Thoughts Without Cigarettes: A Memoir
Oscar Hijuelos 
Gotham - June, 2011
[from the publisher]
The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his pen to the real people and places that have influenced his life and, in turn, his literature. Growing up in 1950's working-class New York City to Cuban immigrants, Hijuelos journey to literary acclaim is the evolution of an unlikely writer.
Oscar Hijuelos has enchanted readers with vibrant characters who hunger for success, love, and self-acceptance. In his first work of nonfiction, Hijuelos writes from the heart about the people and places that inspired his international bestselling novels.
Born in Manhattan's Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants in 1951, Hijuelos introduces readers to the colorful circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel worker and exuberant poetry- writing mother, his story, played out against the backdrop of an often prejudiced working-class neighborhood, takes on an even richer dimension when his relationship to his family and culture changes forever. During a sojourn in pre-Castro Cuba with his mother, he catches a disease that sends him into a Dickensian home for terminally ill children. The year long stay estranges him from the very language and people he had so loved.
With a cast of characters whose stories are both funny and tragic, Thoughts Without Cigarettes follows Hijuelos's subsequent quest for his true identity into adulthood, through college and beyond-a mystery whose resolution he eventually discovers hidden away in the trappings of his fiction, and which finds its most glorious expression in his best-known book, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Illuminating the most dazzling scenes from his novels, Thoughts Without Cigarettes reveals the true stories and indelible memories that shaped a literary genius.
Randy Lopez Goes Home
Rudolfo Anaya
University of Oklahoma Press - June, 2011
[from the publisher]
A new novel by the master storyteller that explores what it means to go home
When he was a young man, Randy Lopez left his village in northern New Mexico to seek his fortune. Since then, he has learned some of the secrets of success in the Anglo world—and even written a book called Life Among the Gringos. But something has been missing. Now he returns to Agua Bendita to reconnect with his past and to find the wisdom the Anglo world has not provided. In t
By: Manuel Ramos,
on 7/29/2010
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JacketFlap tags: Dennis Tafoya, Juan Gómez-Jurado, The Superman Project, Georges Simenon, A.E. Roman, Biennial of the Americas, Add a tag
[publisher blurbs]
A.E. Roman
Minotaur, August
The Superman Project peddles German philosophy, Hinduism, and American comic book mythology as a method toward self-improvement, but its members are hiding more than a few secrets. The leader of TSP is a man named Father Ravi. One of his daughters, Gabby, who is also Joey’s wife, is missing. Joey was accused by the TSP leaders of killing Gabby and has fled the police. Pablo and his mother insist he is innocent.
Compelled to believe in his old friend, and by the promised payment of a very valuable Superman comic, Chico investigates the competing interests in the organization, falling for a beautiful suspect and trying to look out for a friend’s troubled niece in the process.
A. E. Roman brings New York City and its eccentric characters to life in this second in the original and energetic Chico Santana series.
[I'm reading this book now and digging it. This is Roman's second novel - when I reviewed his first, Chinatown Angel, here on La Bloga, I said that it had an "authenticity that flows from the pages like the Hudson River pours into the Atlantic." So far there has been no let down in this second book. I will have a review in the next few weeks, maybe even another interview with the lively, and humorous, A.E. Roman. Watch for it.]
The Moses Expedition
Juan Gómez-Jurado
Atria, August
After fifty years in hiding, the war criminal known as the Butcher of Spiegelgrund has finally been tracked to a small town outside Vienna. Father Anthony Fowler, CIA operative and member of the Vatican’s secret service, the Holy Alliance, has been sent to deal with him. But first he wants something – a candle covered in fine filigree gold that was stolen from a Jewish family many years before.
But it isn’t the gold Fowler is after. As Fowler holds a flame to the wax a metallic obj
This list of new books came at the right time since I just finished reading "Every Night is Ladies Night," by Micheal Jaime-Becerra yesterday. Becerra's book was a great read of connected short stories with true-to-life working class people in El Monte.
What a great list! Thank you for compiling!
Glad to be of service to both of you. This is one of the major reasons for La Bloga's existence -- spreading the word about great reads: old, new, and yet-to-be.