9 Must-Read Novels That Will Add Magic to Your Literary Diet

In this romantic, magical family chronicle, Tita, the youngest daughter of the De La Garza family, has been fordibben to marry, condemed by Mexican tradition to look after her aging mother. But she falls in love with Pedro and seduces him with the magical food she cooks. Desperate to stay close to Tita, Pedro marries her sister, Rosaura. Only an unlikely chain of tragedies, bad luck, and fate can reunite them.

No magical realism list would be complete without Borges, and this collection of seventeen short stories demonstrates his brilliance, imagination, and sense of irony. These tales are a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return.

This harrowing novel of sacrifice, resilience, and love takes place in Berlin, 1941, when Hanni Kohn knows she must send her 12-year-old daughter Lea away to protect her from the Nazis. Ettie, the daughter of a renowned rabbi, creates a mystical creature, a golem, to protect Lea. Lea and the golem embark on a journey through France to find safety. Meanwhile, Hanni and Ettie struggle for survival as their world falls apart.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel tells the story of Sethe, who was born a slave and escaped to Ohio. But eighteen years later she is still haunted by memories of Sweet Home, the farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is also haunted—by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

A single act of kindness catapults Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre: a city under the streets of London, inhabited by monsters and saints, murderers and angels—a city of the people who have fallen between the cracks. A strange destiny awaits him down there, in the Neverwhere.

Celebrated writer Mr. Fox can’t stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels and neither can his wife, Daphne. But then Mary, his muse, comes to life and challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising; in different times and places, the two of them seek each other, find each other, thwart each other, and try to stay together. Meanwhile, Daphne becomes convinced her husband is having an affair and finds her way into Mary and Mr. Fox’s game. Read the full review of MR. FOX.

A moving and magical novel about Ted, a single, gay, struggling writer who is unable to open himself up to anyone except his dog, Lily. When her health is in danger, he will do anything to save her. Read the full review of LILY AND THE OCTOPUS.

On November 25, 1960, three beautiful sisters were found dead near their wrecked Jeep. They were among the leading opponents of General Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship and become known as Las Mariposas—“The Butterflies.” In this extraordinary novel, the voices of the three martyred sisters and the fourth, surviving sister tell their own stories, from hair ribbons and secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture, and describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule.

Cora’s life as a slave on a Georgia plantation is hell, so when Caesar, a recent arrival from Virgina, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take the terrifying risk and escape. In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is a literal secret railroad running beneath the Southern soil. Their journey takes them on a harrowing state-by-state flight toward freedom. Read the full review of THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.

This magical, expansive novel chronicles three generations of the Trueba family. Patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man who relentlessly pursues political influence while also caring for his wife, Clara, who has a connection to the spirit world. Their daughter Blanca goes against her father’s wishes and embarks on a love affair that brings the family a new member: her daughter, Alba, who has a great destiny. Read the full review of THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS.