Latin American Literature

Isabel Allende parte de la célebre cita de Albert Camus -"en medio del invierno aprendí por fin que había en mí un verano invencible"- para urdir una trama que presenta la geografía humana de unos personajes propios de la América de hoy que se hallan "en el más profundo invierno de sus vidas": una chilena, una joven guatemalteca ilegal y un maduro norteamericano.

Hernán Cortés y Motecuzoma protagonizaron el choque de culturas más trascendente de la historia de la humanidad. Todo en la historia del mundo moderno es producto de ese encuentro y esa conquista.

From the author of The Christmas Hirelings comes this Audible Exclusive production of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s classic sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret. English actress Olivia Poulet gives an assured and captivating narration; a cornerstone of the genre and a scandal at the time of its publication, Lady Audley’s Secret is an entertaining and shocking tale of high drama and shifting perceptions.

This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. When her husband discovers her deception, he exacts a terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in China.

This riveting, multigenerational epic tells the story of two families and the history of Puerto Rico through the eyes of Isabel Monfort and her husband, Quintn Mendizabal. Isabel attempts to immortalize their now-united families - and, by extension, their homeland - in a book. The tale that unfolds in her writing has layers upon layers, exploring the nature of love, marriage, family, and Puerto Rico itself.

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.

Rulfo comenta los relatos que sigue escribiendo en cartas a su novia Clara Aparicio. En 1951 se publica el séptimo, "Diles que no me maten", en la revista América. Gracias a la primera beca que Rulfo recibe del Centro Mexicano de Escritores puede terminar los ocho que aparecerán con los previos en 1953, en el libro titulado El Llano en llamas, dedicado a Clara. Dos relatos más, aparecidos en revistas en 1955, serán incluidos en la edición de 1970.

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life.

Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family.

Every woman wants to be Elizabeth Bennet Darcy - beautiful, gracious, universally admired, strong, daring and outspoken - a thoroughly modern woman in crinolines. And every woman will fall madly in love with Mr. Darcy - tall, dark and handsome, a nobleman and a heartthrob whose virility is matched only by his utter devotion to his wife. Their passion is consuming and idyllic - essentially, they can’t keep their hands off each other - through a sweeping tale of adventure and misadventure, human folly and numerous mysteries of parentage.

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood. Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy.

Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong, not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.

Tyesha Couvillier will never forget the rip-offs and brutal treatment she endured as a sex worker. So as the new director of the groundbreaking Lower East Side Women's Health Clinic, she'll take on the Ukranian mob and corrupt strip club bosses to stop local exotic dancers from being pressured into selling sex. And if she and her crew can pull off an elaborate heist, the evidence they steal could upend this vicious game - and give exploited women a chance at justice.

A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it?

A meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph.

In folktales, the trickster can be the wise one or the fool, the one who fools or the one who is fooled. That is why children of all ages enjoy hearing these tales. The psychology of childhood is pretty much the same everywhere, giving these enjoyable stories universal appeal.

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse - by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals - propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.

Un padre y su hijo atraviesan Argentina por carretera, desde Buenos Aires hacia las cataratas de Iguazú, en la frontera norte con Brasil. Son los años de la junta militar, hay controles de soldados armados y tensión en el ambiente. El padre de Gaspar trata de protegerlo del destino que le ha sido asignado después de que su madre muriese en circunstancias poco claras; en un accidente que acaso no lo fue.

La ciudad mexicana de Santa Teresa - trasunto de Ciudad Juarez - atrae como un imán a los protagonistas. Cuatro críticos literarios europeos viajan hasta Sonora tras las huellas del escritor desaparecido Benno von Archimboldi, cuya vida se refiere en la parte final de la novela. Allí conocerán a Amalfitano, el profesor universitario chileno que, junto con su hija, se establece en la ciudad, a la que también llegará el periodista estadounidense Oscar Fate para retransmitir un combate de boxeo.

A Woman of Endurance, set in nineteenth-century Puerto Rican plantation society, follows Pola, a deeply spiritual African woman who is captured and later sold for the purpose of breeding future slaves. The resulting babies are taken from her as soon as they are born. Pola loses the faith that has guided her and becomes embittered and defensive. The dehumanizing violence of her life almost destroys her. But this is not a novel of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity.