What! Have you never heard of Caballuco? said the countryman, amazed at the crass ignorance of Dona Perfecta's nephew. "He is a very brave man, a fine rider, and the best connoisseur of horses in all the surrounding country. We think a great deal of him in Orbajosa; and he is well worthy of it. Just as you see him, he is a power in the place, and the governor of the province takes off his hat to him."

This novel from Benito Perez Galdos is one of the towering masterpieces of nineteenth-century Spanish literature, a distinction that rests in large part on the indelible character of Dona Perfecta. As a new widow desperate to escape destitution, Dona Perfecta promised the hand of her young daughter in marriage to her nephew Pepe. But when the time comes for the wedding to be planned, Dona Perfecta has changed her mind -- and she embarks on a ruthless campaign of terror to ensure that the ceremony never takes place.

Book Excerpt: The first novel in which the new interest was predominant was the present book, Doña Perfecta, finished in April, 1876. In it Galdós brought the new and the old face to face: the new in the form of a highly trained, clear-thinking, frank-speaking modern man; the old in the guise of a whole community so remote from the current of things that its religious intolerance, its social jealousy, its undisturbed confidence and pride in itself must of necessity declare instant war upon that which comes from without, unsympathetic and critical. The inevitable result is ruin for the party whose physical force is less, the single individual, yet hardly less complete ruin for those whom intolerance and hate have driven to the annihilation of their adversary. The sympathies of the author, as his closing sentence shows, are with the new, but his conscience as artist has none the less compelled him to give to the old its right of full and fair utterance.The same ignorant or stubborn relRead More

Dona Perfecta

Excerpt The first novel in which the new interest was predominant was the present book, Dona Perfecta, finished in April, 1876. In it Galdos brought the new and the old face to face: the new in the form of a highly trained, clear-thinking, frank-speaking modern man; the old in the guise of a whole community so remote from the current of things that its religious intolerance, its social jealousy, its undisturbed confidence and pride in itself must of necessity declare instant war upon that which comes from without, unsympathetic and critical. The inevitable result is ruin for the party whose physical force is less, the single individual, yet hardly less complete ruin for those whom intolerance and hate have driven to the annihilation of their adversary. The sympathies of the author, as his closing sentence shows, are with the new, but his conscience as artist has none the less compelled him to give to the old its right of full and fair utterance. The same ignorant or stubborn rel"

A novel about love's labors lost at once hilarious and heartrending, "Loving Pedro Infante" unravels the fictions people weave to justify loving the wrong mate, and confirms Denise Chvez's reputation as one of the most vibrant Chicana storytellers.