Latin American Literature

The Importance of Being Earnest is undoubtably Oscar Wilde's best known play probably due to its sharp wit that cannot help but enchant and entertain any reader, theatregoer or listener with this performance.

Baja California, 1979. Viridiana spends her days watching the dead sharks piled beside the seashore, as the fishermen pull their nets. There is nothing else to do. Yet her head is filled with dreams of Hollywood films, of romance, of a future beyond the drab town where her only option is to marry and have children. Three wealthy American tourists arrive for the summer, and Viridiana is magnetized. They offer excitement, and perhaps an escape. When one of them dies, Viridiana lies to protect her friends. Soon enough, someone’s asking questions....

Esmeralda Santiago reminisces about her childhood in Puerto Rico and her early years in Brooklyn as the oldest of seven (soon to be 11) children. Her upbringing is turbulent on account of her parents’ relentless fighting, which only ever seems to stop when they have another baby. When her youngest brother has an accident, her mother decides to move to New York with her children to seek medical treatment. Arriving in the United States, 13-year-old Santiago experiences uprooting and a loss of identity while she tries to adapt to a culture and language that are foreign to her.

Granny warns Tukama not be tricked by the duppies—or ghosts—of their Caribbean island.

When Anansi the spider decides to help rescue Brother Tiger, he makes Brother Tiger agree to a simple promise.

Larimar Cintrón works hard at three things: her job as brand manager for Beacon Café, a New York based corporate bakery chain; taking care of her parents and her abuela; and hiding that she’s a ciguapa—a mythical creature of Dominican folklore with long, straight hair and backwards-facing feet. Larimar may only be a ciguapa on full moons, but she feels like an outsider in her family the rest of the month too. Her love of ’90s punk rock music and style further sets her apart.

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.

No one expects to meet their father at their mother’s funeral. But for Gabby Medina, that’s exactly what happens. Her dad abandoned her when she was a baby, and now he’s back. And he wants to give her a house. Gabby doesn’t want the house—or him. But she could use the money. So Gabby agrees to take it under two conditions: First, she can sell the house whenever she wants. Second, accepting it doesn’t mean she accepts him.

Santos Paola Santiago has recently returned from Oregon, where she defeated the Hitchhiker ghost and saved her father from the vengeful spirit that was possessing him. The poor girl deserves a rest! But first she has to rescue Dante from the void, where he's been imprisoned by some unknown force. Paola's prophetic dreams seem to have dried up, so she has to find other ways to locate a new rift where she can enter the void. Signs point to Texas—but how is she going to get there from Arizona?

Ambitious San Antonio singer Catalina “Cat” Capuleta gets the chance of a lifetime when she joins superstar heartthrob and fellow mariachi Patricio Galán on his seven-week concert tour. Demanding and arrogant, Patricio challenges Cat on every level, as an artist and as a woman. But headstrong Cat is determined to be his match. No matter how seductive Patricio’s baritone voice, Cat’s eyes are only on the prize: success and making her familia proud.

From 1413-1415 the butcher’s guild, otherwise known as the “White Hoods” of Paris, kept that city in a state of near anarchy. With a mad king, a virtual civil war between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy, and King Henry V of England claiming the French throne, there is plenty of opportunity for Guy Aylmer, a squire to Sir Eustace de Villeroy, to show his mettle in many a skirmish, finally winning his spurs at the lopsided victory of the English over the French at the Battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415.

Relinquishing thoughts of a materially rewarding life, the respectably educated Felix Holt returns to his native village in North Loamshire and becomes an artisan. He is a forceful young man of honor, integrity, and idealism, burning to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans.

Daughters of Latin America collects the intergenerational voices of Latine women across time and space, capturing the power, strength, and creativity of these visionary writers, leaders, scholars, and activists—including 24 Indigenous voices. Several authors featured are translated into English for the first time. Grammy, National Book Award, Cervantes, and Pulitzer Prize winners as well as a Nobel Laureate and the next generation of literary voices are among the stars of this essential collection, women whose work inspires and transforms us.

Antonio José Bolivar Proaño lives quietly in a river town in the rain-soaked jungle of Ecuador that is slowly being overrun by tourists and opportunists. Having lost his wife decades earlier, he takes refuge in books—paperback novels of faraway places and bittersweet love, delivered to him by the dentist who visits the village twice a year. One day, a greedy trader pushes nature too far, setting an enraged mother ocelot on a bloody rampage through the village.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out by letter. She wrote nearly 1,800 poems in her life, but very few were published until after her death. In this volume, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy writings of her last years.

In May 1987, Jackie Benton received a heartbreaking phone call from her boyfriend, Sean Hardy, bringing an end to their five-year relationship. He’d fallen for a fellow student at Exeter University. Sean and Jackie would never see each other again. Thirty-three years later, Sean returns to his home town. There, he inadvertently discovers what became of Jackie Benton.

Rainbow Valley was written in 1919 by L. M. Montgomery for the series that began with Anne of Green Gables. Anne and Gilbert's children are growing up! Their new friends, the Merediths, live in the Manse nearby. When the Merediths aren't playing in the graveyard or riding pigs through town, they meet up with the Blythes to play, fish, and study insects in Rainbow Valley!

Lina has come home to the country of her childhood. Sent away from Colombia to England after her mother's death 20 years before, she's searching for the one person who can tell her about their shared past. She's never forgotten Matty - her childhood friend and protector who now runs the Anthill, a day care refuge for the street kids of Medellín. Lina begins volunteering there, but her reunion with Matty is not what she hoped for.

An earthquake unnerves Tokyo on March 11, 2011, triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster - and a tectonic stirring of the collective past. Mr. Yoshie Watanabe, an aging executive at an electronics company and a survivor of the atomic bomb, feels as though he is a fugitive of his own memory. As the seams of his country threaten to come undone yet again, he braces himself to make the biggest decision of his life. Meanwhile, four women narrate their own memories of Watanabe to an enigmatic Argentinian reporter investigating his life.

The 1660s were a time of turmoil in England: Cromwell had been defeated and Charles II, who was sympathetic to the Catholics, was restored to the throne; the Dutch declared war on England; the Plague raged; and the Great Fire of London destroyed half the city! Our hero, Cyril, at the death of his father Sir Aubrey Shenstone, inherits nothing except his father's title, and works as a bookkeeper for various London tradesmen.