Barbazul Barrio Italia

The Sky After the Rain

Ava Schaffer never felt like she belonged where she was born, on the vast open prairie of Western Kansas. The artist and dreamer planned to remedy that after high school graduation, by packing a moving truck and escaping to New York, but her mother's cancer diagnosis forced her to stay. Their relationship always a struggle, reversing the roles of mother and daughter, as Ava became the sole caretaker of the difficult woman, tested the very edge of familial love's limits. After a three year battle, her mother succumbs to the unforgiving disease and Ava is left alone to exit the reclusiveness of her current life and attempt to rejoin the gossip laden, high school football worshipping, get married and have babies, small town society she grew up in. Ava's childhood best friend, Pode Wagner, a humbly practical farmer, helps her become reacquainted with a community of long lost friends. As he provides epically introverted Ava the companionship and support she didn't realize she missed so desperately, Ava finds herself accidentally enthralled with the charming, yet broken, Lucas Ellis, a world traveled former military man and the current county deputy. Imagining several different futures, none of which include leaving her hometown, Ava's new life begins to crash down around her as her alcoholic father slides. Again at the juncture of self-preservation and self-sacrifice, Ava suffers an earthshattering loss, discovers a life altering truth, and makes an unexpected decision.

Ercilla

Soldiers of Salamis

In the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, a writer and founding member of Franco's Fascist Party is about to be shot, and yet miraculously escapes into the forest. When his hiding place is discovered, he faces death for the second time that day-but is spared, this time by a lone soldier. The POW becomes a national hero and a member of Franco's first government, while the soldier is forgotten. Sixty years later, Cercas's novel peels back the layers of truth and propaganda in order to discover who the real hero was. Elegantly constructed and told with self-deprecating, melancholy humor, Soldiers of Salamis is a wholly original work of literature by a modern master.