For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios--a people broken by war's violence. As the host of "Lost City Radio," she reads the names of those who have disappeared--those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But in the aftermath of the decadelong bloody civil conflict, her own life is about to forever change--thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband.

In this startlingly original memoir, composed of twenty-three letters written over the course of thirty years, Emma Reyes describes in vivid, painterly detail the remarkable courage and limitless imagination of a young girl growing up with nothing. Hailed as an instant classic when first published in Colombia in 2012, nine years after the death of its author, the portrait that emerges from this clear-eyed account inspires awe at the stunning early life of a gifted writer and artist who was encouraged in her writing by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but whose talent remained hidden for far too long.

Something is happening. Wars, both national and internal, are being waged in jungles, across borders, in the streets of Lima, in the intimacy of New York apartments. War by Candlelight is an exquisite collection of stories that carry the reader from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people -- a devastating portrait of a world in flux -- and Daniel Alarcon is an extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon forget.

"American Odysseys" is an anthology of twenty-two novelists, poets, and short-story writers drawn from the shortlist for the 2011 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature. Including Ethiopian-born Dinaw Mengestu, the recipient of the Prize; Yugoslavian-born T?a Obreht, the youngest author to receive the Orange Prize in Fiction; and Chinese-born Yiyun Li, a MacArthur Genius grantee, what these authors all have in common -- and share with US Poet Laureate Charles Simic, who has contributed a foreword -- is that they are immigrants to the United States, now excelling in their fields and dictating the terms by which future American writing will be judged by the world. Running the gamut from desperate realism to whimsical fantasy -- from Miho Nonaka's poetry, inspired by fourteenth-century Noh theater, to Ismet Prcic's wrenching stories set in the aftermath of the Bosnian war -- "American Odysseys" is proof, if any be needed, that the heterogeneity of American society is its greatest asset.

The world's best contemporary writers--from Michael Chabon and Claire Messud to Jonathan Lethem and Amy Tan--engage in a wide-ranging, insightful, and oft- surprising roundtable discussion on the art of writing fiction

Drawing back the curtain on the mysterious process of writing novels, "The Secret Miracle" brings together the foremost practitioners of the craft to discuss how they write. Paul Auster, Roddy Doyle, Allegra Goodman, Aleksandar Hemon, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Minot, Rick Moody, Haruki Murakami, George Pelecanos, Gary Shteyngart, and others take us step by step through the alchemy of writing fiction, answering everything from nuts-and-bolts queries--"Do you outline?"--to perennial questions posed by writers and readers alike: "What makes a character compelling?"

From Stephen King's deadpan distinction between novels and short stories ("Novels are longer and have more s**t in them") to Colm Toibin's anti-romanticized take on his characters ("They are just words") to Jose Manuel Prieto's mature perspective on the anxieties of influence ("Influences are felt or weigh you down more when young"), every page contains insights found nowhere else.

With honesty, humor, and elegance, "The Secret Miracle" gives both aspiring writers and lovers of literature a master class in the art of writing.

En el mundo, algo extrano esta sucediendo: hay movimientos masivos de gente, lenguas y culturas que crecen dislocadas entre guerras y economias en crisis. En pocas palabras, nuestro mundo esta cambiando.

En este asombroso libro de cuentos, Daniel Alarcon transporta al lector de los centros urbanos tercermundistas a las lineas fragmentadas que muchas veces dividen naciones y personas. Un terrorista sin remordimientos recuerda sus comienzos, un posible inmigrante contempla las consecuencias de irse y no volver jamas, un reportero cambia su lapiz y papel por el tragico disfraz de un payaso callejero. Son guerras tanto nacionales como internas, que se llevan a cabo en la selva, en las calles de Lima o en la intimidad de un apartamento neoyorquino. Son vidas que se viven al margen del mundo globalizado y sin globalizar, son las historias de quienes constantemente viajan entre mundos diferentes sin jamas sentirse del todo en casa.

Guerra en la Penumbra ilumina las grietas con las que todos tropezamos en el mundo moderno. Daniel Alarcon es un talento excepcional, una voz dificil de olvidar una vez el libro llega a su extraordinario y devastador desenlace.

The breakout book from a prizewinning young writer: a "surrealistic tour de force" ("O, The Oprah Magazine") about one man's obsessive search to find the truth of another man's downfall.
Nelson's life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man; his brother has left their South American country, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother; and his acting career can't seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of "The Idiot President," a legendary play by Nelson's hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the storied guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre. And that's when the real trouble begins.
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, Alarcon delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.