Alma Cuervo

Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves--lines from...

"Not since Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine has such a powerful and urgent Native American voice exploded onto the landscape of contemporary fiction. Tommy Orange's There There introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career. "We all came to the powwow for different reasons. The messy, dangling threads of our lives got pulled into a braid--tied to the back of everything...

Can she reconcile who she's become with who she's meant to be? Accustomed to an opulent life with her aunt, the last thing twenty-five-year-old Isabella Garcia wants is to celebrate Christmas in her parents' small silver-mining desert town, leaving her handsome beau, Diego Morales, behind in California. Adding insult to injury, she must bear the company of Aaron Bailey, the disapproving Santa Fe Railroad businessman her father has sent to escort her...

"In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued--through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country's future. Meanwhile,...

Thirty-one-year-old Cornelia Brown adores classic romantic films. Anything starring Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant will do nicely, especially The Philadelphia Story. Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But Cornelia's life truly changes one snowy day when she looks up to find troubled 11-year-old Clare Hobbes...

Though she was born into poverty, Inés Suárez, a seamstress in 16th-century Spain, embodies the same restless hope and opportunism that fuels her nation's conquest of the Americas. Learning that her shiftless husband has vanished, Inés uses his disappearance to embark on her own adventure. It is a journey will lead her to Pedro de Valdivia--a conquistador who becomes the first royal governor of Chile--and to a love that not only changes her life...

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.

11-year-old Maud Flynn gets whisked away from a cold New England orphanage and into the stately mansion of three wealthy spinsters. After the Hawthorne sisters adopt her in 1909, they tell her she's their secret child. She must remain indoors at all times and must never stand in front of windows. Since these old ladies treat her so well, Maud doesn't mind their restrictions. But she does wonder what could require such secrecy.

"2035: Robotic technology has evolved into the realm of self-aware, sentient mechanical entities. The future of the human race is to be inevitably linked with its most brilliant creation. But there are some who do not want the future to arrive.... Intelligent and driven, Dr. Susan Calvin is beginning her residency in psychiatry at Manhattan Hasbro teaching hospital, where a select group of patients is receiving the latest in diagnostic advancements--nanotechnology...

An adaptation for television of the Phoenix Theatre's production of Wendy Wasserstein's play about five friends who hold a reunion seven years after their graduation from Mount Holyoke.