Showing results by narrator "Marisol Ramirez" in All Categories

Lizet, a daughter of Cuban immigrants and the first in her family to graduate from high school, secretly applies and is accepted to an ultra-elite college. Her parents are furious at her decision to leave Miami, and amid a painful divorce, her father sells her childhood home, leaving Lizet, her mother, and older sister, a newly single mom, without a steady income and scrambling for a place to live.

A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast's Richard Price—a mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty, set in the chaotic streets of South Central LA in the wake of one of the most notorious and incendiary trials of the 1990s. At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue a black man named Rodney King and failed to reach a verdict on the same charges involving a fourth officer. Less than two hours later, the city exploded in violence that lasted six days. In nearly 121 hours, fifty-three lives were lost. But there were even more deaths unaccounted for: violence that occurred outside of active rioting sites by those who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores.

You can always recognize a painting by Kahlo because she is in nearly all of them, with her black braided hair and colorful Mexican outfits. A brave woman who was an invalid most of her life, she transformed herself into a living work of art. As famous for her self-portraits and haunting imagery as she was for her marriage to another famous artist, Diego Rivera, this strong and courageous painter was inspired by the ancient culture and history of her beloved homeland, Mexico. Her paintings continue to inform and inspire popular culture around the world.

In Kyrkarta, magic - known as maz - was once a freely available natural resource. Then, an earthquake released a magical plague, killing thousands and opening the door for a greedy corporation to make maz a commodity that’s tightly controlled - and, of course, outrageously expensive. Which is why Diz and her three best friends run a highly lucrative, highly illegal maz siphoning gig on the side. Their next job is supposed to be their last heist ever. But when their plan blows up in their faces, they’re driven to unravel a conspiracy - and possibly save the world.

Alex Naranjo and Marlene Vargas, the owners of the biggest metaphysical shop on the West Coast, House of Intuition, have a clear mission: to bring the life-changing experience of magic to a world that needs magic more than ever. Your Intuition Led You Here is an empowering and accessible guide to harnessing the power of ritual and inner knowing. It also shares their personal story as LGBTQ Latinx women and their unlikely journey to becoming champions of magic as a tool of self-care and empowerment.

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.

In this new novel from the author of The Dressmaker’s Dowry, two young women two generations apart discover the joy and heartbreak of following their dreams. Aspiring Hollywood actress Violet makes a shocking choice in 1940, and 70 years later, Mari sets out to discover what happened on that long ago summer. Santa Cruz, Summer 1940: When auburn-haired Violet Harcourt is crowned Miss California on the boardwalk of her hometown, she knows she is one step closer to her cherished dream: a Hollywood screen test.

This astonishing memoir was hailed as an instant classic when first published in Colombia in 2012, nearly a decade after the death of its author, who was encouraged in her writing by Gabriel García Márquez. Comprised of letters written over the course of 30 years, and translated and introduced by acclaimed writer Daniel Alarcón, it describes in vivid, painterly detail the remarkable courage and limitless imagination of a young girl growing up with nothing.

In 1958, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in the United States to immediate controversy and best-sellerdom. More than 60 years later, this phenomenal novel generates as much buzz as it did when originally published. Central to countless issues at the forefront of our national discourse - art and politics, race and whiteness, gender and power, sexual trauma - Lolita lives on, in an afterlife as blinding as a supernova.

Maddie Diaz never should have taken that shortcut through the park. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have seen two gang members attacking a homeless man. Now, as the only witness, Maddie knows there's a target on her back. But her courage has also caught the attention of Lobo, the mysterious leader of a rival gang, who promises to protect her. Lobo might be out for his own revenge, but Maddie knows she can trust him.

In The Silver Women, Joan Flores-Villalobos argues that Black West Indian women made the Panama Canal construction possible by providing the indispensable everyday labor of social reproduction. West Indian women built a provisioning economy that fed, housed, and cared for the segregated Black West Indian labor force, in effect subsidizing the construction effort and the racial calculus that separated pay in silver for Black workers and gold for white Americans.

When Jacinta Juarez is paired with a rich, famous mentor, she is swept away from the diapers and dishes of her own boring life into a world of new experiences. But crossing la linea into Miss' world is scary. Half of Jacinta aches for the comfort of Mamá and the familiar safety of the barrio while the other half longs to embrace a future that offers more than cleaning stuff for white people.

Tag is a medical slave, doomed to spend his life healing his master's injured gladiators. But his warrior's heart yearns to fight in the gladiator ring himself and earn enough money to win his freedom. Lucia is the daughter of Tag's owner, doomed by her father's greed to marry a much older Roman man. But she loves studying the natural world around her home in Pompeii, and lately she's been noticing some odd occurrences in the landscape: small lakes disappearing; a sulfurous smell in the air...

Danielle and Wes have been best friends since college, so when Wes needs a date for his sister's wedding and Dani needs a partner for her company's retreat, they devise the perfect plan: a fake engagement to get through both events unscathed.

How does witnessing a crime change a person? This powerful collection of stories by a star-studded roster of contributors examines this very question.

At night, Las Mal Criadas own these streets. Sixteen-year-old Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City. That role brings with it violent throwdowns and access to the hottest "boydega" clubs, but Nala quickly grows weary of her questionable lifestyle. Her dream is to get off the streets and make a home in the exclusive Mega Towers, in which only a chosen few get to live. To make it to the Mega Towers, Nalah must prove her loyalty to the city's benevolent founder and cross the border in a search of the mysterious gang the Ashe Riders.

Ranging in age from six to 40, 38 sons and daughters of lesbians offer brief essays that could be valuable to like offspring, as well as to relatives and friends trying to understand the problems such children face. Homophobia, visited upon the children as well as their mothers, is the most commonly cited concern; some younger contributors feel isolated from their peers, and a couple of boys endure rejection from radical lesbian acquaintances.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore, read by Neil Kaplan, Devon Sorvari and Marisol Ramirez. Until I met John Smith, Number Four, I’d been on the run alone, hiding and fighting to stay alive. Together we are much more powerful. But it could only last so long before we had to separate to find the others... I went to Spain to find Seven, and I found even more, including a tenth member of the Garde who escaped from Lorien alive.

Thanks to her wealthy and well-connected family, twenty-six-year-old Marta is used to getting whatever she wants. And what she wants is a good time. That is, until her father's wife - the woman who raised her - becomes ill. Beautiful young Marta is forced to witness her unfaithful, brutish father abandon her adoptive mother in her final moments. After her father's swift remarriage, Marta is surprised to discover that she is now the sole heir of her late mother's sizeable estate.

Adam Soto, author of the debut novel This Weightless World, which Robin Sloan called “the social novel for the 21st century,” returns with Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep. The stories in Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, strange and unsettling, explore the quiet spaces where the living and the dead alike haunt one another through their choices, dreams, and institutions.