Argentina

Alicia Steimberg, Musicians and Watchmakers.
A Jewish girl grows up in Argentina in the 1940s.

Brazil

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.

Canada

Judy Fong Bates, Midnight at the Dragon Café.
A Chinese family seeking a better life open a restaurant in Canada but their relationships are strained.

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

Gail Bowen, A Verdict in Blood. Mystery
In Saskatchewan, a hard-line judge who reversed her position on prisoners’ rights is murdered.

Vicki Delany, Scare the Light Away.
A successful executive returns to her small Ontario hometown and uncovers family secrets.

Howard Engel, The Cooperman Variations. Mystery
P.I. Benny Cooperman’s high school sweetheart fears she’s being targeted by a killer.

Elizabeth Hay, A Student of Weather.
Two sisters growing up on a Saskatchewan farm during the 1930s both fall for a botanist.

Lori Lansens, Rush Home Road.
In a Canadian town originally settled by runaway slaves, a black woman cares for an abandoned child.

Mary Lawson, Crow Lake.
A boy in rural Canada must assume responsibility for his siblings after the deaths of their parents.

Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees.
Dark secrets and tragedy follow a Nova Scotia family through four generations.

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

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

Kathy Reichs, Deja Dead. Mystery
A forensic anthropologist tries to convince police that a savage serial killer is at work in Montreal.

Audrey Schulman, The Cage.
A nature photographer joins an expedition to Manitoba and struggles to deal with the severe conditions.

The Caribbean

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

Jimmy Buffett, A Salty Piece of Land.
Fleeing bounty hunters, a man sets sail on a ship with a 103-year-old lady hoping to restore a lighthouse.

Maryse Conde, Crossing the Mangrove.
Villagers in Guadeloupe reflect on the mysterious life and death of a stranger on their island.

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

Donna Hemans, River Woman.
A Jamaican woman is accused of letting her son drown so she could be free to join her mother in America.

Jamaica Kincaid, Mr. Potter.
The life of a chauffer on the island of Antigua.

Earl Lovelace, Salt.
A Trinidad man longs to emigrate to England but his dream is repeatedly deferred.

Bob Morris, Bahamarama.
An ex-football player gets out of jail and heads to the Bahamas, where his girlfriend has been kidnapped.

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.

Patricia Rice, Volcano. Paperback Romance
A woman accused of smuggling drugs to St. Lucia is rescued by a stranger claiming to be her husband.

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.

Stephen Dobyns, After Shocks, Near Escapes.
A family escapes an earthquake but the aftershocks—both real and emotional—continue long afterwards.

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.

Cuba

Arnaldo Correa, Cold Havana Ground.
A retired policeman investigates the disappearance of the body of the leader of a secret Chinese society who died 50 years before.

Cristina Garcia, Monkey Hunting.
A Chinese boy comes to Cuba and marries a former slave, and their descendants struggle to find a place in the world.

Oscar Hijuelos, A Simple Habana Melody.
A Cuban musician who was sent to Buchenwald because of his Sephardic name returns to Havana after the war and looks back on his life.

Jose Latour, Havana World Series.
In 1958 Cuba, a mobster hires a gang to rob a rival who's made millions taking bets on the World Series.

Thomas Sanchez, King Bongo.
After an explosion at the Tropicana nightclub, a musician seeks the culprits and his missing sister.

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, TheLong 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 bookseller treks through the Guatemalan jungle in search of her archeologist mother, who disappeared during a hurricane 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

Kate Braverman, The Incantation of Frida K.
A fictional account of the life of the great Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo.

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.

Panama

Jack Du Brul, River of Ruin. Paperback Fiction
Geologist Philip Mercer tries to stop a plot to blow up the Panama Canal.

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

Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes.
Two soldiers assigned to guard duty in the mountains are caught up in a series of disappearances.

Matthew Reilly, Temple.
A mild-mannered scientist is recruited by the Army to retrieve an Inca idol that may form part of a secret weapon that could destroy the earth.

Kate Wheeler, When Mountains Walked.
A woman who travels to Peru with her husband to provide humanitarian aid becomes caught up in the politics of the region and falls for a revolutionary.

Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
A priest tries to make sense of the deaths of five people when a bridge collapses.

Puerto Rico

Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Meaning of Consuelo.
A girl tries to protect her unbalanced younger sister at a time when Puerto Rico is becoming increasingly Americanized.

Rosario Ferre, The House on the Lagoon.
A woman decides to write a novel of her family’s history despite her husband’s disapproval.

Steven Torres, Precinct Puerto Rico. Mystery
A sheriff discovers a murder victim among the bodies of illegal immigrants that washed up on the shore.