Adult Books for Hispanic Heritage Month 2025

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Bolaño, Roberto

An American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student interact in an urban community on the U.S.-Mexico border where hundreds of young factory workers have disappeared.

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Daria, Alexis

After Ava Rodriguez's now-ex-husband declares he wants to "follow his dreams"--which no longer include her--she's left questioning everything she thought she wanted. So when a handsome hotelier flirts with her, Ava vows to stop overthinking and embrace the opportunity for an epic one-night-stand. Roman Vasquez...lives and dies by his schedule, but the gorgeous stranger grimacing into her cocktail inspires him to change his plans for the evening. At first, it's easy for Roman.... But one night isn't enough, and the more they meet, the more he wants.

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Hernández, Kelly Lytle

Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas' story integral to modern American life.

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Moreno-Garcia, Silvia

"Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches." That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva--stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that's why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay's most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story...

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Anaya, Rudolfo A.

Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic, comes to Antonio Marez's New Mexico family when he is six years old, and she helps him discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past.

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Reyes, Sonora

Alejandro (Han for short) has never been in love....Now, though, he's coming to learn that it might have more to do with his fear of looking too deeply inward, whether that be his sexuality (he's straight, right?), or the looming anxiety about being undocumented in an increasingly hostile environment.... Kenny can't stand being alone, and has always been afraid of being punished for making the wrong choice, so his girlfriend happily makes most of his decisions for him. But when she forces his hand and makes him choose between their relationship and his best friend, he finally knows without a doubt who the correct choice is.

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Gonzalez James, Elizabeth

A family saga that’s epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author’s own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.

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Cisneros, Sandra.

Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she starts telling the Awful Grandmother's life story, seeking clues to how she got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating. Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwind exploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished rebozo, or shawl, that has been passed down through generations of Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love. 

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Urrea, Luis Alberto.

An account of "twenty-six men who in May 2001 attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadly region known as the Devil's Highway ... Only twelve of the men made it out."

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Kahlo, Frida.

Published here in its entirety for the first time, Frida Kahlo's amazing illustrated journal documents the last ten years of her turbulent life. This passionate, often surprising, intimate record, kept under lock and key for some forty years in Mexico, reveals many new dimensions in the complex persona of this remarkable Mexican artist.

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Cruz, Angie

Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work. Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. 

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Urrea, Luis Alberto.

When sixteen-year-old Teresita, the illegitimate daughter of a late-nineteenth-century rancher, arises from death possessing the power to heal, she is declared a saint and finds her faith tested by the impending Mexican civil war.

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Limón, Ada, author.

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness-between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves-from National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist Ada Limón.

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Machado, Carmen Maria

The author's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.

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Urrea, Luis Alberto.

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the United States to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village--they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men--her own "Siete Magníficos"--to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.

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Terán, Víctor and Shook, David (eds.)

Like a New Sun showcases the vibrant contemporary poetry being written in indigenous Mexican languages. Featuring poets writing in Huasteca Nahuatl (Juan Hernández Ramírez), Isthmus Zapotec (Víctor Terán), Mazatec (Juan Gregorio Regino), Tsotsil (Enriqueta Lunez), Yucatec Maya (Briceida Cuevas Cob), and Zoque (Mikeas Sánchez), this ground-breaking anthology introduces readers to six of the most dynamic indigenous Mexican poets writing today.

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Rivera Garza, Cristina

In the early hours of July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend. A life full of promise and hope, cut tragically short, Liliana's story instead became subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of domestic violence.... A memoir decades in the making, Liliana's Invincible Summer tells a singular yet universally resonant story: that of a spirited, wondrously romantic young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence.

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Luiselli, Valeria

Told through the voices of the mother and her son, as well as through a stunning tapestry of collected texts and images--including prior stories of migration and displacement--Lost Children Archive is a story of how we document our experiences, and how we remember the things that matter to us the most. Blending the personal and the political with astonishing empathy, it is a powerful, wholly original work of fiction: exquisite, provocative, and deeply moving.

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Alarcón, Daniel

Imparting comfort while reading the names of missing people to her war-ravaged listeners, radio host Norma finds her life irrevocably changed when a young boy from a remote jungle village provides a connection to her long-missing husband.

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Giménez Smith, Carmen

Giménez Smith’s poetic arsenal includes rapier-sharp wordplay mixed with humor, at times self-deprecating, at others an ironic comment on the postmodern world, all interwoven with imaginative language of unexpected force and surreal beauty. Revealing a long view of gender issues and civil rights, the author presents a clever, comic perspective. Her poems take the reader to unusual places as she uses rhythm, images, and emotion to reveal the narrator’s personality. Deftly blending a variety of tones and styles, Giménez Smith’s poems offer a daring and evocative look at deep cultural issues.

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Otero, Sole

In this moving family saga, a teenage woman uncovers the hushed history of sexual violence that shattered her grandmother's life....Tender, heartrending, and leavened with biting humor, Mothballs is at once a moving family saga and a poignant reflection on the need to hold fast to one's identity, despite how painful it can be.

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Tobar, Héctor

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer [explores] the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.

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Rulfo, Juan.

As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

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Cañas, Isabel

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.

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Olivarez, José

A groundbreaking collection of poems addressing how every kind of love-self, brotherly, romantic, familial, cultural-is birthed, shaped, and complicated by the invisible forces of gender, capitalism, religion, migration, and so on. Written in English and combined with a Spanish translation by poet David Ruano, Promises of Gold explores many forms of love and how "a promise made isn't always a promise kept," as Olivarez grapples with the contradictions of the American Dream laying bare the ways in which "love is complicated by forces larger than our hearts."

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Caña, Natalie

Natalie Caña turns up the heat, humor and heart in this debut rom-com about a Puerto Rican chef and an Irish American whiskey distiller forced into a fake engagement by their scheming octogenarian grandfathers.
 

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Enriquez, Mariana

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, Enriquez's latest collection showcases her unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and show why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her, "the most exciting discovery I've made in fiction for some time."

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Pérez Granell, Laura

Like a vivid dream, this story is rendered through eerie settings and potent symbols, a spiritual puzzle inviting the reader to piece together. With Totem, this self-assured graphic novel by Spanish illustrator and comics artist Laura Pérez is presented in English for the first time. Pérez presents an entrancing, contemporary vision of magic and mystery, aptly rendered through her wispy, atmospheric pencil lines.

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Cañas, Isabel

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead. Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago. Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.
 

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Ospina, Maria

In six subtly connected stories, Variations on the Body explores the obsessions, desires, and idiosyncrasies of women and girls from different strata of Colombian society....Combining humor, heartbreak, and unexpected violence, Ospina constructs a keen reflection on the body as a simultaneous vehicle of connection and alienation in vibrant, gleaming prose.

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Vasquez Gilliland, Raquel

Sage Flores has an affinity for plants, but it wasn't enough to save her younger sister Sky's life. She ran from the tragedy, only to return to her hometown eight years later....Sage... uses her ability to communicate with plants to discover unusual heritage specimens in the surrounding lands. What should be a simple task is complicated by her partner in botany sleuthing: Tennessee Reyes.... Working together is reminding her of all their past tender, genuine moments--and new feelings for this mature sexy man are starting to take root in her heart.

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Fajardo-Anstine, Kali

Merging two multi-generational storylines in Colorado, this is a novel of family love, secrets, and survival. With Fajardo-Anstine's immense capacity to render characters and paint vivid life, set against the Sange de Cristo Mountains, Woman of Light is full of the weight, richness, and complexities of mixed blood and mica clay. It delights like an Old Western, and inspires the hope embedded in histories yet-told.

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Enrigue, Alvaro

You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.

Summaries provided by DPL's catalog unless otherwise noted. Click on each title to view more information.