House Divided by Raul Ramos y Sanchez
Once they had a country, a culture, a future. Today, upheaval and betrayal have turned their world upside down. And for one family-a U.S. war hero, his deeply religious wife, and their impressionable fourteen-year-old son-a new struggle has just begun.
Mano Suarez made a choice to fight against injustice, and his wife can only pray for his deliverance. Now their son, Pedro, takes up his father's cause . . . disappearing into the ranks of a cult-like organization and leaving his family far behind. To rescue him, Mano must face the consequences of his past deeds. But how can he convince his son to give up the very ideals he, Mano, embraced? How can he prove that home and family are the most important ideals of all?
Death at Solstice: A Gloria Damasco Mystery by Lucha Corpi
Chicana detective Gloria Damasco has a "dark gift," an extrasensory prescience that underscores her investigations and compels her to solve numerous cases. This time, the recurring vision haunting her dreams contains two pairs of dark eyes watching her in the night, a phantom horse and rider, and the voice of a woman pleading for help. But most disquieting of all is Gloria's sensation of being trapped underwater, unable to free herself, unable to breathe.
When Gloria is asked to help the owners of the Oro Blanco winery in California's Shenandoah Valley, she finds herself on the road to the legendary Gold Country. And she can't help but wonder if the ever-more persistent visions might foreshadow this new case that involves the theft of a family heirloom, a pair of antique diamond and emerald earrings rumored to have belonged to Mexico's Empress Carlota.
Soon Gloria learns that there's more to the case than stolen jewelry. Mysterious accidents, threatening anonymous notes, the disappearance of a woman believed to be a saint, and a ghost horse thought to have belonged to notorious bandit Joaquín Murrieta are some of the pieces Gloria struggles to fit together. A woman's gruesome murder and the discovery of a group of young women from Mexico being held against their will in an abandoned house send Gloria on a fateful journey to a Witches' Sabbath to find the final pieces of the puzzle before someone else is killed.
Corpi weaves the rich cultural history of California's Gold Country with a suspensefulmystery in this latest installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series
Meet Me Under the Ceiba by Silvio Sirias
"I'm not afraid of that old man," Adela once told her niece. But everyone in the small town of La Curva, Nicaragua, knew that the wealthy land owner, Don Roque Ramírez, wanted Adela Rugama dead.And on Christmas Day, Adela disappeared. It was two months before her murdered body was found.
An American professor of Nicaraguan descent spending the summer in his parents' homeland learns of Adela's murder and vows to unravel the threads of the mystery. He begins the painstaking process of interviewing the townspeople, and it quickly becomes apparent that Adela-a hard-working campesina who never learned to read and write-and Don Roque had one thing in common: the beautiful Ixelia Cruz. The love of Adela's life, Ixelia was one of Don Roque's many possessions until Adela lured her away.
The interviews with Adela's family, neighbors, and former lovers shed light on the circumstances of her death and reveal the lively community left reeling by her brutal murder, including: her older sister Mariela and her four children, who spent Christmas morning with their beloved aunt, excitedly unwrapping the gifts she brought them that fateful day; her neighbor and friend, Lizbeth Hodgson, the beautiful mulata who rejected Adela's passionate advances early in their relationship; Padre Uriel, who did not welcome Adela to mass because she loved women (though he has no qualms about his lengthy affair with a married woman); her former lover Gloria, the town's midwife, who is forever destined to beg her charges to name their newborn daughters Adela.
Through stories and gossip that expose jealousies, scandals, and misfortunes, Sirias lovingly portrays the community of La Curva, Nicaragua, in all its evil and goodness. The winner of the Chicano / Latino Literary Prize, this spellbinding novel captures the essence of a world rarely seen in American literature.
America Libre by Raul Ramos y Sanchez
How will today's immigration crisis shape our nation? This provocative novel set in the second decade of the 21st century poses a chillingly credible nightmare vision . . . a Hispanic liberation movement seeking to redraw the borders of the United States.
After years of anti-immigrant backlash, anger seethes in the nation's teeming barrios. The crowded streets bristle with restless youth idled by a deep recession. When undercover detectives in San Antonio accidentally kill a young Latina bystander during a botched drug bust, riots erupt across the Southwest. As the inner-city violence escalates, Anglo vigilantes strike back with barrio shooting rampages.
Exploiting the turmoil, a congressional demagogue succeeds in passing legislation that transforms the nation's Hispanic enclaves into walled-off Quarantine Zones. Amid the chaos in his L.A. barrio, Manolo Suarez is out of work and struggling to support his growing family. Under the spell of a beautiful Latina radical, the former U.S. Army Ranger eventually finds himself questioning his loyalty to his wife-and his country.
Fast-paced and action-packed, America Libre is a wake-up call to the dangers of extremism - on both sides of this explosive issue.
