Mirta Ojito is an award-winning journalist who was awarded a Pulitzer in 2000 for her contribution to a series on race in America. In this work of historical fiction, Ojito weaves a multigenerational story about the enduring power of a mother’s love. Told in two timelines—1919 Spain and 2019 Cuba—a journalist sets out to cover a shipwreck disaster and unearths a sweeping tale that spans six generations of her family’s history.

I was trying to describe this book to someone and came up with a very profound, “This book does a lot of things in a lot of ways.” I wasn’t exactly wrong, though. Told through the voices of several characters in several different narrative styles, False War paints “extraordinary portraits of ordinary people” who’ve been displaced from their home countries. Journeying everywhere from Miami and Mexico City to Havana, New York, and Berlin, we follow these characters as they navigate this estrangement.

This is prolific Peruvian author Karina Pacheco Medrano’s first novel to be translated into English, a work of historical fiction that explores the devastating effects of war and political violence on the lives of three women in Peru. A chance run-in with someone who looks just like her cousin sends one woman on a journey to confront the terrors of her past, including her cousin’s radicalization at the hands of a Maoist terrorist group. That group, known as Shining Path, was responsible for a blood-soaked period of political violence in the ’80s that resulted in the death or disappearance of tens of thousands of indigenous Peruvians; this story is a fictional account of this violent and tumultuous period. 

Maya’s dad is the kind of guy who prides himself on forcing his kids to “go out and make it on their own,” which is how Maya ends up kicked out of his New York City home after high school graduation. With her mom all the way in Guatemala and no other place to stay, she crashes with friends while trying to stay afloat with freelance gigs. Then she finds out dear ol’ dad is backing the political campaign of a hateful anti-immigrant candidate for governor, and Maya decides it’s time to take a stand. She will have to use the voice she’s newly found in a shared workspace, one offering more than just a place to write.

This is the second or third book I’ve seen in the last year set against the backdrop of Carnaval, but the first I’ve seen that takes place in Ecuador. Our narrator is Ainhoa, a young girl from an Afro-descendant community who lives in her grandmother’s house surrounded by her tias in the 1990s. She narrates the events of her life as they unfold over Carnaval season, both the light (the music and dance that fill her days) and the dark (a history of familial violence). Told through Ainhoa’s innocent eyes, this story explores themes of migration, economic hardship, and other issues relevant to Ecuador’s recent history. 

I saw this cover and thought, “Ooh, that looks a lot like Fresh Banana Leaves.” That’s because it’s by the same author! Jessica Hernandez, PhD is a Binnizá and Maya Ch’orti’ scientist who argues that while not every environmental problem is a result of climate change, every environmental and climate change problem is a result of colonialism. She blends personal family stories with environmental science and a wealth of Indigenous knowledge to explore the causes behind the climate crisis.

Zora Lyon isn’t just a gamer, she’s the gamer, ​​a prodigy of Wizzard Game’s viral battle royale. So when Wizzard offers their top players a shot to attend a summer academy and play for a national championship, Zora knows she was made for this moment. The thing is… what Wizzard really wants is to make viral streaming superstars out of these players, and streaming is not Zora’s area of expertise. When her lack of experience here lands her at the bottom of the class, she’ll do anything to get back on top—even if that means pretending to date the guy she kinda, sorta screwed over to get a spot in the academy in the first place. If you like gaming and fake dating, give this YA romance a try.

Ana is a college professor teaching remote classes from her tiny apartment during lockdown. Her lover has died from COVID, leaving a whole bunch of insects, a giant bat, and an apparently overhearing pangolin to take care of in her wake. As Ana slowly loses her grip on reality, she begins working on a syllabus on the commodfication of art and life, with plans to use her own body to answer questions about labor and intimacy. I’m not sure whether the unlikely pangolin romance teased in the description goes into Shape of Water territory or not, but this book promises to get weird. 

Jazmina Barrera apparently didn’t set out to write this book. She intended to write a short essay about Elena Garro, the influential Mexican novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter, and OG of the magical realism movement. But the more she researched Garro via traditional methods, the less she felt like she understood her subject. Barrera embarked on a journey to truly see the author in all of her complexity, and the result is this book. It’s billed as more than a biography, as an alternate history of Mexico City and an “homage to the unknowable.”

Remember thirty seconds ago when I told you who Elena Garro was? Well looky here, it’s a book she wrote! Available in English for the first time, these stories of feminist horror and anticolonial specualtive fiction were forged in the fires of the early magical realism movement. It’s no surprise (and such a perfect fit) that they were translated by the wonderfully talented Megan McDowell, whom we have to thank for translations of Samantha Schweblin and Mariana Enriquez’s books. If you’re a fan of these mavens of Latin American horror, spend some time with the work of the “cursed mother of magical realism” who paved the way for them to do their thing.

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the award-winning author and playwright who wrote the book for the musical and screenplay for In the Heights! Her latest is a slim little epistolary novel of a mother writing a letter to her daughter. April Soto had a whole future ahead of her when she got pregnant in high school, raising her daughter Noelle in a small apartment in Philly with her mother and grandmother. When Noelle is in elementary school, April has a very bad day that just sort of keeps spiraling; suddenly the white hot takes over, a voice in her head that tells her to just…walk away. That’s exactly what she does: before she even realizes what she’s doing or where she’s going, she hops on a bus on a one-way ticket. What begins as a ten day journey turns into many years spent reflecting in the wilderness, and writing a letter for Noelle to read on her 18th birthday.

I am officially An Old and did not know until just now what Tomorrowland is; I’m apparently too deep in my señora era to be hip to a giant, larger-than-life fantasy-themed music festival. Maybe you already knew that, but did you know that the creators of Tomorrowland and Rosalia Aguilar Solace teamed up to write an epic fantasy series? The first book in the series, The Great Library of Tomorrow, came out last year, and The Sky of Sacrifice is book two of a planned trilogy. The series follows a band of heroes fighting a malevolent evil intent on harshing the vibes.