Maya’s Notebook is a startling novel of suspense from New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende. This contemporary coming-of-age story centers upon Maya Vidal, a remarkable teenager abandoned by her parents. Maya grew up in a rambling old house in Berkeley with her grandmother Nini, whose formidable strength helped her build a new life after emigrating from Chile in 1973 with a young son, and her grandfather Popo, a gentle African-American astronomer. When Popo dies, Maya goes off the rails. Along with a circle of girlfriends known as "the vampires," she turns to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime--a downward spiral that eventually leads to Las Vegas and a dangerous underworld, with Maya caught between warring forces: a gang of assassins, the police, the FBI, and Interpol. Her one chance for survival is Nini, who helps her escape to a remote island off the coast of Chile. In the care of her grandmother’s old friend, Manuel Arias, and surrounded by strange new acquaintances, Maya begins to record her story in her notebook, as she tries to make sense of her past and unravel the mysteries of her family and her own life.

Product Description: It is the late 1970s and Argentina is wracked by the worst excesses of its "Dirty Wars" as thousands have disappeared or have been tortured and murdered by a dying dictatorship. Luz Goldman, on the other hand, lives in Buenos Aires in a bubble of wealth and privilege where such horrors are simply ignored...read more

Product Description: "Elegant” —Marie Claire"Funny and revelatory." —New York Times Book Review"Deeply accessible, deeply moving." —Los Angeles TimesThe Polish Boxer covers a vast landscape of human experience while enfolding a search for origins: a grandson tries to make sense of his Polish 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...read more

Product Description: No one knows the recipe for happiness – and yet Héctor Abad has given us a whole volume. His recipes, at times bizarre, at times wise, can cure almost anything – although the ingredients are not always easy to come by. "Cauliflower in the mist" is protection against melancholy, seasoned with salty tears; and the right preparation of lobster and cutlet can have extraordinary effects on the human mind...read more

Product Description: Perhaps Cortázar’s most unconventional work, From the Observatory moves from descriptions of the life cycle of the Atlantic eel to glimpses of the unearthly structures of an observatory built in Jaipur by an 18th-century Indian prince...read more

Product Description: When Gabriel Santoro publishes his first book, A Life in Exile, it never occurs to him that his father, a distinguished professor of rhetoric, will write a devastating review in a leading newspaper. The subject seems inoffensive enough: the life of a German Jewish woman (a close family friend) who arrived in Colombia shortly before the Second World War...read more

A young would-be writer from Catalonia meets Vietnam veteran Rodney Falk at a Midwestern university in 1987, but it is only years later, after he has become a successful novelist, that he begins to understand what Rodney had revealed about evil and guilt. Original. 10,000 first printing.

An American graduate student working on a dissertation on Borges, Bruno Cadogan arrives in Buenos Aires in September 2001 in search of the legendary tango singer Julio Martel and learns more than he ever had expected as he gets to know the city. By the author of Santa Evita.

'Tenant and The Motive'.

Three men, including a railway signalman, a World War I hero and Nazi general, and a master chess player, find key events in their lives intertwining as the events of the First and Second World Wars thrust them together at the center of a dangerous game. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Facing a firing squad at the end of the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist Rafael Sánchez Mazas escapes his executioners into the nearby forest, where he is discovered by an unknown soldier who refuses to kill him, in a historical novel that sheds light on the events surrounding a real-life incident. 15,000 first printing.

Product Description: Achingly sad and beautifully crafted, The All Saints' Day Lovers is a remarkable and intense exploration of relationships, loneliness, and cruelty. Set mainly in the starkly beautiful landscape of Belgium's Ardennes, these stories have been compared to Maupassant, Chekhov, John Cheever, and Antonio Tabucchi...read more

Product Description: Little Celebrations fiction and nonfiction titles are conveniently organized into leveled libraries to help you quickly match individual students or groups.