From the author of The Tribes of Palos Verdes, a compelling new novel about a couple's getaway to a Mexican paradise that goes horribly wrong. Joy Nicholson's second novel, The Road to Esmeralda, is a dark, seductive story about Americans abroad. Fed up with their L.A. lives, Nick and Sarah decide to head south to Mexico. They are looking for something: love, self-fulfillment, inspiration, or even just peace of mind. However, as the roads get windier and the jungle thicker, this naïve pair realizes that all of the trappings of society-greed, drugs, violence and jealousy-exist even in the remotest of places. Even tiny Esmeralda has a secret agenda . . . While her prose remains hearfelt and spare, Nicholson, in The Road to Esmeralda, also reveals a political edge. In exploring the prejudices of a small Mexican town, she weaves a harrowing and tragic story of love, devastation, and what it means to be a young, intelligent American in a very angry world.

Seeking an escape from their lives in Los Angeles, lovers Nick and Sarah embark on what they hope will be a romantic adventure in the Mexican jungle but instead encounter a dangerous world of drugs, violence, and secret agendas.

As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Leon. And in handsome twin brothers Ramon and Inocente—both in love with Ana—she finds a way to get there. Marrying Ramon at the age of eighteen, she travels across the ocean to Hacienda los Gemelos, a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited. But soon the Civil War erupts in the United States, and Ana finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs her wealth has been built: the hacienda’s slaves, whose richly drawn stories unfold alongside her own in this epic novel of love, discovery and adventure.

The friendship of a brother and sister in California, united by their love of surfing, but divided by their parents' crumbling marriage. Medina sides with the father, a doctor, Jim with the ex-model mother.

During the Spanish Inquisition, two kids fall deeply in love and then are caught up in it. She is burned at the stake, and he is boiled in acid, but death isnt the end, merely a short stop of two hundred years. They then find themselves in Los Angeles, California, and they are facing the same enemy. This time, they might have a chance.

A marvelous new anthology from the editors of Las Christmas in which our most admired Latino authors share memories of their mothers. The women lovingly portrayed in Las Mamis represent a cross section of Latino life and culture. They come from rich families in the big cities of Latin America, from rural immigrant families, and from the worlds in between-and they share an extraordinary inner strength, often maintained against incredible odds. Pressed by conflicting cultural expectations, circumstance, and religion, they have managed the challenges of motherhood, leaving enduring legacies for their children. Now, in these vivid, poignant, and sometimes hilarious reminiscences-all of them infused with distinct sabor latino-Las Mamis celebrates the universality of family love and the special bond between mothers and children. Contributors include: Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Marjorie Agosin, Junot Diaz, Alba Ambert, Liz Balmaseda, Mandalit del Barco, Gioconda Belli, Maria Escandon, Dagoberto Gilb, Francisco Goldman, Jaime Manrique, Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Ilan Stavans

DEATHLESSNESS - the magnet for evil! No one is as impetuous and as spontaneously inventive as Esmeralda when it comes to looking after her human family in times of crisis. So, just as she broke barriers and laws to intervene in the human world when her sister was being murdered, her recklessness again comes to the surface when her human birth mother is hit by a car. What she does is so extraordinary that it actually leads to the discovery of how the boundary between virtual and physical worlds can be erased! That knowledge, in itself, is not dangerous at all, if contained within the virtual world of Screenside. Sadly, some humans get to know, and it is soon revealed that the virtual world holds the key to human immortality! That starts off a very clever game plan to cheat the virtuals, using their desperation to end human pain. The virtual side begins immersing itself into the remarkably easy and rewarding job of helping and curing humans suffering from motor and mental issues, while scarcely bothering with precautions, being confident that the physical world cannot misuse the virtual one. But there are many seekers of The Holy Grail – ETERNAL LIFE, and they will always be wealthy, powerful and evil, and able to arrange things that otherwise seem impossible!

Magic, sexual tension, high comedy, and intense drama move through an enchanted yet harsh autobiography, in the story of a young girl who leaves rural Puerto Rico for New York's tenements and a chance for success.

The Esmeralda books tell the stories of a mother and daughter who live in the city but love to visit the country farm where the child's grandmother lives. This is the second in the series of Esmeralda books. The tales originated as stories created by the author to entertain her grandchildren while they were riding in her car. They would sit quietly, completely enthralled with Esmeralda's adventures. The author could see their reactions in her rear view mirror as each story unfolded. "Nana, Esmeralda! Esmeralda!" would be heard from the back seat of the car soon after each journey began. The characters have become part of their family, and Esmeralda's adventures often cross their minds. The descriptions in the stories are inspired by four generations of the author's family, their animals, and moments they spent together. Simple tales of the love shared by a very special family.