6 Latinx Romances to Read this Bookstore Romance Day

Celebrating Bookstore Romance Day, August 20th!

Created in 2019, Bookstore Romance Day is a day designed to give independent bookstores an opportunity to celebrate Romance fiction—its books, readers, and writers—and to strengthen the relationships between bookstores and the Romance community. The literary holiday is held annually on the third Saturday of August.

Scroll on for six books penned by Latine authors you should read to celebrate!

The Wrong Mr. Darcy by Evelyn Lozada and Holly Lorincz

In Evelyn Lozada and Holly Lorincz's lightly inspired Pride and Prejudice romantic comedy, two unlikely people discover the error of judging by first impressions and the beauty of family, friendship and love. This book will entice you through the last page.

Hara Isari has big ambitions and they won't be sidetracked by her mother's insisting that she settle down soon. She dreams of leaving her small-town newspaper behind, as well as her felon father, and building a career as a sports writer, so when she is chosen to exclusively interview a basketball superstar, she jumps at the chance. It's time to show the bigwigs what she's truly made of.

At the same time, she meets a rookie on the rise, Derek Darcy. Darcy is incredibly handsome, obnoxiously proud, and has a major chip on his shoulder. Hara can't think of a man more arrogant and infuriating. However, fate keeps bringing them together--from locker rooms to elegant parties, to the storm of the century--and what begins as a clash might just be more complicated than Hara anticipated. When she begins to see Darcy in a new light, Hara is not quite sure if she should drop the ball or play the love game.

The Wedding Crasher by Mia Sosa

Just weeks away from ditching DC for greener pastures, Solange Pereira is roped into helping her wedding planner cousin on a random couple's big day. It's an easy gig... until Solange stumbles upon a situation that convinces her the pair isn't meant to be. What's a true-blue romantic to do? Crash the wedding, of course. And ensure the unsuspecting groom doesn't make the biggest mistake of his life.

Dean Chapman had his future all mapped out. He was about to check off "start a family" and on track to "make partner" when his modern day marriage of convenience went up in smoke. Then he learns he might not land an assignment that could be his ticket to a promotion unless he has a significant other and, in a moment of panic, Dean claims to be in love with the woman who crashed his wedding. Oops.

Now Dean has a whole new item on his to-do list: beg Solange to be his pretend girlfriend. Solange feels a tiny bit bad about ruining Dean's wedding, so she agrees to play along. Yet as they fake-date their way around town, what started as a performance for Dean's colleagues turns into a connection that neither he nor Solange can deny. Their entire romance is a sham... there's no way these polar opposites could fall in love for real, right?

American Dreamer by Adriana Herrera

No one ever said big dreams come easy.

For Nesto Vasquez, moving his Afro-Caribbean food truck from New York City to the wilds of Upstate New York is a huge gamble. If it works? He'll be a big fish in a little pond. If it doesn't? He'll have to give up the hustle and return to the day job he hates. He's got six months to make it happen--the last thing he needs is a distraction.

Jude Fuller is proud of the life he's built on the banks of Cayuga Lake. He has a job he loves and good friends. It's safe. It's quiet. And it's damn lonely. Until he tries Ithaca's most-talked-about new lunch spot and works up the courage to flirt with the handsome owner. Soon he can't get enough--of Nesto's food or of Nesto. For the first time in his life, Jude can finally taste the kind of happiness that's always been just out of reach.

An opportunity too good to pass up could mean a way to stay together and an incredible future for them both...if Nesto can remember happiness isn't always measured by business success. And if Jude can overcome his past and trust his man will never let him down.

Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez

In Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan lives a double life.

At home, she is a careful daughter, living within her mother's narrow expectations, in her rising-soccer-star brother's shadow, and under the abusive rule of her short-tempered father.

On the field, she is La Furia, a powerhouse of skill and talent. When her team qualifies for the South American tournament, Camila gets the chance to see just how far those talents can take her. In her wildest dreams, she'd get an athletic scholarship to a North American university.

But the path ahead isn't easy. Her parents don't know about her passion. They wouldn't allow a girl to play fútbol--and she needs their permission to go any farther. And the boy she once loved is back in town. Since he left, Diego has become an international star, playing in Italy for the renowned team Juventus. Camila doesn't have time to be distracted by her feelings for him. Things aren't the same as when he left: she has her own passions and ambitions now, and La Furia cannot be denied. As her life becomes more complicated, Camila is forced to face her secrets and make her way in a world with no place for the dreams and ambition of a girl like her.

Filled with authentic details and the textures of day-to-day life in Argentina, heart-soaring romance, and breathless action on the pitch, Furia is the story of a girl's journey to make her life her own.

A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey

For Lila Reyes, a summer in England was never part of the plan. The plan was 1) take over her abuela's role as head baker at their panadería, 2) move in with her best friend after graduation, and 3) live happily ever after with her boyfriend. But then the Trifecta happened, and everything--including Lila herself--fell apart.

Worried about Lila's mental health, her parents make a new plan for her: Spend three months with family friends in Winchester, England, to relax and reset. But with the lack of sun, a grumpy inn cook, and a small town lacking Miami flavor (both in food and otherwise), what would be a dream trip for some feels more like a nightmare to Lila...until she meets Orion Maxwell.

A teashop clerk with troubles of his own, Orion is determined to help Lila out of her funk, and appoints himself as her personal tour guide. From Winchester's drama-filled music scene to the sweeping English countryside, it isn't long before Lila is not only charmed by Orion, but England itself. Soon a new future is beginning to form in Lila's mind--one that would mean leaving everything she ever planned behind.

Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis

In defiance of the brutal military government that took power in Uruguay in the 1970s, and under which homosexuality is a dangerous transgression, five women miraculously find one another--and, together, an isolated cape that they claim as their own.

Over the next thirty-five years, they travel back and forth from this secret sanctuary, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow or alone. Throughout it all, they will be tested repeatedly--by their families, lovers, society, and one another--as they fight to live authentic lives.

A groundbreaking, genre-defining work, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit.

What romantic read will you pick up this bookstore romance day?

To learn more about Bookstore Romance Day, visit https://bookstoreromanceday.org/

August 2022 Latinx Releases

On Sale August 2, 2022

Coming Up Cuban by Sonia Manzano | Middle Grade

From Pura Belpré Honoree and Emmy-award winning actor Sonia Manzano--best known as "Maria" from Sesame Street--comes the expansive and timeless story of four children who must carve out a path for themselves in the wake of Fidel Castro's rise to power.

Fifteen-time Emmy Award winner and Pura Belpre honoree Sonia Manzano examines the impact of the 1959 Cuban Revolution on four children from very different walks of life. In the wake of a new regime in Cuba, Ana, Miguel, Zulema, and Juan learn to find a place for themselves in a world forever changed. In a tumultuous moment of history, we see the lasting effects of a revolution in Havana, the countryside, Miami, and New York. Through these snapshot stories, we are reminded that regardless of any tumultuous times, we are all forever connected in our humanity.

INVISIBLE: A GRAPHIC NOVEL by Christina Diaz Gonzalez | Middle Grade

For fans of Twins and Allergic, a must-have graphic novel about five very different students who are forced together by their school to complete community service... and may just have more in common than they thought.

How can you be yourself when no one sees the real you?

Five students meet in the school cafeteria when they’re forced to complete their school community service hours.

There’s George: the brain

Sara: the loner

Dayara: the tough kid

Nico: the rich kid

They immediately know that they have nothing in common with each other... even though their school administration has decided that they all belong together.

None of the kids wants to be there, and each has their own issues they're dealing with in their life outside of school. But when they encounter someone who truly needs their help, they might just be able to come together to work as a team—and help their community—after all.

Christina Diaz Gonzalez, award-winning author of The Red Umbrella, and Gaby Epstein, illustrator of the Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel adaptations, have created a vibrant and relatable graphic novel about unexpected friendships and being seen for who you really are.

PAOLA SANTIAGO AND THE SANCTUARY OF SHADOWS by Tehlor Kay Mejia |Middle Grade

Paola Santiago has recently returned from Oregon, where she defeated the Hitchhiker ghost and saved her father from the vengeful spirit that was possessing him. The poor girl deserves a rest! But first she has to rescue Dante from the void, where he’s been imprisoned by some unknown force. Even though Dante has turned against Pao, she can’t just leave him there–they’ve been friends for too long.

Paola’s prophetic dreams seem to have dried up, so she has to find other ways to locate a new rift where she can enter the void. Signs point to Texas–but how is she going to get there from Arizona? It just so happens that Emma’s new group of politically active friends, the Rainbow Rogues, are planning a field trip to San Antonio. It’s the perfect ruse for Paola, if she can stand being with the judgmental girls for that many days. . . .

Relying on her wits, training from the Ninos de la Luz, and the emotional support of her best friend Emma, Pao makes it into the void. Once there she must face down not just one but two enemies: El Cucuy, the bogeyman . . . and someone even scarier who looks a lot like Pao herself.

A GIRL’S GUIDE TO LOVE & MAGIC by Debbie Rigaud | Young Adult

Perfect for fans of The Sun Is Also a Star and Blackout, this YA novel from Debbie Rigaud is a celebration of Haitian and Caribbean culture, and a story of first love, vodou, and finding yourself, all set against the backdrop of the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn.

Cicely Destin lives for the West Indian Day Parade, the joyous celebration of Caribbean culture that takes over the streets of her neighborhood. She loves waving the Haitian flag, sampling delicious foods, and cheering for the floats. And this year? She'll get to hang with her stylish aunt, an influencer known for dabbling in Haitian Vodou.

And maybe spot her dreamy crush, Kwame, in the crowd.

But fate has other ideas. Before the parade, a rogue, mischievous spirit seems to take possession of Cicely's aunt during a spiritual reading. Cicely hardly knows anything about Vodou, or how to get someone un-possessed. But it's up to her to set things right--and the clock is ticking. She'll have to enlist the help of her quick-thinking best friend, Renee, and, as luck would have it...Kwame.

Cicely, her friends, and the reckless spirit who is now their charge set off on a thrilling scavenger hunt to gather the ceremonial items they need. And along the way, will Cicely discover surprising powers of her on?

Bestselling author Debbie Rigaud infuses this novel with sparkling wit, romance, and nuance that will keep readers riveted and enchanted.

The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias | Thriller

Buried in debt due to his young daughter's illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel's cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won't return the same.

IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS by Anna Meriano |Young Adult

Yasmín Treviño didn’t have much of a freshman year thanks to Hurricane Humphrey, but she’s ready to take sophomore year by storm. That means mastering the marching side of marching band—fast!—so she can outshine her BFF Sofia as top of the flute section, earn first chair, and impress both her future college admission boards and her comfortably unattainable drum major crush Gilberto Reyes.

But Yasmín steps off on the wrong foot when she reports an anonymous gossip Instagram account harassing new band members and accidentally gets the entire low brass section suspended from extracurriculars. With no low brass section, the band is doomed, so Yasmín decides to take things into her own hands, learn to play the tuba, and lead a gaggle of rowdy freshman boys who are just as green to marching and playing as she is. She’ll happily wrestle an ancient school tuba if it means fixing the mess she might have caused.

But when the secret gossip Instagram escalates their campaign of harassment and Yasmín’s friendship with Sofia deteriorates, things at school might be too hard to bear. Luckily, the support of Yasmín’s new section—especially introverted section leader Bloom, a sweet ace and aro-spectrum boy—might just turn things around.

On Sale August 9, 2022

THE NEAPOLITAN SISTERS by Margo Candela | Fiction

Three sisters. Three vastly different lives. A maelstrom of family secrets. For fans of María Amparo Escandón and Laurie Frankel, Margo Candela pens a riotous, provocative tale of family and sisterhood.

Growing up with a kind but alcoholic father and a suspicious, passive-aggressive mother, the Bernal sisters each developed their own way of coping: Dulcina had her art and drugs and alcohol, Claudia plunged into her studies and fled to Princeton, and Maritza watched one Disney movie after another in between devouring romance novels.

Now all grown up, the sisters are reunited at last for Maritza's dream wedding. But they are no less different than they were growing up: Maritza is a princess bridezilla, Claudia is the family "fixer," and Dulcina "Dooley" is finally sober. With all three Bernal sisters back in their East L.A. home, each begins to take steps to come to terms with each other, their parents, and the secrets from their shared past. While their lives may have taken different paths, they are still sisters at heart.

Told in alternating points of view, The Neapolitan Sisters is a humorous yet moving look at what it means to be a sister, daughter, and ultimately, your own self, despite the pressures that come with being part of a family.

ABUELITA AND I MAKE FLAN by Adriana Hernández Bergstrom | Picture Book

Anita loves to bake with her abuela, especially when they are using her grandmother's special recipes for Cuban desserts like flan!

Anita is making flan for Abuelo's birthday, but when she accidentally breaks Abuelita's treasured flan serving plate from Cuba, she struggles with what to do. Anita knows it's right to tell the truth, but what if Abuelita gets upset? Worried that she has already ruined the day, Anita tries to be the best helper. After cooking the flan, they need a serving dish! Anita comes up with a wonderful solution.

Complete with a glossary of Spanish terms and a traditional recipe for flan, Abuelita and I Make Flan is a delicious celebration of food, culture, and family.

THE MEMORY INDEX by Julian Ray Vaca |Young Adult

In an alternative 1987, a disease ravages human memories. There is no cure, only artificial recall. The lucky ones–the recollectors–need the treatment only once a day.

Freya Izquierdo isn’t lucky. The high school senior is a “degen” who needs artificial recall several times a day. Plagued by blinding half-memories that take her to her knees, she’s desperate to remember everything that will help her investigate her father’s violent death. When her sleuthing almost lands her in jail, a shadowy school dean selects her to attend his Foxtail Academy, where five hundred students will trial a new tech said to make artificial recall obsolete.

She’s the only degen on campus. Why was she chosen? Freya is nothing like the other students, not even her new friends Ollie, Chase, and the alluring Fletcher Cohen. Definitely not at all like the students who start to vanish, one by one. And nothing like the mysterious Dean Mendelsohn, who has a bunker deep in the woods behind the school.

Nothing can prepare Freya and her friends for the truth of what that bunker holds. And what kind of memories she’ll have to access to survive it.

LOLA OUT LOUD: Inspired by the Childhood of Activist Dolores Huerta by Jennifer Torres | Picture Book

Her grandpa calls her “Lolita Siete Lenguas”—Little Lola, Seven Tongues, all fighting to be heard. Lola is trying not to make so much noise, but when she witnesses injustices in her own neighborhood, she knows she can’t keep quiet.

Can Lola find a way to use her voice for change? ¡Sí, se puede! Inspired by the real-life civil rights activist and labor leader Dolores Huerta.

On Sale August 16, 2022

CITY WITHOUT ALTAR by Jasmine Mendez | Poetry

City Without Altar is a poetry collection and play in verse that explores what it means to live, love, heal and experience violence as a Black person in the world. The titular play in verse that sits at the center of the book seeks to amplify the voices and experiences of victims, survivors and living ancestors of the 1937 Haitian Massacre that occurred along the northwest Dominican/Haitian border during the Trujillo Era. Between the scenes of the play are “interludes” that explore a different kind of “cutting” and what it means to feel othered because of illness, disability and blackness. Ultimately, City Without Altar is a meditation on being/feeling “blacked out” by the archive, on the world stage and in one’s daily life.

TUMBLE by Celia C. Perez | Middle Grade

Twelve-year-old Adela “Addie” Ramirez has a big decision to make when her stepfather proposes adoption. Addie loves Alex, the only father figure she’s ever known, but with a new half brother due in a few months and a big school theater performance on her mind, everything suddenly feels like it’s moving too fast. She has a million questions, and the first is about the young man in the photo she found hidden away in her mother’s things.

Addie’s sleuthing takes her to a New Mexico ranch, and her world expands to include the legendary Bravos: Rosie and Pancho, her paternal grandparents and former professional wrestlers; Eva and Maggie, her older identical twin cousins who love to spar in and out of the ring; Uncle Mateo, whose lucha couture and advice are unmatched; and Manny, her biological father, who’s in the midst of a career comeback. As luchadores, the Bravos’s legacy is strong. But being part of a family is so much harder—it’s about showing up, taking off your mask, and working through challenges together.

ECHOES OF GRACE by Guadalupe García McCall |Young Adult

In this triumphant new novel, Pura Belpré Award-winning author Guadalupe García McCall explores sisterhood, family secrets, intergenerational trauma, life, and love in a modern Gothic setting with a magical realist twist.

In Eagle Pass, Texas, Grace struggles to understand the echoes she inherited from her mother--visions which often distort her reality. One morning, as her sister, Mercy, rushes off to work, a disturbing echo takes hold of Grace, and within moments, tragedy strikes.

Attending community college for the first time, talking to the boy next door, and working toward her goals all help Grace recover, but her estrangement from Mercy takes a deep toll. And as Grace's echoes bring ghosts and premonitions, they also bring memories of when Grace fled to Mexico to the house of her maternal grandmother--a woman who Grace had been told died long ago. Will piecing together the truth heal Grace and her sister, or will the echoes destroy everything that she holds dear?

On Sale August 23, 2022

IF YOUR BABYSITTER IS A BRUJA by Ana Siqueira |Picture Book

On the night before Halloween, a new babysitter might be more than she appears. If she wears a black sombrero and cackles like a crow, she might just be a bruja! One little girl is determined not to fall victim to an evil witch or her cats. She knows bath time is really the bruja’s way of putting her in a boiling cauldron, and the only way to keep her at bay is with a magic potion—or is it?

With a boundless imagination and plenty of tricks up her sleeve, the young protagonist may just have the best night ever!

The Coquíes Still Sing / Los Coquíes Aún Cantan by Karina Nicole González | Picture Book

A powerful story about home, community, and hope, inspired by the rebuilding of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017, written by debut author Karina González and illustrated by Krystal Quiles.

This book is more than beautiful. - Yuyi Morales, Caldecott Honoree and New York Times bestselling creator of Dreamers

Co-quí, co-quí! The coquí frogs sing to Elena from her family's beloved mango tree--their calls so familiar that they might as well be singing, "You are home, you are safe." But home is suddenly not safe when a hurricane threatens to destroy everything that Elena knows.

As time passes, Elena, alongside her community, begins to rebuild their home, planting seeds of hope along the way. When the sounds of the coquíes gradually return, they reflect the resilience and strength of Elena, her family, and her fellow Puerto Ricans. The Coquies Still Sing is also available in Spanish.

This Is Why They Hate Us by Aaron H. Aceves | Young Adult

This fun, irreverent summer romp is Netflix's Never Have I Ever meets What If It's Us about a high school senior determined to get over his unrequited feelings for his best friend by getting under someone else.

Enrique "Quique" Luna has one goal this summer--get over his crush on Saleem Kanazi by pursuing his other romantic prospects. Never mind that he's only out to his best friend, Fabiola. Never mind that he has absolutely zero game. And definitely forget the fact that good and kind and, not to mention, beautiful Saleem is leaving LA for the summer to meet a girl his parents are trying to set him up with.

Luckily, Quique's prospects are each intriguing in their own ways. There's stoner-jock Tyler Montana, who might be just as interested in Fabiola as he is in Quique; straitlaced senior class president, Ziggy Jackson; and Manny Zuniga, who keeps looking at Quique like he's carne asada fresh off the grill. With all these choices, Quique is sure to forget about Saleem in no time.

But as the summer heats up and his deep-seated fears and anxieties boil over, Quique soon realizes that getting over one guy by getting under a bunch of others may not have been the best laid plan and living his truth can come at a high cost.

THE TREE OF HOPE by Anna Orenstein-Cardona | Picture Book

The true story of a beloved banyan tree and a community that fought to save it in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

On the tropical island of Puerto Rico, there was an ancient banyan tree. His enormous twisted trunk rose up beside the San Juan Gate. Long roots hung from his wide-spreading branches and his emerald, leafy crown greeted all who passed by. This beloved tree stood on the shore of the island for over a hundred years--until the fateful time when the biggest hurricane in Puerto Rico's history slammed into the island, devastating communities and uprooting that very tree.

This lushly illustrated and evocatively written picture book tells the story of the majestic jagüey blanco, one of the most beloved trees in the city of Old San Juan. Puerto Rican author Anna Orenstein-Cardona weaves an epic tale based on the true story of this bearded watchdog of the island, how the tree was impacted by Hurricane Maria, and how a group of people rallied together to save it. With gorgeous illustrations by Juan Manuel Moreno, this picture book serves as an account of the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria and the strength of the people who continue to rebuild to this day.

Azar on Fire by Olivia Abathi | Young Adult

Fourteen-year-old Azar Rossi's first year of high school has mostly been silent, and intentionally so. After a bad case of colic as a baby, Azar's vocal folds are shredded--full of nodules that give her a rasp the envy of a chain-smoking bullfrog. Her classmates might just think she's quiet, but Azar is saving her voice for when it really counts and talking to her classmates is not medically advisable or even high on her list.

When she hears about a local Battle of the Bands contest, it's something she can't resist. Azar loves music, loves songwriting, but with her vocal folds the way they are, there's no way she can sing her songs on stage.

Then she hears lacrosse hottie, Ebenezer Lloyd Hollins the Fifth, aka Eben, singing from the locker room. She's transfixed. He's just the person she needs. His voice + her lyrics = Battle of the Bands magic. But getting a band together means Azar has a lot of talking to do and new friends to make. For the chance to stand on stage with Eben it might all just be worth it.

Lightlark by Alex Aster | Young Adult

Welcome to the Centennial.

Every 100 years, the island of Lightlark appears to host the Centennial, a deadly game that only the rulers of six realms are invited to play. The invitation is a summons--a call to embrace victory and ruin, baubles and blood. The Centennial offers the six rulers one final chance to break the curses that have plagued their realms for centuries. Each ruler has something to hide. Each realm's curse is uniquely wicked. To destroy the curses, one ruler must die.

Isla Crown is the young ruler of Wildling--a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with. They are feared and despised, and are counting on Isla to end their suffering by succeeding at the Centennial.

To survive, Isla must lie, cheat, and betray...even as love complicates everything.

On Sale August 30, 2022

BAD AT LOVE by Gabriela Martins | Young Adult

This fun and flirty romance follows a teen rocker with a bad boy reputation and the aspiring journalist who's determined to dig up the dirt on him . . . if they don't fall for each other first.

Ever since Daniel moved to L.A. from Brazil to join the band Mischief & Mayhem, he's become the tabloids' bad boy. Paparazzi follow him and girls swoon over him . . . except for Sasha, who hates bad boys. When a chance encounter brings them together, Sasha sees an opportunity to get close to Daniel and write a story that will make a name for herself at the celebrity gossip magazine where she interns. But Daniel is surprisingly sweet and extremely cute--could she be falling for him?

The truth is: Daniel is hiding something. When Sasha discovers his secret, will she follow her heart or deliver the hottest story of the summer?

Note: An earlier version of this post mistakenly included the title “The Spear Cuts Through Water” and was subsequently removed as the author is not of Latinx/e descent.

Exclusive Cover Reveal: LOS MONSTRUOS FELICE AND THE WAILING WOMAN by Diana López with Cover Art by Pablo Leon

Latinx in Publishing is thrilled to exclusively reveal the cover for the new middle grade novel by beloved Tejana author Diana López, LOS MONSTRUOS: FELICE AND THE WAILING WOMAN, coming from Kokila Books/Penguin in April 2023. The fantastic cover artwork is by Guatemalan comic and animation artist Pablo Leon.

When twelve-year old Felice learns that she’s the daughter of La Llorona, she stows away and lands in the magical town of Tres Leches, where her mother is said to be haunting the river. Growing up with her uncle Clem in Corpus Christi, Felice knew that she had been rescued from drowning—it’s where her intense fear of water comes from—but she had no idea her mother remained trapped between worlds, looking for her. Guided by the town’s eccentric mayor, Felice vows to help her mother make peace with events that have turned her into the most famous monstruo of US-Mexico border lore. Along the way, she meets the children of other monstruos—like La Lechuza and The Dancing Devil—and together, they free Tres Leches from magical and metaphorical curses that have haunted them all for generations.

The first in a series, Felice and the Wailing Woman brims with high stakes adventure, Mexican folklore, and a dash of magic that will have you staying up all night to finish reading. Diana López reframes lore with a positive feminist representation of the La Llorona myth, a perfect conversation starter for book clubs and classrooms. And there will be more books to come --subsequent books will follow the children of other monstruos, La Lechuza and The Dancing Devil.

Cover design by Kaitlin Yang with art direction by Theresa Evangelista.

Diana López

Diana López is the author of the adult novella Sofia’s Saints and numerous middle grade novels, including Confetti Girl, Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel, Nothing Up My Sleeve, and Lucky Luna. Her debut picture book, Sing with Me: The Story of Selena Quintanilla, is available in English and Spanish. She also wrote Coco: A Story about Music, Shoes and Family, the novel adaptation of the Disney/Pixar film Coco. Diana retired after a career in education at both the middle grade and college levels, but she still enjoys meeting with students when she visits schools to chat about books and writing. She is a past mentor in the Latinx in Publishing Writer Mentorship Program, and currently serves as the President of the Texas Institute of Letters. Diana lives in her hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas.

Pablo Leon

Pablo Leon is a Guatemalan author and artist. He currently lives in Los Angeles, jumping between working in the TV animation industry and comics. His original comic “The Journey,” about the true accounts of people migrating from Central America to the U.S., was a 2019 Eisner Award nominee. Some of his clients include Warner Brothers Animation, OddBot Inc, DreamWorks Animation, Bento Box Entertainment, and more. He is the illustrator for the bestselling and award nominated Miles Morales: Shock Waves for the Marvel/Scholastic partnership, and its sequel, Miles Morales: Stranger Tides. His forthcoming YA graphic novel, Silenced Voices, about two sisters during the Guatemalan civil war, comes out with Harper Alley in 2024.

June 2022 Latinx Releases

On-Sale June 1st, 2022

WEST SIDE LOVE STORY by Priscilla Oliveras | Adult Romance

Two familias in Texas, both alike in dignity, rivalries, and passion…

Having grown up in the nurturing household of Casa Capuleta, Mariana will do anything for familia. To solve her adoptive parents’ financial problems amid their rapidly changing San Antonio comunidad, Mariana and her younger sisters are determined to win the Battle of the Mariachi Bands. That means competing against Hugo Montero, their father’s archnemesis, and his band and escalating a decades-old feud. It also raises the stakes of Mariana’s forbidden attraction for a certain dark-eyed mariachi who sets her heart racing.

To Angelo Montero’s familia, Mariana is also strictly off-limits. But that doesn’t stop him from pursuing her. As their secret affair intensifies and the competition grows fierce, they’re swept up in a brewing storm of betrayals, rivalries, and broken ties. Against the odds, they vow to bring peace. But sacrifices must be made and consequences weighed for two star-crossed lovers to make beautiful music together.

On-Sale June 7th, 2022

WOMAN OF LIGHT by Kali Fajardo-Anstine | Adult Fiction

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and love—filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz.

BROWN NEON by Raquel Gutiérrez | Adult Nonfiction

A meditation on southwestern terrains, intergenerational queer dynamics, and surveilled brown artists that crosses physical and conceptual borders.

Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut essay collection Brown Neon gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships. For Gutierrez, terrain is essential to understanding that no story, no matter how personal, is separate from the space where it unfolds. Whether contemplating the value of adobe as both vernacular architecture and commodified art object, highlighting the feminist wounding and transphobic apparitions haunting the multi-generational lesbian social fabric, or recalling a failed romance, Gutiérrez traverses complex questions of gender, class, identity, and citizenship with curiosity and nuance.

MORE THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW by Katie Gutierrez | Adult Thriller

In 1985, Lore Rivera marries Andres Russo in Mexico City, even though she is already married to Fabian Rivera in Laredo, Texas, and they share twin sons. Through her career as an international banker, Lore splits her time between two countries and two families—until the truth is revealed and one husband is arrested for murdering the other.

In 2017, while trawling the internet for the latest, most sensational news reports, struggling true-crime writer Cassie Bowman encounters an article detailing that tragic final act. Cassie is immediately enticed by what is not explored: Why would a woman—a mother—risk everything for a secret double marriage? Cassie sees an opportunity—she’ll track Lore down and capture the full picture, the choices, the deceptions that led to disaster. But the more time she spends with Lore, the more Cassie questions the facts surrounding the murder itself. Soon, her determination to uncover the truth could threaten to derail Lore’s now quiet life—and expose the many secrets both women are hiding.

Told through alternating timelines, More Than You’ll Ever Know is both a gripping mystery and a wrenching family drama. Presenting a window into the hearts of two very different women, it explores the many conflicting demands of marriage and motherhood, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone—especially those we love.

On-Sale June 14th, 2022

MI CIUDAD SINGS by Cynthia Harmony, illustrated by Teresa Martínez | Picture Book

After experiencing a devastating earthquake, the spirit of a charming and vibrant Mexican neighborhood might be shaken, but it cannot be broken.

As a little girl and her dog embark on their daily walk through the city, they skip and spin to the familiar sounds of revving cars, clanking bikes, friendly barks, and whistling camote carts. But what they aren’t expecting to hear is the terrifying sound of a rumbling earthquake…and then…silence.

With captivating text and lively, beautiful illustrations, this heartwarming story leaves readers with the message that they can choose to be strong and brave even when they are scared, and can still find joy and hope in the midst of sadness.

THE GIRLS IN QUEENS by Christine Kandic Torres | Adult Fiction

Best friends growing up along Clement Moore Avenue in Queens, Brisma and Kelly will do anything for each other. They keep each other’s secrets, from their mother’s hidden heartbreaks to warding off the unwanted advances of creepy neighbors. Their exclusive world shifts when they begin high school and Brisma falls deeply in love with Brian, the local baseball legend. Always the wallflower to the vibrant and alluring Kelly, Brisma is secretly thrilled to be chosen by the popular athlete, to finally have someone that belongs to her alone. But as she, Brian, and Kelly fall into the roles that have been set before them, they ignite a bonfire of unrealized hopes and dreams, smoldering embers that finally find some oxygen to burn.   

Years later, Brisma and Kelly haven’t spoken to Brian, ever since a backyard party that went wrong, but their beloved Los Mets are on a historic run for the playoffs and the three friends—no longer children—are reunited. Brisma finds herself once again drawn to her first love. But when Brian is accused of sexual assault, the two friends must make a choice. At first, both rush to support and defend him. But while Kelly remains Brian’s staunch defender, Brisma begins to have doubts as old memories of their relationship surface. As Brisma and Kelly face off in a battle for what they each believe they are owed, these two lifelong friends must decide if their shared past is enough to sustain their future.  

Told in alternating timelines, The Girls in Queens is a novel for and of our time—a skillful exploration of the furious loyalty of young women, the complications of sexual abuse allegations within communities of color, and the danger of forgetting that sometimes monsters hide in plain sight.

On-Sale June 28th, 2022

VALENTINA SALAZAR IS NOT A MONSTER HUNTER by Zoraida Córdova | Middle Grade

It takes a special person to end up in detention their first week at a new school.

It takes a REALLY special person to accidentally burn down the cafeteria while chasing a fire-breathing chipmunk.

But nothing about Valentina Salazar has ever been “normal.” The Salazars are Guardians, tasked with rescuing the magical creatures who sometimes wander into our world, from grumpy unicorns to flying alpacas to the occasional fire-breathing chipmunk.

When Val’s father is killed during a rescue mission gone wrong, her mother decides it’s time for the family to retire from their life on the road. She buys a house in the suburbs and enrolls Val and her siblings in real school for the first time.

But Val is a Guardian at heart and she can’t give up her calling. So when a mythical egg surfaces on a YouTube video, Val convinces her reluctant siblings to help her find the egg before it hatches and wreaks havoc. But she has some competition: the dreaded monster hunters who’ll stop at nothing to destroy the creature and the Salazar family.

TREASURE TRACKS by S.A. Rodriguez | Young Adult

A debut middle-grade adventure about a young teen who goes on a treasure hunt for undersea riches to help his ailing abuelo.

Twelve-year-old Fernando “Fin” joins his grandfather on a secret quest to find a long-lost treasure swept to sea. But when their first mission takes a near-deadly turn, leaving his abuelo weak and unable to speak, Fin’s left to navigate the hunt alone. Well, not exactly alone—his boring, totally unadventurous dad agrees to help out. With danger lurking at every turn, Fin dives into the mission in order to save Abuelo's life. But between Dad’s constant worrying, unwanted diving babysitters, and harrowing encounters in the deep sea, the boy finds himself in a race against time to locate the treasure. If he can’t succeed? He fears he might lose Abuelo for good.

Treasure Tracks is a fast-paced story filled with heart and humor about the bonds of family, the meaning of a legacy, and most of all, the discovery of true treasure.

HORSE COUNTRY #2: FRIENDS LIKE THESE by Yamile Saied Méndez | Juvenile Fiction

Carolina's hope of opening up Paradise Ranch to everyone is coming true: the Unbridled Dreams program is ready to welcome its first sponsored student!

Gisella Bassi seems like the perfect fit -- on paper, that is. When she arrives at Paradise Ranch, she's not as excited as everyone expects. She might even be... scared of the horses? But if their first student isn't a success, there's no way the program will continue. Can Caro and her new friend, Chelsie, agree on how to rope Gisella in?

May 2022 Latinx Releases

On-Sale May 3rd, 2022

INHERITANCE by Elizabeth Acevedo, illustrated by Andrea Pippins | Visual Poem

In her most famous spoken-word poem, author of the Pura Belpré-winning novel-in-verse The Poet X Elizabeth Acevedo embraces all the complexities of Black hair and Afro-Latinidad—the history, pain, pride, and powerful love of that inheritance.

Paired with full-color illustrations by artist Andrea Pippins in a format that will appeal to fans of Mahogany L. Browne’s Black Girl Magic or Jason Reynolds’s For Everyone, this poem can now be read in a vibrant package, making it the ideal gift, treasure, or inspiration for readers of any age.

BAD GIRLS by Camila Sosa Villada |Translation

In Sarmiento Park, the green heart of Córdoba, a group of trans sex workers make their nightly rounds. When a cry comes from the dark, their leader, the 178-year-old Auntie Encarna, wades into the brambles to investigate and discovers a baby half dead from the cold. She quickly rallies the pack to save him, and they adopt the child into their fascinating surrogate family as they have so many other outcasts, including Camila.

Sheltered in Auntie Encarna’s fabled pink house, they find a partial escape from the everyday threats of disease and violence, at the hands of clients, cops, and boyfriends. Telling their stories—of a mute young woman who transforms into a bird, of a Headless Man who fled his country’s wars—as well as her own journey from a toxic home in a small, poor town, Camila traces the life of this vibrant community throughout the 90s.

Imbuing reality with the magic of a dark fairy tale, Bad Girls offers an intimate, nuanced portrait of trans coming-of-age that captures a universal sense of the strangeness of our bodies. It grips and entertains us while also challenging ideas about love, sexuality, gender, and identity.

TRUST by Hernan Diaz | Historical Fiction

A timely story of two teenagers who discover the power of friendship, feminism, and standing up for what you believe in, no matter where you come from. A collaboration between two gifted authors writing from alternating perspectives, this compelling novel shines with authenticity, courage, and humor. 

Malena Rosario is starting to believe that catastrophes come in threes. First, Hurricane María destroyed her home, taking her unbreakable spirit with it. Second, she and her mother are now stuck in Florida, which is nothing like her beloved Puerto Rico. And third, when she goes to school bra-less after a bad sunburn and is humiliated by the school administration into covering up, she feels like she has no choice but to comply.

Ruby McAllister has a reputation as her school's outspoken feminist rebel. But back in Seattle, she lived under her sister’s shadow. Now her sister is teaching in underprivileged communities, and she’s in a Florida high school, unsure of what to do with her future, or if she’s even capable making a difference in the world. So when Ruby notices the new girl is being forced to cover up her chest, she is not willing to keep quiet about it.

Neither Malena nor Ruby expected to be the leaders of the school's dress code rebellion. But the girls will have to face their own insecurities, biases, and privileges, and the ups and downs in their newfound friendship, if they want to stand up for their ideals and––ultimately––for themselves.

THE HACIENDA by Isabel Cañas | Historical Fiction

During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz's father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife's sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.

But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz's sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo's sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz's fears--but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark the doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her.

Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.

Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz's doom.

DIARIES OF A TERRORIST by Christopher Soto | Poetry

This debut poetry collection demands the abolition of policing and human caging. In Diaries of a Terrorist, Christopher Soto uses the “we” pronoun to emphasize that police violence happens not only to individuals, but to whole communities. His poetics open the imagination towards possibilities of existence beyond the status quo. Soto asks, “Who do we call terrorist, & why”? These political surrealist poems shift between gut-wrenching vulnerability, laugh-aloud humor, and unapologetic queer punk raunchiness. Diaries of a Terrorist is groundbreaking in its ability to speak—from a local to a global scale—about one of the most important issues of our time.

VALLEYESQUE: STORIES by Fernando A. Flores | Adult Fiction

Psychedelic, dazzling stories set in the cracks of the Texas-Mexico borderland, from an iconoclastic storyteller and the author of Tears of the Trufflepig.

No one captures the border—its history and imagination, its danger, contradiction, and redemption—like Fernando A. Flores, whose stories reimagine and reinterpret the region’s existence with peerless style. In his immersive, uncanny borderland, things are never what they seem: a world where the sun is both rising and setting, and where conniving possums efficiently take over an entire town and rewrite its history.

The stories in Valleyesque dance between the fantastical and the hyperreal with dexterous, often hilarious flair. A dying Frédéric Chopin stumbles through Ciudad Juárez in the aftermath of his mother’s death, attempting to recover his beloved piano that was seized at the border, while a muralist is taken on a psychedelic journey by an airbrushed Emiliano Zapata T-shirt. A woman is engulfed by a used-clothing warehouse with a life of its own, and a grieving mother breathlessly chronicles the demise of a town decimated by violence. In two separate stories, queso dip and musical rhythms are bottled up and sold for mass consumption. And in the final tale, Flores pieces together the adventures of a young Lee Harvey Oswald as he starts a music career in Texas.

Swinging between satire and surrealism, grief and joy, Valleyesque is a boundary- and border-pushing collection from a one-of-a-kind stylist and voice. With the visceral imagination that made his debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, a cult classic, Flores brings his vision of the border to life—and beyond.

BURN DOWN, RISE UP by Vincent Tirado | Young Adult Fiction

Mysterious disappearances. An urban legend rumored to be responsible. And one group of friends determined to save their city at any cost. Stranger Things meets Jordan Peele in this utterly original debut from an incredible new voice.

For over a year, the Bronx has been plagued by sudden disappearances that no one can explain. Sixteen-year-old Raquel does her best to ignore it. After all, the police only look for the white kids. But when her crush Charlize's cousin goes missing, Raquel starts to pay attention―especially when her own mom comes down with a mysterious illness that seems linked to the disappearances.

Raquel and Charlize team up to investigate, but they soon discover that everything is tied to a terrifying urban legend called the Echo Game. The game is rumored to trap people in a sinister world underneath the city, and the rules are based on a particularly dark chapter in New York's past. And if the friends want to save their home and everyone they love, they will have to play the game and destroy the evil at its heart―or die trying.

On-Sale May 10th, 2022

GROWING AN ARTIST: THE STORY OF A LANDSCAPER AND HIS SON by John Parra | Picture Book

From award-winning artist John Parra comes a touching and deceptively simple picture book based on his childhood experience about the bond between a father and son, hard work, and the links between nature, art, and creativity.

Today is a big day—the first time Juanito gets to help his papi on the job as a landscape architect! Throughout the day, Juanito sketches anything that catches his eye: a nest full of baby birds, a nursery with row upon row of plants and flowers, and more. Father and son travel from house to house, pruning, weeding, mowing, and turning overgrown and chaotic yards into beautiful spaces.

A few of the clients don’t appreciate Papi’s hard work, like Juanito’s classmate who pretends not to see him. But Papi always feels pride in owning his own business and in a job well done. And at the end of the day, Juanito may get the chance to turn his artistic eye toward landscape design—just like his papi.

BREATHE AND COUNT BACK FROM TEN by Natalia Sylvester | Young Adult Fiction

In this gorgeously written and authentic novel, Verónica, a Peruvian-American teen with hip dysplasia, auditions to become a mermaid at a Central Florida theme park in the summer before her senior year, all while figuring out her first real boyfriend and how to feel safe in her own body.

Verónica has had many surgeries to manage her disability. The best form of rehabilitation is swimming, so she spends hours in the pool, but not just to strengthen her body.

Her Florida town is home to Mermaid Cove, a kitschy underwater attraction where professional mermaids perform in giant tanks . . . and Verónica wants to audition. But her conservative Peruvian parents would never go for it. And they definitely would never let her be with Alex, her cute new neighbor.

She decides it’s time to seize control of her life, but her plans come crashing down when she learns her parents have been hiding the truth from her—the truth about her own body.

CAFE CON LYCHEE by Emery Lee | Young Adult Fiction

Theo Mori and Gabriel Moreno have always been at odds. Their parents own rival businesses—an Asian American café and a Puerto Rican bakery—and Gabi’s lack of coordination has cost their soccer team too many games to count.

Stuck in the closet and scared to pursue his own dreams, Gabi sees his parents’ shop as his future. Stuck under the weight of his parents’ expectations, Theo’s best shot at leaving Vermont means first ensuring his parents’ livelihood is secure. 

So when a new fusion café threatens both shops, Theo and Gabi realize an unfortunate truth—they can only achieve their goals by working together to cook up an underground bakery operation and win back their customers. But can they put aside their differences long enough to save their parents’ shops or will the new feelings between them boil over?

Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera | Translation

An intimate exploration of motherhood, Linea Nigra approaches the worries and joys of childbearing from a diverse range of inspirations and traditions, from Louise Bourgeois to Ursula K. Le Guin to the indigenous Nahua model Luz Jiménez. Part memoir and part manifesto, Barrera’s singular insights, delivered in candid prose, clarify motherhood while also cherishing the mysteries of the body.

Writing through her first pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding, and young motherhood, Barrera embraces the subject fully, making lucid connections between maternity, earthquakes, lunar eclipses, and creative labor. Inspired by the author’s own mother’s painting practice, Linea Nigra concludes with an impassioned call: childbearing is art, and art is childbearing.

On-Sale May 17th, 2022

THE LESBIANA’S GUIDE TO CATHOLIC SCHOOL by Sonora Reyes | Young Adult Fiction

Sixteen-year-old Yamilet Flores prefers to be known for her killer eyeliner, not for being one of the only Mexican kids at her new, mostly white, very rich Catholic school. But at least here no one knows she's gay, and Yami intends to keep it that way.

After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend before transferring to Slayton Catholic, Yami has new priorities: keep her brother out of trouble, make her mom proud, and, most importantly, don't fall in love. Granted, she's never been great at any of those things, but that's a problem for Future Yami.

The thing is, it's hard to fake being straight when Bo, the only openly queer girl at school, is so annoyingly perfect. And smart. And talented. And cute. So cute. Either way, Yami isn't going to make the same mistake again. If word got back to her mom, she could face a lot worse than rejection. So she'll have to start asking, WWSGD: What would a straight girl do?

Told in a captivating voice that is by turns hilarious, vulnerable, and searingly honest, The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School explores the joys and heartaches of living your full truth out loud.

NERUDA ON THE PARK by Cleyvis Natera | Adult Fiction

The Guerreros have lived in Nothar Park, a predominantly Dominican part of New York City, for twenty years. When demolition begins on a neighboring tenement, Eusebia, an elder of the community, takes matters into her own hands by devising an increasingly dangerous series of schemes to stop construction of the luxury condos. Meanwhile, Eusebia’s daughter, Luz, a rising associate at a top Manhattan law firm who strives to live the bougie lifestyle her parents worked hard to give her, becomes distracted by a sweltering romance with the handsome white developer at the company her mother so vehemently opposes.
 
As Luz’s father, Vladimir, secretly designs their retirement home in the Dominican Republic, mother and daughter collide, ramping up tensions in Nothar Park, racing toward a near-fatal climax.
 
A beautifully layered portrait of family, friendship, and ambition, Neruda on the Park weaves a rich and vivid tapestry of community as well as the sacrifices we make to protect what we love most, announcing Cleyvis Natera as an electrifying new voice.

JOIN THE CLUB MAGGIE DIAZ by Nina Moreno | Middle Grade Fiction

Everyone in Maggie Diaz's life seems to be finding their true passion. The one thing that defines them as a person. Her best friends Zoey and Julian are too busy to hang out after school thanks to band and comics club. Mom is finishing her last semester in college. And Maggie's perfect older sister Caro is perfectly-perfect at sports and tutoring.

So Maggie cooks up a plan to join every club she can! But trying to fit in with type-A future leaders, gardening whizzes, and the fearless kids in woodshop is intimidating, exhausting, and seriously confusing. And juggling homework, friends, and all of her after-school activities is way harder than it looks.

Seventh grade is all about figuring out who you are -- good thing Maggie Diaz has the perfect plan!

On-Sale May 24th, 2022

THIS IS WHY THEY HATE US by Aaron Acedes | Young Adult Fiction

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor—an attractive married woman and mother—while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme.

Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society—with its racist, classist, hyperviolent tendencies—and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

Just Your Local Bisexual Disaster by Andrea Mosqueda | Young Adult Fiction

Growing up in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, Maggie Gonzalez has always been a little messy, but she’s okay with that. After all, she has a great family, a goofy group of friends, a rocky romantic history, and dreams of being a music photographer. Tasked with picking an escort for her little sister’s quinceañera, Maggie has to face the truth: that her feelings about her friends—and her future—aren’t as simple as she’d once believed.

As Maggie’s search for the perfect escort continues, she’s forced to confront new (and old) feelings for three of her friends: Amanda, her best friend and first-ever crush; Matthew, her ex-boyfriend twice-over who refuses to stop flirting with her, and Dani, the new girl who has romantic baggage of her own. On top of this romantic disaster, she can’t stop thinking about the uncertainty of her own plans for the future and what that means for the people she loves.

As the weeks wind down and the boundaries between friendship and love become hazy, Maggie finds herself more and more confused with each photo. When her tried-and-true medium causes more chaos than calm, Maggie needs to figure out how to avoid certain disaster—or be brave enough to dive right into it, in Just Your Local Bisexual Disaster.

On-Sale May 31st, 2022

ISLANDS APART: BECOMING DOMINICAN AMERICAN by Jasminne Mendez | Young Adult Nonfiction

Jasminne Mendez didn’t speak English when she started kindergarten, and her young, white teacher thought the girl was deaf because in Louisiana, you were either black or white. She had no idea that a black girl could be a Spanish speaker.

In this memoir for teens about growing up Afro Latina in the Deep South, Jasminne writes about feeling torn between her Dominican, Spanish-speaking culture at home and the American, English-speaking one around her. She desperately wanted to fit in, to be seen as American, and she realized early on that language mattered. Learning to read and write English well was the road to acceptance.

Mendez shares typical childhood experiences such as having an imaginary friend, boys and puberty, but she also exposes the anti-black racism within her own family and the conflict created by her family’s conservative traditions. She was not allowed to do things other girls could, like date boys, shave her legs or wear heels. “I wanted us to find some common ground,” she writes about her parents, “but it seemed like we were from two different worlds, and our islands kept drifting farther and farther apart.”

Despite her father’s old-style approach to raising girls, he valued education and insisted his daughters do well in school and maintain their native language. He took his children to hear Maya Angelou speak, and hearing the poet read was a defining moment for the black Dominican girl who struggled to fit in. “I decided that if Maya Angelou could be the author of her own story and rewrite her destiny to become a phenomenal woman, then somehow, so could I.” Teens—and adults too—will appreciate reading about Mendez’s experiences coming of age in the United States as both black and Latina.

April 2022 Latinx Releases

On-Sale April 5th, 2022

THE WEDDING CRASHER by Mia Sosa | Adult Romance | 4/5/2022

Just weeks away from ditching DC for greener pastures, Solange Perreira is roped into helping her wedding planner cousin on a random couple’s big day. It’s an easy gig... until she stumbles upon a situation that convinces her the pair isn’t meant to be. What’s a true-blue romantic to do? Crash the wedding, of course. And ensure the unsuspecting groom doesn’t make the biggest mistake of his life.

Dean Chapman had his future all mapped out. He was about to check off “start a family” and on track to “make partner” when his modern day marriage of convenience went up in smoke. Then he learns he might not land an assignment that could be his ticket to a promotion unless he has a significant other and, in a moment of panic, Dean claims to be in love with the woman who crashed his wedding. Oops.

Now Dean has a whole new item on his to-do list: beg Solange to be his pretend girlfriend. Solange feels a tiny bit bad about ruining Dean’s wedding, so she agrees to play along. Yet as they fake-date their way around town, what started as a performance for Dean’s colleagues turns into a connection that neither he nor Solange can deny. Their entire romance is a sham... there’s no way these polar opposites could fall in love for real, right?

HEARTBREAK SYMPHONY by Laekan Zea Kemp | Young Adult| 4/5/2022

Aarón Medrano has been haunted by the onstage persona of his favorite musician ever since his mother passed away. He seems to know all of Aarón’s deepest fears, like that his brain doesn’t work the way it should and that’s why his brother and father seems to be pushing him away. He thinks his ticket out is a scholarship to the prestigious Acadia School of Music. That is, if he can avoid blowing his audition.

Mia Villanueva has a haunting of her own and it’s the only family heirloom her parents left her: doubt. It’s the reason she can’t overcome her stage fright or believe that her music is worth making. Even though her trumpet teacher tells her she has a gift, she’s not sure if she’ll ever figure out how to use it or if she’s even deserving of it in the first place.

When Aarón and Mia cross paths, Aarón sees a chance to get close to the girl he’s had a crush on for years and to finally feel connected to someone since losing his mother. Mia sees a chance to hold herself accountable by making them both face their fears, and hopefully make their dreams come true. But soon they’ll realize there’s something much scarier than getting up on stage—falling in love with a broken heart.

DOES MY BODY OFFEND YOU? by Mayra Cuevas & Maria Marquardt | Young Adult| 4/5/2022

A timely story of two teenagers who discover the power of friendship, feminism, and standing up for what you believe in, no matter where you come from. A collaboration between two gifted authors writing from alternating perspectives, this compelling novel shines with authenticity, courage, and humor. 

Malena Rosario is starting to believe that catastrophes come in threes. First, Hurricane María destroyed her home, taking her unbreakable spirit with it. Second, she and her mother are now stuck in Florida, which is nothing like her beloved Puerto Rico. And third, when she goes to school bra-less after a bad sunburn and is humiliated by the school administration into covering up, she feels like she has no choice but to comply.

Ruby McAllister has a reputation as her school's outspoken feminist rebel. But back in Seattle, she lived under her sister’s shadow. Now her sister is teaching in underprivileged communities, and she’s in a Florida high school, unsure of what to do with her future, or if she’s even capable making a difference in the world. So when Ruby notices the new girl is being forced to cover up her chest, she is not willing to keep quiet about it.

Neither Malena nor Ruby expected to be the leaders of the school's dress code rebellion. But the girls will have to face their own insecurities, biases, and privileges, and the ups and downs in their newfound friendship, if they want to stand up for their ideals and––ultimately––for themselves.

SCOUT’S HONOR by Lily Anderson | Young Adult| 4/5/2022

Sixteen-year-old Prudence Perry is a legacy Ladybird Scout, born to a family of hunters sworn to protect humans from mulligrubs—interdimensional parasites who feast on human emotions like sadness and anger. Masquerading as a prim and proper ladies' social organization, the Ladybirds brew poisons masked as teas and use knitting needles as daggers, at least until they graduate to axes and swords.

Three years ago, Prue’s best friend was killed during a hunt, so she kissed the Scouts goodbye, preferring the company of her punkish friends lovingly dubbed the Criminal Element much to her mother and Tía Lo’s disappointment. However, unable to move on from her guilt and trauma, Prue devises a risky plan to infiltrate the Ladybirds in order to swipe the Tea of Forgetting, a restricted tincture laced with a powerful amnesia spell.

But old monster-slaying habits die hard and Prue finds herself falling back into the fold, growing close with the junior scouts that she trains to fight the creatures she can’t face. When her town is hit with a mysterious wave of demons, Prue knows it’s time to confront the most powerful monster of all: her past.

On-Sale April 12th, 2022

HIGH SPIRITS by Camille Gomera-Tavarez | Adult Fiction| 3/8/2022

High Spirits is a collection of eleven interconnected short stories from the Dominican diaspora, from debut author Camille Gomera-Tavarez. It is a book centered on one extended family – the Beléns – across multiple generations.It is set in the fictional small town of Hidalpa – and Santo Domingo and Paterson and San Juan and Washington Heights too. It is told in a style both utterly real and distinctly magical – and its stories explore machismo, mental health, family, and identity. But most of all, High Spirits represents the first book from Camille Gomera-Tavarez, who takes her place as one of the most extraordinary new voices to emerge in years.

On-Sale April 19th, 2022

¡ÁNDALE, PRIETA!: A LOVE LETTER TO MY FAMILY by Yasmín Ramírez | Memoir| 4/19/2022

This beautifully open coming-of-age memoir by a Mexican American debut writer doubles as a love letter to the tough grandmother who raised her.

When I tell people who don't speak Spanish what prieta means--dark or the dark one--their eyes pop open and a small gasp escapes ... How do I tell them that now, even after the cruelty of children, Prieta means love? That each time Prieta fell from my grandmother's lips, I learned to love my dark skin.

No one calls me that anymore. I miss how her words sounded out loud.

My Ita called me Prieta. When she died, she took the name with her.

Anchored by the tough grandmother who taught her how to stand firm and throw a punch, debut author Yasmín Ramírez writes about the punches life has thrown at her non-traditional family of tough Mexican American women.

Having spent years of her twenties feeling lost--working an intensely taxing retail job and turning to bars for comfort--the blow of her grandmother's death pushes Yasmín to unravel. So she comes home to El Paso, Texas, where people know how to spell her accented name and her mother helps her figure out what to do with her life. Once she finally starts pursuing her passion for writing, Yasmín processes her grief by telling the story of her Ita, a resilient matriarch who was far from the stereotypical domestic abuelita. Yasmín remembers watching boxing matches at a dive bar with her grandmother, Ita wistfully singing old Mexican classics, her mastectomy scar, and of course, her lesson on how to properly ball your fist for a good punch. Interviewing her mom and older sister, Yasmín learns even more about why her Ita was so tough--the abusive men, the toil of almostliterally back-breaking jobs, and the guilt of abortions that went against her culture.

Expertly blending the lyrical prose of a gifted author with the down-to-earthtone of a close friend, this debut memoir marks Ramírez as a talented new author to watch. Her honesty in self-reflection, especially about periods where she felt directionless, and her vivid depictions of a mother and grandmother who persevered through hard knocks, offers vulnerable solidarity to readers who've had hard knocks of their own.

On-Sale April 26th, 2022

PARADAIS by Fernanda Melchor | Adult Fiction | 4/26/2022

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor—an attractive married woman and mother—while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme.

Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society—with its racist, classist, hyperviolent tendencies—and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

MARIA, MARIA by Marytza K. Rubio | Adult Fiction | 4/26/2022

“The first witch of the waters was born in Destruction. The moon named her Maria.”

Set against the tropics and megacities of the Americas, Maria, Maria takes inspiration from wild creatures, tarot, and the porous borders between life and death. Motivated by love and its inverse, grief, the characters who inhabit these stories negotiate boldly with nature to cast their desired ends. As the enigmatic community college professor in “Brujería for Beginners” reminds us: “There’s always a price for conjuring in darkness. You won’t always know what it is until payment is due.” This commitment drives the disturbingly faithful widow in “Tijuca,” who promises to bury her husband’s head in the rich dirt of the jungle, and the sisters in “Moksha,” who are tempted by a sleek obsidian dagger once held by a vampiric idol.

But magic isn’t limited to the women who wield it. As Rubio so brilliantly elucidates, animals are powerful magicians too. Subversive pigeons and hungry jaguars are called upon in “Tunnels,” and a lonely little girl runs free with a resurrected saber-toothed tiger in “Burial.” A colorful catalog of gallery exhibits from animals in therapy is featured in “Art Show,” including the Almost Philandering Fox, who longs after the red pelt of another, and the recently rehabilitated Paranoid Peacocks.

Brimming with sharp wit and ferocious female intuition, these stories bubble over into the titular novella, “Maria, Maria”―a tropigoth family drama set in a reimagined California rainforest that explores the legacies of three Marias, and possibly all Marias. Writing in prose so lush it threatens to creep off the page, Rubio emerges as an ineffable new voice in contemporary short fiction.

March 2022 Latinx Releases

On-Sale March 1st, 2022

THE LOST DREAMER by Liz Huerta | Young Adult | 3/1/2022

A stunning YA fantasy inspired by ancient Mesoamerica, this gripping debut introduces us to a lineage of seers defiantly resisting the shifting patriarchal state that would see them destroyed—perfect for fans of Tomi Adeyemi and Sabaa Tahir.

Indir is a Dreamer, descended from a long line of seers; able to see beyond reality, she carries the rare gift of Dreaming truth. But when the beloved king dies, his son has no respect for this time-honored tradition. King Alcan wants an opportunity to bring the Dreamers to a permanent end—an opportunity Indir will give him if he discovers the two secrets she is struggling to keep. As violent change shakes Indir’s world to its core, she is forced to make an impossible choice: fight for her home or fight to survive.

Saya is a seer, but not a Dreamer—she has never been formally trained. Her mother exploits her daughter’s gift, passing it off as her own as they travel from village to village, never staying in one place too long. Almost as if they’re running from something. Almost as if they’re being hunted. When Saya loses the necklace she’s worn since birth, she discovers that seeing isn’t her only gift—and begins to suspect that everything she knows about her life has been a carefully-constructed lie. As she comes to distrust the only family she’s ever known, Saya will do what she’s never done before, go where she’s never been, and risk it all in the search of answers.

With a detailed, supernaturally-charged setting and topical themes of patriarchal power and female strength, Lizz Huerta's The Lost Dreamer brings an ancient world to life, mirroring the challenges of our modern one.

PILAR RAMIREZ AND THE ESCAPE FROM ZAFA by Julian Randall | Middle Grade| 3/1/2022

The Land of Stories meets Dominican myths and legends come to life in Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa, a blockbuster contemporary middle-grade fantasy duology starter from Julian Randall. Fans of Tristan Strong and The Storm Runner, here is your next obsession.

Twelve-year-old Pilar Violeta “Purp” Ramirez’s world is changing, and she doesn’t care for it one bit. Her Chicago neighborhood is gentrifying and her chores have doubled since her sister, Lorena, left for college. The only constant is Abuela and Mami’s code of silence around her cousin Natasha—who vanished in the Dominican Republic fifty years ago during the Trujillo dictatorship. 

When Pilar hears that Lorena’s professor studies such disappearances, she hops on the next train to dig deeper into her family's mystery. After snooping around the professor's empty office, she discovers a folder with her cousin’s name on it . . . and gets sucked into the blank page within. 

She lands on Zafa, an island swarming with coconut-shaped demons, butterfly shapeshifters, and a sinister magical prison where her cousin is being held captive. Pilar will have to go toe-to-toe with the fearsome Dominican boogeyman, El Cuco, if she has any hope of freeing Natasha and getting back home.

THE NIGHT by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón | Translation | 3/1/2022

Translated by Daniel Hahn and Noel Hernández

For readers who love Bolaño, a new voice of Latin American fiction, winner of the Mario Vargas Llosa Prize.

Recurring blackouts envelop Caracas in an inescapable darkness that makes nightmares come true. Real and fictional characters, most of them are writers, exchange the role of narrator in this polyphonic novel. They recount contradictory versions of the plot, a series of femicides that began with the energy crisis. The central narrator is a psychiatrist who manipulates the accounts of his friend, an author writing a book titled The Night; and his patient, an advertising executive obsessed with understanding the world through word puzzles. The author shifts between crime fiction and metafiction, cautioning readers that the events retold are both true and manipulated. This is a political novel about the financial crisis and socio-political division in Venezuela from 2008 to 2010. The title of the book, originally also in English, is a gesture towards Chavism's failure to resist US influence. Yet, the form is unapologetically literary, a reflection on the depiction and distortion of reality through storytelling. Blanco Calderón said about the potential of language, "I am convinced that all the evil in the world begins in them: in words."

On-Sale March 8th, 2022

LAKELORE by Anna-Marie McLemore | Young Adult| 3/8/2022

In this young adult novel by award-winning author Anna-Marie McLemore, two non-binary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake - but can they keep their worlds above water intact?

Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who’ve been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore’s only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.

Then the lines between air and water begin to blur. The world under the lake drifts above the surface. If Bastián and Lore don’t want it bringing their secrets to the surface with it, they have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There’s just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven’t spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they’re trying to hide.

On-Sale March 15th, 2022

WHEN WE WERE BIRDS by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo | Fiction | 3/15/2022

A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.

In the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide’s mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother’s neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out.

Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life his mother built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past, and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.

SECRET IDENTITY by Alex Segura | Mystery Fiction | 3/15/2022

From Anthony Award-winning writer Alex Segura comes Secret Identity, a rollicking literary mystery set in the world of comic books.

It’s 1975 and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book.

That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to piece together what happened to him, to hang on to her piece of the Lynx, which turns out to be a runaway hit. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor from her home in Miami, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.

Alex Segura uses his expertise as a comics creator as well as his unabashed love of noir fiction to create a truly one-of-a-kind novel--hard-edged and bright-eyed, gritty and dangerous, and utterly absorbing.

On-Sale March 22nd, 2022

THE TOWN OF BABYLON by Alejandro Varela | Adult Fiction | 3/22/2022

A debut novel about domestic malaise and suburban decline, following Andrés, a gay Latinx professor, returning to his hometown for a twenty-year high school reunion.

When his father falls ill, Andrés, a professor of public health, returns to his suburban hometown to tend to his father's recovery. Reevaluating his rocky marriage in the wake of his husband’s infidelity and with little else to do, he decides to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, where he runs into the long-lost characters of his youth.

Jeremy, his first love, is now married with two children after having been incarcerated and recovering from addiction. Paul, who Andrés has long suspected of having killed a man in a homophobic attack, is now an Evangelical minister and father of five. And Simone, Andrés's best friend, is in a psychiatric institution following a diagnosis of schizophrenia. During this short stay, Andrés confronts these relationships, the death of his brother, and the many sacrifices his parents made to offer him a better life.

A novel about the essential nature of community in maintaining one’s own health, The Town of Babylon is an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity, a call to reevaluate the ties of societal bonds and the systems in which they are forged.

2022 Latinx Romance & Women’s Fiction to Add to Your TBR

It’s February, which means amor is in the air. For me, love and romance is an intricate part of Latinidad. We are romantic people. It’s in our music, telenovelas, epic novels. Here are some adult romance & women’s fiction novels to look forward to this year.  Happy reading and make sure to support Latinx Romance!

THE WEDDING CRASHER by Mia Sosa (Avon - April 5, 2022)

Mia Sosa’s follow up to The Worst Best Man has been highly anticipated by fans (it me). The Wedding Crasher follows two strangers who get trapped in a lie and have to fake date their way out of it. Solange Pereira is a romantic at heart, and gets roped into helping her wedding planner cousin on a stranger’s big day. Dean Chapman’s big day, to be exact. Dean’s life is about to be perfect–make partner, start a family, and all that. But when the wedding goes up in smoke, thanks to Solange, the pair end up entangled in a fake-dating lie. But what started off as self-preservation is becoming so much more. Mia Sosa writes with the perfect mix of humor, and won’t disappoint the rom-com lovers.

A PROPOSAL THEY CAN'T REFUSE by Natalie Caña (Mira - May 24 , 2022)

This is a debut I’ve been looking forward to since it was announced. This rom-com follows a Puerto Rican chef and an Irish American whiskey distiller forced into a fake engagement by their scheming octogenarian grandfathers. In order to uphold their family businesses, and legacies, Kamilah and Liam agree to an engagement. One that will end once they outwit their families. But the more time they spend together, and work toward winning big at the Fall Foodie Tour in Chicago, they start to realize maybe they’ve bought into their own bargain.

WEST SIDE LOVE STORY by Priscilla Oliveras (Montlake - June 1, 2022)

USA Today bestselling author Priscilla Oliveras brings us a tale of two families, rival mariachi bands, and swoony romance. Mariana Capuleta and her sisters are determined to win the Battle of the Mariachi Bands. Unfortunately, that means competing against the Monteros, her father’s arch-nemesis. The families, both alike in dignity and all that good stuff, have had an escalating decades-old feud that sees no end. Angelo Montero and Mariana Capuleta know that nothing can happen between them, but love isn’t rational and their attraction is undeniable. As their secret affair intensifies, so does the mariachi competition. Can their romance heal old wounds and make beautiful music together?

RUNNING FROM THE BLAZE by Ofelia Martinez (Reading Cactus Press, January 11, 2022)

If you’re looking for a super steamy romance with unapologetically Mexican-American women at the forefront, then Ofelia Martinez is your girl. Book one in the series follows a bar owner and a rock-star. In Running From the Blaze, the companion novel, we keep getting to know the members of the band, Industrial November. Here we meet Lola, a young woman who cleans mansions for a living. That’s how she meets Karl Sommer, a notorious heavy metal guitarist who is trying to prove he’s more than a party boy. Falling for the lead singer's sister-in-law was not on the plan, but they strike an indecent proposal that shakes up both their lives and views of love. *All the chili pepper emojis*

TWICE A QUINCEAÑERA by Yamile Saied Méndez (Kensington - July 26, 2022)

I’m so excited for Yamile Saied Méndez’s adult debut. If you’ve followed her kidlit career, then you know to expect fierce heroines and big family dynamics. In Twice a Quinceañera, a jilted bride decides to throw herself a quinceañera (times two) for her 30th birthday. When Nadia Palacio’s dream wedding is called off, no thanks to her cheating ex, instead of losing the deposit on her venue she decides to throw the biggest bash imaginable to celebrate herself. After all, her family is already flying over from Argentina. Everything is scheduled to go according to plan until she discovers that the man in charge of the venue is none other than a college fling who might just be her second chance at first love.

OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA by Chanel Cleeton (May 24, 2022)

I got to read an early copy of this book and it was a beautiful journey. Chanel Cleeton has been writing about the women of the Perez family since her smash hit and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year In Havana, which was inspired by her Cuban roots. In Our Last Days in Barcelona, straight-laced Isabel Perez travels to Barcelona to save her rebellious and independent sister Beatriz from political dangers. Alternating between 1964 and 1936, we see the aftermath of the Cuban revolution, and toggle back to the rising fascist threat in Spain. The more Isabel digs, she discovers a shocking family secret that sheds light to her elusive mother. There's mystery, romance, and political intrigue. It is a perfect read.

THE REBEL'S RETURN by Nadine Gonzalez (Harlequin Desire - February 22, 2022)

I know sometimes it’s hard to make the time to read. But these bite sized novels by Nadine Gonzales are like delicious little bon bons. In this installment of the Texas Cattleman’s Club, a hotshot hotelier returns home to discover whether or not love at first sight really is for suckers. This world is luxe, lavish, and sexy. Eve Martin’s one night stand with Rafael Wentworth turns into something more as they’re unable to deny their chemistry. But is Eva an asset to his business or a danger to his heart?

RAMÓN AND JULIETA by Alana Quintana Albertson (Berkley Books - February 1, 2022)

Alana Quintana Albertson is no stranger to romance. She’s penned over thirty spicy novels as Alana Albertson. In Ramón and Julieta she loosely retells Romeo and Juliet with the Day of the Dead and rival food empires as the backdrop. When fate and tacos bring them together, the titular star-crossed pair must make a choice: accept the bitter food rivalry that drives them apart or surrender to a love that consumes them.

A CARIBBEAN HEIRESS IN PARIS by Adriana Herrera (Hqn - May 31, 2022)

This is the historical romance I’ve always wanted to read, and Adriana Herrera constantly delivers what I want. There’s a sexy Scottish Duke, fierce rum heiress, La Belle Époque in Paris, and a marriage of convenience. The novel follows Luz Alana, who hails from the Dominican Republic. She’s on her way to find partnerships to expand Caña Brava, the rum business her family built over three generations. Her father’s untimely death has made this expansion top priority, since she discovers she can’t access her trust fund until she marries. But when she lands in France, she finds that the buyers and shippers dismiss her, and won’t do business with a woman, let alone an Afro-Latina from the Caribbean. Enter James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick, an infuriatingly handsome Scot with secrets of his own, who makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Luz Alana went in search of new beginnings, but she might have found love along the way.

BIG CHICAS DON’T CRY by Annette Chavez Macias (Montlake - August 9, 2022)

You might already know her contemporary romance as Sabrina Sol, but with Big Chicas Don’t Cry Annette Chavez Macias pens a family saga that pulls at the heartstrings. Four cousins, Mari, Erica, Selena, and Gracie, navigate love, loss, and family bonds. As kids they were inseparable. But when Mari’s parents divorced, she got shipped away to another part of the country. Fifteen years later, their lives intersect once again when tragedy strikes and they have to deal with the heartbreaking loss of a loved one. Can they pick up where things left off, or has time pulled them too far to bring back together? I can’t wait to read this and become part of this beautiful family.

AFTER HOURS ON MILAGRO STREET by Angelina M. Lopez (Carina Trade - July 12, 2022)

Professor Jeremiah Post loves the quirky town of Freedom, Kansas that has been his home for five years. But for Alex Torres, returning to the place where her sprawling Mexican-American family has lived for generations isn’t quite the homecoming she imagined. She’s got plans to revamp her grandmother’s bar and actually save the business, but the hot brainiac who rents the room next door is getting in the way. When an old enemy threatens the town, Alex and Jeremiah must combine forces. It will take her might and his mind to save the home they both desperately need.

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Zoraida Córdova is the acclaimed author of more than two dozen novels and short stories, including the Brooklyn Brujas series, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge: A Crash of Fate, and The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina.  In addition to writing novels, she's the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Vampires Never Get Old, as well as the cohost of the writing podcast, Deadline City. She writes romance novels as Zoey Castile. Zoraida was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and calls New York City home. When she’s not working, she’s roaming the world in search of magical stories. For more information, visit her at zoraidacordova.com.

February 2022 Most Anticipated Books

Happy February! With a new month, comes new and exciting releases! We put together a list of our most anticipated books that will be released in February. We hope you enjoy and please let us know if any of these are on your TBR!

Ophelia after All - February 8, 2022 

Ophelia’s whole family knows her as a boy crazy type of girl. However, Ophelia begins to explore her sexualitiy when she develops a crush on Talia Sanchez. With the impending doom of the end of high school, as well as a broken friend group, Ophelia begins to feel a loss of control.

No Filter and Other Lies - February 8, 2022

Kat Sanchez is a seventeen year old liar. Through pictures, she has created twenty one-year-old, Max Monroe, who has it all. Not only is she stunning but she has lots of friends and an adventurous life that her loyal followers love. Little do these followers know that Kat Sanchez is a quiet teenager living in Bakersfield, California living the complete opposite life. Instead of adventure, she has bad house parties, a bad school year, and an uncomfortable situation as she deals with her best friend’s unrequited love. Therefore in order to escape her drabby life, she thrives as Max by giving advice, networking with influences, and even making a real friendship with a follower named Elena. The longer they stay connected through texting, snapchatting, and even phone calls, the harder it is for Kat to keep up her lie. It becomes even harder when one of Max’s posts goes viral and the person she’s been stealing pictures from realizes it. From here, Kat must figure out how to get herself out of this mess without hurting anyone she loves but is it already too late?

Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity - February 8, 2022

 Luz “Lulu” Zavala not only perfect grades and attendance but she also has a set ten-year plan. Although her first step is to crush her interview for an internship at Stanford, her older sister in college, Clara, launches a massive fight with their overprotective Peruvian mother and convinces her that out of state college will destroy their family. Therefore, maybe Lulu’s next step is to fix their issues so her ten-year-plan can come true. 

Unlike her older sister, the middle sister, Milagro, has no attraction towards college and much less a nerdy class field trip. However, when a spot opens up on the trip, Milagro is more concerned about getting back at her ex. On this trip, she realizes maybe there is more than boys. 

From Baltimore to San Francisco, Lulu and Milagro bond as sisters to unpack family expectations, discover Clara’s secrets, and discover the value in sisterhood.

Pauli Murray: The Life of a Pioneering Feminist and Civil Rights Activist - February 8, 2022

Pauli Murray is a queere civil rights and women’s rights activist. During her lifetime, she conceptualized arguments that would win Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1944 and the arguments that won equality for women in the workplace in 1964.

Murray dedicated her life to fight for those that are oppressed by using her powerful prose to influence change. She consistently dismissed the consequences that would come with challenging authority to gain fairness and justice for others. 

With Lots of Love - February 8, 2022

Her whole life, Rocio has grown up in Central America, but her life quickly changes when her and her family move to the United States. With so many differences, Rocio is doing her best to adapt but she can’t help but miss her beloved memories with her Abuela. She misses her cooking, piñata creations, affection. However, on her birthday, abuela is able to bring Rocio a special gift that is filled with lots of love. 

Rima’s Rebellion - February 15, 2022

This is a coming of age story, which we learn about the women’s suffrage movement in the 1920s in Cuba through Rima. While she loves riding her horse with her abuela and Las Mambisas, a fierce group of women veterans, Rima is bullied for being an illegitimate child. Rima dreams of her freedom on her horse rides until she is met with an unexpected friendship and potential romance. 

Reclaim the Stars - February 15, 2022

This is a collection of stories from multiple bestselling acclaimed YA authors that take the Latin American diaspora out of this world. There are stories that cover a wide range of topics from princesses, climate change, to even ghost stories and mermaids. This science fiction and fantasy novel breaks down reality to prove that stories are truly universal.  

The Turning Pointe - February 22, 2022

Sixteen year old Rosa Dominguez is a master in pointe shoes. Rosa would do anything to dance for an hour in the dance studio where Prince, the Purple ONe himself, is in the house. Fortunately, her father, who is also a ballet master, announces upcoming auditions for an opportunity to dance in Prince’s concert. Rosa is determined to nail her audition to land that spot until Nikki, a cross-dressing boy who works in the dance shop, comes into her life. Rosa is quickly stuck at a crossroads due to her family’s expectations. She quickly learns her value outside her pointe shoes and is ready to take a chance to break away from the traditional ballet life to groove to that unmistakable Minneapolis sound.

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Mariana Felix-Kim (she/her) lives in Washington, D.C. with her lovely cat, Leo. When she is not working in the environmental science field, Mariana is constantly reading. Her favorite genres include non-fiction, thrillers, and contemporary romances. Mariana is half Mexican and half Korean. You can find her on Instagram: @mariana.reads.books

February 2022 Latinx Releases

On-Sale February 1st, 2022

RAMÓN AND JULIETA by Alana Quintana Albertson | Adult Romance | 2/1/2022

When fate and tacos bring Ramón and Julieta together on the Day of the Dead, the star-crossed pair must make a choice: accept the bitter food rivalry that drives them apart or surrender to a love that consumes them—perfect for fans of Jane the Virgin!

Ramón Montez always achieves his goals. Whether that means collecting Ivy League degrees or growing his father’s fast-food empire, nothing sets Ramón off course. So when the sexy señorita who kissed him on the Day of the Dead runs off into the night with his heart, he determines to do whatever it takes to find her again. 
 
Celebrity chef Julieta Campos has sacrificed everything to save her sea-to-table taqueria from closing. To her horror, she discovers that her new landlord is none other than the magnetic mariachi she hooked up with on Dia de los Muertos. Even worse, it was his father who stole her mother’s taco recipe decades ago. Julieta has no choice but to work with Ramón, the man who destroyed her life’s work—and the one man who tempts and inspires her. 
 
As San Diego’s outraged community protests against the Taco King takeover and the divide between their families grows, Ramón and Julieta struggle to balance the rising tensions. But Ramón knows that true love is priceless and despite all of his successes, this is the one battle he refuses to lose.

On-Sale February 8th, 2022

OPHELIA AFTER ALL by Racquel Marie | Young Adult | 2/8/2022

A teen girl navigates friendship drama, the end of high school, and discovering her queerness in Ophelia After All, a hilarious and heartfelt contemporary YA debut by author Racquel Marie.

Ophelia Rojas knows what she likes: her best friends, Cuban food, rose-gardening, and boys – way too many boys. Her friends and parents make fun of her endless stream of crushes, but Ophelia is a romantic at heart. She couldn’t change, even if she wanted to.

So when she finds herself thinking more about cute, quiet Talia Sanchez than the loss of a perfect prom with her ex-boyfriend, seeds of doubt take root in Ophelia’s firm image of herself. Add to that the impending end of high school and the fracturing of her once-solid friend group, and things are spiraling a little out of control. But the course of love—and sexuality—never did run smooth. As her secrets begin to unravel, Ophelia must make a choice between clinging to the fantasy version of herself she’s always imagined or upending everyone’s expectations to rediscover who she really is, after all.

JAWBONE by Mónica Ojeda | Translation | 2/8/2022

Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise?

When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.

NO FILTER AND OTHER LIES by Crystal Maldonado | Young Adult | 2/8/2022

Twenty one-year-old Max Monroe has it all: beauty, friends, and a glittering life filled with adventure. With tons of followers on Instagram, her picture-perfect existence seems eminently enviable.

Except it’s all fake.

Max is actually 16-year-old Kat Sanchez, a quiet and sarcastic teenager living in drab Bakersfield, California. Nothing glamorous in her existence—just sprawl, bad house parties, a crap school year, and the awkwardness of dealing with her best friend Hari’s unrequited love.

But while Kat’s life is far from perfect, she thrives as Max: doling out advice, sharing beautiful photos, networking with famous influencers, even making a real friend in a follower named Elena. The closer Elena and “Max” get—texting, Snapping, and even calling—the more Kat feels she has to keep up the façade.

But when one of Max’s posts goes ultra-viral and gets back to the very person she’s been stealing photos from, her entire world – real and fake — comes crashing down around her. She has to figure out a way to get herself out of the huge web of lies she’s created without hurting the people she loves.

But it might already be too late.

UNBETROTHED by Candice Pedraza Yamnitz | Young Adult | 2/8/2022

Around Agatha Sea, princesses are poised, magically gifted, and betrothed.

 So, when seventeen-year-old Princess Beatriz still fails to secure a betrothal, her parents hold a ball. Forming an alliance could mean the difference between peace and war, but Beatriz doesn't want just any suitor.She's in love with her best friend, Prince Lux. Marrying Prince Lux will always be a silly dream as long as she has no magical gift.

Princess Beatriz will do whatever it takes to obtain a touch of magic, including making a deadly oath to go on a quest to Valle de Los Fantasmas. A valley where no one comes out alive.

If she can manage to succeed, Princess Beatriz could have everything she desires and secure peace for her kingdom. If she fails, she’ll lose not only her greatest dream but also her kingdom, and maybe even her own life.

On-Sale February 15th, 2022

RECLAIM THE STARS: 17 TALES ACROSS REALMS & SPACE edited by Zoraida Córdova | Young Adult | 2/15/2022

From stories that take you to the stars, to stories that span into other times and realms, to stories set in the magical now, Reclaim the Stars takes the Latin American diaspora to places fantastical and out of this world.

Follow princesses warring in space, haunting ghost stories in Argentina, mermaids off the coast of the Caribbean, swamps that whisper secrets, and many more realms explored and unexplored; this stunning collection of seventeen short stories breaks borders and realms to prove that stories are truly universal.

Reclaim the Stars features both bestselling and acclaimed authors as well as two new voices in the genres: Vita Ayala, David Bowles, J.C. Cervantes, Zoraida Córdova, Sara Faring, Romina Garber, Isabel Ibañez, Anna-Marie McLemore, Yamile Saied Méndez, Nina Moreno, Circe Moskowitz, Maya Motayne, Linda Raquel Nieves Pérez, Daniel José Older, Claribel A. Ortega, Mark Oshiro and Lilliam Rivera.

RIMA’S REBELLION: COURAGE IN A TIME OF TYRANNY by Margarita Engle | Young Adult | 2/15/2022

An inspiring coming-of-age story from award-winning author Margarita Engle about a girl falling in love for the first time while finding the courage to protest for women’s right to vote in 1920s Cuba.

Rima loves to ride horses alongside her abuela and Las Mambisas, the fierce women veterans who fought during Cuba’s wars for independence. Feminists from many backgrounds have gathered in voting clubs to demand suffrage and equality for women, but not everybody wants equality for all—especially not for someone like Rima. In 1920s Cuba, illegitimate children like her are bullied and shunned.

Rima dreams of a day when she is free from fear and shame, the way she feels when she’s riding with Las Mambisas. As she seeks her way, Rima forges unexpected friendships with others who long for freedom, especially a handsome young artist named Maceo. Through turbulent times, hope soars, and with it…love.

On-Sale February 22nd, 2022

HOW TO DATE A FLYING MEXICAN: NEW AND COLLECTED STORIES by Daniel A. Olivas | Adult Fiction | 2/22/2022

How to Date a Flying Mexican is a collection of stories derived from Chicano and Mexican culture but ranging through fascinating literary worlds of magical realism, fairy tales, fables, and dystopian futures. The characters confront—both directly and obliquely—questions of morality, justice, and self-determination.

The collection is made up of Daniel A. Olivas’s favorite previously published stories, along with two new stories—one dystopian and the other mythical—that challenge the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies. Readers will encounter a world filled with both the magical and the quotidian: a man with twelve fingers who finds himself on a mystical date with a woman, God who appears in the form of a scrawny chicken, a woman who bravely fights back against her abuser, and Aztec gods searching for relevance after the Spanish conquest—just to name a few of the unforgettable characters populating these pages. The book draws together some of Olivas’s most unforgettable and strange tales, allowing readers to experience his very distinct, and very Chicano, fiction.

THE BOOK OF WANDERERS by Reyes Ramirez | Adult Fiction | 2/22/2022

What do a family of luchadores, a teen on the run, a rideshare driver, a lucid dreamer, a migrant worker in space, a mecha soldier, and a zombie-and-neo-Nazi fighter have in common?

Reyes Ramirez’s dynamic short story collection follows new lineages of Mexican and Salvadoran diasporas traversing life in Houston, across borders, and even on Mars. Themes of wandering weave throughout each story, bringing feelings of unease and liberation as characters navigate cultural, physical, and psychological separation and loss from one generation to the next in a tumultuous nation.

The Book of Wanderers deeply explores Houston, a Gulf Coast metropolis that incorporates Southern, Western, and Southwestern identities near the borderlands with a connection to the cosmos. As such, each story becomes increasingly further removed from our lived reality, engaging numerous genres from emotionally touching realist fiction to action-packed speculative fiction, as well as hallucinatory realism, magical realism, noir, and science fiction.

Fascinating characters and unexpected plots unpack what it means to be Latinx in contemporary—and perhaps future—America. The characters work, love, struggle, and never stop trying to control their reality. They dream of building communities and finding peace. How can they succeed if they must constantly leave one place for another? In a nation that demands assimilation, how can they define themselves when they have to start anew with each generation? The characters in The Book of Wanderers create their own lineages, philosophies for life, and markers for their humanity at the cost of home. So they remain wanderers . . . for now.