LibraryAware Hispanic Heritage Month 2023

Dona Cleanwell leaves home : stories
by Ana Castillo

A celebrated poet, novelist, essayist and playwright presents a collection of short stories that explore the secrets that are kept within households and the women they impact including a student who joins Cesar Chavez's La Causa. 40,000 first printing.

Pinata
by Leopoldo Gout

A Head Full of Ghosts meets Mexican Gothic in Piñata, a terrifying possession tale by author and artist Leopoldo Gout. They were worshiped by our ancestors. Now they are forgotten. Soon, they will make us remember. It was supposed to be the perfect summer. Carmen Sanchez is back in Mexico, supervising the renovation of an ancient abbey. Her daughters Izel and Luna, too young to be left alone in New York, join her in what Carmen hopes is a chance for them to connect with their roots. Then, an accident at the worksite unearths a stash of rare, centuries-old artifacts. The disaster costs Carmen her job, cutting the family trip short. But something malevolent and unexplainable follows them home to New York, stalking the Sanchez family and heralding a coming catastrophe. And it may already be too late to escape what's been awakened .

The haunting of Alejandra
by V. Castro

Struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her, Alejandra discovers she, like the women in her family before her, is being haunted by La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican Legend, and must summon everything she's inherited from her foremothers to banish this demon forever.

Dulcinea : a novel
by Ana Veciana-Suarez

"The daughter of a wealthy merchant, young Dolðca Llull Prat is besotted with the dashing, bootstrapping Miguel Cervantes from their first meeting. Despite Miguel's entreaties, the ever-practical Dolðca, with her love of luxury and her devotion to her own art, repeatedly refuses to upend her life for him, although she always welcomes his attentions on her own terms. When Miguel renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his great Quixote, revealing their association, he commits an unforgivable offense and their decades-long affinity is severed--until he reaches out to her one last time"

The enchanted hacienda
by J. C. Cervantes

Harlow Estrada returns to the enchanted Hacienda Estrada, a family farm in Mexico where her mother, sisters, aunt and cousins harness the magic of charmed flowers, but when she's chosen to watch over the farm, she panics since she, herself, is magic-less, until she opens her heart to love and creativity.

The mimicking of known successes
by Malka Older

When her former girlfriend, the enigmatic Investigator Mossa, arrives on Valdegord, needing her help with her latest investigation, Pleiti, a scholar of Earth's pre-collapse ecosystems, joins her on a twisting path where not only the future of Earth is at stake, but also their futures together. 60,000 first printing.

Valleyesque : stories
by Fernando A. Flores

"Short stories set in the cracks of the Texas-Mexico borderland"

River woman, river demon : a novel
by Jennifer Givhan

"Eva Santos Moon is a burgeoning Chicana artist who practices the ancient, spiritual ways of brujerâia and curanderisma, but she's at one of her lowest points-suffering from disorienting blackouts, creative stagnation, and a feeling of disconnect from her magickal roots. When her husband, a beloved university professor and the glue that holds their family together, is taken into custody for the shocking murder of their friend, Eva doesn't know whom to trust-least of all, herself. She soon falls under suspicion as a potential suspect, and her past rises to the surface, dredging up the truth about an eerily similar death from her childhood. Struggling with fragmented memories and self-doubt, an increasingly terrified Eva fears that she might have been involved in both murders. But why doesn't she remember? Only the dead women know for sure, and they're coming for her with a haunting vengeance. As she fights to keep her family out of danger, Eva realizes she must use her magick as a bruja to protect herselfand her loved ones, while confronting her own dark history"

The daughter of Doctor Moreau : a novel
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

When the arrival of Eduardo Lizalde sets in motion a dangerous chain of events, Carlota Moreau finds her carefully constructed world falling down around her as passion is ignited in the sweltering heat of the jungle where a motley group of monstrosities await.

A touch of moonlight : a novel
by Yaffa S. Santos

Despite being aciguapa, a mythical Dominican creature with backward feet, Larimar tries to live normally and finally meets someone she can be herself with but is alarmed that he works for a competing bakery chain. Original. 40,000 first printing.

Monarca : a novel
by Leopoldo Gout

"From award-winning artists and filmmakers Leopoldo Gout and Eva Aridjis comes an illustrated fable about a Mexican-American girl who magically transforms into a monarch butterfly for the great migration to Mexico, exploring the value of heritage, environmentalism, and personal transformation"

A ballad of love and glory : a novel
by Reyna Grande

Widowed by the Texas Rangers in the fight over the disputed Rio Grande boundary, a Mexican woman, skilled at healing, joins the Mexican army and falls in love with a Yankee deserter. 100,000 first printing.

Woman of light : a novel
by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

In 1930s Denver, Luz“Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, begins having visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory where she must save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion. Maps.

The wind knows my name : a novel
by Isabel Allende

Traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on two children—5-year-old Samuel, whose mother puts him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England in 1938, and 7-year-old Anita, who boards another train eight decades later to the U.S., where she's separated from her mother.

Gordo : stories
by Jaime Cortez

"His first-ever collection of stories, Jaime Cortez's Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California, in the 1970s. A young boy named Gordo fights back tears underneath a wrestler's mask as he is forced to fight other boys and grow into his father's expectations of manhood. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, poverty, and discovers the wrenching divides between documented and undocumented immigrants. Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist, uses tiny library pencils to draw murals of graffiti flowers along the camp's blank walls, the words CHICANO POWER boldly lettered across, before she runs away from home one day with her mother's boyfriend. Los Tigres, the perfect pair of twins who show up to Gyrich Farms every season without fail, are champion drinkers until one of them is rushed to the emergency room after a brawl, bloody and slumped in a tattered easy chair on the back of a pick-up truck. These scenes from Steinbeck Country seen so intimately from within are full of humor, family drama, and a sweet frankness about serious matters-who belongs to America and how are they treated? Written with balance and poise, Cortez braids together elegantly tragicomic and inviting stories about life on a California camp, in essence redefining what all-American means"

For additional reading ideas, talk with your library staff