Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Magical Realism

Beautifully capturing the rhythms and personalities of small town life, Terry Kay's novel is a tender celebration of the special gifts inside each of us. The simplicity of Kay's prose belies the mythic nature of his story. Luminous, memorable, and deeply moving, The Valley of Light is Kay's finest work to date.

In this grand saga of love, war, and magic set in the tenth century, young Sigrid is destined to be the mother of the king of the Nordic lands that would become Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England. A devout believer in the old Nordic gods, Sigrid is visited regularly in her dreams by the goddess Freya, who whispers to her of the future. Though Sigrid is beautiful, rich, arrogant, and matchlessly clever, her uncanny ability to foresee the future and manipulate the present guides her through dangerous politics.

In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”

A woman delves into science and superstition, fear and persecution, and the hope and courage of belief in an award-winning and internationally bestselling novel by Kateřina Tučková.

It starts with a simple wish, and Emma Davies hardly notices when it comes true. She’s too preoccupied with a life she isn’t happy in - the spark in her marriage has fizzled, her career is headed nowhere and her boss is a misogynist. Her teenage daughter has grown distant, and her heart breaks daily for her teenage son with cerebral palsy. But soon Emma discovers her wishes are coming true, and she realizes that she has been given the power to change her life. Either that, or she’s going insane.

Chloe Howard’s devotion to her job has come at a cost: spending time with the most important person in her life - her mother. Vowing to change, she plans a trip home. Sadly, hours before she arrives, her mother passes away, leaving Chloe without a goodbye and riddled with grief and regret. But maybe...maybe it’s not too late. Just days before the funeral, Chloe finds her mother unaccountably alive and well. And it’s no longer May; she’s been transported back in time to March.

Jailbird. Klepto. Spectacular failure to launch. Nicole Wood’s sticky fingers have earned her many names, but it’s not that she’s stealing—some objects just need to be moved elsewhere, and the universe has chosen her to do it. Still, being a relocator of objects isn’t easy. With her marriage on the rocks, no real-world skills, and the threat of prison hanging over her head, Nicole is determined to change her ways.

After her mother dies, Hannah doesn’t know how to exist without her. Literally. In fact, Hannah’s not even certain that she does exist. No one seems to see or hear her, and she finds herself utterly alone. Grief-stricken and confused, her sense of self slowly slipping away, Hannah sets out to find new purpose in life—and answers about who (and what) she really is.

Graham Patterson’s life has hit a dead end. His career as a comedian is failing. The love of his life recently broke up with him and he literally has no idea what to do next. With nothing to lose, he buys a new car and hits the road, planning to drive across country and hopefully figure out his next moves before reaching California. But along the way Patterson does something his old self would never have even considered: he gets tattooed by a brilliant tattoo artist in North Carolina.

Vincent Ettrich is a charming carefree man who discovers he has recently died but been mysteriously resurrected. As he tries to piece together the circumstances of his death and the reason for his return, he learns his resurrection is not just a second chance at life but also a pivotal event in a cosmic battle.

Glass Soup is a loose sequel to Jonathan Carroll’s earlier work, White Apples. The story continues to explore themes of life, death, love, and the metaphysical battle between good and evil. The novel follows Vincent Ettrich and his lover, Isabelle Neukor, who were central to the plot of White Apples. Having died, Vincent is once again alive, recently resurrected for some mysterious reason. Isabelle, pregnant with their child, discovers that their unborn son is destined to play a crucial role in the cosmic struggle between chaos and order.

Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can keep: preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K’iche’ people.

At Sunny Pines Retirement Community, where the “Sixty-Two and Better!” share their golden years, secrets abound. Some scandalous, some haunting, and some dangerous. For Birdie Allen, a retired business owner and grandmother, her secret is the only thing she’s got left. Getting old isn’t the hardest part about life. It’s the memories from more than fifty years ago of the death of her unrequited love. And Birdie’s abandoned quest to root out the killer.

When John Harvey’s watch stops working on the morning of February 3rd, 1987, he has an epiphany. It occurs to him that every personal trauma he is trying to forget has had one thing in common: they all occurred at some point on the face of that very watch. The loss of his job, the death of his child, Zola’s suicide, all contained right there in that tiny circle of finite numbers. So he smashes the watch. Problem solved. But when John steps out the door to make his daily trek to the local bar as a man newly freed from the tyrannies of time, he is met by a snowstorm.

It’s been two years and two months since trauma shattered hospital chaplain Isabel Myles’s world. Since that day, she has stopped answering calls. She’s shut out her family, friends, and coworkers. Even her faith seems to have faded. Except for her connection with her younger sister, Chantel, Isabel copes by forgetting. Then she takes on a summer job as a home caregiver for Opal, a dementia patient who is struggling to remember.

Mary Mulligan has two problems: her wisdom teeth…and everything else. Her only daughter is moving overseas. Her husband would rather go golfing than spend time with her. And Mary’s left to wonder why she abandoned her career ambitions when loneliness is all she has to show for it. Plus her teeth really, really hurt. But that’s one problem she can fix—never mind the stories that say if she gets her wisdom teeth removed, the last thirty years of her life will be erased. In fact, Mary wouldn’t mind if the Mulligan curse were actually true.

More like sisters than best friends, Issa Bui and Olivia Nong grew up dreaming of becoming movie stars. But for young Vietnamese women in 1930s Hollywood, the MGM back lot seems unreachable. Undeterred, Issa knows she’s meant for great things. The blood of shamans runs through her veins. To find fame in this town, for herself and for Olivia, Issa needs to make connections. For starters, with her dead grandmother Bà Ngoại.

Los Angeles brims with opportunity in 1959—though not for aspiring fashion designer Cordelia Mai Yin, the first-generation child of Vietnamese immigrants, who finds the city unkind to outsiders and as dispirited as her own family. When Cordi rents a cheap loft in an old apartment building, she quickly warms to kindred souls Tessa, Audrey, and Silly. They also want better things and have pasts they’d rather forget. That they all share the same middle name makes their friendship seem like destiny.

Violeta Sanoguera had always done what she was told. She left the man she loved in Colombia in pursuit of a better life for herself and because her mother and grandmother didn’t approve of him. Chasing dreams of education and art in New York City, and with a new love, twenty-eight-year-old Violeta establishes a new life for herself, on her terms. But when her grandmother suddenly dies, everything changes.

Disconnected and listless, twenty-eight-year-old Mattie Bridges is fraying at the edges. Working as a wardrobe assistant on a charming Christmas movie in an even more charming small town should be a balm to her turmoil. But she still can’t find her footing. And after falling headfirst into her own closet, her life—or more accurately, her lives—becomes a lot more unsteady. Following a hidden passageway, Mattie uncovers a portal to all the paths her life could have taken. Each reality sees her in a different career, different headspace, and sometimes, a different romance.