Recommendations based on "The Seventh Veil of Salome"

"Portrait in Sepia is the best book Allende has published in the United States since her first novel of nearly two decades ago, The House of the Spirits.”—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World“Portrait in Sepia tightens the weave of a multigenerational fantasy as complete and inspiring as the real world it parallels … Allende’s enchanting historical universe keeps expanding and Portrait in Sepia is a new galactic jewel.”—Chicago TribuneA sequel to Daughter of Fortune, New York Times bestselling author, Isabel Allende, continues her magic with this spellbinding family saga set against war and economic hardship.Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that erases from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she decides to explore the mystery of her past.Portrait in Sepia is an extraordinary achievement: richly detailed, epic in scope, intimate in its probing of human character, and thrilling in the way it illuminates the complexity of family ties.

Newly Reissued New York Times Bestselling Author “Beautiful and heartrending. . . . Memoir, autobiography, epicedium, perhaps even some fiction: they are all here, and they are all quite wonderful.” —Los Angeles Times When Isabel Allende’s daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and fell into a coma, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious child. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes; we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most intimate secrets passed along in whispers. With Paula, Allende has written a powerful autobiography whose straightforward acceptance of the magical and spiritual worlds will remind readers of her first book, The House of the Spirits.

From the bestselling author of the National Book Award Finalist The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School comes a revenge story told with nuance, heart, and the possibility of healing. An ideal next read for fans of Laurie Halse Anderson. Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers--despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen. Luis's attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party--while Ari didn't say no, she definitely didn't say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning--thanks, she's sure, to Luis's ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won't say no. Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she'll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night--and risk everything to see justice done.

Told in an irresistible, heartrending voice, Bad Habit takes us deep into the lives of the residents of a godforsaken Madrid neighbourhood ironically named after a holy saint.An unnamed young trans woman grows up in a working class suburb that has no place for her. She discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a lively party scene animated by junkies, pop divas, and fallen angels. But with each step she takes forward, she finds herself confronted by a violence she does not yet know how to counter; in this thrilling and yet often terrifying world each choice can truly be a matter of life and death.Blistering and compassionate, Bad Habit by Alana S Portero is translated by Mara Faye Lethem, and deftly illuminates the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of sisterhood. Shimmering in its lyrical beauty and vivid in its realism, Bad Habit is a mesmerising story of self-realisation that speaks to the outsider in all of us.

'The best kind of book: the one you didn't know you were craving until it appeared . . . self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it' JIA TOLENTINO 'A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity' TESSA HADLEY When it comes to children: a man leaves, a woman abandons Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Maria Montessori, Joni Mitchell ... what do these vastly different women have in common? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who were able to overcome both society's judgement and their own maternal instincts in order to leave their children. More than anything, she was fascinated by her own prejudice towards these women, so clearly tied up in a much wider cultural bias. Using famous examples including Doris Lessing, fictional ones such as Anna Karenina, and interrogating modern trends like Momfluencers, Begoña reveals what our judgement of these women tells us about our judgement of all women. 'The best book I've read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti's Motherhood' CLAUDIA DURASTANTI

Part memoir, part lies, this imaginative tale is a story about loving a woman made of paper, about the wounds made by first love and sharp objects.

“Here is poetry of courage and passion, which manages to be tender and achingly sensual and what is often called ‘political’ at the same time. This is a major new voice.” — Margaret AtwoodThe Country Between Us opens with a series of poems about El Salvador, where Carolyn Forché worked as a journalist and was closely involved with the political struggle in that tortured country in the late 1970's. Forché's other poems also tend to be personal, immediate, and moving. Perhaps the final effect of her poetry is the image of a sensitive, brave, and engaged young woman who has made her life a journey. She has already traveled to many places, as these poems indicate, but beyond that is the sense of someone who is, in Ignazio Silone's words, coming from far and going far.

New York Times Bestseller"Packed with suspense. . . a gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller.” — Washington Book ReviewThe internationally acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author returns to the magnificent universe he constructed in his bestselling novels The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game, and The Prisoner of Heaven in this riveting series finale—a heart-pounding thriller and nail-biting work of suspense which introduces a sexy, seductive new heroine whose investigation shines a light on the dark history of Franco’s Spain.In this unforgettable final volume of Ruiz Zafón’s cycle of novels set in the universe of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, beautiful and enigmatic Alicia Gris, with the help of the Sempere family, uncovers one of the most shocking conspiracies in all Spanish history.Nine-year-old Alicia lost her parents during the Spanish Civil War when the Nacionales (the fascists) savagely bombed Barcelona in 1938. Twenty years later, she still carries the emotional and physical scars of that violent and terrifying time. Weary of her work as an investigator for Spain’s secret police in Madrid, a job she has held for more than a decade, the twenty-nine-year old plans to move on. At the insistence of her boss, Leandro Montalvo, she remains to solve one last case: the mysterious disappearance of Spain’s Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls.With her partner, the intimidating policeman Juan Manuel Vargas, Alicia discovers a possible clue—a rare book by the author Victor Mataix hidden in Valls’ office in his Madrid mansion. Valls was the director of the notorious Montjuic Prison in Barcelona during World War II where several writers were imprisoned, including David Martín and Victor Mataix. Traveling to Barcelona on the trail of these writers, Alicia and Vargas meet with several booksellers, including Juan Sempere, who knew her parents.As Alicia and Vargas come closer to finding Valls, they uncover a tangled web of kidnappings and murders tied to the Franco regime, whose corruption is more widespread and horrifying than anyone imagined. Alicia’s courageous and uncompromising search for the truth puts her life in peril. Only with the help of a circle of devoted friends will she emerge from the dark labyrinths of Barcelona and its history into the light of the future.In this haunting novel, Carlos Ruiz Zafón proves yet again that he is a masterful storyteller and pays homage to the world of books, to his ingenious creation of the Cemetery of Forgotten, and to that magical bridge between literature and our lives.

"Ruben Reyes Jr. has announced himself here in impressive fashion. This wonderful debut collection displays a virtuosic fictional range.” —Jamel BrinkleyAn electrifying debut story collection about Central American identity that spans past, present, and future worlds to reveal what happens when your life is no longer your own.An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man.In There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present, and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans.Blazing with heart, humor, and inimitable style, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own.

Julius was born in a mansion on Salaverry Avenue, directly across from the old San Felipe Hippodrome. Life-size Disney characters and cowboy movie heroes romp across the walls of his nursery. Out in the carriage house, his great-grandfather's ornate, moldering carriage takes him on imaginary adventures. But Julius's father is dead, and his beautiful young mother passes through her children's lives like an ephemeral shooting star. Despite the soft shelter of family and money, hard realities overshadow Julius's expanding world, just as the rugged Andes loom over his home in Lima. This lyrical, richly textured novel, first published in 1970 as Un mundo para Julius, opens new territory in Latin American literature with its focus on the social elite of Peru. In this postmodern novel Bryce Echenique incisively charts the decline of an influential, centuries-old aristocratic family faced with the invasion of foreign capital in the 1950s. Winner of the Outstanding Translation Award of the American Literary Translators Association and the Columbia University Translation Center Award.