The Man with No Borders


Richard C. Morais - 2019
    Nearing the end of a long and tumultuous life, he’s overcome by hallucinatory memories of the past. Among his most cherished memories are those of his boyhood in 1950s Franco-era Spain and the bucolic afternoons he spent salmon fishing on the Sella River with his father, uncle, and much-loved younger brother. But these fond reveries are soon eclipsed by something greater. José’s regrets and dark family secrets are flooding back, as is the devastating tragedy that drove José into exile and makes him bear the burden of a soul-deep guilt.Now, as his three estranged sons return to their father’s side, José hopes to outpace death long enough to finally put his house in order and exorcise its demons. Only in his quest for redemption can José begin to understand the meaning of his life—and what his legacy has meant to others.

Thirty-One Bones


Morgan Cry - 2020
    But Daniella has been estranged from her mother for over twenty years, and Effie’s life in Spain harbours many secrets . Daniella is soon confronted by a hostile group of ex-pat misfits who frequent the bar and who, along with Effie, are involved in a multi-million-pound property scam. But the money has vanished, and the ex-pats are threatening to implicate Daniella to save themselves.Meanwhile, a Spanish detective is investigating Effie’s death. He’s convinced Daniella knows more than she is telling. And now a terrifying enforcer has heard about the missing cash. With no idea where the money is and threats coming from all sides, Daniella is up against a seemingly impossible deadline to find the cash. She’s a stranger in a strange town – and she’s seriously out of her depth.

Ordinary Magic: Promises I Kept to My Mother Through Life, Illness, and a Very Long Walk on the Camino de Santiago


Cameron Powell - 2018
    An unbreakable bond. And one unforgettable journey. ”An epic love letter . . . Stunning, unique, unlike anything I've read before.” -- Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir Cameron Powell has always struggled with goodbyes. On the day his marriage ends, he finds out his mother's cancer has returned-and this time there may be no escape. Faced with the prospect of more chemo and surgery, his German-born mother, Inge, vows to conquer a 500-mile trek across Spain, and Cameron pushes aside his fears to walk by her side. Joined by a misfit band of adventurers - a politically incorrect Spaniard, a theatrical Frenchwoman, a teenager who's never been far from home - Cameron and Inge write a fierce and funny travelogue about the rocky heights and hidden valleys of the Camino de Santiago. As a Camino memoir in the tradition of James Hitt or Bill Bryson, Ordinary Magic delivers. But the hardest stretch comes three years later, when Inge's health declines -- and Cameron, ready or not, must accept the challenge to remain as present to his mother as he can. As their journey shrinks to the room around a hospice bed, Cameron begins to record, in their blog, his real-time impressions of life's most difficult voyage. What he created is one of literature's great love letters and a uniquely unflinching insight into how we all truly can create love and meaning in our lives, even amidst the fear and sadness we’ll all face from time to time. “Powerful, inspiring —and, amazingly, almost impossible to put down.” - Mary Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller Propelled by the searing immediacy of Cameron’s own fear and sadness, this deeply-felt memoir opens up new insight into what it means to be a man, and takes us - with wisdom, humor, and an overflowing tenderness - into one of the most challenging journeys true friends can ever take. If you like candid mother-son relationships (Inge’s last recorded words: “God I’m going to a hotel!”), humorous tales from the trail, and in-the-moment insights on living a life of resilience and purpose, then you'll love Cameron Powell's luminous, inspirational true story about pilgrimage, presence, and letting go. Ordinary Magic is the love story, the lifelong inspiration, the soulful laugh and cry you need in your life right now. Pick up your copy today by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of this page! Then join our community celebrating the ordinary magic of love and resilience, and wake up your love for yourself and others. Studded with gems of spirited observation and wit. Is this black humor? If so, it’s of the most fond and loving sort, and Inge, Powell’s mother, emerges as an indelible heroine. Powell is a writer to watch. -- Mary Dearborn, Hemingway: A Biography AUTHOR INTERVIEW How did the story begin? Mom and I blogged while on the Camino de Santiago. Readers loved the travel writing, and said our journey was inspiring and hilarious. But when the Camino ended, I stopped blogging. What made you start again? Well, I had to write. I’d just realized, and was trying to accept, what I most feared: that my mother was going to die soon. My decision to share my path with others, on the blog, was one of the best I’ve ever made. The love was overwhelming, a light in my darkness. What surprised you most about readers’ reactions? People they saw the humor in it all.

The Light of the Fireflies


Paul Pen - 2013
    Before he was born, his family was disfigured by a fire. His sister wears a white mask to cover her burns.He spends his hours with his cactus, reading his book on insects, or touching the one ray of sunlight that filters in through a crack in the ceiling. Ever since his sister had a baby, everyone’s been acting very strangely. The boy begins to wonder why they never say who the father is, about what happened before his own birth, about why they’re shut away.A few days ago, some fireflies arrived in the basement. His grandma said, There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light. That light makes the boy want to escape, to know the outside world. Problem is, all the doors are locked. And he doesn’t know how to get out.…

Into a Desert Place: A 3000-Mile Walk Around the Coast of Baja California


Graham Mackintosh - 1988
    Into a Desert Place is his account of how he equipped himself, what he saw and learned, and how he survived on this harsh and beautiful journey. The book was first published in England and then by Mackintosh himself in the United States; this is its first appearance in paperback.

Mapmaker's Opera


Bea González - 2005
    Inspired by the magnificent images in John James Audubon's Birds of America, Diego Clemente dreams of journeying to the New World to see such creatures for himself and gets his chance when his joins American naturalist Edward Nelson to create a guide to the birds of the Yucatan, in a turbulent Mexico on the eve of revolution.

Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain


Michele Morano - 2007
    Living and traveling in Spain during a year of teaching English to university students, she learned to translate and interpret her past and present worlds—to study the surprising moments of communication—as a way to make sense of language and meaning, longing and memory.    Morano focuses first on her year of living in Oviedo, in the early 1990s, a time spent immersing herself in a new culture and language while working through the relationship she had left behind with an emotionally dependent and suicidal man. Next, after subsequent trips to Spain, she explores the ways that travel sparks us to reconsider our personal histories in the context of larger historical legacies. Finally, she turns to the aftereffects of travel, to the constant negotiations involved in retelling and understanding the stories of our lives. Throughout she details one woman’s journey through vocabulary and verb tense toward a greater sense of her place in the world.    Grammar Lessons illustrates the difficulty and delight, humor and humility of living in a new language and of carrying that pivotal experience forward. Michele Morano’s beautifully constructed essays reveal the many grammars and many voices that we collect, and learn from, as we travel.

The Spirit of Christmas


Cecil Murphey - 2011
    But sometimes, through God's grace or a simple twist of fate, we're able to step back and understand what the holiday is truly about.The Spirit of Christmas is an inspiring collection of true stories from real-life people who have experienced such moments where the meaning of the season becomes clear and touches their hearts. A man mailing gifts at the post office witnesses a moving scene that changes his life forever. An unhappy couple are drifting further apart…until a special Christmas gift allows them to renew their love and mend their fractured marriage. And a father tries to keep the spirit of Christmas alive for his son with a grand gesture--a gesture that will be remembered by his family and many others for years to come.Filled with magic, wonder and deep meaning, it's impossible for these stories not to touch your heart—and fill you with The Spirit of Christmas.

The Maze of Cadiz


Aly Monroe - 2008
    Sent to Spain to arrest a rogue spy, British agent Peter Cotton expects an easy first assignment. But he arrives to find his quarry dead and all of Cadiz awaiting his arrival. In a hotbed of scandal and murder, Cotton must navigate through a labyrinth of international conspiracies, shifting political allegiances and a mysterious local expatriate community to discover the truth. What he unearths could just tilt the emerging balance of post-war power and the course of history for ever.

Fallen / Torment


Lauren Kate - 2010
    Except she can't shake the feeling that she has . . . and with him - a boy she doesn't remember ever setting eyes on. Will her attempt to find out why enlighten her - or destroy her?And in the incredible sequel, Torment, after finally finding each other, Luce and Daniel are forced apart again at the hands of the Outcasts - immortals who want Luce dead. During her separation from her beloved angel, Luce learns more about her mysterious past lives. But the more she discovers, the more she suspects Daniel is hiding something . . .

La fábrica del terror


Ana María Shua - 1998
    Readers will find zombies, werewolves, snakes and black magic, tombs and ghosts.

Spain: The Root and the Flower: An Interpretation of Spain and the Spanish People


John Armstrong Crow - 1975
    Crow's classic study of the cultural history of Spain and its people, which he last updated in 1985 but which seems as fresh and pertinent as when he first wrote it. Crow devoted a lifetime to Hispanic studies and here provides a historical interpretation of Spanish civilization from its earliest beginnings to the present. The scope of this study is remarkable and includes chapters on Roman Spain, the Jews in Spain, the Moors, life in medieval towns, and the Golden Age of Spain, plus a view of Franco's legacy.

The Muse


Jessie Burton - 2016
    . .On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastien climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, knowing that her life is about to change forever. Having struggled to find her place in the city since she arrived from Trinidad five years ago, she has been offered a job as a typist under the tutelage of the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick. But though Quick takes Odelle into her confidence, and unlocks a potential she didn't know she had, she remains a mystery - no more so than when a lost masterpiece with a secret history is delivered to the gallery.The truth about the painting lies in 1936 and a large house in rural Spain, where Olive Schloss, the daughter of a renowned art dealer, is harbouring ambitions of her own. Into this fragile paradise come artist and revolutionary Isaac Robles and his half-sister Teresa, who immediately insinuate themselves into the Schloss family, with explosive and devastating consequences . . .

By Light of Hidden Candles


Daniella Levy - 2017
     Five hundred years later, Alma Ben-Ami journeys to Madrid to fulfill her ancestor’s final wish. She has recruited an unlikely research partner: Manuel Aguilar, a young Catholic Spaniard whose beloved priest always warned him about getting too friendly with Jews. As their quest takes them from Greenwich Village to the windswept mountain fortresses of southern Spain, their friendship deepens and threatens to cross boundaries sacred to them both; and what they finally discover in the Spanish archives will force them to confront the truth about who they are and what their faiths mean to them. At times humorous, at times deeply moving, this beautifully written and meticulously researched book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of Inquisition-era Spain, Sephardic Jews, or falling in love. "Engaging characters, a 500-year-old family mystery, and romance — what more could a reader want? I had a hard time putting it down!" — Maggie Anton, award-winning author of the Rashi’s Daughters trilogy “A well-researched and engaging debut — By Light of Hidden Candles is an enchanting read!” — Barbara Stark-Nemon, author of multiple-award-winner Even in Darkness

The History of Sugar


Kelley Deetz - 2021
    Have it powdered or granulated, by the teaspoon or cube, dark brown or light brown, refined or raw. Taste it in a thick slice of birthday cake, a palmful of chocolate candies, or a snifter of dark rum. Whatever the form, whatever the treat - sugar drives us wild like nothing else. It’s lingered on our tongues for millennia and found its way into almost every household in the world. Alas, the history of sugar is far from sweet. Long before it was linked to America’s obesity epidemic, sugar was fueling the dark forces of exploitation, colonization, conquest, and slavery. More than just candy and cake, sugar has drastically altered the diets, cultures, and economies of the modern world. How can we love sugar while having a healthy relationship with its bittersweet history? From the earliest cultivation of sugarcane in Asia, to the brutal conditions on colonial sugar plantations, to the multibillion-dollar industry that dominates our grocery aisles today, The History of Sugar offers you a host of surprising insights into human nature. As historian Kelley Fanto Deetz reveals in her fascinating Audible Original, our relationship to this commodity showcases its incredible capacity to lure, to addict, to transform humans to bow to its sweetness at almost all costs - and still bring us together in moments of undeniably delicious joy and celebration.