READER: Madeline Peña
Sin entrañas by Maruja Torres is a well-written and entertaining whodunit police/detective mystery that keeps readers interested and eager to find out who did it? The main character, journalist-turned-detective Diana Dial, enlists the help of her friend, Inspector Fattush—a Lebanese police detective—to solve the mysterious death of a successful, wealthy and extravagant businessman and amateur Egyptologist during a private cruise on the Nile River.
READER: Teresa Mlawer
Carlos Frabetti was born in Bologna, Italy, and has resided in Spain since he was eight years old. He writes for children and adults and has won several literary awards. In addition to being an author and a scriptwriter, he is a mathematician who loves physics and science.
READER: Félix Lizárraga
The narrator and protagonist in La luz difícil (The Difficult Light) is David, a Colombian artist who in his old age is losing his eyesight and, unable to paint anymore, is reduced to writing with the help of a magnifying glass. The novel alternates between two main settings: his present everyday life in a peaceful Colombian town, attended by a family of farmers, and a particular day in New York, 18 years in the past, a day when the whole family waited in agony while Jacobo, his elder son, crippled in an accident, sought release in euthanasia from a life fraught with unbearable pain.
READER: Teresa Mlawer
Gabriel Janer Manila was born in Algaida, Mallorca in 1940. He worked as a teacher for 15 years. In 1970 he received a Master’s degree in Pedagogy from the University of Barcelona, and wrote his thesis about Marcos Flores the child who was abandoned in the wilderness and lived there by himself surrounded by wild animals for 13 years. It is this incredible story that inspired the novel that we now have at hand.
READER: Monica Chapa Domercq
It is rare to encounter a novel that so succinctly describes the intimacies of modern relationships yet Andrés Barba accomplishes this in the four nouvelles that comprise Ha dejado de llover. The characters that inhabit these stories are fascinating; a B-list rock star who suddenly becomes a parent after impregnating a groupie (Paternidad), a resentful daughter who reluctantly deals with her difficult mother’s mortality (Astucia), a budding teenager who struggles with the infidelity of a parent (Infidelidad) and a glamorous mother who has eschewed the death of her ex-husband and the emotional needs of her daughter (Compras).
READER: Patricia Figueroa
Entra en mi vida (Destino, 2012) is a novel by Clara Sanchéz, a writer born in Guadalajara, Spain, and the recipient of two prestigious Spanish literary awards – Premio Alfaguara de Novela in 2000 and the Premio Nadal de Novela in 2010. Her work has been translated in fifteen countries. Clara Sánchez is also known for her collaboration in the Spanish television program about film Qué grande es el cine.
READER: Eduardo de Lamadrid
El último secreto de Frida K. by Gregorio León, winner of the Tenth Emilio Alarcos Llorach International Prize for the Novel, is based on the supposed sentimental and sexual connection between the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. According to León, the origin of the novel is the confirmation made by Trotsky's own bodyguard that such a relationship did in fact exist. Taking that confirmation as a point of departure, the author tells the story of what could have been the affective relationship between the two figures, a relationship that they hid from their respective partners, and which led the Surrealist painter and the creator of the Red Army to become passionate lovers.
READER: Teresa Mlawer
Jorge Bucay was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has written over 20 books, and many of them have been translated into more than 20 different languages.
READER: Teresa Mlawer
This is a truly captivating modern adaptation of The Little Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen. Beautifully illustrated by Page Tsou, this book received the International Award for Illustration at the Bologna Book Fair 2011.
READER: Eduardo de Lamadrid
Alfonso Domingo's El espejo negro won the Ateneo de Sevilla XLIII Prize for the Novel. Standing midpoint between a historical novel and a thriller, this novel recounts the story of different lives united by a common pictorial passion: Hieronymus Bosch. The story is told from various points of view, by the artist himself (15th century), by emissaries of Philip II (16th century), by collectors (end of 19th century and first half of 20th century), and by a scholar who specializes in medieval art and works for the Prado museum (21st century).
