Showing results by narrator "Armando Durán" in All Categories

Joel Agee’s hallucinatory first novel begins in a house with a large garden in an unnamed Mexican town in the late 1940s, where six-and-a-half-year-old Peter reads, dreams, and plays with his friends. He is a nascent explorer, artist, philosopher, mystic, and scientist. His world is still new, not yet papered over with received knowledge. And the actual world around him is a unique one in history: a community of leftist emigrés who have found refuge in Mexico from the Nazi and fascist regimes of Europe, rubbing shoulders with Mexican labor activists and leftists such as Frida Kahlo.

On March 10, 1920, in Pachuca, Mexico, the Compañía de Santa Gertrudis may have committed murder. The alert was first raised at six in the morning: A fire was tearing through the El Bordo mine. After a brief evacuation, the mouths of the shafts were sealed. Company representatives hastened to assert that “no more than 10” men remained inside the mineshafts, and that all 10 were most certainly dead. Yet when the mine was opened six days later, the death toll was not 10 but 87. And there were seven survivors.

Funny Bones tells the story of how the amusing calaveras - skeletons performing various everyday or festive activities - came to be. They are the creation of Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe (Lupe) Posada (1852-1913). In a country that was not known for freedom of speech, he first drew political cartoons, much to the amusement of the local population but not the politicians. He continued to draw cartoons throughout much of his life, but he is best known today for his calavera drawings.

It's 2004 in Muriga, a quiet town in Spain's northern Basque Country, a place with more secrets than inhabitants. Five years have passed since the kidnapping and murder of a young local politician - a family man and father - and the town's rhythms have almost returned to normal. But in the aftermath of the Atocha train bombings in Madrid, an act of terrorism that rocked the nation and the world, the townspeople want a reckoning of Muriga's own troubled past.

It is April 2003. American forces have taken Baghdad and are now charged with winning hearts and minds. But this vital tipping point is barely recognized for what it is, as a series of miscalculations and blunders fuels an already-simmering insurgency intent on making Iraq the next graveyard of...

Nelson’s fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelson’s story - and perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.

Bombs fall over a Greek village during World War II, and a teacher takes her students to a cave for shelter. There she tells them about another war - when the Greeks besieged Troy. Day after day, she recounts how the Greeks suffer from thirst, heat, and homesickness, and how the opponents meet - army against army, man against man. Helmets are cleaved, heads fly, blood flows. And everything had begun when Prince Paris of Troy fell in love with king of Sparta Menelaus's wife, the beautiful Helen, and escaped with her to his homeland.

Dark Dude captures New York City in the 1960s - violent, decaying, slouching away from the American dream - and brings to life a character who has no choice but to head out west in search of something better. But, when Rico and his ex-druggie friend arrive in Wisconsin, they discover that picket-fenced apple-pie people can be just as violent and judgmental as the neighbors they left behind.

Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, finished writing The Captain's Verses in 1952 while in exile on the island of Capri - the paradisiacal setting for the blockbuster film Il Postino ( The Postman). Surrounded by sea, sun, and Capri's natural splendors, Neruda addressed these poems to his lover, Matilde Urrutia, before they were married, but he didn't publish them publicly until 1963.

In the winter of 1976, Simon Cardoso is arrested by the military and is never seen again. Thirty years later, Emilia Dupuy, his wife, is stunned to find him in New Jersey. Her world, which had crumbled after losing him, is alight with life again. There is a caveat, however: for Simn Cardoso time stopped when he disappeared. Using this enigma as the foundation, Tomas Eloy Martinez' story of the anguish of a lost and recovered love is masterfully tied to the sinister sense of unreality created by a regime.

María is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, "Beautiful María of My Soul.'" Now in her sixties and living as an exile in Miami, María remains a beauty, still capable of turning heads. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor. As she thinks back to her days—and nights—in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the Mambo Kings story unfolds.

When the dead body of a Latino woman is found in a reservoir about 50 miles north of Manhattan, with a photo of a baby in her purse nearby, the police try to determine who the child is and if it is still alive. Along with the photo, they also find a disturbing note in the purse: "Go back to your country. You don't belong here."

The Polish Boxer covers a vast landscape of human experience while enfolding a search for origins: a grandson tries to make sense of his grandfather’s past and the story behind his numbered tattoo; a Serbian classical pianist longs for his forbidden heritage; a Mayan poet is torn between his studies and filial obligations; a striking young Israeli woman seeks answers in Central America; a university professor yearns for knowledge that he can’t find in books and discovers something unexpected at a Mark Twain conference.

He was a legend with a blood price on his head both north and south of the border; a renegade black West Point man now living among the hostile bronco Apaches and waging a war of vengeance against two governments. But when a courageous Mestizo priest with a desperate dream needed a man of strength to fulfill his vision, there was only one warrior fierce enough to whom to turn. It was the one they called the Black Apache.

On the day of Joseph Conrad's death, in 1924, the Colombian-born José Altamirano begins to write and cannot stop. Many years before, he confessed to Conrad his life's every delicious detail - from his country's heroic revolutions to his darkest solitary moments. Those intimate recollections became Nostromo, a novel that solidified Conrad’s fame and turned Altamirano’s reality into a work of fiction. Now Conrad is dead, but the slate is by no means clear. Nostromo will live on and Altamirano must write himself back into existence.

At the height of tourist season, an armored car drives off a crowded pier and sinks to the bottom of San Francisco Bay. By the time divers find the wreck, the cash is gone and the driver has vanished. The police are convinced it's an inside job, but local merchant Vera Young, whose boyfriend drove the armored car, claims it was much more than a simple heist. Vera swears the missing driver is innocent and wants him found before the police can throw him in jail. Private investigator Cape Weathers reluctantly takes the case but warns Vera that her boyfriend is likely guilty - or dead.

A group of U.S. soldiers emailed their observations and experiences from Iraq and their candid opinions on fighting an insurgency. This book is the result. This startling collection of emails is a thoughtful and compelling narrative that carries the reader from the alleys and city streets to the homes of long-suffering Iraqis, and from the soldiers’ concrete bunkers to the “majestic” army base.

Young lovers Héctor and Lilia dreamed of a brighter future for their family in the United States. Héctor left Mexico first to secure work and housing. But when Lilia crossed the border with their infant daughter, Alejandra, mother and child were separated, and Alejandra disappeared. Now, four years later, back in their sleepy hometown of Oaxaca, the couple enjoys a semblance of normal life, with a toddler son and another baby on the way.

All Ben Allison wants in El Paso is to buy a horse. But after the sale falls through, he runs into an old acquaintance and agrees to escort her son home to his father. But Ben is late and misses the stagecoach, and when it's attacked by Apaches, the boy is kidnapped because Ben wasn't there to protect him. Will he be able to fix the mess he never intended to be a part of in the first place?

Peter Quince was a fighter born and bred. Orphaned at a young age, he remembered an old woman saying that he was a bad one and would cause a lot of trouble in the world. Others claimed he had bad blood, and it would show up sooner or later. But Bill Andrews felt a connection with the boy, took him home, and raised him as one of his own despite his wife's misgivings. Peter soon learned he could manipulate people by withholding his true feelings. He had learned that battles should be won by cunning and strength, with cunning being far more important.