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...

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...

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...

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 ...

“An engrossing, suspenseful family saga filled with unpredictable twists and turns.” —Chanel Cleeton, New York Times bestselling author of Next Year in Havana“With an equal mix of historical fiction, dramatic family conflict, and mystery, this tale should please fans of Christina Baker Kline, Lisa Wingate, and Kate Quinn.” —BooklistThe Washington Post Books to Read Now | Ms. M...

A "wonderfully twisted meditation on identity and individuality" from a Nobel Prize–winning author who pushes fiction to its very limits ( The Boston Globe).As this novel by the author of Blindness and All the Names begins, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed history teacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But during the night, when he is awakened ...

Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant, multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young life is disrupted by two arrivals.The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas are holding the city's listeners ...

One incredible night…Cara Delany shouldn’t have been surprised when Pepe Mastrangelo – world-renowned playboy –disappeared after their unforgettable night, leaving only cold sheets and X-rated memories… Or so she thought! But four months later, with more than herself to think of, she’s forced to face the sexy Sicilian again.One very big consequence!When the fiery redhead Pepe hasn’t been able to forget hurtles back into his life, proclaiming he’s the father o...