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 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 siecle America are vivdly rendered and Eulalia's personal rebellion will resonate with many readers. (Source: The Ivy Bookshop)
Javier Mallarino is a living legend. He is his country's most influential political cartoonist, the consciousness of a nation. A man capable of repealing laws, overturning judges' decisions, destroying politicians' careers with his art. His weapons are pen and ink. Those in power fear him and pay him homage. After four decades of a brilliant career, he's at the height of his powers. But this all changes when he's paid an unexpected visit from a young woman who upends his sense of personal history and forces him to re-evaluate his life and work, questioning his position in the world. In Reputations, Juan Gabriel Vasquez examines the weight of the past, how a public persona intersects with private histories, and the burdens and surprises of memory. In this intimate novel that recalls authors like Coetzee and Ian McEwan, Vasquez plumbs universal experiences to create a masterful story, one that reverberates long after you turn the final page. (Source: The Ivy Bookshop)
When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR was one of the world's two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990, he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system's gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America's arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev's unique character that, by Gorbachev's admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced?
Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman's intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev's remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel. (Source: The Ivy Bookshop)