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La revista Luvina y la Editorial de la Universidad de Guadalajara reúnen estos cien Cuentos de Asia, Europa y América para celebrar el número 100 de Luvina y sus veinticinco años ininterrumpidos de publicación. Son textos representativos de la literatura universal contemporánea que Luvina ha publicado, especialmente en los números dedicados al país invitado de honor de la Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara. Es una muestra formada por distintas literaturas, en el afán de nombrar nuevos y originales mundos, en una dimensión habitada en su totalidad por la lengua. Cada uno de los cuentos permite internarse en la singularidad humana al mismo tiempo que en los entramados de los relatos, cuya belleza encierra vitalidad y resignificación de lo real gracias al encuentro de la creatividad y la imaginación del autor, la obra y el lector.

A young Mexican mother struggles to reconnect with her child in America—a “heartrending, take–no–prisoners” novel (Publishers Weekly) and National Book Award finalist.A vital and unsparing vision of America from National Book Award finalist Susan Straight. At three years Elvia was placed in foster care when her mother, Serafina, an undocumented migrant worker, was deported. Twelve years later, Serafina risks everything to return to the United States and the daughter she was forced to abandon.

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year“Straight's memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women's stories... The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.” —San Francisco ChronicleIn the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self–proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close–knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne's female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post–slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight's mother–in–law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan's family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.”“Certain books give off the sense that you won't want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight's new memoir, In the Country of Women... Her vibrant pages are filled with people of churned–together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb... Straight gives us permission to remember what went before with passion and attachment.” ––Los Angeles Times

“Straight's portrayal of a black woman's life is nearly miraculous in its astonishing richness of detail, its emotional honesty and its breadth of human thought and feeling.” —USA TodayEvoking the Gullah–speaking 1950s community of Pine Gardens, South Carolina, I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots follows Marietta Cook, a maid with a growing interest in the civil rights movement, as she raises talented twin boys destined for pro football glory and comes to find peace in an often unjust world.Imbued with extraordinary resilience and joy, Susan Straight's debut is a celebration of an extraordinary soul and a novel with a beautifully vivid sense of place.

“A writer of exceptional gifts and grace.” —Joyce Carol OatesA young fireman battles to provide for his family—and struggles to avoid the traps of crime and poverty that surround him.A resident of impoverished Rio Seco, California, Darnell Tucker works part–time as the lone black member of the fire department. Cutbacks to the state budget force him to search for new work, and the low–paying positions he finds rival firefighting in their peril. His path blocked by economics, institutionalized racism, and the dangers of the place he lives, Darnell must find a way to persevere. Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights is a stark and thoroughly convincing portrait of life on the margins.

“Aquaboogie is a love story in fragments... A book by a writer whose love for her characters infuses her work with the dignity and urgency they so clearly deserve.” —The New York Times Book ReviewFull of defiance and tenderness, Aquaboogie chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the residents of Rio Seco. In “Aquaboogie,” art student Nacho finances his class out East by working as a janitor, subject to torment by his white coworkers. In “Back,” elderly Pashion sleeps wrapped around the body of her dying husband L. C., all the while recalling their 49 years of marriage and thinking about the sleeping pills she has secreted away for when life becomes unbearable. In “The Box,” Shawan carries her radio everywhere; since her best friend was gunned down, music is the only thing that can get her through the day. In these and other stories in this powerful collection, the author gives voice to those on the margins while demonstrating her great affection for her characters.

A young Mexican mother struggles to reconnect with her child in America—a “heartrending, take-no-prisoners” novel and National Book Award finalist (Publishers Weekly). As an undocumented migrant worker, Serafina has scratched together a life for herself and her three-year-old daughter, Elvia, in the unglamorous shadows of Hollywood—until the morning she is apprehended by immigration officials and deported, separated from her terrified daughter who is crouched under the dashboard of their car. By the time Elvia is fifteen, she has survived numerous foster homes and a father ill-suited to raising a tough-talking, pregnant young woman. Fighting for herself and her unborn child, she decides to search for her long-lost mother. Meanwhile, Serafina is making her way back across the Mexican border to find her little girl after all these years. Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “an eye-opener of a novel, a road map to the real California,” Susan Straight “turns headlines into poetry.” As with all her work, Straight's fourth novel presents a vital and unsparing vision of America.

“All the heavy hitters, from Michael Connelly in Los Angeles to Joyce Carol Oates in suburban New Jersey... an important anthology.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors'Choice) Features Dennis Lehane's story “Animal Rescue,” the inspiration for the movie The Drop starring Tom Hardy. Launched with the summer 2004 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir, the groundbreaking Akashic Noir series now includes over sixty volumes and counting. The stories in USA Noir “represent the best of the U.S.-based anthologies, and the list of contributors include virtually anyone who's made the best-seller list with a work of crime fiction in the last decade... a must-have anthology” (Booklist, starred review). Featuring stories by: Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Susan Straight, Jonathan Safran Foer, Laura Lippman, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Terrance Hayes, Jerome Charyn, Jeffery Deaver, Maggie Estep, Bayo Ojikutu, Tim McLoughlin, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Reed Farrel Coleman, Megan Abbott, Elyssa East, James W. Hall, J. Malcolm Garcia, Julie Smith, Joseph Bruchac, Pir Rothenberg, Luis Alberto Urrea, Domenic Stansberry, John O'Brien, S.J. Rozan, Asali Solomon, William Kent Krueger, Tim Broderick, Bharti Kirchner, Karen Karbo, and Lisa Sandlin. One of Zoom Street Magazine's Favorite Books of 2014One of “100 Best Books for Readers Young and Old,” HispanicBusiness.com “Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates'faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott's impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief's head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing, and moaning and screaming.”—Kirkus Reviews

Glorette Picard is dead. Her body was found in the alley behind a taqueria, half-hidden by wild tobacco trees, but no one—not Sidney, who knew she worked that alley, not her son Victor who memorizes SAT words to avoid the guys selling rock out of dryers in the Launderland, not her uncle Enrique, who everyone knows will be the one to hunt down her killer—saw her die. As the close-knit residents of Rio Seco, California react to Glorette's murder, it becomes clear that her life and death are deeply entangled with the dark history of the city, and the untouchable beauty that, finally, killed her. Just as Faulkner spent years populating his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Susan Straight has captivated readers with her rich portrait of Rio Seco in novels such as A Million Nightingales and Take One Candle Light a Room. Rio Seco is a town deep in the groves, heavy with the sweet tang of citrus and the smell from the old morgue; it's a place some will never leave. In Between Heaven and Here, the final novel in her Rio Seco trilogy, Susan Straight tells a story of unforgettable intimacy and intensity.

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the author of A Million Nightingales (“a writer of exceptional gifts and grace”—Joyce Carol Oates) comes a luminous new novel about the forces that tear families apart and the ties that bind them together. Fantine Antoine is a travel writer, a profession that keeps her happily away from her Southern California home. When she returns to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of her closest childhood friend, Glorette, she finds herself pulled into the tumultuous life of Glorette's twenty-two-year-old son—and Fantine's godson—Victor. After getting involved in a shooting, Victor has fled to New Orleans. Together with her father, Fantine follows Victor, determined to help him avoid the criminal future that he suddenly seems destined for. On this journey her father will reveal the wrenching secrets of his past, and Fantine will be compelled to question the most essential choices she's made in her life.

From National Book Award finalist Susan Straight comes a haunting historical novel about a Louisiana slave girl's perilous journey to freedom.Daughter of an African mother and a white father she never knew, Moinette is a house maid on a plantation south of New Orleans. At fourteen she is sold, separated from her mother without a chance to say goodbye. Bright, imaginative and well aware of everything she risks, Moinette at once begins to prepare for an opportunity to escape. Inspired by a true story, A Million Nightingales portrays Moinette's experience–and the treacherous world she must navigate–with uncommon richness, intricacy, and drama.

Sharron was five when her father gave her the Friskative Dog. And just like the best-loved toys from The Velveteen Rabbit, Sharron has made the Friskative Dog real through her love and devotion.Now Sharron is nine, and her father is missing, and the Friskative Dog is more necessary to her than ever. Her father walked out about a year ago and has been lost to her ever since. If he were a dog, he'd be able to find his way home, Sharron thinks. But people don't have the same homing instincts as dogs. And you can't train them to be true.The Friskative Dog is about a young girl coming to accept that families can take all different shapes and sizes, and learning to live with hope and patience.Susan Straight has written a spare, delicate story, rich in metaphor and meaning, and full of love.

In the third novel by the author of Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights, the Thompson clan tries to deal with the chaos after their family patriarch finds the burning bodies of two white women on his property and is then accidentally gunned down by police.