Peel My Love Like an Onion: A Novel

Peel My Love Like an Onion: A Novel
Ana Castillo
ISBN 038549677X

The seductive world of flamenco forms the backdrop for a classic tale of independence found, lost, and reclaimed. Like Bizet's legendary gypsy, Carmen "La Coja" (The Cripple) Santos is hilarious, passionate, triumphant, and mesmerizing.  A renowned flamenco dancer in Chicago despite the legacy of childhood polio, Carmen has long enjoyed an affair with Agustín, the married director of her troupe--a romance that's now growing stale. When she begins a new, passionate liaison with Manolo, Agustín's grandson and a dancer of natural genius, an angry rivalry is sparked. Carmen finally makes her way back to happiness in this funny, fiery story that's equal parts soap opera, tragicomedy, and rhapsody.

A Place Where the Sea Remembers

A Place Where the Sea Remembers
Sandra Benitez
ISBN 0671892673

In A Place Where the Sea Remembers, Sandra Benitez invites us into a mesmerizing world filled with, love and betrayal, tragedy and hope. This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. Chayo, the flower seller, and her husband Candelario, the salad maker, are finally blessed with the child they thought they would never have. Their cause for happiness, however, triggers a chain of events that impact the lives of everyone in their world.

The hopes, triumphs, failures, and shortcomings of the novel's enchanting array of characters create a graceful picture of life that is both a universal portrait and an insider's look at life in Latin America.

Face of an Angel

Face of an Angel
Denise Chavez
ISBN 0446671851

Last in a long line of long-suffering women, once-divorced, once-widowed Soveida Dosamantes reflects on her 30 years as a waitress at the El Farol Mexican restaurant. Looking back, she hears a rich chorus of Latino voices whose touching, funny and sage advice shows her how to celebrate her true love and her true self. 

The Hummingbird's Daughter

The Hummingbird's Daughter
Luis Alberto Urrea
ISBN 0316154520

Teresita is not an ordinary girl. Born of an illiterate, poor Indian mother, she knows little about her past or her future. She has no idea that her father is Don Tomas Urrea, the wild and rich owner of a vast ranch in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. She has no idea that Huila, the elderly healer who takes Teresita under her wing, knows secrets about her destiny. And she has no idea that soon all of Mexico will rise in revolution, crying out her name. When Teresita is but a teenager, learning from Huila the way plants can cure the sick and prayer can move the earth, she discovers an even greater gift: she has the power to heal. Her touch, like warm honey, melts pain and suffering. But such a gift can be a burden, too. Before long, the Urrea ranch is crowded with pilgrims and with agents of a Mexican government wary of anything that might threaten its power. The Hummingbird's Daughter is the story of a girl coming to terms with her destiny, with the miraculous, and with the power of faith. It is the tale of a father discovering what true love is and a daughter recognizing that sometimes true love requires true sacrifice.

Portrait in Sepia

Portrait in Sepia
Isabel Allende
ISBN 0060898488

Portrait in Sepia is a novel about memory and family secrets. Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that shapes her character and 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.

Caramelo

Caramelo
Sandra Cisneros
ISBN 0679742581

Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl, makers. The striped caramelo rebozo is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip–a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels–from Chicago to “the other side”: Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the “Paris of the New World” to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties–and, finally, to Lala’s own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.

B as in Beauty

B as in Beauty
Alberto Ferreras
ISBN 0446697893

Everyone in the world, it seems, is either prettier or thinner (or both) than Beauty Marie Zavala. And the only thing "B" resents more than her name is the way others judge her for the extra 40 pounds she can't lose. At least she has her career. Or did, until she overhears her boss criticizing her weight and devising a scheme to keep her from being promoted. Enter B's new tax accountant, a modern-day matchmaker determined to boost B's flagging self-esteem by introducing her to rich, successful men who will accept her for who she is. As B's confidence blossoms, so do her fantasies of revenge. But will B find true happiness or true disaster when she unwittingly falls for the one guy she shouldn't?

Waking Up in the Land of Glitter: A Crafty Chica Novel

Waking Up in the Land of Glitter: A Crafty Chica Novel
Kathy Cano-Murillo
ISBN& 0446509248

Struggling domestic-goddess-in-training Ofy is determined to turn heads at this year's International CraftOlympics. To do that, she'll need the help of her best friend, Star. Considering herself a serious artist, Star is hesitant, but finally agrees to help as a way to end her own creative slump. Truthfully she thinks Ofy is a little loca about the whole craft thing - and about her idol: Local TV personality, Crafty Chloe. Star doesn't trust the bottle-blonde, even after she becomes part of their crafting team. As the competition heats up, Star will learn Chloe's dirty little secret, why crafting means so much to Ofy, and that beauty, art, and creativity can take many more forms than a canvas hanging in a gallery.

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood
Benjamin Alire Saenz
ISBN 0938317814


The "Hollywood" where Sammy Santos and Juliana Ros live is not the West Coast one, the one with all the glitz and glitter. This Hollywood is a tough barrio at the edge of a small town in southern New Mexico. Sammy and this friends-members of the 1969 high school graduating class-face a world of racism, dress codes, war in Vietnam and barrio violence. In the summer before his senior year begins, Sammy falls in love with Juliana, a girl whose tough veneer disguises a world of hurt. By summer's end, Juliana is dead. Sammy grieves, and in his grief, the memory of Juliana becomes his guide through this difficult year. Sammy is a smart kid, but he's angry. He's angry about Juliana's death, he's angry about the poverty his father and his sister must endure, he's angry at his high school and its thinly disguised gringo racism, and he's angry he might not be able to go to college.