The House in the Cerulean Sea and 31 More Magical Realism Books to Get Lost In

The House in the Cerulean Sea ($21, originally $27) follows a straight-laced case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth who gets sent to an isolated orphanage filled with six dangerous magical children. There, he is meant to report any untoward activity and check up on its caretaker, Arthur Parnassus, then report back to the DICOMY's Extremely Upper Management; but along the way stumbles upon far more profound revelations.

In The Removed ($19, originally $27), a grieving mother addresses her family's physical and emotional distances 15 years after her son was killed in a police shooting. During an annual bonfire that also marks the anniversary of Ray-Ray's death, his family members find themselves toeing the line between reality and the spiritual world.

In a postpartum fog, Megan discovers the ghost of Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, is living in her house in The Upstairs House ($20, originally $27). Megan appears to be the only person who can communicate with Margaret and her late lover, Michael Strange, and fears that she and her newborn daughter are in danger unless she finds a way to settle this supernatural activity.

The Wide Starlight ($15, originally $19) tells the story of a 16-year-old Eline, whose mother vanished on a frozen fjord in Norway after whistling at the Northern Lights 10 years prior. When Eli does the same, she comes face-to-face with her mother again, as well as other extraordinary and seemingly impossible events.

When Nora Seed decides she no longer wants to live in the beginning of The Midnight Library ($13, originally $26), she is transported to a library filled with volumes of her life that could have been reality had any of her minor or major life choices been different. She's given the opportunity to explore these other versions of her life and has to make a choice: stay in one of her many possible lives or cease to exist just when she's starting to understand what she wants out of life.

Cursed to be forgotten by everyone on the eve of a wedding she doesn't want to have, Addie finds herself trapped completely alone in an immortal existence in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue ($16, originally $27). Centuries after she's cursed, she's travelled the world and lived in many places, but has never once been remembered — until she's in New York City and a bookshop employee named Henry remembers her.

In The Valley and the Flood ($15, originally $19), Rose hears a broadcast of her late friend's last voicemail to her on the radio of her broken-down car. Rose walks into a nearby prophet-filled town in Nevada's Lotus Valley and discovers that her arrival is part of a prophecy that says the valley will flood in three days' time and be destroyed.

Dannie falls asleep on the night she's proposed to in the beginning of In Five Years ($13, originally $27), then wakes up in a different apartment, with a different ring, and a different fiancé five years in the future, unsure of how she got there. An hour later, she's back in her own apartment, but can't shake what she saw in her sleep and knows it was more than a dream.

In The Glass Hotel ($13, originally $27), a business scheme ruins countless lives, and years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a woman who's vanished.

In Nothing to See Here ($14, originally $27), it's been years since Lillian has seen her boarding school roommate Madison, so she's surprised to hear from her at random, when she's asked to act as caretaker for Madison's two stepchildren. After accepting, Lillian learns that the twins are prone to . . . spontaneously setting on fire, and over the course of a summer she finds ways to bond with them, learning much about herself along the way.

In Oona Out of Order ($17, originally $27), 18-year-old Oona is about to turn 19 at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1982. Before she can get to the end of the 10-second countdown, however, she faints and wakes up 51 years old. But she doesn't stay there, 32 years in the future — each year on her birthday she is transported into another year of her life, all completely out of order.

Land of Big Numbers ($14, originally $16) is a collection of stories about China's government, people, and history that teeter back and forth between realism and magical realism.

Tom Hazard looks 41 years old, but has a secret. In How to Stop Time ($14, originally $16), a man who's been alive for centuries has been given just one rule by the society that protects people like him: don't fall in love. When Tom begins a romance with a woman he thinks could save him, he's forced to make a decision that will change the way he's lived his centuries-long life.

Sourdough ($14, originally $17) follows software engineer Lois, who finds herself suddenly tending daily to a sourdough starter left to her by the owners of the now-closed restaurant she frequented. Soon, she's not only baking bread for herself, but for her company cafeteria, before she's approached to bring her bread to the local farmer's market and everything changes.

In Wings of Ebony ($18, originally $20), half-god, half-human Rue is whisked to a magical island, Ghizon, shortly after her mother is shot and killed on their doorstep. She's separated from her little sister but returns to see her a year later against Ghizon's rules, only to discover that since she left her town, Black children have been forced into violence and crime. With her ancestors' power inside her, Rue must find a way to save her neighbourhood before the evil plaguing it destroys everything and everyone.

Mrs Death Misses Death ($19) sees Death as a seemingly ordinary woman who has done her work unseen for eternity, but the lives she's taken weigh heavy on her conscious. She enlists the help of a young writer to pen her memoirs, and together they travel through time and space to revisit deaths past and present.

In The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (As Told to His Brother) ($15, originally $17), Aidan disappears for six days and reappears with an impossible tale of what happened to him. No one, including his parents, believes his story, but his brother Lucas wants to — though that would mean believing in the impossible even when everyone tells you not to.

In The Absolute Book ($21, originally $28), we meet Taryn Cornick years after her sister's death and Taryn's subsequent revenge. All appears well until she's questioned about a fire at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter. Taryn soon discovers that all of the mysterious activity she's being questioned about could have to do with the fates of more than one world.

After Jenna and Amelia get into a huge fight over one of them being able to meet their shared favourite author, Jenna is killed in a car crash. A grieving Amelia is questioning her entire future when a rare version of her and Jenna's favourite book shows up, and Amelia is convinced it's been sent from her late friend. In Amelia Unabridged ($16, originally $19), the 18-year-old seeks to find clues to something Jenna had been trying to tell her before her death.

In The Starless Sea ($16, originally $29), Zachary Ezra Rawlins finds a mysterious book in his grad school library that contains a story only he knows about his own childhood. Zachary seeks answers about the book's origins and finds himself in an ancient library under the earth where he discovers other pieces of the book's history — objects and people lost in time and characters from unbelievable stories — while learning about himself along the way.

The Water Dancer ($16, originally $28), which is in development to become a movie, tells the story of Hiram Walker: an enslaved boy who is gifted with mysterious powers after his mother is sold and taken away from him. When these powers save his life, he escapes the world he was born into, but later becomes desperate to rescue the family he left behind amid an underground war between enslavers and the enslaved.

In When You Trap a Tiger ($14, originally $17), Lily's family moves in with her sick grandmother, only to discover that long ago, her grandmother stole something from magical tigers Lily believed only existed in Korean folklore. When one of the tigers tries to strike a deal with Lily to take back what was once stolen in exchange for her grandmother's health, Lily is faced with a choice that could affect far more than the parameters of the deal.

In Gods of Jade and Shadow ($9, originally $16), Casiopea Tun's dream of leaving her small town in Mexico behind becomes a possibility when she accidentally releases the spirit of the Mayan god of death from a wooden box in her grandfather's house. He sets her a task that could mean her dreams coming true, or, if things don't go well . . . her demise.

In The Immortalists ($14, originally $26), four siblings find out the exact dates of their future deaths, each going on to live their lives over the course of five decades, their individual dates looming.

The Night Tiger ($17, originally $27) follows the intertwined stories of Ji Lin and Ren, both of whom are caught along dangerous paths in a time where unexplained deaths are plaguing their Malaysian district and there are rumours of men who become tigers.

After meeting at a party in the beginning of Opposite of Always ($12, originally $18), Jack knows he's falling for Kate — and then she unexpectedly dies. Jack is immediately immersed in a Groundhog Day loop in which every time Kate dies Jack is sent back to their first meeting with a chance to save her life — but not without potentially changing a ton of other things in time as a result.

In King and the Dragonflies ($14, originally $18), 12-year-old Kingston James's brother Khalid passes away, but King is sure he's turned into a dragonfly who has been visiting him in his dreams. He seeks to unload his grief and confusion on his best friend, but in the days before his death, Khalid told King to not be friends with him anymore for a reason that sends him on a path to learn more about his own realities.

Conjure Women ($23, originally $27) takes place in both the pre- and post-Civil War south and follows the lives of three women: Miss May Belle, a healer; her daughter Rue; and their master's daughter, Varina. The story jumps back and forth through time as secrets among these women and their community spread superstitions that could threaten their shaky postwar freedoms.

Watch Over Me ($14, originally $18) tells the story of recent high school grad, Mila, who has aged out of the foster care system and accepts a teaching job on a farm she learns is haunted. The ghosts of the past and her own memories tangle in this gripping and emotional story.

Lydia Bird is straddling two separate lives: one in which her fiancé Freddie has died on her 28th birthday, and another where he's somehow still alive, but everything is different. In The Two Lives of Lydia Bird ($15, originally $26), a grieving woman must decide whether she wants to live in the past with a lover who isn't quite there, or live her new life to the fullest, as Freddie would have wanted her to.

The first novel in a trilogy, The City We Became ($18, originally $28) follows several New York City residents who can suddenly feel the soul of the city in various forms and through multiple senses.

In Yesterday Is History ($16, originally $18), Andre Cobb wakes up from a liver transplant with the discovery that he's now able to time travel as a side effect. The family of his late donor designates their youngest son to help him learn to use his gift, and he spends his time travelling between present day and the past. He's torn between two boys he's interested in — one in each time period — and must decide where he wants to stay before the consequences of so much time travel catch up with him.