Author Q&A: ‘Menudo Sunday’ by María Dolores Águila and Illustrated by Erika Meza

Menudo Sunday begins with joyful anticipation. An older man, smiling, sits outside a warm yellow house. A woman and a boy pull out plastic chairs from a stack to arrange them side by side. And a grinning young girl sprints to one of her abuelos, who waits for her by the iron front gate.

“One cozy casita,” author María Dolores Águila writes. “Two grinning abuelitos.”

Out now from Dial Books for Young Readers, Menudo Sunday is a counting picture book that follows a family over one lively Sunday. The girl and her mamá, abuelos, tías and primos always gather on this day to enjoy a pot of menudo, a traditional Mexican soup made with beef tripe and hominy. The book counts from 1-15 in Spanish and English, until Abuelito Esteban’s special bowl of menudo breaks. Can the family work together and still make this a special Sunday?

Menudo Sunday is Águila’s second picture book and largely inspired by her own Sunday gatherings at the home of her paternal grandmother in San Diego. Illustrations by Erika Meza bring tremendous color and humor into the family’s already chaotic Sunday, adding to the book’s excitement. Menudo Sunday is a vibrant and fun read, and includes a Spanish glossary, author’s note, and even tips for hosting your very own Menudo Sunday.

Águila spoke with Latinx in Publishing recently about the inspiration behind her picture book. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Menudo Sunday. In your author’s note, you write about how some of your most cherished memories are from the menudo Sundays you’d spend at your paternal grandparents’ home in San Diego, California. I’d love to start by asking, what is a Menudo Sunday?

María Dolores Águila (MDÁ): My paternal grandma lived in San Diego, and had this huge yard. It felt like a jungle when we were kids. She had eight kids, so I have a lot of aunts and uncles, and they all have kids. We would all descend on her house on Sundays and she would make this humongous pot of menudo. 

She had this tiny two-bedroom house. And because there were so many of us, we would take turns eating in shifts. First all the adults would go, then all the older cousins, and then the younger cousins or whoever showed up late or whatever. For me, it was this unstructured spending time together… just this beautiful moment of being with family.

AC: Your book is a Spanglish counting book. When you began to write it, did you envision it in Spanglish?

MDÁ: Yes, from the beginning. I always tell people, I live my life in Spanglish. That’s how everything filters through me. I know people say it’s not proper, but some things are better said in Spanish. Some things are better said in English. In National City, where I live in San Diego, I spend half of my day speaking Spanish. So for me, it’s very natural to write in Spanglish because that’s how I share my lived experience with the world.

AC: Menudo Sunday is chock full of details, from two grinning abuelitos to seis – six little bowls filled with salsa, cilantro, lime, oregano, onion and jalapeño. Walk us through how you chose which details are a must for Menudo Sunday?

MDÁ: It took quite a few drafts to figure out how to decide what numbers to put for what. For the very first draft I was really literal. I thought it had to be something that you could physically count. Rosie (Ahmed) was my editor at the time and pushed me to rethink what counting can be. And so now we have things like, “ten dedos stealing tasty treats” and “eleven risitas when the grownups aren’t watching.” And Erika did such an amazing job even illustrating how to count those. When I was trying to create a story from the numbers, I thought, OK, how can I move through these numbers and still tell a story, and still have something to count? It was an enjoyable experience. It was like putting together a puzzle.

“And Menudo Sunday is a book of resilience. I think resilience comes from allowing yourself to experience joy and happiness. Even though things are tough, things are hard, life is stressful, still allowing yourself to experience beautiful, ordinary moments of life, that’s what it’s made out of. ”

AC: About halfway through the book, the special bowl of menudo crashes and menudo spills everywhere. At that moment it felt like the family’s whole Menudo Sunday was in jeopardy. How did you come up with that big obstacle?

MDÁ: When I wrote the very, very first draft of Menudo Sunday, I had it from 1 to 20. When the bowl broke, I had the character in “16 minutos of time-out.” That’s how I originally had it. And Rosie pushed me. She was like, I don’t know about putting her in time-out. Then I thought about it. I don’t even do time-out for my own kids. We figure out how to fix things together. I kept thinking about it and realized I have a really big chance right now. 

You know what chancla culture is, right? It’s always about the Latina mom coming after you with a chancla if you do something wrong. I get it, it’s funny, but that’s still a punitive thing. For our generation, where we’re raising kids now and trying to break these generational curses, I thought the best thing we could do is figure out how to solve this together, and not blame anyone. Yeah, they shouldn’t have been doing all that. But you know what? Kids are kids. And it doesn’t have to be the end of everything. We can come together and we can fix it, and we will be just as good as we were before. I’m trying to push back against chancla culture, and I’m trying to show some social, emotional learning – that fixing something is better than being punished.

AC: What do you think Erika Meza’s illustrations added to the story?

MDA: I don't even know if I could list everything that her illustrations added to the story. I really love the body diversity of the characters; there’s skinny ones, there’s mas gorditas. I love that, because I’m a gordita myself and I often don’t see myself in a book. The focus is not on that. They’re just there in the story. 

I also love all the little Easter eggs that she put throughout the story. And then after the crash is my favorite illustration. I know it’s really silly, but when it reads “fifteen fragmentos scattered across the ground,” one of the aunts is looking at the dog, really pissed off. It makes me laugh so much every time I see it. I love books like this, where there’s so much to look at. I think it adds re-readability to the story, because every time I read it I notice something new.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Menudo Sunday?

MDÁ: Barrio Rising was very much a book of resistance. And Menudo Sunday is a book of resilience. I think resilience comes from allowing yourself to experience joy and happiness. Even though things are tough, things are hard, life is stressful, still allowing yourself to experience beautiful, ordinary moments of life, that’s what it’s made out of. I just want readers to see themselves in this book, to connect with Chicano culture, to see themselves and to look for the joy and the family food traditions in their own lives.

---

María Dolores Águila is a Chicana poet and writer from San Diego, California. Deeply inspired by Chicane history and art, she seeks to write empowering and inclusive stories about everything she learns. She is also the author of the historical fiction picture book Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park.

Erika Meza was born in Mexico, fell in love with animation on the border of California, and developed a taste for eclairs in Paris before moving to the UK to teach at Nottingham Trent University. She is the illustrator of numerous children’s books including My Two Border Towns by David Bowles and Salsa Lullaby by Jen Arena.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.

2025 Latinx in Publishing Recommended Books for Latine Heritage Month

Happy Latine Heritage Month!🎉

From September 15–30, we're honoring Latinx storytellers with these powerful recs from Latinx in Publishing. These titles are all 20% off with code LHM25.

Browse our picks below and then head over to LxP’s Bookshop to pick up your next read. 📚✨

Head to the LxP Bookshop now! Remember to use code LHM25 by September 30th to receive 20% off these select titles. Happy reading!

Most Anticipated September 2025 Releases

What a Latinx-filled month it is for new book releases! Here are a few of the books we’re excited to add to our TBR pile. Make sure to pick them up from your local bookstore or at the library—enjoy!

Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive! by Melissa Lozada-Oliva | SHORT STORIES

A beheaded body interrupts a quinceañera. An obsession with her father’s bizarre video game shifts a lonely girl’s reality. A sentient tail sprouts from a hospital worker’s backside, throwing her romantic life into peril. And in the novella “Community Hole,” a recently cancelled musician flees New York and finds herself in a haunted punk house in Boston.

This collection, at once playful, grisly, and tender, presents a tapestry of women ailing for something to believe in – even if it hurts them. Using body horror, fabulism, and humor, Melissa Lozada-Oliva mines the pain and uncanniness of the modern world. Reveling in the fine line between disgust and desire, Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive! is for the sinner in us all.

Bold, Brilliant, and Latine: Meet 52 Latine and Hispanic Heroes from Past and Present by Alyssa Reynoso-Morris | Illustrated by Sol Cotti | CHILDREN’S

Young Latine and Hispanic children can see themselves reflected in 52 amazing heroes from the past and present, whom everyone can look up to. Featuring incredible icons like:

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - Politician, the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress

• Lionel Messi - Superstar soccer player

• Sonia Sotomayor - US Supreme Court Justice

• Ellen Ochoa - First Latina astronaut in space

Kids will be inspired by these stories and others, from sporting legends to fashion icons, political leaders to fearless changemakers, as well as renowned writers, musicians, artists, scientists, and more. These heroes' lives are vividly recounted by queer award-winning Dominican and Puerto Rican storyteller Alyssa Reynoso-Morris and brought to life by Argentinian illustrator Sol Cotti.

Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories from the Guatemalan Genocide by Pablo Leon | Illustrated by Pablo Leon | GRAPHIC NOVEL

Langley Park, Maryland, 2013

Brothers Jose and Charlie know very little about their mother’s life in Guatemala, until Jose grows curious about the ongoing genocide trial of Efrain Rios Montt. At first his mother, Clara, shuts his questions down. But as the trial progresses, she begins to open up to her sons about a time in her life that she’s left buried for years. 

Peten, Guatemala, 1982

Sisters Clara and Elena hear about the armed conflict every day, but the violence somehow seems far away from their small village. But the day the fight comes to their doorstep, the sisters are separated and are forced to flee through the mountains, leaving them to wonder…Have their paths diverged forever?

a chronology of blood by Teo Shannon | POETRY

A stunning debut collection by a gifted poet, a chronology of blood explores major traumas in the author’s life. Autobiographical in nature, the book is broken into three sections that each deal with a trauma the author has endured, and it explores a range of themes including gun violence, conversion therapy, misuse of drugs, addiction, and domestic violence. But balancing the anger, harm, and pain is hope: above all Shannon is a survivor, learning to incorporate these experiences into a life filled with healing and lived on his own terms.

Waiting for Godínez by Daniel A. Olivas | ADULT FICTION

Olivas’s extraordinary reimagining of a classic play lays bare the destructive and brutalizing effects of the United States’ anti-immigration policy on undocumented immigrants and their families. In Waiting for Godínez, the forever-waiting characters of Estragon and Vladimir are embodied in Jesús and Isabel, two Mexican friends living in the States. Each night Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents kidnap Jesús and throw him into a cage intending to deport him. But the agents forget to lock the cage, so Jesús escapes and makes his way back to Isabel as they wait for the mysterious Godínez in a city park. At one point Isabel looks upon her exhausted friend and laments, “What harm have you done to them? You are as much of this country as you are of México. But you are not home in either place. Ni de aquí, ni de allá.”

Waiting for Godínez humanizes the plight undocumented people face in a country that both needs and disdains them. Through a darkly comic absurdist lens, it implores us to reconsider this country’s policies in light of the fact that we are all human and deserve respect and dignity as we each try to make our way in a confusing and often indifferent world.

Mexico's Day of the Dead: A Celebration of Life Through Stories and Photos by Luisa Navarro | Photographed by Christine Chitnis | NONFICTION

Whether you are new to the holiday and celebrating for the first time, looking to process a recent loss, or just interested in this authentic Mexican cultural tradition, Mexico's Day of the Dead paints a vibrant picture of one of the country's most storied and sacred holidays.

With photographer Christine Chitnis by her side, author Luisa Navarro documents the most breathtaking displays, as well as the artisans and people who keep the traditions alive. She delves into the origins of the holiday, its rich iconography, and modern-day customs. Thoughtful essays on the evolution of Día de Muertos are coupled with practical guides for celebrating it yourself, as Luisa shares her tips for cultivating your own Day of the Dead traditions. Turn to Mexico's Day of the Dead for approachable DIY projects. Build your own altar. Make your own sugar skulls. Create papel picado and bake your own delicious pan de muerto at home.

This landmark book brings Day of the Dead to life with transportive photography, high-end finishes, and eye-catching stained edges.

All That Dies in April by Mariana Travacio | Translated by Samantha Schnee & Will Morningstar | ADULT FICTION

Lina has dreamt for years of leaving her tiny village in the drought-stricken region. Her son left long ago to find work and a better fortune. Relicario, her husband, is content to stay put in the land of his ancestors, tending to their graves. Ignoring Relicario's pleas, a desperate Lina decides to abandon their home in search of her son, work, and water. She starts her journey on foot, and Relicario eventually follows behind, bringing a donkey and a sack with his ancestors' bones. Both witness unspeakable violence, cruelty, and folly, but the hope of reuniting their family keeps them alive.
Poetically charged, restrained, and delicately condensed, this is a suspenseful ancestral tale rooted in a long Latin American history of rural displacement and perpetual inequality.

Calladita No More: My Latina Journey and the Lessons that Shaped Me by Hady Mendez | NONFCITION

"Calladita No More" is a powerful collection of stories about the lived experiences of a Latina who dared to dream big-only to find that the world wasn't built for her ambitions. Through the lens of familiar Latinx cultural sayings, or refranes, Hady Méndez shares the lessons she learned navigating identity, leadership, and belonging in a world fueled by bias, discrimination, racism, and sexism.

Each chapter holds a different refrán and lesson, blending personal storytelling with cultural reflection to spotlight hard-earned insights on empowerment, resilience, and reclaiming one's voice. This is not a step-by-step guide. It is a deeply personal narrative-an offering of wisdom and encouragement to Latinas and Women of Color who are carving their own paths through systems that were never designed with them in mind.

Hady's journey is a testament to what is possible when one learns to champion themselves, celebrate their successes, foster community, and prioritize self-care. Written with joy, clarity, and mucho orgullo, the book invites readers to reflect on the lessons they've learned and the insights they've gained.

Chloe Vega and the Agents of Magic by Leslie Adame | MIDDLE GRADE

Twelve-year-old Chloe Vega’s biggest fear is that her undocumented parents will be detained by immigration. That is, until she learns that her parents are actually part of a secret magical society…and that the suspicious looking police officers who have been hanging around their block are henchmen for an evil sorcerer determined to settle a decades-old score. 

Just when Chloe discovers that she has powers, too, her parents are kidnapped. In order to rescue them, she’ll need to harness her abilities at an elite academy, run by the very agency who exiled her parents from the magical world.

Finding herself in the center of a magical war that might destroy everything she has ever known, Chloe can’t shake the feeling that the Agents of Magic are hiding secrets. With her parents’ lives hanging in the balance, she must uncover who is truly on her side and fast to save her family—and the world itself.

The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar by Sonora Reyes | YOUNG ADULT

Seventeen-year-old Cesar Flores is finally ready to win back his ex-boyfriend. Since breaking up with Jamal in a last-ditch effort to stay in the closet, he’s come out to Mami, his sister, Yami, and their friends, taken his meds faithfully, and gotten his therapist’s blessing to reunite with Jamal.

Everything would be perfect if it weren’t for The Thoughts—the ones that won’t let all his Catholic guilt and internalizations stay buried where he wants them. The louder they become, the more Cesar is once again convinced that he doesn't deserve someone like Jamal—or anyone really.

Cesar can hide a fair amount of shame behind jokes and his “gifted” reputation, but when a manic episode makes his inner turmoil impossible to hide, he’s faced with a stark choice: burn every bridge he has left or, worse—ask for help. But is the mortifying vulnerability of being loved by the people he’s hurt the most a risk he’s willing to take?

Inside the Cartel: How an Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire by Martin Suarez & Ian Frisch | NONFICTION

Martin Suarez, a legend within the FBI who specialized in Colombian drug cartels, holds the record for the longest time spent continuously undercover. As his alter ego Manny, Martin followed the unspoken rules of the cartels: He knew the right lingo to use, the right whiskey to drink, the right watch to wear, the wrong questions to ask. He smuggled over $1 billion worth of cocaine into the United States for the Medellín Cartel and, as his cover deepened, he graduated to become a high-level money launderer for the North Coast Cartel. He helped wash tens of millions of dollars worth of drug money, ensnaring himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse while simultaneously exposing the Black Market Peso Exchange, the most insidious money laundering apparatus in the world that involved billionaire bankers, blue-chip American corporations, and even the President of Colombia himself.

Martin was raised by a father who served in the military and valorized the nobility of the FBI, and Martin stopped at nothing to allow his father to live vicariously through his son. He wanted nothing more than to make his father proud—and to be a good husband to his wife, and a loving father to his two young sons. He became a man caught between two worlds—that of an undercover agent who wanted to rid the world of its evils, but also that of a family man who was trying not to lose himself in this dark, brutal underworld that captivated the globe during the War on Drugs.

And yet his worlds begin to collide as danger creeps dangerously close to his doorstep when his cover is blown and a cartel-hired sicario comes hunting for him.

The Other Barrio: New and Selected Stories by Alejandro Murguía | SHORT STORIES

In the title story, a once-elegant hotel--now a rundown apartment building for mostly single men and a few desperate families--burns to the ground, killing seven people.

City building inspector Roberto Morales had recently reviewed it and knows there was nothing wrong with the wiring, even before he's hustled off to a "meeting" with a local mafioso.

As he pounds the pavement of San Francisco's grimy Mission District, looking for clues to the fire, he realizes the lengths to which developers will go to make another million--even as far as sending seven innocent souls to "the other barrio.

San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus Alejandro Murguía imbues his mostly brown, working-class characters with the grit necessary to face every day in this collection of short fiction.

How to Say Goodbye in Cuban by Daniel Miyares | MIDDLE GRADE

Carlos, who lives in a small town in the Cuban countryside, loves to play baseball with his best friend, Alvaro, and to shoot home-made slingshots with his abuelo.

One day, a miracle happens: Carlos' father, his papi, wins the lottery! He uses the money to launch his own furniture business and to move the family to a big house in the city.

Carlos hates having to move -- hates leaving Abuelo and Alvaro behind -- and hates being called country kid at his new school. But the pains of moving and middle school turn out to be the least of his problems.

When rebel leader Fidel Castro overthrows the existing Cuban president, the entire country is thrust into revolution. Then, suddenly, Papi disappears. Carlos' mother tells him that Papi has gone to America, and that they will soon join him. But Carlos really doesn't want to leave Cuba, the only home he's ever known. Besides, how will they get to America when Castro's soldiers are policing their every move? Will Carlos ever see his father again?

Book Review: An Embroidery of Souls by Ruby Martinez

Ruby Martinez’s debut YA novel, An Embroidery of Souls, traps you in a way only the most complex needlework could. 

The story follows the dual POV of Jade Aguilar and Lukas Keller, two young people with too much emotional baggage to carry. Jade is a “thread speaker,” a person with magical abilities who can see the colored strings of your soul and manipulate them with only a needle and thread. She can take and give beauty, intelligence, and even life. In Mérecal, such power is controlled by Queen María-Celese Ríos, and the Crown’s control has kept Jade isolated, with her mom being her only companion. The problem is that Jade’s mom has gone missing, leaving her alone with the demanding queen and an ocean of fears she can’t control. Then we have Lukas, an immigrant boy who must take care of his family after his father’s passing. He struggles to make ends meet, and his desperation brings him down to the sewers, where the underground queen of the Serpensas, Cora Ramos, awaits with venomous fangs. Their unfortunate entanglement with royalty ultimately brings them together, as they must solve a series of seemingly supernatural murders that have Mérecal’s people in a sort of religious paranoia. 

“Martinez’s prose is both beautiful and gut-wrenching, like a delicate thread and a sharp needle embroidering something both lovely and painful.”

With a hint of detective novel-like tropes, Martinez writes scenes packed with danger for our protagonists. They must overcome many external and internal challenges to discover the murderer’s identity. Each chapter ends in such a teasing moment that it is impossible to stop reading. Among all the chaos and high stakes, the author develops a sweet romance that sparkles with magic. Martinez cooks Jade and Lukas’s love ever so slowly; so much so that the slight steam might make your cheeks get rosy. However, your eyes might tear up as the pair deals with their respective darkness. With these deeply damaged characters, Martinez applies her knowledge as a therapist to explore their traumas, leaving little gems for the readers along the way. Many passages felt like my own therapist was talking to me; this way, Martinez reaches her readers with the same compassion and sternness only a mental health professional could. 

Martinez’s prose is both beautiful and gut-wrenching, like a delicate thread and a sharp needle embroidering something both lovely and painful. If I were a thread speaker, I’m sure I would see Martinez’s soul full of violet strings of intelligence and merlot passion. I don’t know what the color for creativity is, but I am sure she also has that in abundance. And all her hues are stitched with care into this book. 

An Embroidery of Souls is a kaleidoscope of sweet and sour moments that will not only have you rooting for Jade and Lukas’s journey together, but also for their individual healing. 

---

Roxanna Cardenas Colmenares is a Venezuelan writer living in New York City who loves to consume, study, and create art. She explores multiple genres in her writing, with a special interest in horror and sci-fi, while working on her B.A. in English with a Creative Writing concentration. 

Her work has made her a two-time recipient of the James Tolan Student Writing Award for her critical essays analyzing movies. She has also won The Henry Roth Award in Fiction, The Esther Unger Poetry Prize, and The Allan Danzig Memorial Award in Victorian Literature.

In her free time, she likes to watch movies, dance, and draw doodles that she hopes to be brave enough to share one day.

September 2025 Latinx Releases

We are so excited to bring you such a plentiful list of new releases this month—we've even changed our post format a bit. Make sure to check out all these amazing titles releasing just in time to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month!

ON SALE SEPTEMBER 2

ON SALE SEPTEMBER 9

ON SALE SEPTEMBER 16

ON SALE SEPTEMBER 23

ON SALE SEPTEMBER 30

8 Titles to Celebrate Women in Translation Month

August is Women in Translation Month, a time dedicated to promoting and celebrating women writers all around the world! It’s never too late to pick up one of these 8 titles to read and celebrate our Latin American sisters and women writers from across the globe.

A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez | Translated by Megan McDowell

Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.

Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez’s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”

Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza | Translated by Robin Myers and Sarah Booker

A city is always a cemetery.

A professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police. When shown a crime scene photo, she finds a stark warning written in tiny print with coral nail polish on the brick wall beside the body: “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.”

The professor becomes the first informant on the case, which is led by a detective newly obsessed with poetry and trailed by a long list of failures. But what has the professor really seen? As the bodies of more castrated men are found alongside lines of verse, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems to put a stop to the violence spreading throughout the city.

Originally written in Spanish, where the word “victim” is always feminine, Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative of gendered violence on its head. As sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims, it unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the police station to the professor’s classroom and through the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art in an imaginative exploration of the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.

It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo | Translated by Elizabeth Bryer

In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcón stands over an open grave. Alone, she buries her mother—the only family she has ever known—and worries that when night falls thieves will rob the grave. Even the dead cannot find peace here.

Adelaida had a stable childhood in a prosperous Venezuela that accepted immigrants in search of a better life, where she lived with her single-mother in a humble apartment. But now? Every day she lines up for bread that will inevitably be sold out by the time she reaches the registers. Every night she tapes her windows to shut out the tear gas raining down on protesters. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida must make a series of gruesome choices in order to survive in a country disintegrating into anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But just how far is she willing to go?

A bold new voice from Latin America, Karina Sainz Borgo’s touching, thrilling debut is an ode to the Venezuelan people and a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.

Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda | Translated by Sarah Booker

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 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.

The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers | Translated by Kit Maude

When The Naked Woman was originally published in 1950, critics doubted a woman writer could be responsible for its shocking erotic content. In this searing critique of Enlightenment values, fantastic themes are juxtaposed with brutal depictions of misogyny and violence, and frantically build to a fiery conclusion.

Finally available to an English-speaking audience, Armonía Somers will resonate with readers of Clarice Lispector, Djuna Barnes, and Leonora Carrington.

Human Sacrifices by María Fernanda Ampuero | Translated by Frances Riddle

An undocumented woman answers a job posting only to find herself held hostage, a group of outcasts obsess over boys drowned while surfing, and an unhappy couple finds themselves trapped in a terrifying maze. With scalpel-like precision, Ampuero considers the price paid by those on the margins so that the elite might lounge comfortably, considering themselves safe in their homes.

Simultaneously terrifying and exquisite, Human Sacrifices is "tropical gothic" at its finest--decay and oppression underlie our humid and hostile world, where working-class women and children are consistently the weakest links in a capitalist economy. Against this backdrop of corrosion and rot, these twelve stories contemplate the nature of exploitation and abuse, illuminating the realities of those society consumes for its own pitiless ends.

Seeing Red by Lina Meruane | Translated by Megan McDowell

This powerful, profound autobiographical novel describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke, leaving her blind and increasingly dependent on those closest to her. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, illness, science, and human relationships.

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica | Translated by Sarah Moses

From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,” a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,” and in “Candy Pink,” a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.

Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.

Most Anticipated August 2025 Releases

What a busy month full of new releases! We’ve got some exciting picks for most anticipated books this August, check out our list below to find the newest addition to your TBR pile. 📚✨

Menudo Sunday: A Spanglish Counting Book by María Dolores Águila | Illustrated by Erika Meza | PICTURE BOOK

Sundays are the best: that’s when a little girl and her mamá, abuelitos, tías and primos all gather together to eat yummy menudo, a traditional Mexican soup. But when playtime with the cousins and family dogs gets out of hand and Abuelito Esteban’s special bowl of menudo breaks, everyone has to pitch in to make a new batch! Through all the menudo mishaps and sneaky snacks for perritos with wagging tails, young readers will giggle as they learn to count from 1-15 in Spanish and English.

Bonus materials at the back of the book include a glossary of Spanish words, a note from the author, and tips for hosting your very own Menudo Sunday!

Solitaria by Eliana Alvez Cruz | Translated by Benjamin Brooks | ADULT FICTION

Mabel has been staying in the Golden Plate—the most expensive building on the block, in an unnamed city in Brazil—for almost her entire life. Yet her presence there is merely tolerated: she inhabits a miniscule room with her mother, Eunice, who alongside Mabel provides round-the-clock attention and care for the wealthy family who lives there. As Mabel grows up, her dissatisfaction with the forced smallness of her life becomes difficult to bear, and she is driven to work toward new possibilities for herself.

Eunice does the best that she can—uneducated, and with a daughter and ailing mother both depending solely on her, her life is a series of limitations. She moves through the rooms of the penthouse suite in silent servitude, and though Mabel is ashamed of this invisibility act they've both perfected, the era of slavery is still fresh in the country's consciousness, and Eunice thinks it best not to dwell too hard on such things. But when tragedy strikes, and a little boy dies, Eunice must decide if she can face the indifference and injustices of the ruling class she has spent so long orbiting.

Told through direct, agile and evocative prose, Solitaria is a liberation novel of the most rousing order. Through the book's awareness of space and whose presence is permissible, the world of the Golden Plate unfurls, and an unflinching portrait emerges of modern-day Brazil, its legacies of colonial violence haunting rooms across the country, both big and small.

Marisol Acts the Part by Elle Gonzalez Rose | YOUNG ADULT

Actress Marisol Polly-Rodriguez might be entering her flop era. After wrapping  up a hit show, she’s neither booked nor busy. Not to mention, her former costar turned boyfriend, Miles, recently dumped her for being an “unserious” performer. Can you imagine?

To prove to Miles—and online trolls—that she takes her craft very seriously,  Marisol lands a role on the same  upcoming drama series he does. But with the eccentric director constantly  rewriting her lines and a snobby castmate trying to upstage her, Marisol quickly  realizes that her hope of nabbing an award nomination might be a pipe dream.

The only person she doesn’t have to put on a performance for is the show’s leading lady, Jamila. Marisol hasn’t  been able to look away from her since their first audition. Falling for Jamila wasn’t part of Marisol’s plan, but even the most dedicated actors go off script sometimes, right?

The Darién Gap: A Reporter's Journey Through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas by Belén Fernández | NONFICTION

The narrow Darién Gap, the only land bridge connecting South and Central America, encompasses a spectacularly hostile jungle, covered in steep mountains, dense rainforests, and flood-prone marshes. Known in Spanish as el infierno verde, or "the green hell," it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world. Its terrain is too treacherous for roads, yet hundreds of thousands of refuge seekers contend with its horrors every year in the hopes of reaching the United States, still some three thousand miles away. And of the countless who set out for the border, an untold number never arrive.

In this book, journalist Belén Fernández visits the Darién Gap to report on the dehumanizing and deadly stretch of land that has become a mass graveyard for migrants. Fernández's travels bring her into contact with refuge seekers, people smugglers, law enforcement officials, and many more whose stories bring life to a place overwhelmingly associated with death. Combining history, on-the-ground reporting, travelogue, memoir, and searing politico-economic analysis, she shines light on a largely made-in-the-USA crisis that has come to define our modern era.

Engrossing and heartrending, The Darién Gap is a poignant and compassionate indictment of structural inequality and institutionalized inhumanity in a world where the have-nots must risk death for a chance at a better life--or any life at all.

Wanda Hears the Stars: A Blind Astronomer Listens to the Universe by Amy S. Hansen & Wanda Díaz Merced | Illustrated by Rocio Arreola Mendoza | CHILDREN’S

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Wanda Díaz Merced wanted to learn everything she could about the stars. But in college she started losing her sight. How could she study what she couldn't see?

Wanda found a way. She learned to hear the stars using sonification, which converts data into sounds. Listening to those chimes and drumbeats, she made new discoveries about the universe.

Today Wanda is a leading advocate for inclusive science. She and her friend Amy S. Hansen collaborated on this book to inspire children to follow their curiosity no matter the challenges. As Wanda urges, "Never give up!" 

Wanda Hears the Stars is the perfect picture book biography to inspire any STEM-minded future scientist!

Gabriela and His Grace by Liana De la Rosa | ADULT FICTION

As the youngest and most rebellious daughter of the overly protective Luna family, Gabriela Luna Valdés claws after her freedom in any way she can. This time, her hunger for adventure has led her aboard a windswept ship bearing for her homeland, away from a mob of fumbling British suitors. But Gabby can’t escape her father’s expectation that she settle down to find a proper husband—a compromise she’s unwilling to make.

For Sebastian Brooks, Duke of Whitfield, the trip to Mexico is his last chance. His last chance to rectify his family’s estate and refill their dwindling coffers. And his last chance to match wits with the sharp-tongued but deliciously tempting Gabriela.

When Gabby finds herself in need of a hasty escape, Sebastian agrees to assist her…but their close proximity sparks a red-hot passion that could ruin all their plans. With scandal looming, can Sebastian convince Gabby his regard is sincere or will she sail away with his heart?

August 2025 Latinx Releases

ON SALE AUGUST 5

Menudo Sunday: A Spanglish Counting Book by María Dolores Águila | Illustrated by Erika Meza | PICTURE BOOK
Sundays are the best: that’s when a little girl and her mamá, abuelitos, tías and primos all gather together to eat yummy menudo, a traditional Mexican soup. But when playtime with the cousins and family dogs gets out of hand and Abuelito Esteban’s special bowl of menudo breaks, everyone has to pitch in to make a new batch! Through all the menudo mishaps and sneaky snacks for perritos with wagging tails, young readers will giggle as they learn to count from 1-15 in Spanish and English. Bonus materials at the back of the book include a glossary of Spanish words, a note from the author, and tips for hosting your very own Menudo Sunday!

Rosa by Any Other Name by Hailey Alcaraz | YOUNG ADULT

Rosa Capistrano has been attending posh North Phoenix High School to boost her chances of a college education and a career in journalism, thanks to the groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education verdict for desegregation. But though she’s legally allowed to be there, it’s still unsafe for Mexican Americans. That’s why she’s secretly passing as Rosie, a white girl. All she has to do to secure her future is make sure her Mexican home life and her white school experience never intersect.

However, Rosa’s two worlds collide when her best friend Ramon and classmate Julianne meet and find themselves entangled in a star-crossed romance. Rosa is terrified about what their relationship could mean for her and them . . . and her worst fears are soon realized in an unspeakable tragedy. Rosa is thrown into the center of a town-wide scandal and her true identity is put in the spotlight. With the help of Marco, Ramon's brooding and volatile brother whose passion ignites hers, Rosa must choose what is more important to her—protecting her fragile future, or risking everything to help her friends find justice.

The Island of Forgotten Gods by Victor Piñeiro | MIDDLE GRADE

Nico wants to be a famous film director. He's pretty sure if he can make the right movie, and soon, his life will completely change. The catch? His parents are sending him to Puerto Rico for the summer to stay with his iconic, but old-school, Abuela Luciana, and his awesome, but unpredictable cousins. Still, the show must go on.

Until Nico and his cousins awaken a monster. A monster that looks an awful lot like the infamous Chupacabra. And it turns out this isn't a chance encounter. The creature begins stalking them all over Puerto Rico, turning up on every dark corner, sandy beach, and moonlit night. To make matters worse, a shadowy cult enters the chase, intent on capturing them before the Chupacabra can.

Soon they are thrown into an adventure that brings them face-to-face with the ancient Taino people, even more ancient Taino gods, and the mysterious Chupacabra, who is somehow linked to everything. Nico keeps his camera rolling, hoping the epic documentary will catapult him to stardom. But in the end, it's the island's fate that hangs in the balance, as they face down the very gods that created Puerto Rico.

Day of the Dead ABC / Día de Los Muertos ABC by Gabriela Orozco Belt | Illustrated by Estelí Meza | PICTURE BOOK

In this beautifully illustrated bilingual book, readers aged 7 to 11 will delight in discovering the rich traditions and customs of Day of the Dead. From decorating colorful altars to enjoying delicious pan de muerto, this heartwarming book captures the essence of this special celebration.

English and Spanish alphabet books often provide one set of text in English with a Spanish translation. This book weights both English and Spanish equally for our bilingual readers--providing different entry text for many letters of the alphabet. Both English and Spanish have translations underneath to help readers understand and connect to the illustrations.

Bebé AMA a Abuelita / Baby Loves Grandma by Chela de la Vega | Illustrated by Teresa Martínez | CHILDREN’S

Bebé Ama a Abuelita / Baby Loves Grandma is a sweet and charming exploration of grandmotherly love, creating a rich and engaging experience for babies and toddlers. Through charming illustrations and simple, expressive text, the book celebrates the special bond between babies and their grandmothers and features a diverse group of grandmas from various backgrounds throughout Latin America and the United States. From playful moments to exploring the city to mealtime, Bebé Ama a Abuelita / Baby Loves Grandma captures the joy that abuelas/grandmas have when spending time with their grandkids, making it a perfect read for families looking to embrace both English and Spanish in their little one's early learning journey.

Sundust by Zeke Peña | PICTURE BOOK

Where the rock wall ends, the desert beyond begins.

Following a blazing trail of sundust, two curious siblings hop the wall into a place that’s endless and free. Here, prickly old nopal trees beg to be climbed, empty turtle shells invite a closer look, enormous rocks model how to sit still and listen, and a colibrí offers an unexpected ride. In the desert, where life revolves around the Sun, brother and sister explore, imagine, and wonder, What if Sun’s power was inside me? until their mom’s whistle calls them back home again.

With spare, lyrical text, Pura Belpré Honor and Ezra Jack Keats Honor recipient Zeke Peña has created a fantastical tale that suspends moments in time with his radiant art and celebrates the bonds between the sun, the desert, and its people.

Solitaria by Eliana Alvez Cruz | Translated by Benjamin Brooks | ADULT FICTION

Mabel has been staying in the Golden Plate—the most expensive building on the block, in an unnamed city in Brazil—for almost her entire life. Yet her presence there is merely tolerated: she inhabits a miniscule room with her mother, Eunice, who alongside Mabel provides round-the-clock attention and care for the wealthy family who lives there. As Mabel grows up, her dissatisfaction with the forced smallness of her life becomes difficult to bear, and she is driven to work toward new possibilities for herself.

Eunice does the best that she can—uneducated, and with a daughter and ailing mother both depending solely on her, her life is a series of limitations. She moves through the rooms of the penthouse suite in silent servitude, and though Mabel is ashamed of this invisibility act they've both perfected, the era of slavery is still fresh in the country's consciousness, and Eunice thinks it best not to dwell too hard on such things. But when tragedy strikes, and a little boy dies, Eunice must decide if she can face the indifference and injustices of the ruling class she has spent so long orbiting.

Someone's Gotta Give by Alisha Fernandez Miranda | ADULT FICTION

Lucia thought she had it all figured out-until life in London as a new mom and expat turned everything upside down. She's barely holding it together when she unexpectedly lands a glamorous job as a philanthropic adviser at London's poshest private bank. But is the world of the über-wealthy everything that it's cracked up to be?

At work, she's rubbing elbows with royals; at home, her teething one-year-old is up at all hours of the night, and her husband's growing connection to his ex-girlfriend is raising suspicions.

Can Lucia juggle Buckingham Palace visits, private island getaways, and late-night cocktails at secret clubs while keeping her family intact and staying true to herself?

ON SALE AUGUST 12

Marisol Acts the Part by Elle Gonzalez Rose | MIDDLE GRADE

Actress Marisol Polly-Rodriguez might be entering her flop era. After wrapping up a hit show, she’s neither booked nor busy. Not to mention, her former costar turned boyfriend, Miles, recently dumped her for being an “unserious” performer. Can you imagine?

To prove to Miles—and online trolls—that she takes her craft very seriously, Marisol lands a role on the same upcoming drama series he does. But with the eccentric director constantly rewriting her lines and a snobby castmate trying to upstage her, Marisol quickly realizes that her hope of nabbing an award nomination might be a pipe dream.

The only person she doesn’t have to put on a performance for is the show’s leading lady, Jamila. Marisol hasn’t been able to look away from her since their first audition. Falling for Jamila wasn’t part of Marisol’s plan, but even the most dedicated actors go off script sometimes, right?

My Abuela Is a Bruja by Mayra Cuevas | Illustrated by Lorena Alvarez Gómez | PICTURE BOOK

My abuela is a bruja.
There is magic in everything she does.

There is nothing more magical than a grandmother's love. But one lucky girl suspects her grandmother has actual magic. It's in the tun-tun-tun of the way she dances salsa, in the warmth of her hugs, and the delicious smell of her cooking. The granddaughter wonders: will I have magic of my own one day?

Follow the magic in this heartfelt picture book that features extensive backmatter that includes two special recipes from Mayra Cuevas and uplifiting illustrations from Lorena Alvarez Gómez.

The New Lesbian Pulp by Sarah Fonseca & Octavia Saenz | SHORT STORIES
esbian pulp fiction thrived in the oppressive 1950s, telling subversive stories of lonely sapphic women who find connection, passion, and revenge. In The New Lesbian Pulp, editors Sarah Fonseca and Octavia Saenz revive the genre for today, layering nuance into classic tropes while dialing up the melodrama, romantic peril, and collateral damage.

In these pages--which pair revived classics from Lorraine Hansberry and Alice Dunbar Nelson with new stories from Sarah Schulman, Grace Byron, Shamim Sharif, and more--vigilante lesbians gather roadkill for revenge, a woman and her former high school bully hook up and commit murder, Brooklyn witches cruise kink parties for human sacrifice, and a sinister kidnapping goes horribly wrong (or horribly right).

Here, gathered just for you, are some of today's best lesbian pulp stories. Don't be afraid. Pick them up.

Vera La Valiente Is Scared by Ana Siqueira | Illustrated by Teresa Martinez | PICTURE BOOK

Meet Vera the Brave--La Valiente! She dives like a dolphin, climbs like a mountain goat, and defends her amigos like un león. But she trembles when she hears her teacher say, "We're going to Rocking Roller Coasters!" Oh no! Vera tries to convince the teacher her plan is not the best, but Ms. Rodríguez does not change her mind about the field trip. Now if Vera can't face her fears, everyone will discover she's not that brave after all! But what if being brave is much more than she expected?

Vera La Valiente Is Scared redefines what it means to be brave. It's okay to show your feelings and fears! And maybe, with some help, you can even face some of them.

Tia Sofia and the Giant Tortilla by Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz | Illustrated by Carlos Vélez Aguilera | PICTURE BOOK

special magic with the power to be a cape, a placemat, a scarf, a blanket, and even more importantly--a way to bring back the memory of someone special.

Meet Tia Sofia -- the "cool aunt" who creates wild art and loves dancing in her cozy California bungalow. One day, while babysitting her niece and nephew, things get out of control while preparing fresh tortillas in her colorful kitchen.

Distracted by dancing with her niece and nephew in the kitchen, Tía Sofía makes a giant tortilla so big that Luna sees an opportunity for an adventure. Exhausted by a day of laughing, coloring, ghosts, and broomsticks, Luna and Sol finally enjoy lunch with their favorite aunt and her little dog, Tamayo.

This sweet semi-bilingual story includes a seek-and-find of animals commonly found in traditional Mexican folk art and includes a recipe for Tía Sofía's flour tortillas!

On Earth as It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia | Translated by Padma Viswanathan | ADULT FICTION

On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison's waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins. Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face, or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls. Ana Paula Maia has once again delivered a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witness.

The Día de Los Muertos Story: Celebrating the Never-Ending Bonds of Family by Andrea Jáuregui de la Torre | Illustrated by Laura González | PICTURE BOOK

Through detailed stories told by Little Andrea's beloved abuela, The Dia de Los Muertos Story reveals to young readers the origins of Dia de Los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, what it means to Mexican families, and how it has grown and expanded to other parts of the world, specifically north into the United States.

This enchanting picture book follows Little Andrea as she discovers how what began as ceremonies practiced by the ancient Aztecs has evolved into a holiday recognized far beyond the borders of Mexico. As the story unfolds, Little Andrea explores significant moments in history and historical figures that demonstrate the endurance of the holiday through the ages.

The Darién Gap: A Reporter's Journey Through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas by Belén Fernández | NONFICTION

The narrow Darién Gap, the only land bridge connecting South and Central America, encompasses a spectacularly hostile jungle, covered in steep mountains, dense rainforests, and flood-prone marshes. Known in Spanish as el infierno verde, or "the green hell," it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world. Its terrain is too treacherous for roads, yet hundreds of thousands of refuge seekers contend with its horrors every year in the hopes of reaching the United States, still some three thousand miles away. And of the countless who set out for the border, an untold number never arrive.

In this book, journalist Belén Fernández visits the Darién Gap to report on the dehumanizing and deadly stretch of land that has become a mass graveyard for migrants. Fernández's travels bring her into contact with refuge seekers, people smugglers, law enforcement officials, and many more whose stories bring life to a place overwhelmingly associated with death. Combining history, on-the-ground reporting, travelogue, memoir, and searing politico-economic analysis, she shines light on a largely made-in-the-USA crisis that has come to define our modern era.

ON SALE AUGUST 19

From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides: A Latinx Comics Anthology by Frederick Luis Aldama & Angela M Sánchez | NONFICTION

In this comics anthology full of humor and heart, writers and artists from across the US pay tribute to the ways food and sports endure as touchstones in the Latin American diaspora. In the vein of Frederick Luis Aldama's bestselling anthology Tales from la Vida, creators offer slice-of-life comics in an array of styles to capture common threads that bind this dizzyingly diverse community. From a simple quesadilla eaten hot on the way to school, to a Puerto Rican grandmother's offering of guineitos en escabeche, to a homesick Chicano punk's reverse-engineered tamales, food is a gift from elders to children, a marker of continuity and togetherness amid a dominant culture that may dismiss its flavors. Sports, too, provide a path to friendship and connection across national and language barriers, anchoring fans and participants in a sense of identity and place, whether through the perseverance of the Mayan game pok ta' pok, the unifying surge of lucha libre or soccer fandom, or a father and daughter's shared love of horse racing.

The Unlikely Aventuras of Ramón and El Cucuy by Donna Barba Higuera |Illustrated by Juliana Perdomo | CHILDREN’S

It's a monster's ancient duty to inflict unimaginable horrors on misbehaving kids.

But when a young cucuy who's anxious to prove himself is sent to the human world to terrorize his first child, the naughty niño isn't scared by glowing eyes, sharp talons, or even disgusting breath. Instead, he's preoccupied with worries about his first day at a new school. Can the little cucuy prove himself as a fierce boogeyman? As he soon learns from his human, maybe some things are scarier than creatures under the bed . . . and maybe even a monster could use a friend.

Of the Sun: A Poem for the Land's First Peoples by Xelena González | Illustrated by Emily Kewageshig | PICTURE BOOK

Indigenous. Native. On this land, you may roam.
Child of the sun, on this land, you are home.

Of the Sun is an uplifting and mighty poem that wraps the Indigenous children of the Americas in reassuring words filled with hope for a brighter future and reminders of their bond and importance to the land. Each page fills them with pride and awe of their cultural heritage and invites them to unite and inspire change in the world.

Paired with powerful art reflecting cultures of various Indigenous Nations and Tribes, the poem offers all readers a sense of the history and majesty of the land we live on and how we can better care for ourselves and the world when we recognize our connection to the land and to each other.

Wanda Hears the Stars: A Blind Astronomer Listens to the Universe by Amy S. Hansen & Wanda Díaz Merced | Illustrated by Rocio Arreola Mendoza | CHILDREN’S

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Wanda Díaz Merced wanted to learn everything she could about the stars. But in college she started losing her sight. How could she study what she couldn't see?

Wanda found a way. She learned to hear the stars using sonification, which converts data into sounds. Listening to those chimes and drumbeats, she made new discoveries about the universe.

Today Wanda is a leading advocate for inclusive science. She and her friend Amy S. Hansen collaborated on this book to inspire children to follow their curiosity no matter the challenges. As Wanda urges, "Never give up!" 

Popo the Xolo by Paloma Angelina Lopez| Illustrated by Abraham Matias | PICTURE BOOK

Nana is surrounded by family and takes joy in her many grandchildren. She's also tired and feels pain. Soon she begins her transition from life into death, accompanied by her beloved Xolo dog, Popo.

Together they go on Nana’s journey, and by the end of the story, Nana's family celebrates the many years of love they shared with her. And a grandchild will now care for Popo.

An unforgettable picture book that's grounded in the importance of the 9 levels of Mictlān and the role Xolo (show-low) dogs play in Indigenous cultural understandings of present-day Mexico.

Popo the Xolo is available in both English and Spanish language editions.

The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas | HORROR

in 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.  

Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice the growing tension between them every time she enters the room…and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood gets stronger. 

In the fight for her life, Alba and Elías become entangled with the occult, the Church, long-kept secrets, and each other… not knowing that one of these things will spell their doom.

ON SALE AUGUST 26

Perla and the Pirate by Isabel Allende | Illustrated by Sandy Rodríguez | PICTURE BOOK

Perla is a mighty dog who has two superpowers—making people love her and roaring like a lion.

When she finds out her human brother, Nico Rico, got lost on the way home from school, she knows she has to step in! But what will Perla do?

In a charming and poignant story, Isabel Allende continues her series about the bond between a child and a beloved pet.

Hello, Tobi! by Andrea Cáceres | PICTURE BOOK

Every day, Tobi goes for walks with his family. At the park, he likes to say hello to everyone—small families with big dogs, big families with small dogs, tall families with tall dogs, short families with short dogs. There are families who look alike and families where everyone is different; families who are quiet, some who yell or sing loudly, and some who like to play together or create. Even when there are so many people and dogs at the park that Tobi can’t tell which dog belongs to which family, he still loves them all! But there’s always one family he loves the best . . . With welcoming, childlike illustrations and a breezy text, Andrea Cáceres invites us on a walk through the park that celebrates all kinds of families, with an endearing pup whose world is a friendly place indeed. Hello, Tobi!

Leyendas/Legends: 60 Latine People Who Changed the World by Mónica Mancillas | Illustrated by Isadora Zeferino | CHILDREN’S

Discover the stories of sixty inspiring figures—including celebrities and icons like Frida Kahlo, Roberto Clemente, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sonia Sotomayor, Shakira, Walter Mercado, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Jharrel Jerome—in this beautifully illustrated, celebratory collection showcasing the multitude of talent within the Latine community.

Each extraordinary person has a unique story—from artists who have shaped pop culture to athletes who have won championships to activists who have changed laws and so many more—Vand this empowering book shows that anyone can make a difference in the world if they set to their mind to it!

Gabriela and His Grace by Liana De la Rosa | ADULT FICTION

As the youngest and most rebellious daughter of the overly protective Luna family, Gabriela Luna Valdés claws after her freedom in any way she can. This time, her hunger for adventure has led her aboard a windswept ship bearing for her homeland, away from a mob of fumbling British suitors. But Gabby can’t escape her father’s expectation that she settle down to find a proper husband—a compromise she’s unwilling to make.

For Sebastian Brooks, Duke of Whitfield, the trip to Mexico is his last chance. His last chance to rectify his family’s estate and refill their dwindling coffers. And his last chance to match wits with the sharp-tongued but deliciously tempting Gabriela.

When Gabby finds herself in need of a hasty escape, Sebastian agrees to assist her…but their close proximity sparks a red-hot passion that could ruin all their plans. With scandal looming, can Sebastian convince Gabby his regard is sincere or will she sail away with his heart?

Rise Up or Die!: The Struggle Against the Genocide of Black People in Brazil by Andreia Beatriz Silva Dos Santos & Hamilton Borges Dos Santos | Translated by João H Costa Vargas | NONFICTION

Rise Up or Die! describes the origins, main concepts, distinct phases, and visions of the future of one of the most innovative, daring, and militant Black organizations in Brazil. Firmly rooted in that country's long tradition of resistance and rebellion against a nation that depends on the continued hyper-exploitation, dehumanization, abandonment, and social and physical death of Black people, the organization invented what it refers to as "bad manners in Black politics." If bad manners mean a refusal to abide by expectations of decorum, analysis, collective organization—and indeed the Brazilian genocidal model of racial democracy—then Rise Up certainly fits the description. The organization invented a new political vocabulary, led to the formation of an autonomous Black School in Salvador (the Winnie Mandela School), and constantly attracts people from the most marginalized Black spaces of the largest Black nation in the world, second only to Nigeria.

Drawing on a constantly replenished matrix of Black radical traditions, the activists of Rise Up or Die relentlessly pursue invention as the necessary alternative to a social formation that simply hates Black people.

Lost on Doll Island by Cassandra Ramos-Gomez | MIDDLE GRADE

Diego feels trapped. He’s confined in an arm cast, stuck with his tía and tío for a week in Mexico City, and smothered with the sickening fear that he’s the one who really caused his parents’ divorce. But most of all, he’s trapped in his own secret. Because ever since he got to Mexico City, he’s started having strange dreams of a doll calling his name.

Then Diego learns of La Isla de Muñecas, an island full of legendary magic that can make children’s wishes come true. If Diego can harness the power there, maybe he could fix everything that has gone wrong in his life.

So, with the help of two new friends, Diego takes a boat to the legendary island. From the moment the kids step ashore, nothing is as it seems—with dolls disappearing and reappearing in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, Diego is more trapped than ever before, and as the night goes on, he’s not sure he can escape.

Restoration by Ave Barrera | Translated by Ellen Jones & Robin Myers | ADULT FICTION

Propelled by female desire, shaped by the violence of the male gaze, and inspired by the endless vitality of old stories remade anew, Restoration takes on Bluebeard, Salvador Elizondo, Juan Rulfo, Angela Carter, Octavio Paz, Mariana Enriquez, and Amparo Dávila to produce a novel of obsession, reclamation, and romance gone very, very wrong.Jasmina has been hired by her maybe-boyfriend to restore his family home, a grubby, abandoned time capsule where a great artist once lived. As she moves from room to room - scrubbing, scraping, plastering over cracks - the stories inhabiting them awaken, and the lives of the women who came before her begin to overlap with her own. Who is the woman in the photograph? And what secrets linger in that last locked room?Restoration is a ghost story with porous borders, between Jasmina and these forgotten women, between the novel and us. And the questions Barrera asks may be about what's behind our own barred door.

Book Review: Everything She Never Knew by Annette Chavez Macías

Everything She Never Knew by Annette Chavez Macías is about life after betrayal. Readers follow along as Claudia rebuilds herself as infidelity causes her marriage and a childhood friendship to crumble around her. The book motivates you to reflect on the relationship to yourself and others with all too real characters and emotions that pull at your heartstrings.  

Through the dual timeline of the present and the past written in the form of diary entries, readers see that Claudia and Rachel were inseparable childhood best friends. However, the cracks of this friendship are obvious to all, except for Claudia. Why is that? Claudia had gone through many adversities as a child, with an absent mother who frequently ran off with different men and a grandmother who passed away too soon. Rachel had gone through her own respective challenges in life with family, education, and more. These two girls found light in the other and clung on to each other for more than 20 years. At a glance, they were a perfect example of childhood best friends that stuck with each other through anything. With their deep history, these cracks in Claudia’s mind just simply couldn’t exist.   

“[Chavez Macías] doesn’t just write addictive dramas, she writes thought-provoking emotional tales of women finding the love, strength, and support system needed to push through life’s difficulties. ”

In order to fully understand why Claudia couldn’t see the red flags, you have to wonder, “what did this friendship mean to these two women?” first. Claudia always had time and room for love for Rachel. Rachel protected Claudia in a way that no one else was doing. All of these still couldn’t prevent the cracks from forming. In her endless well of love, Claudia lost herself. She was always running to Rachel’s side while disregarding her own wants and needs. Rachel, once a protector, slowly became Claudia’s bully and took advantage of her unwavering love and kindness. In their confrontation, Claudia finally saw through the lies, insults, and betrayal and realized this friendship meant everything to her but was a means to an end for Rachel to get whatever she wanted, no matter the cost. 

Annette Chavez Macías illustrates that sometimes we lose ourselves in our love for other people that we forget to show ourselves that same respect. She doesn’t just write addictive dramas, she writes thought-provoking emotional tales of women finding the love, strength, and support system needed to push through life’s difficulties. What makes her writing remarkable is that readers can relate to and find solace in the perseverance and vulnerabilities of these women. 

Macías also incorporates a plethora of Mexican American history, heritage, identity, and more in her stories and throughout various characters. Each person is attuned to their heritage in different ways, making them relatable to every kind of reader. This cultural enrichment helps the reader feel a deeper connection to the character, which enhances the reading experience of her compelling storytelling. Her well-rounded writing leaves the reader with a positive, long-lasting impression.

---

Annette Chavez Macias writes stories about love, family and following your dreams. She is proud of her Mexican-American heritage, culture and traditions. All of which can be found within the pages of her books. For those readers wanting even more love stories and guaranteed happily ever afters, Annette also writes romance under the pen name Sabrina Sol. A Southern California native, Annette lives just outside Los Angeles with her husband, three children and an English Bulldog named Reina.

Melissa Gonzalez (she/her) loves boba, horror movies, and reading. You can spot her in the fiction, horror/mystery/thriller, and fantasy sections of bookstores. Though she is short, she feels as tall as her TBR pile. You can find Melissa on her book Instagram: @floralchapters

Most Anticipated July 2025 Releases

The selection of newly released books is oh so plentiful this month! Here are our most anticipated picks for July—from a summer romance ala Only Murders in the Building to some amazing translations, well be checking out these titles! Which one will you add to your TBR?

Archive of Unknown Universes by Ruben Reyes Jr. | ADULT FICTION

Cambridge, 2018. Ana and Luis’s relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including their mothers who both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers, and against her best judgement, Ana uses The Defractor, an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know, eager to learn if what might have been could fix what is.

Havana, 1978. The Salvadoran war is brewing, and Neto, a young revolutionary with a knack for forging government papers, meets Rafael at a meeting for the People's Revolutionary Army. The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. When their work separates them, they begin to exchange weekly letters, but soon, as the devastating war rages on, forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart forever.

Ruben Reyes Jr.’s debut novel is an epic, genre-bending journey through inverted worlds—one where war ends with a peace treaty, and one where it ends with a decisive victory by the Salvadoran government. What unfolds is a stunning story of displacement and belonging, of loss and love. It’s both a daring imagining of what might have been and a powerful reckoning of our past.

Putafeminista: A Manifesto of Sex Worker Feminism by Monique Prada | Translated by Amanda de Lisio | NONFICTION

As long as feminism has existed as a movement in Brazil, sex workers have taken to the streets in solidarity--despite the fact that mainstream feminist discourse positions sex work, and the "putas" who enact it, as detrimental to women's rights. In Putafeminista, activist and sex worker Monique Prada calls for feminists to retire this hypocrisy and embrace putafeminism: a working class women's movement that rejects whorephobia and its classist, colonial dimensions.

Drawing on her firsthand experiences with sex work and movement building, Prada argues for the validity of sex work as feminist labor and tracks the innovations introduced by Brazilian sex workers to feminist internet discourse, street actions, and governmental advocacy. For readers seeking the glimmers of tomorrow's feminism, Prada places that future with putafeminists, naming the brothel a "final frontier" for all women to gather, reform, and revolt.

A Father Is Born by Andrés Neuman | Translated by Robin Myers | ADULT FICTION

"I am delighted that we are together, my son, becoming what we will both be."

A man awaits his son's birth. Captivated, he follows the mother's pregnancy, imagining the child that will transform his house, his language, his relationship, and his family history. For a year, he annotates the memorable first steps leading the three of them into these new existential situations: being a father, a mother, a son; three different characters in a universal story, told in newly born words. A situation further complicated when the child begins speaking and articulating his world.

A Father Is Born is a lyrical tale that resonates both on intimate and collective levels. Its understanding of fatherhood faces masculinity with the miracle of life and its incessant rereading of the present. In a time that redefines traditionally attributed roles, A Father Is Born accepts Anne Waldman's invitation: "Tell the man to give up tumult for the while / To wonder at the sight of baby's beauty." But it is also, and above all, a love statement.

My Train Leaves at Three by Natalie Guerrero | ADULT FICTION

After her sister Nena’s sudden death, Xiomara, an Afro-Latina singer and actress born and raised in Washington Heights, is numb. With her sister gone, Xiomara, painfully close to thirty, is living in a tiny apartment with her ultra-Catholic Puerto Rican mother, and having the same shitty sex with the same shitty men that she’s been entertaining for years. Behind on rent despite two minimum-wage jobs, one of which involves singing show tunes while serving pancakes to tourists at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, Xiomara is bitingly cynical, especially in her grief, and barely treading water.

But when a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity falls into her lap—the chance to audition for Manny Santos, the most charismatic director of the moment—Xiomara sees a second chance to pursue the dream she thought she’d lost. Meanwhile, something about Santi, a new co-worker at the print shop where she spends half of her days photocopying other performers’ headshots, starts to tug at the threads of her apathy. Nothing is simple, and soon Xiomara finds herself interacting with the ugliest sides of the industry and the powerful men who control it. Sometimes the closer you are to your dreams, the further away you become from yourself, and as Xiomara grapples with this hard truth, she is forced to ask herself if she has what it takes to build a new shiny life without losing the truth of her old one.

With hopeful spirit and unapologetic energy, My Train Leaves at Three is a coming-of-age story about the balancing act between moving on and moving forward.

Only Lovers in the Building by Nadine Gonzalez | ADULT FICTION

After her legal career comes to a sudden and humiliating end, Liliane Lyon books a restorative summer rental at The Icon, a quintessential Art Deco building in Miami Beach, where her only plan is to bask in the sun, read, and sip cocktails. But soon she's enchanted by the colorful community, including university professor Benedicto Romero--resident tortured poet, whose sole intention for sabbatical is to indulge in brooding introspection.

When they discover a shared passion for romance novels, Lily and Ben are soon spending hours reading together by the pool, the spark between them unwittingly giving the other residents the impression that they're experts in matters of the heart...no matter that IRL their disastrous love lives bear little resemblance to the stories they're reading.

But while Ben and Lily can pinpoint a trope a mile away and give excellent advice to others, they can't make sense of the sizzling chemistry between them, and the suggestion of a professional podcast suddenly forces them to consider the long-term. So what if it means working even closer together! So what if their banter makes Lily's head spin! It's the summer of taking chances, but a word to the wise: Miami isn't the place for growth and rebirth. It's the place to get messy.

The Tilting House by Ivonne Lamazares | ADULT FICTION

In the summer of 1993, Yuri, a teenage orphan, is living with her strict, religious aunt Ruth in a Havana suburb when Mariela, a thirty-four-year-old artist, arrives from the United States with a shocking revelation. She claims to be Yuri's sister, insisting that she and Yuri share a mother, and that Ruth essentially kidnapped her when she sent her into exile against her will through Operation Pedro Pan. Forced to grow up in orphanages, Mariela spent the past three decades in the United States and has returned to Cuba to reclaim her roots, make art, and perhaps seek vengeance on Ruth. Yuri is both fascinated and repulsed by the young, glamorous, and aggrieved Mariela. When Ruth is jailed for unknown charges, Yuri falls further into Mariela’s mercurial orbit.

Spanning two countries and three decades, The Tilting House explores identity and family loyalty, the effects of losing one’s mother and motherland, the scars of political and historical upheaval, and an immigrant’s complex quest both to return “home” and to be free from the past. Through her long journey, Yuri comes to understand that the past cannot be fully recovered, or fully escaped, even as she approaches the possibility of compassion for Mariela, for Ruth, for others, and for herself.

The Dance and the Fire by Daniel Saldaña París | Translated by Christina MacSweeney | ADULT FICTION

After years apart, three high school friends return to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where an intense love triangle once left an indelible mark on their adolescence. The city, surrounded by a ring of claustrophobic wildfires, brings out the past and confronts them with their present: they must once again face the entanglement of friendship and desire, the seemingly distant discovery of sexuality, complex parental relationships, and the daunting task of artistic fulfillment. 

In the background, two forces of chaos and destruction are a constant presence. As fires ravage the physical landscape, one of the friends begins choreographing an ecstatic dance inspired by the German expressionist Mary Wigman and medieval Danse Macabre. What starts as a coping mechanism for the anxieties of youth and climate catastrophe becomes an overpowering, all-consuming hysteria. Mysterious powers are awakened, the boundary between reality and myth begins to blur, and the friends find themselves immersed in an increasingly turbulent and uncertain universe.