Hispanic Heritage Month 2024: New Fiction

"When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives."--...

"A saucy, searingly original debut about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador's brutal dictator, El Gran Pendejo, and their flight from genocide, which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to cannery row, each followed by a chorus of furies, the ghosts of their murdered friends, who aren't yet done telling their stories. El Salvador, 1923. Graciela grows up on a volcano in a community of indigenous women indentured to coffee plantations owned...

"The Other Black Girl meets Midsommar in this spine-chilling, propulsive psychological adult debut from highly acclaimed author Vincent Tirado, in which a married couple moves into a gated "community" that slowly creeps into a pervasive dread akin to the social horror of Jordan Peele and Lovecraft County-We Came to Welcome You cleverly uses the uncanny to illuminate the cultish, shocking nature of systemic racism. Where beauty lies, secrets are held...ugly...

"To be free, we must learn to fly. Tere Sanchez has always known who she was: a professor, a wife, a mother, and a friend. But when her husband dies unexpectedly, she finds herself completely broken. Taking a leave from the university, Tere hopes that she can mourn her husband and get back on her feet, but instead, she spends a year consumed by grief. Until the day she levitates. Suddenly, Tere's life is thrown into disarray, and the repeated incidents...

"A riveting multigenerational tale of magic, sisterhood, and borders spanning centuries--from modern-day El Paso, to the 1940s, to 18th century colonial Mexico. It's 1943 in El Paso, Texas, and 18-year-old Nena spends her days caring for the infant children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of adventure and purpose. She also has a secret: her vivid premonitions are what's causing her to faint, and she fears she'll end up like the scary...

"In the tradition of Isabel Allende's career-launching debut, The House of the Spirits, a multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a young man abandons his family for the cause--and receives a late-life chance at redemption." -- Publisher annotation.

"Three generations of fiercely strong and stubborn Mexican American women face grief head-on as they attempt to shed generational trauma and discover the true meaning of home in this lyrical novel that features magical realism in the tradition of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and The House of the Spirits. For generations, the Olivares women have sought to control their daughters' destinies, starting with their names. In life, Olvido constantly...

"Ernesto and Elena Vega arrive in Mexico City where Ernesto works on a construction site until he is discovered by a local lucha libre trainer. At a time when luchadores-Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes-were treated as daredevils or rockstars, Ernesto finds fame as El Rey Coyote, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico. Years later, in East Los Angeles Freddy Vega is struggling to save his father's gym while Freddy's own...

"Chino Flores, a queer Latino in his late thirties, was a beloved middle school biology teacher with an adoring wife and a child on the way until a devastating loss dramatically changed his life and he relies on his coterie of new and old friends and lovers in this anthem to queer and platonic love"-- Provided by publisher.

"1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to be Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times. So when the film's mercurial director casts an unknown Mexican ingenue in the lead role, Vera Larios quickly becomes the talk of the town. She's also the object of envy of Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes...