Friday, December 08, 2017

New Books


Presenting a quartet of new titles, two out this month, two more set for early Spring.  Kingdom of Women is a timely look at an imagined world where women impose justice on rapists and murderers.  Prisoner of Pinochet reminds us what fascism and right-wing extremism are all about when authoritarian rule seizes power.  Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch introduces readers to a Cherokee mystery writer writing about mysteries among the Cherokee.  And Photographic is a young adult graphic bio about the immortal Graciela Iturbide.

Remember -- Leaders are readers.


Kingdom of Women
Rosalie Morales Kearns
Jaded Ibis Press - December

[from the publisher]
Women are forming vigilante groups to wreak vengeance on rapists, child abusers, and murderers of women. Averil Parnell, a female Roman Catholic priest, faces a dilemma: per the Golden Rule she should advise forgiveness, but as the lone survivor of an infamous massacre of women seminarians, she understands their anger.

Averil befriends Catherine Beck, a former military officer who, unbeknownst to Averil, has begun an assassination campaign against rapists and murderers of women. At the same time, she embarks on an obsessive affair with John Honig, a wealthy young man with a sordid past as a serial rapist. The three of them quickly form a dysfunctional triangle of attraction and repulsion, love and obsession.

Averil’s life becomes even more complicated when she starts having visions: She sees the souls of dead monks, converses with Jesus, slips into alternate realities.

She had wanted to be a scholar, before the trauma of the massacre. Later, all she wanted was a quiet life as a parish priest. But now she finds that she has become a mystic, and a central figure in the social upheaval that’s gathering momentum all over the world.

Kingdom of Women spans decades and delves into multiple points of view, not only highlighting the personal evolution of a complex, troubled individual but also exploring larger themes like the ethical implications of the use of violence against oppression, and the tension between justice and mercy, revenge and forgiveness.







Rosalie Morales Kearns, a writer of Puerto Rican and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, is the founder of Shade Mountain Press, the author of the magic-realist story collection Virgins and Tricksters, and the editor of the short story anthology The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women. A product of Catholic schooling from kindergarten through college, Kearns has a B.A. in theology from Fordham University and an MFA from the University of Illinois.











Prisoner of Pinochet: My Year in a Chilean Concentration Camp

Translated by Erin Goodman; Foreword and notes by Peter Winn
University of Wisconsin Press - December

[from the publisher]

September 11, 1973: Chilean military forces under General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the elected government of President Salvador Allende, bombing the presidential palace with the president inside. Minister of Mining Sergio Bitar was forcibly detained along with other members of the Allende cabinet and confined on bleak, frigid Dawson Island in the Magellan Straits.

Prisoner of Pinochet is the gripping first-person chronicle of Bitar's year as a political prisoner before being expelled from Chile; a poignant narrative of men held captive together in a labor camp under harsh conditions, only able to guess at their eventual fate; and an insightful memoir of the momentous events of the early 1970s that led to seventeen years of bloody authoritarian rule in Chile. Available in English for the first time, this edition includes maps and photos from the 1970s and contextual notes by historian Peter Winn.




Sergio Bitar




Sergio Bitar returned to Chile after years of exile and served as a senator and cabinet minister. He is the president of the Chilean Council for Strategy and Foresight, and his many books include Democratic Transitions: Conversations with World Leaders. Erin Goodman is the associate director of academic programs at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, and coeditor of Reflections on Memory and Democracy. Peter Winn is a professor of Latin American history at Tufts University and coeditor of The Chile Reader.








Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch
Sara Sue Hoklotubbe
University of Arizona Press - February, 2018

[from the publisher]
When Sadie Walela learns that her new neighbor in Cherokee Country, Angus Clyburn’s Buffalo Ranch, offers rich customers a chance to kill buffalo for fun, she is horrified. No good can surely come from this. It doesn’t, and murder soon follows. Even though Deputy Sheriff Lance Smith, Sadie’s love interest, suspects a link to the Buffalo Ranch, he can find little evidence to make an arrest. And when a rare white buffalo calf is born on the ranch and immediately disappears, Sadie’s instincts tell her something is wrong—and she sets out to prove it.

Her suspicions—and fears of more violence—escalate when a former schoolmate returns to Oklahoma to visit her ailing father and finds employment at the ranch. Will she be the next victim? Drawn deeper and deeper into danger, Sadie uncovers an unparalleled web of greed and corruption. It will take all of her investigating skill to set things straight—assuming she and her wolfdog can stay alive long enough to succeed.







Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, a Cherokee tribal citizen, is the author of the award-winning Sadie Walela Mystery series, which also includes Deception on All Accounts, The American Café, and Sinking Suspicions. She is the winner of a WILLA Literary Award, a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for best mystery/ suspense, and a Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Award for best mystery. She and her husband live in Colorado.






Photographic:  The Life of Graciela Iturbide
Isabel Quintero
Illustrated by Zeke Peña
Getty Publications - March, 2018


[from the publisher]
Graciela Iturbide was born in Mexico City in 1942, the oldest of thirteen children. When tragedy strikes Graciela as a young mother, she turns to photography for solace and understanding.

From then on Graciela embarks on a photographic journey that takes her throughout her native Mexico, from the Sonora Desert to Juchitán to Frida Kahlo’s bathroom, to the United States, India, and beyond.

Photographic is a symbolic, poetic, and deeply personal graphic biography of this iconic photographer. Graciela’s journey will excite young readers and budding photographers who will be inspired by her resolve, talent, and curiosity.

Isabel Quintero lives and writes in the Inland Empire of Southern California, where she was born and raised. She received her BA in English and MA in English Composition from California State University, San Bernardino. Her first novel, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, was one of School Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2014, and won the American Library Association’s William C. Morris Award prize for a debut young-adult novel. Her second book, Ugly Cat & Pablo (Scholastic), was published in April 2017, to much acclaim.

Zeke Peña is a cartoonist, an illustrator, and a painter. He was born in southern New Mexico and grew up on the US–Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. He received a degree in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin. His illustrations have appeared on album and book covers, in editorials and comics, and as graphics for community organizing. His work has been exhibited at the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago), Albuquerque Hispanic Cultural Center, Houston Center of Photography, MACLA (San Jose), Loisaida Center (New York), El Paso Museum of Art, and Museo de Arte Ciudad Juárez, as well as galleries in the US and Mexico.


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Manuel Ramos is the author of several novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction books and articles. His collection of short stories, The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories, was a finalist for the 2016 Colorado Book Award. My Bad: A Mile High Noir was published by Arte Público Press in 2016 and was a finalist for the Shamus Award in the Original Paperback category sponsored by the Private Eye Writers of America.  He is hard at work on his next Chicano Noir crime novel.



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