiny island, the rugged outcropping of easternmost Cape Breton Island on the Atlantic Ocean. A man without any family, he sees himself as a silent vigilant, performing his duties courageously year after year, with an admirable sense of responsibility.

The first work of long fiction from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright - a tour de force of memory, mystery, death, and life.This searing, extraordinarily evocative narrative opens with a man in his house at dawn, surrounded by aspens, coyotes cackling in the distance as he quietly navigates the distance between present and past. The rhythms of theater, the language of poetry, and a flinty humor combine in this stunning meditation on the nature of experience, at once celebratory, surreal, poignant, and unforgettable.

Isabelle’s estranged archeologist father dies, leaving her a puzzle. In a box she finds some papers and a mysterious African amulet—but their connection to her remains unclear until she embarks on a trip to Morocco to discover how the amulet came into her father’s possession. When the amulet is damaged and Isabelle almost killed in an accident, she fears her curiosity has got the better of her. But Taib, her rescuer, knows the dunes and their peoples, and offers to help uncover the amulet’s extraordinary history.