Spain Literary

It is a time of reckoning for José-Maria Alvarez, an aristocratic Spanish banker living in a Swiss village with his American wife. Nearing the end of a long and tumultuous life, he’s overcome by hallucinatory memories of the past. Among his most cherished memories are those of his boyhood in 1950s Franco-era Spain and the bucolic afternoons he spent salmon fishing on the Sella River with his father, uncle, and much-loved younger brother. But these fond reveries are soon eclipsed by something greater.

Presented as a fictionalized autobiography, The Master of the Prado begins in Madrid in 1990, when Sierra encounters a mysterious stranger named Luis Fovel within the halls of the Prado. Fovel takes him on a whirlwind tour and promises to uncover startling secrets hidden in the museum's masterpieces - secrets that open up a whole new world to Sierra. The enigmatic Fovel reveals how a variety of visions, prophesies, conspiracies, and even heresies inspired masters such as Raphael, Titian, and Hieronymus Bosch....

Summer ends, the season changes, and Coro, an artist frightened off by what her own paintings may represent, gets in her car and drives for hours in the middle of the night until she chances upon Betania, an isolated house existing in a world of its own. It's an unfamiliar place inhabited exclusively by women who, strangely, all seem to know her. Like adherents of an ancient cult, the women of Betania all dress the same, carry out strange rites and celebrations, and live alongside goats and innumerable dogs against a landscape dominated by a mountain that seems to block out the sunlight.

Lucas (the son of farmers) and Ignacio (a descendant of the Barí indigenous people) enter the seminary out of a desire to help others and to get an education. Their visceral love story undergoes stages of passion, indifference, rage, and a final commitment to stay together until the end of their lives. Working in a community largely composed of people displaced by the war, Ignacio stumbles upon the horrifying story of the false positives, which will put the lives of the two men in grave danger.

Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost, and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate.

Recorrer los senderos más recónditos de la naturaleza sobre las huellas que deja a su paso el rebaño trashumante. Probar la sed del lobo cuando está sediento, conocer de cerca los códigos de supervivencia y lealtad de la manada bajo la piel del que aúlla a la luna, cantando al cielo nocturno. Ver con tus propios ojos cómo las leyendas de las marismas cobran vida. La España del silencio es el título que recibe la colección de novelas del mundo rural escrita por Borja Cardelús....

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos. Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the '40s, '50s and '60s. Hilarious, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel...twice.

Serena Sampson has traveled the world with the gift of prophetic healing, deliverance, and the sword of the Spirit in her hands. She claims victory when she is used by God to set women free from all types of bondage. The world reveres her as a powerhouse of a preacher and a woman of God whose faith is on fire. Women flock to conferences whenever she is in their city. Serena has been molded and shaped for ministry of such magnitude in her mother's church; however, they seem to be two totally different vessels that God uses to reach his people.

Rachel Harper’s debut novel has won praise for its vivid protrayal of a mixed-race girl coming of age in a family that’s falling apart. Nellie’s white mother and black father are breaking up. Nellie, whose black skin and blonde hair have always made her feel like an outsider, feels even more out of place traveling across the country with her dark-skinned dad, taking her white, sassy cousin Jess to meet her own father. But they might have more in common than they all think.

After losing her grandmother, her home, and all her worldly possessions in the storm, Monique Deveraux has all but given up on life. Then at an evacuee shelter, a wealthy woman takes her in and introduces her to a billionaire businessman, starting Monique on a whirlwind of success. But something is lurking in the shadows that could take everything away again. In the chaos after the storm, a convict walked out of jail and blended in with the dishevelled evacuees - and she was looking for revenge when she met Monique.

Yolanda Joe, author of the Blackboard best-seller Bebe’s By Golly Wow, crafts a touching novel about returning to your roots to understand where you’re headed. Terri Mills’ star is on the rise. A smart and ambitious lawyer, she has everything going for her — until her fiance is unfaithful. Suddenly facing an uncertain future, Terri travels to Arkansas and the bedside of her ailing grandmother, who has plenty of wisdom to share.

Cris Burks won widespread acclaim for her engaging first novel, SilkyDreamGirl. Burks' second offering follows the life of a determined girl struggling toward adulthood in 1950s Chicago. The devastating discovery that "Daddy" is not her real father opens a great chasm in Neecey's world and leads to Neecey's abusive mother bringing a succession of no-good men into the home. Nevertheless, as she grows into a woman, the resilient Neecey strives to overcome despair and forge a new life for herself.

Critics have compared her work to that of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, but J. California Cooper has a warm, witty style that’s definitely her own. Each of her short stories is a gem of downhome wisdom, polished with a bit of gossip, some heartbreak, and lots of humor.