Bartleby & Co / Vila-Matas, Enrique
“Marcelo, a clerk in a Barcelona office who might himself have emerged from a novel by Kafka, inhabits a world peopled by characters from literature. He once wrote a novel about the impossibility of love, but since then he has been able to write nothing, and a nervous breakdown has meant that he has not even been able to put pen to paper. He has, in short, become a “Bartleby”, so named after the scrivener in Herman Melville’s short story who, when asked to do anything, always replied, “I would prefer not to.”” (adapted from Catalogue)

Our share of night : a novel / Enriquez, Mariana
“In 1981, a young father and son set out on a road trip across Argentina, devastated by the mysterious death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travels to her family home near Iguazú Falls, where they must confront the horrific legacy she has bequeathed. For the woman they are grieving came from a family like no other–a centuries-old secret society called the Order that pursues eternal life through ghastly rituals. For Gaspar, the son, this cult is his destiny. As Gaspar grows up he must learn to harness his developing supernatural powers, while struggling to understand what kind of man his mother wanted him to be. Meanwhile Gaspar’s father tries to protect his son from his wife’s violent family while still honoring the woman he loved so desperately”– Provided by publisher.” (Catalogue)

The old gringo / Fuentes, Carlos
“The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American author, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa’s soldiers – particularly his encounter with one of Villa’s generals, Tomas Arroyo, as well as with a spirited young American woman named Harriet Winslow. In the end, the incompatibility between Mexico and the United States (or paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both Bierce and Arroyo, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of these two cultures in conflict.”–Publisher description.” (Catalogue)

Berta Isla : una novela / Marías, Javier
“Berta Isla thought she knew what to expect from life. When she was a young girl she decided she had found her match in Tomás Nevinson–the dashing half-Spanish, half-English boy in her class with an extraordinary gift for languages–so she was even able to endure their time apart while Tomás studied at Oxford. But after his graduation, he returns to Madrid a changed man. Distracted, sullen, and anxious, Berta’s new husband has become a stranger to her, and she begins to suspect that his mysterious job at the Foreign Office is responsible. Berta Isla is a novel of love and truth, fear and secrecy, and the destinies we bring upon ourselves”–Provided by publisher.” (adapted from Catalogue)

Delirium : a novel / Restrepo, Laura
“Aguliar returns home after a four-day business trip to discover that his beloved wife has gone mad. Desperate to rescue Agustina from her sudden, devastating insanity, Aguliar delves back into her shadowy past. Other narratives are intertwined with his frantic search for the truth; that of Midas, a flamboyant drug-trafficker and Agustina’s former lover, and Agustina’s splintered memories of her own troubled childhood. The key to her madness lies buried deep in a Colombian story of money, power and corruption.” (Amazon.co.uk)

The savage detectives / Bolaño, Roberto
“Bolano traces the hidden connection between literature and violence in a world where national boundaries are fluid and death lurks in the shadow of the avant-garde. “The Savage Detectives” is a dazzling original, the first great Latin American novel of the 21st century.” (Catalogue)

The discreet hero / Vargas Llosa, Mario
“The Discreet Hero, follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima vividly–and the cities become not merely physical spaces but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters” — provided by publisher.” (adapted from Catalogue)

Chilean poet : a novel / Zambra, Alejandro
“Nine years after their bewildering breakup, aspiring poet Gonzalo reunites with his high school girlfriend, Carla, now the mother of a six-year-old son, Vicente. Soon the three form a happy sort-of family–a stepfamily, though no such word exists in their language. After a few years, their ambitions pull the lovers in different directions, but traces of Gonzalo remain: Vicente inherits his love of poetry. When, at eighteen, he meets Pru, an American journalist literally and figuratively lost in Santiago, he encourages her to write about Chilean poets–not the famous, dead kind, your Nerudas or Mistrals or Bolaos, but rather the living, everyday poets, who are also a kind of family. By the time Pru’s article is published, Gonzalo has returned to Chile. But will he and Vicente find their way back to one another?” (Catalogue)

The shadow of the wind / Ruiz Zafón, Carlos
“Barcelona, 1945–just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again.” (adapted from Catalogue)

Love in the time of cholera / García Márquez, Gabriel
“‘It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love’
Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza’s impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half-century, Florentino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina. When Fermina’s husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?” (adpted from Amazon.co.uk)