Caribbean Journeys Through Time and Space

Angie Cruz is the author of the novels Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee, a finalist in 2007 for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has published work in The New York Times, VQR, Gulf Coast Literary Journal, and other publications, and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. She is founder and editor in chief of Aster(ix), a literary and arts journal, and is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Sandra Cisneros calls Cruz’s latest novel Dominicana (Flatiron Books) “Gorgeous writing, gorgeous story.” Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. It doesn’t matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. So on New Year’s Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights, where she is lonely and miserable. As the Dominican Republic slides into political turmoil, Juan returns to protect his family’s assets, leaving his younger brother Cesar to take care of Ana. Suddenly, Ana is free to imagine the possibility of a different kind of life in America. When Juan returns, Ana must decide once again between her heart and her duty to her family.

David Chariandy grew up in Toronto and lives and teaches in Vancouver. His debut novel, Soucouyant, received stunning reviews and nominations from eleven literary awards juries, including a Governor General's Literary Award shortlisting, a Gold Independent Publisher Award for Best Novel, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. Brother (McClelland & Stewart) is his second novel. An intensely beautiful, searingly powerful, tightly constructed novel, Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991. With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home. With devastating emotional force David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.

Sara Collins studied law at the London School of Economics and worked as a lawyer for seventeen years before earning a Master of Studies in Creative Writing at Cambridge University, where she was the recipient of the 2015 Michael Holroyd Prize for Creative Writing. The Washington Post writes of her novel The Confessions of Frannie Langton (Harper), “A startling, compelling historical debut novel. . . should be on top of your vacation reading pile.”  All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being tried at the Old Bailey. The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore. But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home—and into a passionate and forbidden relationship. A brilliant, searing depiction of race, class, and oppression that penetrates the skin and sears the soul, it is the story of a woman of her own making in a world that would see her unmade.

Uva de Aragón has published a dozen books of essays, poetry, short stories, and the novel Memoria del Silencio, which now is offered in its first translation into English. Some of her short stories and a play have also been translated and appear in textbooks and anthologies such as The Voice of the Turtle, Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion, Cubana and Cuban-American Theater. Until her retirement in 2011, she was Associate Director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, where she also taught. Dr. de Aragón served for six years as Associate Editor of Cuban Studies. She is a graduate of the University of Miami, where she obtained a Ph.D. in Latin American and Spanish Literature. Her most recent novel is The Miracle of Saint Lazarus: A Mystery Twenty Years in the Making (Mango). A few weeks after Hurricane Andrew wreaks devastation and havoc across South Florida, a father and his infant daughter crash their car into a canal. The man’s body is recovered, but his baby girl is never found. Twenty-three years later: After reports of alleged sightings of the girl, the case is reopened by police. Detective Maria Duquesne has been assigned to the case, but she has very little in the way of clues. Is it really possible that the girl has not died? Uva de Aragón provides a multifaceted portrait of the Latino communities of Miami and Hialeah, creating an exciting thriller that will appeal to readers who enjoy mysteries with female sleuths.