The acclaimed Cuban American author of Love and Ghost Letters delivers “a wonderful story about the stories we tell each other” set in 1960s Cuba (San Francisco Chronicle). Cuba, 1963. Hurricane Flora, one of the deadliest in recorded history, is bearing down on the island. Seven women have been forcibly evacuated from their homes and herded into the former governor’s mansion. There they are watched over by another woman—Ofelia, a young soldier of Castro’s new Cuba. As the storm rages and the floodwaters rise, a cigar factory lector named Maria Sirena tells the incredible story of her childhood during Cuba’s Third War of Independence; of her father Augustin, a ferocious rebel; of her mother, Lulu, an astonishing woman who fought, loved, dreamed, and suffered as fiercely as her husband. But stories have a way of taking on a life of their own, and soon Maria will reveal more about herself than she or anyone ever expected. Chantel Acevedo’s The Distant Marvels is an epic adventure tale, a family saga, a love story, a stunning historical account of armed struggle against oppressors, and a long tender plea for forgiveness. It is, finally, a life-affirming novel about the kind of love that lasts a lifetime and the very art of storytelling itself.

Don't miss Selznick's other novels in words and pictures, The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck, which together with The Marvels, form an extraordinary thematic trilogy! A breathtaking new voyage from Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick.Two stand-alone stories--the first in nearly 400 pages of continuous pictures, the second in prose--create a beguiling narrative puzzle.The journey begins at sea in 1766, with a boy named Billy Marvel. After surviving a shipwreck, he finds work in a London theatre. There, his family flourishes for generations as brilliant actors until 1900, when young Leontes Marvel is banished from the stage.Nearly a century later, runaway Joseph Jervis seeks refuge with an uncle in London. Albert Nightingale's strange, beautiful house, with its mysterious portraits and ghostly presences, captivates Joseph and leads him on a search for clues about the house, his family, and the past.A gripping adventure and an intriguing invitation to decipher how the two stories connect, The Marvels is a loving tribute to the power of story from an artist at the vanguard of creative innovation.

The Living Infinite is based on the true story of the Spanish princess Eulalia, an outspoken firebrand at the Bourbon court during the troubled and decadent final years of her family's reign. After her cloistered childhood at the Spanish court, her youth spent in exile, and a loveless marriage, Eulalia gladly departs Europe for the New World. In the company of Thomas Aragon, the son of her one-time wet nurse and a small-town bookseller with a thirst for adventure, she travels by ship first to a Cuba bubbling with revolutionary fervor then on to the 1893 Chicago World Fair. As far as others are concerned, she is there as an emissary of the Bourbon dynasty and a guest of the Fair. Secretly, she is in America to find a publisher for her scandalous, incendiary autobiography, a book that might well turn the old world order on its head. Acevedo's new novel is an atmospheric and gripping tale of love, adventure, power and the quest to take control of one's destiny. Bourbon Spain, Revolutionary Cuba, and fin de si cle America are vividly rendered and Eulalia's personal rebellion will resonate with many readers.

A ravishing first novel, set in vibrant, tumultuous turn-of-the-century New York City, where the lives of four outsiders become entwined, bringing irrevocable change to them all. New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs. Odile Church and her beautiful sister, Belle, were raised amid the applause and magical pageantry of The Church of Marvels, their mother’s spectacular Coney Island sideshow. But the Church has burnt to the ground, their mother dead in its ashes. Now Belle, the family’s star, has vanished into the bowels of Manhattan, leaving Odile alone and desperate to find her. A young woman named Alphie awakens to find herself trapped across the river in Blackwell’s Lunatic Asylum—sure that her imprisonment is a ruse by her husband’s vile, overbearing mother. On the ward she meets another young woman of ethereal beauty who does not speak, a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both. As these strangers’ lives become increasingly connected, their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, Church of Marvels takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York—a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger. In magnetic, luminous prose, Leslie Parry offers a richly atmospheric vision of the past in a narrative of astonishing beauty, full of wondrous enchantments, a marvelous debut that will leave readers breathless.

Josefina Navarro childhood was one of previledge and pampering in the pre-Castro days of Cuba. When she reached adulthood, however, she impulsively marries a poor and reckless young man who will only bring her heartache and grief. During the start of all the political troubles in Cuba, Josefina starts to get a series of letters from her father, whom she thought was dead. These "ghost letters" help her to better understand her distant father and bring some meaning to her otherwise disappointing life.

The first in an action-packed debut middle grade fantasy duology about a Cuban American girl who discovers that she’s one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology. Perfect for fans of The Serpent’s Secret, the Aru Shah series, and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Callie Martinez-Silva didn’t mean to turn her best friend into a pop star. But when a simple pep talk leads to miraculous results, Callie learns she’s the newest muse of epic poetry, one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology tasked with protecting humanity’s fate in secret. Whisked away to Muse Headquarters, she joins three recruits her age, who call themselves the Muse Squad. Together, the junior muses are tasked with using their magic to inspire and empower—not an easy feat when you’re eleven and still figuring out the goddess within. When their first assignment turns out to be Callie’s exceptionally nerdy classmate, Maya Rivero, the squad comes to Miami to stay with Callie and her Cuban family. There, they discover that Maya doesn’t just need inspiration, she needs saving from vicious Sirens out to unleash a curse that will corrupt her destiny. As chaos erupts, will the Muse Squad be able to master their newfound powers in time to thwart the Cassandra Curse . . . or will it undo them all?

Wonder and wonders constituted a central theme in ancient Greek culture. In this book, Jessica Lightfoot provides the first full-length examination of its significance from Homer to the Hellenistic period. She demonstrates that wonder was an important term of aesthetic response and occupied a central position in concepts of what philosophy and literature are and do. She also argues that it became a means of expressing the manner in which the realms of the human and the divine interrelate with one another; and that it was central to the articulation of the ways in which the relationships between self and other, near and far, and familiar and unfamiliar were conceived. The book provides a much-needed starting point for re-assessments of the impact of wonder as a literary critical and cultural concept both in antiquity and in later periods. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.