LITERATURA EN OTROS IDIOMAS

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us. Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

Holly Beech and Ivy Casey are bury-the-body besties. They’re so in sync, they even look alike. When Holly’s fiancé jilts her, leaving her in shock and with a nonrefundable honeymoon, Holly convinces Ivy to switch places. Ivy will go on the Hawaiian honeymoon her best friend can’t bear to take alone, while Holly escapes to Ivy’s rented Hudson Valley cabin to binge-watch holiday movies and heal. But Holly’s wallowing is interrupted when her rugged Airbnb host turns out to be her high school academic rival who’s had a major glow-up. Meanwhile, Ivy’s (now Hawaiian) annual solo art retreat is upended when Holly’s ex-fiancé checks into the honeymoon suite—with a new woman. Raging and bed-less, the last thing Ivy expects is for the hot hotel bartender to come to her rescue. Against all odds, this Christmas might prove the most magical yet.

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die. Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

The Italy Letters is a slim, powerful shot of literary fantasia from one of America’s best-kept secrets. Long an underground favorite, visionary writer Vi Khi Nao weaves an unforgettable and highly distinctive story of a love affair suffused with longing, erotic passion, and heartbreak—all while painting a picture of the gritty underside of Las Vegas. This beautiful and mesmerizing novel by a queer Vietnamese American writer is a brilliant and unclassifiable work of fiction that takes the form of a series of letters written by the unnamed narrator to her lover in Italy … part of a stream-of-consciousness narrative that is by turns poignant, bawdy, funny, and disturbing—and often beautifully poetic. Along the way, the story touches on the immigrant experience, LGBTQIA identity, social class, writing, betrayal, sex, and homesickness. The result is an authentically distinctive piece of writing from a writer on the cusp of wide acclaim.

Jack, June, Quint, and Dirk face their biggest challenge yet: creating the sequel to their hit graphic novel! And like all sequels, it must be BIGGER, BETTER, and PACKED WITH EVEN MORE NEAT STUFF! While the kids get to work, their superhero alter-egos make a startling discovery: supervillains do not come up with their own evil plans! The shocking truth? Every supervillain scheme comes from the mind of a single, mysterious bad guy.

Written while Mary Shelley was in a self-imposed lockdown after the loss of her husband and children, and in the wake of intersecting crises including the climate-changing Mount Tambora eruption and a raging cholera outbreak, The Last Man (1826) is the first end-of-mankind novel, an early work of climate fiction, and a prophetic depiction of environmental change. Set in the late twenty-first century, the book tells of a deadly pandemic that leaves a lone survivor, and follows his journey through a post-apocalyptic world that’s devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature. But rather than give in to despair, Shelley uses the now-ubiquitous end-times plot to imagine a new world where freshly-formed communities and alternative ways of being stand in for self-important politicians serving corrupt institutions, and where nature reigns mightily over humanity—a timely message for our current era of climate collapse and political upheaval. Brimming with political intrigue and love triangles around characters based on Percy Shelley and scandal-dogged poet Lord Byron, the novel also broaches partisan dysfunction, imperial warfare, refugee crises, and economic collapse—and brings the legacy of her radically progressive parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, to bear on present-day questions about making a better world less centered around “man.” Shelley’s second major novel after Frankenstein, The Last Man casts a half-skeptical eye on romantic ideals of utopian perfection and natural plenitude while looking ahead to a greener future in which our species develops new relationships with non-human life and the planet.

In an alternate Edinburgh of 1824, every woman lives in fear that she will be the next one hanged for witchcraft. All it takes is invoking the anger, or the desire, of the wrong person. Nellie Duncan, beautiful and unwed, keeps to herself until she encounters the Rae Women’s Apothecary. There, fiery Jean Rae and the other women provide cures and teach others that they too can aid the winter deity, the Cailleach, embracing her characteristic independence, agency, and craft, in turn becoming witches themselves. Nellie finds a place and a purpose at the shop, and a blossoming romance with Jean, as she learns about nature-based craft and a witch’s ability to return to life after death. But the Cailleach has an ancient enemy intent on stripping the power of the deity and all her witches, leaving a wake of patriarchal violence and destruction. When heart-breaking disaster strikes, Nellie flees and spends the next two centuries hiding from the world—until love gives her the courage and the motivation to come back. Nellie’s past is waiting for her there, and hanging witches is no longer the only means of oppression. But this time, Nellie refuses to run—either from her foes, or from her resolve to awaken others to the unimaginable power that can come with fighting the patriarchy in its many forms—and finding one’s own magical inner-strength.

“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…” When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past. Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

The second part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic adventure The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship is scattered. Some brace hopelessly for war against the ancient evil of Sauron. Others must contend with the treachery of the wizard Saruman. Only Frodo and Sam are left to take the One Ring, ruler of the accursed Rings of Power, to be destroyed in Mordor, the dark realm where Sauron is supreme. Their guide is Gollum, deceitful and obsessive slave to the corruption of the Ring.

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest’s housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival. Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.