In the wake of the Great Blackout, faced with the near-extinction of humanity, a pair of lovers speak to each other. They parse, with precision, with familiarity, the endless aspects of their love. Out of their dialogues, piece by piece, a composite image of love takes form, one that moves outwards beyond the realm of relationships and into metaphysics, geology, linguistics, AI.
Years previously, a writer and her husband, a Latin professor, stay in Venice while she works on a text. As they roam the city, strange occurrences accumulate, signalling that the world around them is heading towards a point of no return.
Blending fiction and essay, poetry and philosophy, Agustín Fernández Mallo's The Book of All Loves is a startling, expansive work of imaginative agility, one that renders love unfamiliar so as to renew it, and makes the case for hope in the midst of a disintegrating present.

Manuela left Colombia a year ago for a coastal town in the Basque region of Spain with her nine-year-old son, Juan Camilo, who has not said a word since they arrived. She is now working as a housekeeper-companion to Irene, a well-known dress designer left blind as the result of an accident. Gradually, as the two women exchange their stories, cope with the boy's silence, and forge a strong friendship, the traumatic events that changed all of their lives emerge, with unexpected consequences. Despite the inherent dangers, Irene continues to swim alone in the ocean each day, attached to a harness of her own making, because there's more to life than just living. Meanwhile, Manuela and her son each strive to overcome their fears and past experiences so they can begin their lives afresh in their new home, looking to the future rather than the past.

Cruzar el agua / Crossing Waters is a powerful reflection on the need to avoid nostalgia, to move forward, to grow and adapt to new situations and environments. Such impetus dredges up critical elements from the past of each of the three main characters that cannot be suppressed. This adds a powerful dimension to the novel. As in other works by Luisa Etxenike, the images are haunting, and the language is poetic, starkly simple, and meticulously chosen to reflect the different voices and registers of her characters. A confrontation between human nature on the one hand and the forces of nature on the other is ever-present, and the relevant issues Etxenike explores in her prose leave her reader with much to consider, and also to relish.

On an international flight to a writer's conference, the writer Marta Sanz notices a tiny bump, something she calls a tick, on her chest, just below her clavicle, near her breast bone.

It comes with a pain she has never felt before and she is struck with terror. However, this is no instance of mere anxiety or hypochondria. In Spanish, the title is Clavícula, which refers to the collarbone, but also makes a direct pun in that language on the word clavé or key. Soon we realize that something has changed for Marta, and that whatever has happened, however hard to explain, is not just in her head but something which is locked up or suddenly hidden away. At the same time, the mystery reflects in everything the author encounters, but especially the bodies of women, and especially women of a certain age.

My Clavicle is a masterpiece of auto fiction, the narration of the episodes fracturing like the author's body into a deeply moving series of vignettes that never lose their tension: imperfect, obsessive, but also full of love. Marta doesn't have children; her job (a successful and celebrated novelist in Spain) is nevertheless stressful; she is an only child with aging parents; her husband is out of work and a bit adrift even as he continues to adore his wife; and she worries about money -- because her success is not, has never been, financial. One thing is certain: desire, in any form, has become elusive.

The difficulty of giving a name to Marta's pain, of even locating a precise place for it, provokes a number of reflections: about the edge that separates the body from scientific definitions and imagination; about the function of poetry; about our intolerance for psychological gray areas; about anxiety as a pathology of late stage capitalism; and in the face of daily headlines, the perversion of a public health system. Ultimately, Marta's attempts to define something impossible are channeled through her strange and roving pain, manifesting in curiosity, poetry, and love.

Poetic and magical ... Astur's language is meticulous and vivid.--Asymptote

A breathtaking literary crime novel about family conflict in the Spanish countryside. Marcelino lives alone on his parents' farm, set deep in the beautiful but impoverished reaches of northern Spain. It's the place where he grew up, the place where he doted on his baby brother, the place where he protected his mother from their father's drunken rages. But when Marcelino's brother tricks him out of his house and land, a moment of anger sparks a chain of events that can't be reversed. Marcelino flees to the wild peaks of rural Asturias, becoming a cult hero as he evades the authorities. Into this, author Manuel Astur interweaves family tales and fables about the sun and the moon, about death and love, and offers glimpses into the lives of other villagers and the history of their community. Astur's poetic language and seamless blend of lyricism with the grotesque renders this book a treasure for the reader. Of Saints and Miracles is a sensuous portrayal of an outcast's struggle to survive in a chaotic world of both tragedy and magical splendor.

A Spanish-gothic version of a Patricia Highsmith novel

Jon and Katharina spend the winter in Jon's childhood home on the Cantabrian coast, lonely and bored, ambivalent about their precarious freelance jobs and disconnected in their relationship. Yet the couple's routine will soon be disturbed when one rainy night, they witness strange lights in the sky over the village. The next morning, ufologists begin to arrive in the village, anxious to make extraterrestrial contact. The morning brings other unexpected guests: Jon's distant cousin, Markel, and his companion, the silent, alluring Virginia. The visit becomes increasingly uncomfortable as-like the ufologists camped out in view of the house--the strangers stay on and show little sign of planning to leave. Days stretch into weeks, even as the cousins can't remember ever having met, Virginia's behavior becomes subtly threatening, and Jon begins doubt that Markel is who he says he . . . A deliciously tense and darkly humorous novella that explores the border that separates love from routine and offers a twist on theme of the other and how to live with the unknown, The Strangers introduces English readers to singular talent.