“Thrilling, authoritative and revelatory, here at last is a biography of Bolivar, the maker of South America, that catches the sheer extraordinary unique adventure and titanic scale of his life with accessible narrative and scholarly judgement.” (Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography, Catherine the Great and Potemkin, and Young Stalin.) The Telegraph (U.K.), by Nicholas Shakespeare, July…

“Erotic, catastrophic . . . Arana’s novel of taboo passion, tragic misperception, and life’s hidden dimensions is as shattering as it is seductive.”

In the elegance of Marie Arana’s American-English prose, one hears the persistent whisper of her father-tongue, Latin-American Spanish. Arana, the daughter of a Peruvian engineer and a North American mother, grew up belonging to both Americas, North and South.

“Sumptuous, often erotic, and wholly enchanting. A superb example of the magic that a gifted storyteller can work with ink and paper.” In her stunning fiction debut, Marie Arana has created a rich, boisterous saga about a remarkable family, a wondrous invention, and a powerful collision between science, magic, and faith.

Featuring a gathering of more than fifty of contemporary literature’s finest voices, this volume will enchant, move, and inspire readers with its tales of The Writing Life. In it, authors divulge professional secrets: how they first discovered they were writers, how they work, how they deal with the myriad frustrations and delights a writer’s life affords.

An introduction by Marie Arana—author of American Chica and Cellophane—prefaces the book. The photographs and commentary are organized thematically: landscapes, humans and their impact, wildlife, abstracts, ancient sites. Poignant essays penned by Haas while living in Latin America expand on themes important to understanding the region: culture, economy, development, tourism, and more.

Steps carved from huge rocks, boulders used for the sides of buildings, windows precisely aligned to capture the first rays of the solstice sun, and other amazing features of Peru’s Machu Picchu are captured in this collection of Torrey’s detailed photographs.