South American Literature

“Extraordinary . . . [Bolaño’s] greatest work.” —James Wood, The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous river of feeling, a brilliant meditation, an enthralling fantasy—By Night in Chile is the real thing, and the rarest: a contemporary novel destined to have a permanent place in...

General Armistead Mason and John “Jack” Mason McCarty are brothers-in-law, second cousins, and descendants of founding father George Mason IV. Ambitious and headstrong, together they set out to find love, acceptance and honor on their own merit. Armistead - by nature a politician - demands respect and strives for perfection. Jack - by inclination a rover - looks to forge his own path. When Armistead is challenged by corruption in the political machine and is denied a seat in the US Congress, the two become embroiled in a bitter dispute....

Rhea's neighborhood is fading away—the mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her. Because while their little corner of South L.A. isn't perfect, to Rhea and her two best friends, it's something even more important—it's home. And it's worth protecting. But as more white people flock to their latest edgy, urban paradise, more of Rhea's friends and family are pushed out. Until Rhea decides it's time to push back.

Before being torn down in 2007, the Stateway Gardens public housing projects on Chicago’s South Side were ridden with deprivation and crime. But for some, like Tracy, the shy, intelligent young boy at the center of this enthralling collection of linked stories, they are simply home. Set in the mid-1980s and taking listeners up to the point of the destruction of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects, this collection gives an intimate look at the hopes, dreams, failures, and fortunes of a group of people growing up with the deck always stacked against them.

In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart—one black, one white; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager—fight for their families’ survival in this lyrical and powerful...

Set in a small coastal town in North Carolina during the waning years of the American Revolution, this incandescent debut novel follows three generations of family—fathers and daughters, mother and son, master and slave, characters who yearn for redemption amidst a heady brew of war...

Billie James' inheritance isn't much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened, she has no memory of that day—and...

Set in Soweto, the urban heartbeat of South Africa, Innards tells the intimate stories of everyday Black folks processing the savagery of apartheid with grit, wit, and their own distinctive bewildering humor. Rich with the thrilling textures of township language and life, it braids the voices and perspectives of an indelible cast of characters into a breathtaking collection flush with forgiveness, rage, ugliness, and beauty.

How far would you go to protect a loved one? Would you tamper with evidence? Commit arson? Allow a prime suspect to remain at large? Pegasus Quincy and her former partner, Shepherd Malone, have some difficult choices ahead when Shep’s daughter is caught with a murder weapon in her hand. It doesn’t help when the detective on the case has problems of his own. When he applies to the sheriff’s department, he conveniently forgets to mention that he was terminated from his previous position under a cloud of fraud.

""The House of Forster is built on bubbles; watching each wealth-addled generation try not to blow the family fortune and/or disgrace its name provides not only excellent Southern Gothic fun but a panoramic tour of the American Century.""— Jonathan Dee, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist...

"I was born a slave, as was my father before me, but I shall die a free man." Thus begins the poignant story of Samuel Washburn, born a slave in 1850. A young master's cruelty leads to an unforeseen confrontation, which results in Sam and his cousin fleeing the plantation for their lives. They run north to freedom, only to return the South to fight for the greater cause in the Civil War.

At age 23, Cullen Thomas was, like most middle-class kids his age, looking for something meaningful and exciting to do before settling into the 9-to-5 routine. Possessed of a youthful, romantic view of the world, he set off for adventure in Asia and a job teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. But he got more than he ever bargained for when an ill-advised stunt led to a drug smuggling arrest and a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

Betrothed to Major Samuel Prescott, Amanda sympathizes with the Union, but Alice struggles to forgive the Northern forces that nearly destroyed their home. To make ends meet, Alice smuggles medical supplies for the Confederacy, and she falls in love with Amanda's former beau, Colonel William Jackson. Meanwhile, two opposing armies, devastated by the clash at Fredericksburg, wait for the spring campaign on the banks of the Rappahannock River.

Khian "Khi" Prince has the ladies going crazy. He's a certified boss with what seems to be the weight of the world on his shoulders. After failing at love twice, Khi's not ready to give up yet, and when he runs into Cuba Lance, he's certain he has finally gotten it right. But when Cuba shatters his heart all over again, will Khi give up on love once and for all? Daelan "Dae" Prince is the ultimate bad boy. With the love of his life and their five-year-old son by his side, Dae seems to have his happily ever after. But things are never what they seem.

In 1948 most White people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the 10 million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous White journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Escorted through the South's parallel Black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic Black civil rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local Black leaders, and families of lynching victims.

“Dispute in progress, lethal weapons involved.” Deputy Pegasus Quincy takes the call to resolve violence on a Friesian horse ranch in Arizona. Intent on his own personal vendetta, partner Shepherd Malone refuses to declare a murder in a fatal fire at the ranch. Peg unwisely circumvents the law to investigate anyway. Two families feuding over water rights, a Gypsy clan suspected of drug dealing, and a blackmailer on the loose, all lead Pegasus astray on her quest to find the killer in a desert mountain town beset by flash floods and arsenic-laced creeks.

That brash decision lands Pegasus Quincy in the midst of a hostile murder situation. She alienates her new partner and almost gets him killed. She ignores regulations and jeopardizes an ongoing investigation. Just when she thinks things couldn’t get worse - they do! She encounters the Nettle family: an insanely jealous wife, a banished son, and a sister whose little girl has been traumatized by an explosion at the illicit family whiskey still.

Pegasus Quincy, a rookie deputy on temporary assignment in a sleepy mountain town, expects a quiet summer citing jaywalkers and writing traffic tickets. Fate intervenes when a dead body turns up in an old copper mining pit. The man is a three-time loser disowned by even his own mother. Peg’s sheriff boss declares the death an accident and tells her to “move on”. She wants to agree, but then her office is ransacked and her assistant kidnapped...Will they find the killer before he strikes again?

This is the story of Bronx-born David Kokolovitz and his hilarious experiences with sex, Shakespeare, and the South Pacific. We follow David on his journey away from his Bronx home in search of an acting career. In a comedy of opposites, New Yorker David ends up living in the Deep South where he lands his first acting job at a southern Shakespeare repertory company. Just as the hazards of too-tight tights and too-long soliloquies become too much for him, World War II conveniently breaks out and he moves on to entertain the troops.

The legacy of Alexandra Ripley's Charleston lives on in this next installment in her Deep South saga. Let the passion, deception, secrets, and revenge creep under your skin like South Carolina heat as you plunge into this gripping novel of Southern intrigue.