|
Latino Book Month May 2022
|
|
|
|
|
The Hacienda
by Isabel Cañas F CAN
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches... During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz's father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife's sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined. When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz's sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo's sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz's fears--but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark the doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano? Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her. Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness. Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz's doom.
|
|
|
The Queen of the Cicadas
by V. Castro F CAS
2018 - Belinda Alvarez has returned to Texas for the wedding of her best friend Veronica. The farm is the site of the urban legend, La Reina de Las Chicharras - The Queen of The Cicadas. In 1950s south Texas a farmworker- Milagros from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, is murdered. Her death is ignored by the town, but not the Aztec goddess of death, Mictecacíhuatl. The goddess hears the dying cries of Milagros and creates a plan for both to be physically reborn by feeding on vengeance and worship. Belinda and the new owner of the farmhouse - Hector, find themselves immersed in the legend and realize it is part of their fate as well.
|
|
|
Martita, I remember you = : Martita, te recuerdo
by Sandra Cisneros F CIS
When she unearths a letter in a closet, Corina finds the memories of her days spent in Paris rushing back as she remembers her intense friendships with two women with whom she fell out of touch and out of mind.
|
|
|
The inheritance of Orquídea Divina : a novel
by Zoraida Córdova F COR
Seven years after their matriarch Orquidea passed away, blessing them with her special gifts, the Montoya family journeys to Ecuador to uncover the truth behind their inheritance to stop a hidden figure from killing off Orquidea’s line one-by-one. Perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Isabel Allende, and Sarah Addison Allen, this is a gorgeously written novel about a family searching for the truth hidden in their past and the power they've inherited.
|
|
|
Gordo : stories
by Jaime Cortez F COR
His first-ever collection of stories, Jaime Cortez's Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California, in the 1970s. A young boy named Gordo fights back tears underneath a wrestler's mask as he is forced to fight other boys and grow into his father's expectations of manhood. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, poverty, and discovers the wrenching divides between documented and undocumented immigrants. Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist, uses tiny library pencils to draw murals of graffiti flowers along the camp's blank walls, the words CHICANO POWER boldly lettered across, before she runs away from home one day with her mother's boyfriend. Los Tigres, the perfect pair of twins who show up to Gyrich Farms every season without fail, are champion drinkers until one of them is rushed to the emergency room after a brawl, bloody and slumped in a tattered easy chair on the back of a pick-up truck. These scenes from Steinbeck Country seen so intimately from within are full of humor, family drama, and a sweet frankness about serious matters-who belongs to America and how are they treated? Written with balance and poise, Cortez braids together elegantly tragicomic and inviting stories about life on a California camp, in essence redefining what all-American means.
|
|
|
What's mine and yours : a novel
by Naima Coster F COS
A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off achain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the next twenty years. On one side of the integration debate is Jade, Gee's steely, ambitious mother. In the aftermath of a harrowing loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he'll need to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious, young Black man. On the other side is Noelle's headstrong mother, Lacey May, a white woman who refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. She strives to protect them as she couldn't protect herself from the influence of their charming but unreliable father, Robbie. When Gee and Noelle join the school play meant to bridge the divide between new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers--each determined to see her child inherit a better life--will make choices that will haunt them for decades to come. As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, What's Mine and Yours is an expansive, vibrant tapestry that moves between the years, from the foothills of North Carolina, to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris. It explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.
|
|
|
Dominicana
by Angie Cruz F CRU
The award-winning author of Soledad draws on her mother’s story in a tale set in a turbulent 1960s Dominican Republic, where a young teen agrees to marry a man twice her age to help her family’s immigration to America.
|
|
|
Of women and salt
by Gabriela Garcia F GAR
The daughter of a Cuban immigrant battles addiction and the fallout of her decision to take in the child of an ICE detainee, while her mother wrestles with displacement trauma and complicated family ties.
|
|
|
Olga dies dreaming
by Xochitl Gonzalez F GON
In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Olga, the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers, must confront the effects of long-held family secrets when she falls in love with Matteo, while other family members must weather their own storms.
|
|
|
Lost children archive : a novel
by Valeria Luiselli F LUI
This novel tells the story of a family's summer road trip across America - a journey that, with profound humanity, probes the nature of justice and equality in America today. A mother and father set out with their kids from New York to Arizona. In their used Volvo - and with their ten-year-old son trying out his new Polaroid camera - the family is heading for the Apacheria: the region the Apaches once called home, and where the ghosts of Geronimo and Cochise might still linger. The father, a sound documentarist, hopes to gather an "inventory of echoes" from this historic, mythic place. The mother, a radio journalist, becomes consumed by the news she hears on the car radio, about the thousands of children trying to reach America but getting stranded at the southern border, held in detention centers, or being sent back to their homelands, to an unknown fate. But as the family drives farther west - through Virginia to Tennessee, across Oklahoma and Texas - we sense they are on the brink of a crisis of their own. A fissure is growing between the parents, one the children can feel beneath their feet.
|
|
|
The five wounds : a novel
by Kirstin Valdez Quade F QUA
A first novel by the award-winning author of Night at the Fiestas finds a man accepting the role of Jesus in his New Mexico community’s Good Friday procession, before his personal goals of redemption are challenged by a daughter’s pregnancy.
|
|
|
Fruit of the drunken tree : a novel
by Ingrid Rojas Contreras F ROJ
A novel set against the violence of 1990s Columbia follows a sheltered girl and a teen maid, who forge an unlikely friendship as the families of both struggle to maintain stability amidst Bogotá's rapidly escalating violence
|
|
|
The house of broken angels
by Luis Alberto Urrea F URR
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home.
|
|
|
Gods of jade and shadow
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia FAN MOR
A dark fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore is set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age in Mexico's underworld, where a young dreamer is sent by the Mayan God of Death on a life-changing journey
|
|
|
The Cipher
by Isabella Maldonado M MAL
Escaping a still-at-large serial killer as a teen, Special Agent Nina Guerrera teams up with the Bureau’s preeminent criminal profiler, Dr. Jeffrey Wade, when the killer, a depraved social media superstar, begins taunting her with coded riddles.
|
|
|
The transparency of time
by Leonardo Padura M PAD
When an old Marxist turned flamboyant practitioner of Santeria needs help in tracking down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla — a black Madonna, Mario Conde must delve as far back as the Crusades in an attempt to uncover the true origin of the statue.
|
|
|
You had me at hola : a novel
by Alexis Daria ROM DAR
Rendered the subject of tabloid gossip by a messy public breakup, soap star Jasmine takes a part in a new bilingual comedy at the side of a telenovela costar who would revitalize his career.
|
|
|
The worst best man
by Mia Sosa ROM SOS
Mia Sosa delivers a sassy, steamy #ownvoices enemies-to-lovers novel, perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory, Helen Hoang, and Sally Thorne! A wedding planner left at the altar? Yeah, the irony isn't lost on Carolina Santos, either. But despite that embarrassing blip from her past, Lina's offered an opportunity that could change her life. There's just one hitch... she has to collaborate with the best (make that worst) man from her own failed nuptials. Marketing expert Max Hartley is determined to make his mark with a coveted hotel client looking to expand its brand. Then he learns he'll be working with his brother's whip-smart, stunning--absolutely off-limits--ex-fiancée. And she loathes him. If they can nail their presentation without killing each other, they'll both come out ahead. Except Max has been public enemy number one ever since he encouraged his brother to jilt the bride, and Lina's ready to dish out a little payback of her own. Soon Lina and Max discover animosity may not be the only emotion creating sparks between them. Still, this star-crossed couple can never be more than temporary playmates because Lina isn't interested in falling in love and Max refuses to play runner-up to his brother ever again.
|
|
|
Chilling effect
by Valerie Valdes SCI VAL
After her sister is kidnapped by a shadowy syndicate known as The Fridge, the foul-mouthed Captain Eva Innocente and her motley crew aboard La Sirena Negra must pay the ransom through a series of dangerous missions.
|
|
|
The undocumented Americans
by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio 364.137 COR
An Ivy League-educated DACA beneficiary reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans, from the volunteers recruited for the 9/11 Ground Zero cleanup to the homeopathy botanicas of Miami that provide limited health care to non-citizens.
|
|
|
Mi Cocina : Recipes and Rapture from My Kitchen in Mexico
by Rick Martínez 641.5972 MAR
An enticing, regional, and stunning exploration of Mexican cuisine from beloved food writer and host of Food52's "Sweet Heat" series, Rick Martinez. In his first, much-anticipated cookbook, New York Times contributor, Food52 columnist, and former Bon Appétit food editor Rick Martinez introduces home cooks to the diverse culinary treasures of Mexico. In Mi Cocina, Rick travels to each of the seven regions in Mexico to explore 100 unique dishes, the recipe for each accompanied by stunning on-site photography. In this beautifully personal tribute, Rick expresses Mexico's regionality through dishes like Oaxaca's Mole Coloradito (a rich pasilla chile sauce made with dried fruits, nuts, and seeds and sweetened with plantain and bittersweet chocolate) and Tacos de Capeados (cornmeal-battered fried fish tacos with papaya, tomatillo, and a spicy cream sauce) from coastal Baja. He delivers recipes based on his favorite home-tested version of each dish, veering from tradition when inspired-- like in the Tlayuda con Tasajo in which a flank steak is marinated with miso paste before being grilled and added to a large tostada topped with refried beans and queso Oaxaca. Rick always keeps accessibility in mind when speaking to the availability of ingredients such as chiles, spices, and herbs-he often calls for or talks about what is traditional and provides substitutions and replacements when needed. In addition to the captivating recipes, Rick includes essays on topics like the migration and culinary influence of people from the Middle East and China to Mexico, and his experiences of finding welcomeness, support, and a feeling of belonging in his new home in Mazatlán. The collective result is touching, transportive, and delicious.
|
|
|
How to love a country : poems
by Richard Blanco 811.54 BLA
The diverse poems in this collection form a mosaic of seemingly varied topics: the Pulse Nightclub massacre; an unexpected encounter on a visit to Cuba; the forced exile of 8,500 Navajos in 1868; the arrival of a young Chinese woman at Angel Island in 1938; the incarceration of a gifted writer; and the poet's abiding love for his partner, who he is finally allowed to wed. But despite each poem's unique subject matter or occasion, all are fundamentally asking one overwhelming question: how to love this country? Seeking answers, Blanco digs deep into the very marrow of our nation--our cities and towns--with poems that interrogate our past and present, grieve our injustices and note our flaws, yet remember to celebrate our ideals and cling to our hopes. Blanco unravels the very fabric of the American narrative, pursuing a resolution to the inherent contradiction of our nation's psyche and mandate: e pluribus unum (out of many, one), charged with the utopian idea that no single narrative is more important than another, and that America could and ought someday to be a county where all narratives converge into one. A country in which we can all truly thrive and truly love.
|
|
|
In the Dream House: A Memoir
by Carmen Maria Machado B MACHADO
The award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties shares the story of her relationship with an abusive partner and how it was shaped by her religious upbringing, her sexual orientation, and inaccurate cultural beliefs about psychological trauma.
|
|
|
|
|
|