Fantasy is an incredibly diverse body of literature that goes far beyond tales with detailed maps and invented languages or classic subgenres like sword and sorcery. If you’re seeking irresistible storytelling that breaks the bounds of what’s possible in the real world, you can’t go wrong with the following, transportive books with broad appeal that even readers who don’t typically gravitate to fantasy will snap up. Each of these stories blends magical elements with relatable human emotions, centering on the family relationships that lie at the core of our psyches.

Gods & Comics by Kat Cho and illustrated by Robin Har (Nancy Paulsen Books, April 21) opens with panels from Sun God, Grace Bak’s popular webcomic. No one knows that the anxious, socially isolated 17-year-old is its creator. She’s inspired by stories of Korean gods that she heard from her beloved halmeoni, whose death she’s grieving. In this entertaining, accessible story, fans’ passion for Grace’s characters brings them to life: Sun god Haemosu and goddess Yuhwa (daughter of vengeful water god Habaek) materialize as Grace’s new classmates, sparking disaster—and romance.

The page-turner Seconds To Spare by Rachel Reiss (Wednesday Books, May 12) takes travel nightmares to the next level: Evelyn Werth, 18, flies to Hawai‘i to collect her father’s ashes. Their relationship was rocky even before he left the family. During her flight home to California, she gets stuck in a 28-minute time loop that resets just as the plane is about to plunge into the Pacific. Then she awakens Rion James, a basketball-playing boy with a serious heart condition who’s the only other passenger to experience the loops.

In The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue by Zoulfa Katouh (Little, Brown, June 2), readers meet 17-year-old Jihad Dabbagh, who has inherited ancestral magic from Syria. As a child, she realized the gift manifested in her when she “could taste the colors” that “whispered their stories” and “pulsed and breathed.” But ever since her mother’s death from cancer, Jihad, who longs to attend art school, has seen everything in gray. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious sketchbook, she finds her art miraculously appearing on murals around New York City.

Ama Ofosua Lieb’s fast-paced debut, Goldenborn (Scholastic, June 2), which is infused with Ghanaian cultural elements, unfolds in an alternate near-future San Francisco where 17-year-old Akoma Addo goes undercover in AfricaTown as an investigator for the International Magical Crime Alliance Group. This vibrant neighborhood was the only one to survive the Great Quake intact, but now someone is wreaking havoc; an attack has left Akoma’s father in a coma. When the trickster god Anansi appears and offers to work with her, Akoma must decide whether he can be trusted.

A teen who believes she’s lost everyone rebuilds a found family and attempts the impossible in Hell To Pay by Lora Beth Johnson (Putnam, July 28), a nail-biting, darkly humorous story. Elle, who’s from a Boston crime family, grew up going on jobs in the Afterlife. Now that her parents are gone, Elle, who “kind of lost it” when her brother died, is determined to retrieve his soul. Her old crew reunites to try to pull off the heist of a lifetime.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.