Showing results by author "Adrian West" in Historical Fiction

Guatemala, 1954. A CIA-supported military coup topples the government. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changed the development of Latin America: that those in power encouraged the spread of Soviet communism in the Americas. Mario Vargas Llosa has written a drama on a world stage, in which some persecutors end up as victims of the very plot they helped construct.

Ceferino Carrión is desperate for a new life - one of opportunity, fortune, and fame. But he knows he’ll never find this life in war-torn Spain. With his home country under the heel of the devastating Franco dictatorship and call-up papers on his doorstep, Cefe knows there’s only one thing he can do: run. A new life awaits in America, as does a new name - Jean Leon. From the concrete valleys of the Bronx to the sun-soaked hills of California, Jean crosses paths with legendary superstars, political powerhouses, and dangerous mobsters as he flees his past and pursues his dreams.

When he arrives in Cuba at the close of the eighteenth century, Victor Hugues, a merchant sailor from Marseille, brings with him not only the idealism of the French Revolution but also its ambition and bloodlust. Landing at the Havana doorstep of a trio of wealthy, eccentric Creole orphans, he sweeps them across the Caribbean Sea to Guadeloupe, whose enslaved Africans he frees only then to exploit them in his fight against the British for colonial sovereignty. What ensues in Alejo Carpentier’s magical realist masterpiece is an explosive clash between the New World and the Old World.

Manuel Lindo came from nothing, but stubbornly worked his way up at the Dredging and Construction Company. Obliged to move from city to city for his job, the family couldn't put down roots, and Elvira and her siblings' childhood was marked by unpredictability. As they pass through temporary homes, they're caught between Manuel's outsized temper and their young mother's worsening illness, which would tragically take her life. Beginning with nine-year-old Manuel's experience in Madrid in 1939, Open Heart takes us on a journey through Spain full of insights about love in its many forms.