Latin American Fiction

Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there's no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages - one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.

The life of astronaut John "Danny" Olivas.

Solitario Cisneros thought his life was over long ago. He lost his wife, his family, even his country in the late 1870s when the Rio Grande shifted course, stranding the Mexican town of Olvido on the Texas side of the border. He’d made his brooding peace with retiring his gun and badge, hiding out on his ranch, and communing with horses and ghosts.

A German advocate of the Kaiser discovers he is a facial/physical match for young Englishman Everard Dominey, who is near death after harrowing experiences in Africa. The remarkable doppelgänger resemblance leads Major-General Baron Leopold Von Ragastein to infiltrate the UK in perfect disguise. He wants to lead his country’s efforts as Europe is racing toward war. Part of the plan is to murder Dominey and have the Baron take his place in English society.

In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa's own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.

In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcon stands over an open grave. Alone, except for harried undertakers, she buries her mother - the only family Adelaida has ever known. Numb with grief, Adelaida returns to the apartment they shared. Outside the window that she tapes shut every night - to prevent the tear gas raining down on protesters in the streets from seeping in. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida resists and is beaten up. It is the beginning of a fight for survival in a country that has disintegrated into violence and anarchy.

Hugo Contreras’s world in Miami has shrunk. Since his wife died, Hugo’s debt from her medical bills has become insurmountable. He shuffles between his efficiency apartment, La Carreta (his favorite place for a cafecito), and a botanica in a strip mall where he works as the resident babaláwo.

One month short of her wedding day—and her thirtieth birthday—Nadia Palacio finds herself standing up to her infuriating, cheating fiancé for the first time in, well, ever. But that same courage doesn’t translate to breaking the news to her Argentinian family. She’s hyperventilating before facing them when she glimpses a magazine piece about a woman celebrating herself—with a second quinceañera! And that gives Nadia an idea. With a wedding venue already paid for, and family from all over the world with plane tickets, Nadia is determined to create her own happily-ever-after.

A new re-interpretation of the classic mystical poetic work by the English poet and printmaker William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a must-listen for any serious literati or poet - as featured in the movie Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch, starring Johnny Depp.

Between the years of 1762 and 1763, James Boswell kept a journal of his time in London. During his time, he met the renowned writer, moralist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, with whom Boswell would form a close relationship. This account, told with much detail and candor, was one of the various journals written by Boswell, but it is the journal that has undergone the least amount of censorship, leading it, and the racy material within, to be deemed a best seller upon publication.

El clásico indiscutible de las letras españolas en una edición única.

Award-winning author Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of the world's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers. In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways they surface in their work.

Lala Reyes' grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala's possession. The novel opens with the Reyes' annual car trip, a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels, from Chicago to "the other side": Mexico City.

Guatemala, 1954. El golpe militar perpetrado por Carlos Castillo Armas y auspiciado por Estados Unidos a través de la CIA derroca el gobierno de Jacobo Árbenz. Detrás de este acto violento se encuentra una mentira que pasó por verdad y que cambió el devenir de América Latina: la acusación por parte del gobierno de Eisenhower de que Árbenz alentaba la entrada del comunismo soviético en el continente.

Carmen Sanchez is back in her home country of Mexico, overseeing the renovation of an ancient cathedral into a boutique hotel. Her teen daughters, Izel and Luna, are with her for the summer, and left to fill their afternoons unsupervised in a foreign city. The locals treat the Sanchez women like outsiders, while Carmen's contractors openly defy and sabotage her work. After a disastrous accident at the construction site nearly injures Luna, Carmen's had enough. They're leaving. Back home in New York, malevolent and unexplainable happenings seem to swarm the Sanchez family.

En Macondo transcurre la historia de un entierro imposible. Ha muerto un personaje extraño, un antiguo médico odiado por el pueblo, y un viejo coronel retirado, para cumplir una promesa, se ha empeñado en enterrarle ante la oposición de todo el pueblo y sus autoridades. Como en una tragedia griega -el libro lleva como lema una cita de Antígona que recuerda la prohibición de enterrar el cuerpo del Polinices-, el viejo coronel, su hija y su nieto van a cumplir la ominosa tarea.

The fifth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, The Small House at Allington, concerns the lives of the two Dale girls, Lily and Bell, who live at the Small House. While Bell is in love with the local doctor James Crofts, Lily is pursued by two men: the worldly, rich and handsome Adolphus Crosbie and the poor but honest Johnny Eames. With each determined to gain her hand in marriage, who will she choose?

When it was first published in 2006, then-literary critic and poet Alejandro Zambra’s first novel, Bonsai, caused a sensation. Here, in a brilliant new translation from four-time International Booker Prize nominee Megan McDowell, is the little book that started it all: The story of Julio and Emilia, two Chilean university students who, seeking truth in great literature, find one another instead. As they fall together and drift apart over the course of young adulthood, Zambra spins an emotionally engrossing, expertly distilled, formally inventive tale of love, art, and memory.

South Korea, 1970s: Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey, a senior NCO in charge of Eighth Army’s classified documents, has long been a friend (willing or unwilling) to Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. So when he goes missing with a top-secret document that even a glance at could get an officer court-martialed, Sueño and Bascom take it upon themselves to find him. Meanwhile, Overseas Observer reporter Katie Byrd Worthington is back to make life difficult for top army brass. When she lands in a Korean jail cell, Sueño and Bascom are sent to get her out.

What happens to a fox that won't stop teasing the others animals? Listen to this Peruvian tale to find out. Some lessons can change everything.