Short stories in the genre Magical Realism

Listing 47 stories.

In the Old West, after witnessing an elderly Chinese prospector win a fight against a couple of outlaws, a young girl forms a deep bond with him, learns that he may be a god in disguise, and must defend him when he is called to trial over his treatment of the outlaws.

In the Land of Witches, an enslaved girl learns the magic of Dream Science and liberates herself from her master. Her account of the town inspires a present-day researcher, trapped in her war-torn hometown, and a band of witches to pilgrimage to the site. An enslaved girl's fantastical account of the Land of Witches encourages a group of witches and a present-day researcher, marooned in her war-torn hometown, to locate the site through the magic of dreams.

During World War II in West Bengal, a Bengali grandmother and doll-crafter faces the atrocities of British colonial rule. Upon delivering a magical doll to the Governor of Kolkata, the grandmother seeks justice for these colonial cruelties and the death of her grandson.

A boy visits the Ulysses County library seeking books that allow him to escape into distant worlds. As the witch-librarian chooses stories for him and senses him becoming more and more desperate, she eventually lends him a book that literally allows him to leave his world.

A Black, transgender, college girl spends the week agonizing over cookies she’s baking to impress her dorm mates and seeks assurance from a portrait of her aunt.

As a member of a 1950's West Indies African/Indian family steeped in superstitious tradition, a teenage boy has four encounters with a spirit that comes to collect the dead, with the last taking someone he loves dearly.

A young, cynical slave girl’s murder of her owners stirs up the etherworld, leading to the birth of multiple ghosts that will change her life.

On a ship journeying from earth to a post-apocalyptic world, a young mother gives birth to a daughter with white fur. The mother, who's been having strange dreams about a bear prince, wonders if her child's unique appearance is related to these visions.

A woman tells a story about a fox who, to great consequences, raises a human child.

A gambling miner faces a massive twist of fate when he must gamble for his own life.