Not to be confused with bestselling Julia Alvarez’s book of the same title – hers, a nonfiction examination of Latina coming-of-age quinceañera traditions – Monica Gomez-Hira makes her YA debut with a rollicking fable of quinceañeras lost and found. Eighteen-year-old Carmen never got her party: her...
Bahni Turpin opens and ends Pochoda’s thriller with electrifying energy as Feelia, the sole survivor of a serial killer who claimed 13 victims 15 years ago. All – including Feelia – had their throats slit, their heads covered in plastic bags, their bodies dumped. All...
Invoking the shocking Chanel Miller case, Joy McCullough introduces a mixed Guatemalan/presumed-to-be-white family in which older daughter Elinor is brutally raped; although found guilty, the rapist is released for “time served.” Despite best intentions, younger daughter Marianne’s social justice-driven public outrage only causes further damage...
Following the success of her lauded “We Set the Dark on Fire” duology, Tehlor Kay Mejia makes her middle grade debut, proving mothers are always right, ghosts exist, and La Llorona is legit. From 12 to eternal, desperate parent to dismissive cop, madwoman to murderer,...
These United States are not quite a quarter-millennium old, but “Hispanic history in regions that are now called the United States spans more than five centuries,” Margarita Engle reminds in her essential opening historical note. With the island’s 15th-century colonization, “the history of the modern...
