Two nuns, and one obsessed mother, doing everything in their power to achieve communion with the one they love.Sister Lugarda de la Encarnación takes the lash, and an unnamed mother gets down on her hands and knees – sacramental postures demanded by inscrutable men. Apparitions is a novel of ecstasy pursued, desire transmogrified into devotion, and obedience as a passionately pursued, not entirely free choice. Erotic, and suffused with painting, music, art...

After her ex-husband dies unexpectedly, Nora García travels to the funeral, back to a Mexican village from her past and the art and music of their life together.The way you hold a cello, the way light lands on a Caravaggio, the way the castrati hit notes like no one else could—a lifetime of conversations about art and music and history unfolds for Nora García as she and a crowd of friends and fans send off her recently deceased ex-husband, Juan. Like any good symph...

The heartbreaking final volume in Sergio Pitol's groundbreaking memoir-essay-fiction-hybrid Trilogy of Memory, which won him the prestigious Cervantes Prize, finds Pitol boldly and passionately weaving fiction and autobiography together to tell of his life lived through the written word as a way to stave off the advancement of a degenerative neurological condition causing him to lose the use of language.

José Tomas de Cuéllar (1830-1894) was a Mexican writer noted for his sharp sense of humor and gift for caricature. Having a Ball and Christmas Eve are two novellas written in the costumbrista style, made popular in the mid-nineteenth century by the periodical press in which these sketches of contemporary manners were first published. The stories are a sensitive reflection of the effects of modernization brought by an authoritarian regime dedicated to order and pr...

José Tomas de Cuéllar (1830-1894) was a Mexican writer noted for his sharp sense of humor and gift for caricature. Having a Ball and Christmas Eve are two novellas written in the costumbrista style, made popular in the mid-nineteenth century by the periodical press in which these sketches of contemporary manners were first published. The stories are a sensitive reflection of the effects of modernization brought by an authoritarian regime dedicated to order and pr...

Gustavo 'Highway' S�nchez is a man with a mission: he is planning to replace every last one of his unsightly teeth. He has a few skills that might help him on his way: he can imitate Janis Joplin after two rums, he can interpret Chinese fortune cookies, he can stand an egg upright on a table, and he can float on his back. And, of course, he is the world's best auction caller - although other people might not realise this, because he is, by nature, very discreet.Studying auctioneeri...

Beauty is Convulsive is a biographical meditation on one of the twentieth century's most compelling and famous artists, Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). At the age of nineteen, Kahlo's life was transformed when the bus in which she was riding was hit by a trolley car. Pierced by a steel handrail and broken in many places, she entered a long period of convalescence during which she began to paint self-portraits. In 1928, at twenty-one, she joined the Communist Party and came to know Diego Rivera. T...

A TLS Book of the YearThis exhilarating collection of non-fiction sees one of the greatest twentieth-century writers meditating on the moments that make up a life'How did I so unwittingly transform the joy of living into the great luxury of being alive?'Between 1967 and 1977, the internationally renowned author Clarice Lispector wrote weekly dispatches from her desk in Rio for the Jornal do Brasil. Already...

In Carlos Rojas’s imaginative novel, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, murdered by Francoist rebels in August 1936, finds himself in an inferno that somehow resembles Breughel’s Tower of Babel. He sits alone in a small theater in this private hell, viewing scenes from his own life performed over and over and over. Unexpectedly, two doppelgängers appear, one a middle-aged Lorca, the other an irascible octogenarian self, and the poet faces a nightmarish confusion of alternative i...

An NPR Best Book of 2023A collection of twenty dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica*,* this collection of twenty brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human exper...

After one hot night, an Irish lass has shocking revelation for an arrogant Sicilian playboy in this sexy romance of consequences.Cara Delany shouldn’t have been surprised when notorious playboy Pepe Mastrangelo disappeared after their unforgettable night, leaving only cold sheets and X-rated memories. . . . Or so she thought! Four months later, with more than herself to think of, she’s forced to face the sexy Sicilian again.When the fiery redhead Pepe could...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A beautifully written, witty memoir that is also an immersive exploration of classical music—its power, its meanings, and what it can teach us about ourselves—from the MacArthur “Genius” Grant–winning pianistLONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • “Jeremy Denk has written a love letter to the music, and especially to the music teachers, in his life.”—Conrad Tao, pianist and composerONE OF THE ...