THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

      There are endless jokes about mother-in-laws.   Some kind, some not so kind.   Unfortunately, many are well deserved.   In her memoir, SHE'S NOT MY MOTHER SHE'S MY HUSBAND'S MOTHER, author Rebecca Miller Pringle exposes her hostile relationship with her husband's mother in the hopes that her story will help other daughters-in-law. Miller Pringle is a Latina with two sons, who falls in love with a 37-year-old white man, divorced with two daughters of his own.     Unfortunately, their life together is marred by a prejudice and antagonistic mother-in-law, who does everything in her power to break them up -- telling lies about her to family and friends; not inviting her to family functions; forgetting her birthday but remembering the ex's; refusing to go to family counseling; and more cruelly, trying to separate a father and his daughters. In her book, Miller Pringle has come up with 15 rules --or warnings -- to watch out for.   She shares examples fro

The Latina Book Club congratulates author Mary Castillo on her new book released this week.  LOST IN THE LIGHT is an emotional, thrilling paranormal mystery which readers will enjoy wholeheartedly.    BOOK SUMMARY:   One October morning in 1932, Vicente Sorolla entered the white house on the hill and was never seen again.  Now, Detective Dori Orihuela helplessly witnesses his brutal murder in her nightmares. Settling into a 120 year-old Edwardian mansion, Dori restores her dream home while recovering from a bullet wound and waiting to go back on duty. But then one afternoon, Vicente materializes out of her butler's pantry and asks her to find a woman named Anna. Dori wonders if she's not only about to lose her badge, but also her sanity. Dori and Vicente's unlikely friendship takes us back to the waning days of Prohibition in San Diego and the dusty barrio of National City. Mary Castillo's new novel, featuring the wild Orihuela family that first delighted

     “The moral of the Tampa story is this: if good citizens of a community shut their eyes to wholesale violation of a law – even if it is a law prohibiting something that a lot of people happen to like – law enforcement and honesty in public office will go to hell in a handcart. It happened in Tampa. It can happen anywhere.” --Estes Kefaurver When we think of Florida, we think of Disneyland, white-sand beaches, gentle breezes, great nightlife, Cuban food. If we think about a “wild” place in Florida, we immediately think about Miami. But it is Tampa that “has always been equal to Dodge City, Laredo, Deadwood and all those dusty cow towns of the Old West.” Tampa, the cigar capital of the world, one of the nation’s “best cities,” is the city with the troubled past. Paul Guzzo has put together an exciting collection of stories on some of Tampa’s most colorful and darkest characters, including Robert Anderson aka The Killer, one of the nation’s first serial killers; Charlie W

   The Latina Book Club congratulates Sabrina on the October 15 release of her book, INK. It’s a scary book because this  could happen. Think Holocaust. Fans of AMERICA LIBRE will enjoy this apocalyptic book. INK by Sabrina Vourvoulias Crossed Genres Available in paper and e-book What happens when rhetoric about immigrants escalates to an institutionalized population control system? The near-future, dark speculative novel INK opens as a biometric tattoo is approved for use to mark temporary workers, permanent residents and citizens with recent immigration history – collectively known as inks. Set in a fictional city and small, rural town in the U.S. during a 10-year span, the novel is told in four voices: a journalist; an ink who works in a local population control office; an artist strongly tied to a specific piece of land; and a teenager whose mother runs an inkatorium (a sanitarium-internment center opened in response to public health concerns about inks). T

   NOTE :    Saturday, October 13 :  Meet Sandra at the Latino Book and Family Festival at the California State University/Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles.   She will be moderating the Historical Fiction/Nonfiction panel, and will be on a panel on What Latinas Want to Read. Admission is free.          "This story of love, mysticism and betrayal tests the ultimate boundaries of sisterhood.  I loved this brave, lushly written tale of life in old Santa Fe." ---Jill Smolinski, author of Objects of My Affection and The Next Thing on My List Arranged marriages A runaway bride Sisters Adultery Witchcraft A Woman doctor Secrets THE SANDOVAL SISTERS Survival themes are one of my interests, especially if the protagonist is female: woman vs. nature, woman vs. the establishment (tradition), woman vs. woman, and woman vs. herself.  I also like settings wherein the protagonist is challenged to be creative, flexible, to change coping strategi

     “You can’t tell a man’s story unless you are for sure about the facts.”   –Uncle Neto Anaphora Literary Press So begins this stark and poignant collection of intertwined short stories about the Ortiz family. At the center of these tales is Manito, who is trying to piece together the tattered bits of his father’s life. Unfortunately for Manito, his main source of information is his unreliable drunkard Uncle Neto, whose memories are full despair, hunger, resignation, and defeat. Neto and his brother Relles grew up in Southern Colorado on Spruce Street, best described as “a nest of cabrones,” where husbands are unfaithful and the girls wear a tough beauty; where wives make it all the way to the Greyhound terminal but never get on the bus to freedom; where boys grow up too fast in order to put food on the table; where the army doesn’t always make you a better man; where poverty and unemployment corrode family values. Each story in Jaramillo’s collection stands alone,

“The half-life of love is forever” Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Díaz turns his remarkable talent to the haunting, impossible power of love – obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. At the heart of this collection of short stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own. Read it, and let us know what you think about the book, about Yunior, about love, about a happy ending.