We first meet Angie Rubio at age five, being scolded by her kindergarten teacher for not knowing how to skip properly.Set in California in the 1960s and ’70s, Guided Tours in Living Color takes Angie year by year from kindergarten through high school, offering a portrait of the artist as a shy, awkward Mexican-American girl.Taking place against the backdrop of the Cold War and civil rights eras—the Cuban missile crisis, the Watts riots, Beatlemania, the Black Power...

Twin sisters Ofelia and Norma have always been inseparable, yet their shared identity begins to fracture in community college. As Ofelia loses weight through long, solitary walks, Norma senses the twin bond slipping away and leaves for a transfer college, forcing both to confront life as large-bodied women in a world that isn' t kind to them. Ofelia' s deliberate weight loss spirals into disordered eating and a near-tragic accident, pushing her to move out and leave their emotionally dista...

In 1920s Southern California, Lupita Camacho leaves Mexico and settles not far from the border—and so begins the journey of an American family told by a chain of tales stretching across three generations. Early stories track Lupita’s concessions to the demands of her new country and her new fish cannery job overseen by a lecherous boss who makes sure Lupita, her friend Rosa, and their Chinese coworkers work long, hard, and, for the most part, in silence, since speaking any language but Eng...

On a summer day at the arcade, timid sixteen-year-old Ignacio Cañas encounters two charismatic rebels: El Zarco (“Blue Eyes”) and his gorgeous girl, Tere. Entranced, he crosses the border into their dangerous world, becoming their partner in crimes that quickly escalate.Twenty-five years later, Tere materializes in Cañas's office, needing help. Cañas has settled back into middle-class life, becoming a successful defense lawyer. Zarco has matured into a convict of some infamy. Yet s...

South Korea, 1974. US Army CID Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom are assigned an underwhelming case of petty theft: Major Frederick M. Schulz has accused Miss Jo Kyong-ja, an Itaewon bar girl, of stealing twenty-five thousand won from him—a sum equaling less than fifty US dollars. After two very divergent accounts of what happened, Miss Jo is attacked, and Schulz is found hacked to death only days later. Did tensions simply escalate to the point of murder?Looking int...

Patti Sheehy continues Frank Mederos's true-life story of romance, suspense, and intrigue in The Boy Who Said No: An Escape to Freedom. After defecting from Cuba's Special Forces and making a harrowing escape from his homeland, Frank faces new challenges in America. With five dollars in his pocket and a boatload of determination, he rejects an offer to join the CIA and takes his chances on achieving the American dream. Frank and his sweetheart, Magda, want nothing more than marriage, child...

Perk is just your normal, everyday average guy. He could do with a little adventure in his life. Yet, all he wants is some down time and a vacation. However, fate and the universe have other plans for him.On a whim, Perk heads to the mystical town of Old Mesilla, NM to pick up a VW Microbus for his roommate. Little did he know that he was entering into a paranormal vortex of outlandish Mexican folklore and scandalous black market deals. All of which seem to link to a phantasmic nui...

In the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico’s Mora Valley harbors the ghosts of history: troubadours and soldiers, Plains Indians and settlers, families fleeing and finding home. There, more than a century ago, villagers collect scraps of paper documenting the valley’s history and their identity—military records, travelers’ diaries, newspaper articles, poetry, and more—and bind them into a leather portfolio known as “The Book of Archives.” When a bomb blast during the Mexic...

In this lyrical novel set in a Cuban-American neighborhood in Miami, three generations of women face an unexpected—and ultimately life-changing—trial. When Maribel, an overly cautious and orderly market analyst, gives birth to a severely handicapped baby, her mother, Adela, and her grandmother Cuca must put aside their differences to fill his short life with love. This means more than just a shift in attitude for Cuca, who speaks regularly to her deceased husband, and for Adela, a middle-a...

Wanderers and writers, gangbangers and lawyers, dreamers and devils. The King of Lighting Fixtures paints an idiosyncratic but honest portrait of Los Angeles, depicting how the city both entrances and confounds. Each story serves as a reflection of Daniel A. Olivas’s grand City of Angels, a “magical metropolis where dreams come true.”The characters here represent all walks of L.A. life—from Satan’s reluctant Craigslist roommate to a young girl coping with trauma at her bro...

Traveling home to rural Patagonia, a young woman grapples with herself as she makes the journey to scatter the ashes of her friend Andrea. Twenty-one-year-old Emilia might still be living, but she’s jaded by her studies and discontent with her boyfriend, and apathetic toward the idea of moving on. Despite the admiration she receives for having relocated to Buenos Aires, in reality, cosmopolitanism and a career seem like empty scams. Instead, she finds her life pathetic.Once home, E...