Dirty Girls on Top
by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
from St. Martin's Press
The Dirty Girls are back, saucier and sexier than ever….but would it be wrong to ask them to be a little smarter, too?? Especially when it comes to men. And sex.
Lauren Fernandez is at the top of her game as the cleverest columnist the Boston Gazette has on board—but she can't quite figure out how to pick a guy or how to eat (and not drink) like a healthy person. Usnavys is still sashaying all over town, 260 pounds of her dolled up in designer duds and ready for action—from anyone except her husband Juan, that is. He’s become just a bit boring staying home scrubbing the tub and cooking up chicken fingers for pre-schooler Carolina while somebody else brings home the bacon.
Maybe the other Dirty Girls could help Lauren and ‘navy out, but they've got their own messes to deal with: Rebecca Baca hasn't gained a pound since college (well, who would, if they had an ounce of self-control?) but suspects her picture-perfect marriage may not yield the baby she longs for; Sara may be the star of her own decorating show on cable television, but her dangerous pull toward her ex-husband Roberto isn't so pretty; Amber keeps renaming herself and doesn't want to hear that her soulfulness and reinvention aren't enough to make fans actually buy her music; and Elizabeth is discovering that a relationship with another woman takes more than bravery and a nesting instinct.
Dirty Girls on Top is about trying to figure it all out without quite as much time left as there was five years ago. And it’s about sex and love—getting it, not getting it, yearning for it, having it with the wrong person, fighting it from the right person, trying it a new way, giving up on it. And, in the end, if your fingers are crossed and the planets are in alignment, having it come out just the way it should.
The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child
by Francisco Jimenez
from University of New Mexico Press
After dark in a Mexican border town, a father holds open a hole in a wire fence as his wife and two small boys crawl through.
So begins life in the United States for many people every day. And so begins this collection of twelve autobiographical stories by Santa Clara University professor Francisco Jim�nez, who at the age of four illegally crossed the border with his family in 1947.
"The Circuit," the story of young Panchito and his trumpet, is one of the most widely anthologized stories in Chicano literature. At long last, Jim�nez offers more about the wise, sensitive little boy who has grown into a role model for subsequent generations of immigrants.
These independent but intertwined stories follow the family through their circuit, from picking cotton and strawberries to topping carrots--and back agai--over a number of years. As it moves from one labor camp to the next, the little family of four grows into ten. Impermanence and poverty define their lives. But with faith, hope, and back-breaking work, the family endures.
"A jewel of a book"--Rolando Hinojosa-Smith
"These stories are so realistic they choke the heart."--Rudolfo Anaya
Bodega Dreams: A Novel
by Ernesto Quinonez
from Vintage
Growing up in Spanish Harlem, Chino knew he needed three things to survive: a solid friend (his pana), a decent nickname--not some lame thing his parents had called him, like Tito or Googie--and a reputation that he would rather lose a tooth or get his ribs broken than back out of a fight. With the help of Sapo, "the meanest and ugliest kid on the block," Chino manages to make it as far as college before his life is endangered. He even attracts the attention of Nancy Saldivia, a beautiful Pentecostal girl so genuinely devout that she has earned the high school nickname "Blanca." In a typically vivid passage at the start of his debut novel, Bodega Dreams, Ernesto Quiñonez writes:
Blanca wasn't allowed to wear jeans but she made up for it by wearing tight, short skirts. She always carried a Bible with her and never talked bad about anybody and at school she only hung around with her Pentecostal friend, Lucy. Lucy was a hairy girl who never shaved her legs because it was against her religion. Blanca had hairy legs as well, but Lucy's legs were so hairy that everyone called her Chewbacca.... When the cruelty toward Lucy became too much for Blanca, she'd punish the boys by being the coldest, most serious person in school. Only Blanca could get away with this because she had an angelic face that almost made you want to sing Alleluia. Made you want to pick up a tambourine and join her one night in her church. Make a joyful noise to the Lord so she would begin to jump up and down to all that religious salsa. And maybe you'd be lucky enough to cop a cheap feel as the Holy Ghost took over her body.Our narrator's luck is running out, though, and when Sapo introduces him to the mysterious, powerful Willie Bodega, Chino finds himself helplessly drawn into a criminal network. Even if Chino and Sapo's world is far from your own, you can't help but succumb to Quiñonez's funny, rapid-fire prose and his uncanny gift for dialect. The author's dead-on renderings of verbal tics and rhythms fit seamlessly into his depiction of the vibrant culture of East Harlem. Bodega Dreams is an unusually accomplished debut with all the right ingredients: distinctive characters, a troubling plot, and a seductive voice. --Regina Marler
"A new and authentic voice of the urban Latino experience." --Esmeralda Santiago, author of When I Was Puerto Rican
In a stunning narrative combining the gritty rhythms of Junot Diaz with the noir  genius of Walter Mosley, Bodega Dreams announces the arrival of a writer who The Village Voice has already hailed as "a Writer on the Verge."
The word is out in Spanish Harlem: Willy Bodega is king.  Need college tuition for your daughter?  Start-up funds for your fruit stand?  Bodega can help.  He gives everyone a leg up, in exchange only for loyalty--and a steady income from the drugs he pushes.
Lyric, inspired, and darkly funny, this powerful debut novel brilliantly evokes the trial of Chino, a smart, promising young man to whom Bodega turns for a favor.  Chino is drawn to Bodega's street-smart idealism, but soon finds himself over his head, navigating an underworld of switchblade tempers, turncoat morality, and murder.
Miami Manhunt
by Johnny Diaz
from Kensington
SCORE
It's not just a name--it's a frame of mind.
Nestled amid peach and candy-pink Art Deco buildings, Score is the hottest gay bar in Miami's South Beach. And for friends Ray Martinez, Ted Williams, and Brian Anderson, there's no better way to start the weekend than by checking out the steady stream of beautiful Latin men coursing in and out of Score's doors...
While Miami is home to the most gorgeous males ever created by God or a lifetime gym membership, Ray, resident movie critic at The Miami News, would give the dating scene a one-star review. Tired of hooking up with sculpted, shallow hunks who use books as towel weights, Ray is thrilled to finally meet a guy he wants to take home to mami and papi...
Ted, host of a popular Miami version of Entertainment Tonight, has enjoyed all the perks of his celebrity status. But being overexposed has its downside. Ted's longing for a deeper connection spurs a reckless move that could cost him everything...
Brian has a life of leisure with his fabulously wealthy older boyfriend. The key rule to their open relationship: no sleeping with the same guy twice. But ever since Brian met a Puerto Rican love god named Eros, it's a rule he keeps breaking...
A sexy, smart, and irresistibly witty new novel, Miami Manhunt explores one wild year when love gets crazy, hearts get broken and mended, and the only thing to count on is the fact that life will never be the same again...
Praise for Johnny Diaz and Boston Boys Club
"Racy, funny, and smart. You're going to love this book." --Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear "Fun, well-written, and a great page-turner." --Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, New York Times bestselling author
Caramelo
by Sandra Cisneros
from Vintage
Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros's first novel since her celebrated The House on Mango Street, weaves a large yet intricate pattern, much like the decorative fringe on a rebozo, the traditional Mexican shawl. Through the eyes of young Celaya, or Lala, the Reyes family saga twists and turns over three generations of truths, half-truths, and outright lies. And, like Celaya's grandmother's prized caramelo (striped) rebozo, so is "the universe a cloth, and all humanity interwoven.... Pull one string and the whole thing comes undone." The Reyes clan, from Awful Grandmother Soledad and her favorite son Inocencio to Celaya, follow their destinies from Mexico City to the U.S. armed forces, jobs upholstering furniture, and to Chicago and San Antonio. Celaya gathers and retells, in over 80 chapters, the stories that reinforce her family's, and subsequently her own, identity as they travel between the U.S.-Mexican border and within the United States. Rich with sensory descriptions and animated conversations and peppered with Mexican cultural and historical details, this novel can hardly contain itself. Also an acclaimed poet, Cisneros writes fiercely and thoroughly, and her characters enter and exit the page with uncommon humanity. Although the book is long--over 400 pages plus a relevant U.S.-Mexico chronology--in many ways it's not long enough. The world of the 20th-century Mexican family, and of the Reyeses in particular, is as complicated, timeless, and satisfying as our own family stories. --Emily Russin
Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes' family--aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, and Lala's six older brothers--packs up three cars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City for the summer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she starts telling the Awful Grandmother's life story, seeking clues to how she got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating. Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwind exploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished rebozo, or shawl, that has been passed down through generations of Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love.
Zoot Suit and Other Plays
by Luis Valdez
from Arte Publico Press
This collection contains three of playwright and screenwriter Luis Valdez's most important and recognized plays: Zoot Suit, Bandido! and I Don't Have to Show You No Stinking Badges. The anthology also includes an introduction by noted theater critic Dr. Jorge Huerta of the University of California-San Diego. Luis Valdez, the most recognized and celebrated Hispanic playwright of our times, is the director of the famous farm-worker theater, El Teatro Campesino.
The People of Paper
by Salvador Plascencia
from Harvest Books
THE PEOPLE OF PAPER is an astonishing debut novel about the anguish of lost love. Author Salvador Plascencia, a "once-in-a-generation talent" (George Saunders), weaves together the stories of a large cast of colorful characters, including: a disgruntled monk, a father and daughter, a gang of carnation pickers, and a woman made of paper.
Macho!
by Victor Villasenor
from Delta
From Victor Villase-or, author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Rain of Gold, comes the stunning story of a young man's coming of age--a novel that captures the cadences and color, passion and pride of the Mexican-American experience.
Roberto Garcia was only seventeen. But he already had big dreams of freedom, respect, money, familia. With ambition to burn and a passion to prove his manhood, Roberto took the dangerous journey north, crossing the Mexican border to pick fruit in the golden fields of California. There, a good man could make more money in a week than in a whole year in the mountains of Michoacan. Nothing could have prepared Roberto for the jammed boxcars and bolted trucks carrying migrants through burning deserts to fields of dreams. But he was determined to become a norte-o, coming home with a family to save and a score to settle, no longer a boy, but a man.
At once raw and powerful, poetic and heartbreaking, Macho! brings to life the brutality of migrant labor, Cesar Chavez's efforts to unionize the workers, and a vivid portrayal of the immigrant experience as seen through the eyes of a young man who saw it all.
Caramel Flava
by Zane
from Atria Books
"Zane, the queen of erotic fiction and publisher of Strebor Books, an imprint of Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, presents the second in a series of collections of great erotic fiction. Based on the Featured Erotica section of her website, Eroticanoir.com, which gets more than three million hits a year from around the world, these sensual tales, handpicked by Zane, are sure to please her fans. These stories are written specifically with both African-American and Latino readers in mind, but they are for all people because as Zane always states: "Sensuality is universal." Among the contributors are names already familiar to readers of erotica, such as Tracee A. Hanna, Teresa Lamai, Michelle De Leon, Naleighna Kai, William Fredrick Cooper, and, of course, Zane -- as well as emerging voices, such as Pat Tucker, James W. Lewis, and Nikki Sinclair. Zane always selects stories that turn her on, and she guarantees they will turn you on, also. These storytellers take risks. The stories are unique and creative. The contributors to this book are great at what they do -- making readers hot. A todos los amantes del mundo. No importa el color de su piel, la pasion es universal. To all the lovers in the world. No matter what your skin color, passion is universal. "
La breve y maravillosa vida de Óscar Wao (Vintage Espanol)
by Junot Diaz
from Vintage
Una crónica familiar que abarca tres generaciones y dos paÃses, La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao cuenta la historia del gordiflón y solitario Oscar de León en su intento de convertirse en el J.R.R. Tolkien Dominicano y su desafortunada búsqueda del amor. Pero Oscar sólo es la última vÃctima del fukú —una maldición que durante generaciones ha perseguido a su familia, condenándoles a vidas de tortura, sufrimiento y amor desdichado. Con unos personajes inolvidables y una prosa vibrante e hipnótica, esta novela confirma a Junot DÃaz como una de las mejores y más deslumbrantes voces de nuestra época, y nos ofrece una sobrecogedora visión de la inagotable capacidad humana para perseverar y arriesgarlo todo por amor.
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