Fairy tales & magical fiction for adults
Discover enchanting fairy tales & magical fiction books for adults. Explore a curated list of spellbinding stories filled with fantasy, wonder, and grown-up whimsy.
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Sappho's Leap
by Erica Jong
A novel of ancient Greece tells the story of the epic poet's journeys, loves, and losses.
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The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
by A. N. Roquelaure
Before E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey and Sylvia Day's Bared to You, there was Anne Rice’s New York Times best seller The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty In the traditional folktale of "Sleeping Beauty," the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a Prince. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious. In the first book of the series, Anne Rice (author of Beauty's Kingdom), writing as A.N. Roquelaure, retells the Beauty story and probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the Prince awakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty's complete and total enslavement to him . . . as Anne Rice explores the world of erotic yearning and fantasy in a classic that becomes, with her skillful pen, a compelling experience. Readers of Fifty Shades of Grey will indulge in Rice’s deft storytelling and imaginative eroticism, a sure-to-be classic for years to come. "Articulate, baroque, and fashionably pornographic." —Playboy "Something very special . . . at once so light and yet so haunting." —The Advocate
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Sometimes the Soul
by Gioia Timpanelli
Hauntingly beautiful fiction about two women, solitude, art, and transformation. In "A Knot of Tears", a woman's locked-up life is transformed by a parrot who tells tales; "Rusina, Not Quite in Love" offers a strange and lovely retelling of the story of "Beauty and the Beast".
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The Arabian Nights
by Muhsin Mahdi
The tales portray a world of magic, wish-fulfillment and pleasure, depicting the marriage of the supernatural to the ordinary and the sacred to the profane.
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The War of the Saints
by Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado has been called one of the great writers of our time. The joyfulness of his storytelling and his celebration of life's sensual pleasures have found him a loyal following. With The War Of The Saints, he has created an exuberant tale set among the flashing rhythms, intoxicating smells, and bewitching colors of the carnival. The holy icon of Saint Barbara of the Thunder is bound for the city of Bahia for an exhibition of holy art. As the boat the bears the image is docking, a miracle occurs and Saint Barbara comes to life, disappearing into the milling crowd on the quay. Somewhere in the city a young woman has fallen in love, and her prudish guardian aunt has locked her away--an act of intolerance that Saint Barbara must redress. And when she casts her spell over the city, no one's life will remain unchanged.
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Jitterbug Perfume
by Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time). It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.
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Mipam
by Albert Arthur Yongden
This humorous masterpiece was written especially for Western readers by a Tibetan lama in 1938.
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The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, plummet from the sky, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, and proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations.
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Dictionary of the Khazars (M)
by Milorad Pavic
A national bestseller, Dictionary of the Khazars was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year. Written in two versions, male and female (both available in Vintage International), which are identical save for seventeen crucial lines, Dictionary is the imaginary book of knowledge of the Khazars, a people who flourished somewhere beyond Transylvania between the seventh and ninth centuries. Eschewing conventional narrative and plot, this lexicon novel combines the dictionaries of the world's three major religions with entries that leap between past and future, featuring three unruly wise men, a book printed in poison ink, suicide by mirrors, a chimerical princess, a sect of priests who can infiltrate one's dreams, romances between the living and the dead, and much more.
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The Mists of Avalon
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The magical saga of the women behind King Arthur's throne. “A monumental reimagining of the Arthurian legends . . . reading it is a deeply moving and at times uncanny experience. . . . An impressive achievement.”—The New York Times Book Review In Marion Zimmer Bradley's masterpiece, we see the tumult and adventures of Camelot's court through the eyes of the women who bolstered the king's rise and schemed for his fall. From their childhoods through the ultimate fulfillment of their destinies, we follow these women and the diverse cast of characters that surrounds them as the great Arthurian epic unfolds stunningly before us. As Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar struggle for control over the fate of Arthur's kingdom, as the Knights of the Round Table take on their infamous quest, as Merlin and Viviane wield their magics for the future of Old Britain, the Isle of Avalon slips further into the impenetrable mists of memory, until the fissure between old and new worlds' and old and new religions' claims its most famous victim.
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Lolly Willowes
by Sylvia Townsend Warner
The story of a middle-aged spinster who moves to a country village to escape her controlling relatives and takes up the practice of witchcraft.
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Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico blends poignant romance, bittersweet wit, and delicious recipes. This classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef, using cooking to express herself and sharing recipes with readers along the way.
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Maia
by Richard Adams
Maia, a peasant girl in the mythical Beklan Empire, is sold into slavery, but a turn of fate sees her become a successful concubine, then a national heroine.
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The Master and Margarita
by Михаил Булгаков
Mikhail Bulgakov's devastating satire of Soviet life was written during the darkest period of Stalin's regime. Combining two distinct yet interwoven parts-one set in ancient Jerusalem, one in contemporary Moscow-the novel veers from moods of wild theatricality with violent storms, vampire attacks, and a Satanic ball; to such somber scenes as the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, and the murder of Judas in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane; to the substanceless, circus-like reality of Moscow. Its central characters, Woland (Satan) and his retinue-including the vodka-drinking, black cat, Behemoth; the poet, Ivan Homeless; Pontius Pilate; and a writer known only as The Master, and his passionate companion, Margarita-exist in a world that blends fantasy and chilling realism, an artful collage of grostesqueries, dark comedy, and timeless ethical questions.
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Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
by Jorge Amado
Dona Flor's husband may have been a gambler and womanizer, but when he dies all she remembers is his lovemaking. A new marriage does not bring the erotic love she longs for. So when her first husband appears naked at the foot of her bed, eager to reclaim his conjugal rights, it is hard to resist.
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Sisters of the Night:
by Chelsea Q. Yarbro
In Bram Stoker's dark classic Dracula, three "weird sisters," make a brief but unforgettable appearance. The beautiful, mad brides of the vampire lord, their untold histories are at last revealed to us in Sisters of the Night, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's brilliant reimagining of a timeless legend. In a distant age of brutal chaos, young Kelene is her family's salvation. An exquisite, golden-haired child just entering womanhood's embrace, she is blessed-and cursed-with a great gift. For most of her fourteen years, God's "Militant Angels" have guided her, shielding Kelene, her parents, her brothers and sisters from the horror and devastation visited upon their neighbors by the bloodthirsty Ottoman hordes. But suddenly another has invaded her dreams. This angel who speaks to Kelene in the night is far more elusive and demanding than any who came before-filling her with uncertainty and terrors while tempting her with impure thoughts and unholy desires. He will come to her, he vows, in Kelene's darkest hour. And then she will be his...for eternity. A monumental work of the imagination from an unparalleled storyteller, Sisters of the Night: The Angry Angel is a haunting, erotic, and endlessly enthralling tale of innocent death and corrupted love...and of one extraordinary young woman-the first of three-whom destiny has chosen to be Dracula's consort.
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Exit to Eden
by Anne Rice
Lisa, the founder of an exclusive sexual fantasy resort called The Club, finds her stern self-control disrupted when she falls in love with Elliot, a photojournalist who has been contracted as a slave to the resort.
