Sergio Ramírez, writer and former civilian leader in the Sandinista revolutionary government from 1985-1990, has now won the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary award in the Hispanic world. He wrote his great panoramic novel from exile, and this was the first Nicaraguan novel ever translated into English. The long years of dictatorship in Nicaragua are dramatically recreated as cabaret singers, activists, policemen, prostitutes, beauty queens and would-be presidents haunt this sophistica...

In the two decades since Sergio Ramírez left active politics as a Sandinista leader of one of the great leftist revolutions of the Americas, his output as a writer and the appreciation of his literary achievement have only grown larger, culminating in his winning the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary accolade for a writer in the Hispanic world.These stories dating from early in his writing career and also marking his return to literature after a gap of some years in active poli...

The Old Patagonian Express tells of Paul Theroux’s train journey down the length of North and South America. Beginning on Boston’s subway, he depicts a voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts to the arid plateau of Argentina’s most southerly tip, via pretty Central American towns and the ancient Incan city of Macchu Pichu. Shivering and sweating by turns as the temperature and altitude rise and plummet, he describes the people he encountered – thrown in with the tedious, and unavoidab...

Discover the beautiful stories of Michael Morpurgo, author of Warhorse and the nation’s favourite storytellerBest-selling author Michael Morpurgo turns his storytelling skills to the drama and tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, illustrated by Michael Foreman.TORO,TORO is the story of a young boy growing up in Andalucia, Spain, on a farm rearing bulls for the bull ring. Antonito hand rears a little black calf and they become firm friends, but the boy doesn't yet understand th...

For a growing number of British holidaymakers, Cuba is a Caribbean paradise, but it is also a land of cutbacks and economic instability. Stephen Smith comes to live on the island, and his search for the real Cuba inevitably becomes a search for Fidel Castro too. Before meeting his quarry, Smith travels extensively through the 'land of miracles' in an old American automobile. His highly-personalised account features a bloody initiation into a voodoo-like cult, dining on giant rat, and check...

Dazzling, hallucinatory stories by Sara Gallardo, a rediscovered Argentinian contemporary of García Márquez An old man wakes up one morning to find that his beloved garden, the envy of all his neighbours, is floating away - with him on board; a bored young woman decides to start a new, double life in Buenos Aires - with the useful prop of a spare head she keeps in her closet; a meek German missionary leaves Paraguay for the Pampas, completely unprepared for what he will encounter there at ...

During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREIn The Feast of the Goat, this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.Haunted all her life by feelings of ...

NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING STEVE COOGAN AND JONATHAN PRYCEThis is the true story of the unlikely friendship between a flightless bird and a teacher out of his depth…'So touching that I didn't want it to end. I really loved this book' Michael Bond, creator of Paddington'Heartwarmingly eccentric' Guardian'Charming' Daily Mail-Tom Michell is in his roaring twenti...

John D MacDonald - bestselling author and the inspiration behind a generation of crime writers - has penned a thriller so compelling and addictive and full of intrigue and incident, you won't be able to stop reading. Perfect for fans of Lee Child, Michael Connelly and John Grisham, this suspenseful mystery will get right under your skin.'MacDonald had a huge influence on me . . . Reacher is like a fully detached version of Travis McGee' -- LEE CHIL...

The true story of the 1972 Andes plane crash and rescue dramatised in Netflix's Society of the SnowIn October 1972, Nando Parrado and his rugby club teammates were on a flight from Uruguay to Chile when their plane crashed into a mountain. Miraculously, many of the passengers survived but Nando's mother and sister died and he was unconscious for three days.Stranded more than 11,000 feet up in the wilderness of the Andes, the surviv...

WINNER OF THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2014Cádiz, 1811. While the city is under siege from the marauding French army, an even greater menace is lurking within the city walls: a serial killer is on the loose, flaying young women to death. Each of these murders takes place near where a French bomb has just fallen. In order to find the murderer, police commissioner Rogelio Tizon begins to perceive the city as a vast chessboard as he tries to predict his unknown oppone...