Regina Rheda is a contemporary award-winning Brazilian writer whose original voice and style have won her many admirers. First World Third Class and Other Tales of the Global Mix presents some of her finest and most representative work to an English-speaking readership. Stories from the Copan Building consists of eight tales set in a famous residential building in So Paulo. The stories, like the apartment complex, are a microcosm of modern-day urban Brazil. They are witty, consistently causti...

A forty-year-old Brazilian journalist reduced to living in a dilapidated building inhabited by a bizarre human fauna—fortune-tellers, transvestites, tango-loving Argentinean hustlers—is called upon to track down and write the story of Dulce Veiga, a famous singer who disappeared twenty years earlier on the eve of her first big show. Thus begins a mad race through an underground, nocturnal São Paulo among rock bands with eccentric names, feline reincarnations of Vita Sackville-West, ex-revo...

A new edition of Clarice Lispector’s final masterpiece, now with a vivid introduction by Colm Tóibín.Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretch...

NOW A NETFLIX SERIES • A GRIPPING DETECTIVE STORY AND A PASSIONATE, DEVASTATING TALE OF EROS AND INSANITY IN COLUMBIAIn this remarkably nuanced novel, internationally acclaimed author Laura Restrepo delves into the minds of four characters. There's Agustina, a beautiful woman from an upper-class family who is caught in the throes of madness; her husband Aguilar, a man passionately in love with his wife and determined to rescue her from insanity; Agustina's former l...

Journey to Spain with "stories that tap into history, politics and culture to cast a cloak of horror and humor on the city's distinctive neighborhoods" ( The Miami Herald).For some, Barcelona is a European enchantress of nouveau architecture, fusion tapas, and fine cava. To others, it's a Gothic labyrinth of tiny streets to lose oneself in; hashish-clouded after-hours bars to forget the time; dimly lit plazas with global bohemians squatting, prostitutes te...

In this "evocative first novel," an elderly woman looks back on the world of revolutionary Cuba as she recalls her intimate, secret love affair with Ernesto "Che" Guevara ( Publishers Weekly).A young Cuban woman has been searching in vain for details of her birth mother. All she knows of her past is that her grandfather fled the turbulent Havana of the 1960s for Miami with her in tow, and that pinned to her sweater—possibly by her mother—were a few treasur...

To celebrate her 50th birthday and face the challenges of mid-life, Jane Christmas joins 14 women to hike the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Despite a psychic’s warning of catfights, death, and a sexy, fair-haired man, Christmas soldiers on. After a week of squabbles, the group splinters and the real adventure begins. In vivid, witty style, she recounts her battles with loneliness, hallucinations of being joined by Steve Martin, as well as picturesque villages and even ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A tremendous accomplishment. It does every last blessed thing a masterpiece is supposed to—and a few things we never even knew to expect.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Brilliant . . . an irresistibly engaging literary fantasy.”—The Washington PostA Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the CenturyThe year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.A young woman named Aomame foll...

"Anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling should rush right out to the nearest bookstore and pick up The Shadow of the Wind**. Really, you should." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post“Wondrous...masterful...The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —**Entertainment Weekly,

“In the fairy tales about father–daughter incest—‘The Girl Without Hands,’ ‘Thousand Furs,’ the original ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Donkey Skin,’ and the stories of Saint Dymphna, patron saint of incest survivors—the daughters are all as you would expect them to be: horrified by their father’s sexual advances. They do everything in their power to escape. But I didn’t. A child can’t escape. And later, when I could, it was too late.”Throughout her childhood and adolescence, the anonymous author ...

An American writer and his wife find a new home—and a new lease on life—in the charming sixteenth-century hill town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.When Los Angeles novelist Tony Cohan and his artist wife, Masako, visited central Mexico one winter they fell under the spell of a place where the pace of life is leisurely, the cobblestone streets and sun-splashed plazas are enchanting, and the sights and sounds of daily fiestas fill the air. Awakened to needs they didn’t know they ha...

When Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera, Diego was 42 years old, and 300 pounds; Frida was 22 years old,and just 98 pounds. Her mother did not approve of the union and did not attend the wedding ceremony. She said that Diego was too old, too fat and worse yet he was a Communist and an atheist. She described the marriage as "between an elephant and a dove." On one of Diego's frequent visits to the Kahlo home, Frida's father took Diego aside and said: "She is a devil". "I know" Diego replied. ...