Showing results by author "Thomas Bunstead" in All Categories

Virginia Mendoza's first memories are of drought. She grew up in La Mancha, Spain, the driest region in Europe. In The Search for Water, Mendoza weaves this personal reflection together with a dazzling scientific and anthropological enquiry into the ways the search for water has shaped the story of humanity. From flows of migration, agriculture and pagan rain gods to contemporary struggles with drought and climate change, Mendoza writes a gripping and inventive history of humankind as driven and united by one force: thirst.

In the summer, the Isle of Ons is a vacation paradise. But in the winter, when nature is unpredictable and supply boats are rare, Ons is far less inviting. Yet the offseason is perfect for Roberto Lobeira, who hopes to find peace and inspiration to write his new novel. Instead, the island’s few permanent residents give Roberto an unnerving and cautionary welcome. There are even warnings of chilling Galician folklore that keep him on edge—and on watch at night.

Cí, a young scholar-turned-gravedigger in medieval China, has survived enough horrors and pain to last several lifetimes. He finally has the chance to return to his studies - only to receive orders from the Imperial Court to find the sadistic perpetrator of a series of brutal murders. With lives in jeopardy, Cí finds his gruesome investigation complicated by his old loyalties - and by his growing desire for the enigmatic beauty haunting his thoughts. Is he skilled enough to track down the murderer? Or will the killer claim him first?

Daniel Amat has left Spain and all that happened there behind him. Having just achieved a brilliant role in ancient languages at Oxford University and an even more advantageous engagement, the arrival of a letter - a demand - stamped 'Barcelona' comes like a cold hand from behind. He arrives back in that old labyrinthine and near-mythic city a few days before the great 1888 World's Fair, amid dread whispers of murders - the injuries reminiscent of an ancient curse and bearing signs of the genius 16th century anatomist Vesalius.

In postwar Moscow, Soviet secretary Olga Simonova is instructed to destroy a painting from Mexico by Diego Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo. Her boss condemns the surrealist depiction of a woman’s suffering as bourgeois and anti-Soviet. Once a painter herself, Olga has experienced devastating losses and oppression by the Soviet regime, and she identifies with the anguish in Kahlo’s self-portrait. She secretly resolves to rescue the painting, even though her decision could cost her dearly.

A landmark in contemporary Spanish literature, Agustin Fernandez Mallo’s Nocilla Trilogy—Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Lab, and Nocilla Experience—presents multiple narratives of people and places that reflect America and the world in the digital age of the twenty-first century. In the middle of...