Best of
Magical-Realism

1974

The Milagro Beanfield War


John Nichols - 1974
    Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories. Gradually, the small farmers and sheepmen begin to rally to Joe's beanfield as the symbol of their lost rights and their lost lands. And downstate in the capital, the Anglo water barons and power brokers huddle in urgent conference, intent on destroying that symbol before it destroys their multimillion-dollar land-development schemes. The tale of Milagro's rising is wildly comic and lovingly ter, a vivid portrayal of a town that, half-stumbling and partly prodded, gropes its way toward its own stubborn salvation.

The Hearing Trumpet


Leonora Carrington - 1974
    Exact Change launched a program of reprinting her fiction with what is perhaps her best loved book.The Hearing Trumpet is the story of 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, who is given the gift of a hearing trumpet only to discover that what her family is saying is that she is to be committed to an institution. But this is an institution where the buildings are shaped like birthday cakes and igloos, where the Winking Abbess and the Queen Bee reign, and where the gateway to the underworld is open. It is also the scene of a mysterious murder.Occult twin to Alice in Wonderland, The Hearing Trumpet is a classic of fantastic literature that has been translated and celebrated throughout the world.

What The Wind Told


Betty D. Boegehold - 1974
    The wind discusses the people and creatures living behind six different windows.

Tobermory and Other Stories


Saki - 1974
    Saki's stories include the satiric, the comic, the macabre, and show a marked interest in the use of animals as agents of revenge upon mankind.

Candles in the Wood


Alexandra Manners - 1974
    She had grown up a servant's child on the Grant family's estate, and had savored the memory of its elegance as well as her love for young Lennox Grant for long years after she'd been abandoned by her parents and forced to leave.Now, unexpectedly an heiress, Helen found she could go back to Gallowmerry. She could fulfill her desire to live among the Grants as an equal... .But the Gallowmerry to which she returned was not the fond home of her childhood. It had become a house of dark secrets and unspoken hatreds whose poisons had infected the entire Grant family. It had become a house of horror luring Helen herself to the brink of madness.