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Argentina

Nathan Englander, Ministry of Special Cases.
During Argentina’s Dirty War, a Jewish couple try to find out what happened to their son who was arrested though the authorities won’t admit it.

Philip Kerr, A Quiet Flame.
In 1950, a German detective emigrates to Buenos Aires and investigates a murder and an abduction that may be linked to old crimes back in Germany.

Belize

Ian Vasquez, In the Heat. Mystery
An aging boxer in Belize is hired to find a runaway girl who made off with a large sum of cash.

Brazil

Leighton Gage, Blood of the Wicked. Mystery
A detective is confronted by corruption and brutality after a Bishop is assassinated in a remote town.

Luiz Garcia-Roza, Silence of the Rain. Mystery
A cop in Rio must determine if a businessman’s murder was robbery or something more personal.

Rachael King, The Sound of Butterflies.
An Englishwoman tries to find out what happened when her husband returns from an expedition to Brazil unable to speak.

Frances de Pontes Peebles, The Seamstress.
In the 1930s, two sisters take divergent paths when one marries a wealthy doctor and the other is kidnapped by bandits and becomes an outlaw.

Canada

Giles Blunt, The Delicate Storm. Mystery
Two bodies in the woods of northern Ontario may be linked to a Quebec separatist movement.

Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road.
Two Cree friends leave Canada to fight in World War I and are changed by their experiences.

Anne Emery, Sign of the Cross. Mystery
A Halifax attorney defends a priest accused of murder but is stymied by his client’s secretiveness.

Elizabeth Hay, Late Nights on Air.
An eclectic group of people come to work at a radio station in Yellowknife in far northern Canada.

Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief.
A Canadian man caring for his dying brother explores his family’s history and their Scottish roots.

Ami McKay, The Birth House.
In early 20th century Nova Scotia, the local midwife comes into conflict with a doctor with modern ideas.

Donna Morrissey, Kit’s Law.
A Newfoundland girl fights efforts to remove her from the care of her mentally disabled mother.

Howard Norman, What Is Left the Daughter.
During World War II, an orphaned young man falls in love with a girl who’s involved with a German student.

Stef Penney, The Tenderness of Wolves.
On the Canadian frontier, a woman sets out with a native tracker to find her son who disappeared after a trapper was found murdered.

Louise Penny, Still Life. Mystery
An inspector in the Sûreté du Québec investigates the death of an artist in an apparent hunting accident.

Robert Rotenberg, Old City Hall. Mystery
A Toronto radio talk show host confesses to murdering his common-law wife but then refuses to speak again.

Marc Strange, Follow Me Down. Mystery
In rural Ontario, a police chief investigates the death of a man found pinned to a tree with arrows.

Inger Wolfe, The Calling. Mystery
In a remote Canadian town, a detective investigates a series of murders of terminally ill people.

The Caribbean

Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies.
A fictionalized account of the outspoken Mirabal sisters who opposed the Dominican dictator Trujillo.

Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker.
A Haitian immigrant confesses to his daughter that back home he was a prison guard skilled at torture.

Marlon James, The Book of Night Women.
A woman born into slavery on a Jamaica sugar plantation is believed to have dark powers.

Andrea Levy, The Long Song.
A Jamaican slave is taken into the manor house by her mistress and lives through the slave revolt.

V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas.
A man in Trinidad who yearns to buy his own home tries to break free of his wife’s domineering family.

Amanda Smyth, Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange.
A girl fleeing her lecherous uncle leaves Tobago for Trinidad and works for a man with a fragile wife.

Chile

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits.
The patriarch of a prominent family tries to keep things the same while Chile is changing around him.

Colombia

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo seen through the eyes of one family.

Laura Restrepo, The Dark Bride.
A prostitute in a Colombian oil-drilling town falls in love with a man she can never have.

Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Informers.
A man tries to discover why his father is angered by a book he wrote about a family friend—a Jewish German woman who escaped to Colombia during the 1930s.

Cuba

Oscar Hijuelos, A Simple Habana Melody.
A Cuban musician sent to Buchenwald because of his Jewish name returns to Havana after the war.

Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba.
Two children whose parents work for American companies in Cuba find their lives changing as Castro’s revolution begins.

Leonardo Padura, Havana Fever.
A retired cop turned bookdealer finds an article about a missing singer from the 1950s in the library of a wealthy Cuban who fled after the fall of Batista.

Cecilia Samartin, Broken Paradise.
Two cousins live a privileged life in Havana, but when Castro takes over one escapes to America while the other endures hardship at home.

El Salvador

Sandra Benitez, The Weight of All Things.
A boy tries to make his way home after his mother is killed in a massacre at Archbishop Romero's funeral.

Guatemala

Francisco Goldman, Long Night of White Chickens.
A man is fascinated by the family’s Guatemalan maid who later returns home to run an orphanage.

Kent Harrington, Red Jungle.
A journalist gets involved with the wife of an intelligence official and in the hunt for a jade jaguar.

Yxta Maya Murray, The Queen Jade.
A woman seeks her mother who disappeared in the Guatemalan jungle while seeking a legendary relic.

Honduras

Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast.
An American man takes his family to the jungles of Honduras but their paradise soon falls apart.

Mexico

Harriet Doerr, Consider This, Senora.
Four Americans settle in a small Mexican town, changing their lives and the lives of the townspeople.

Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate.
A woman who is forbidden to marry the man she loves because she must care for her mother releases her emotions through cooking.

Carlos Fuentes, The Years with Laura Diaz.
A woman born on a coffee plantation in 1898 lives through a century of Mexico’s rich history.

Reyna Grande, Across a Hundred Mountains.
A 14-year-old Mexican girl leaves home to look for her father who went north to the U.S. years ago and has not been heard from since.

Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna.
In the 1930s, a boy with an American father and a Mexican mother spends his formative years in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Luis Alberto Urrea, The Hummingbird’s Daughter.
A girl called a saint by the people is accused of being a heretic and rebel by the Church and government.

Panama

Cristina Henriquez, Come Together, Fall Apart.
A collection of stories about people at emotional crossroads during a time of political upheaval in Panama.

David Terrenoire, Beneath a Panamanian Moon.
A retired spy takes a job as a piano player at a Panama hotel that’s a front for paramilitary training.

Peru

Marie Arana, Cellophane.
During the Great Depression, a man starts a paper mill in the jungle of Peru, but things change when he masters the process of making cellophane.

Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.
While working at a radio station in Lima, an aspiring writer's life is disrupted by the arrival of his alluring aunt and a manic soap opera scriptwriter.

Uruguay

Carolina De Robertis, The Invisible Mountain.
Three generations of women search for love and identity during the tumultuous political events of 20th century Uruguay.