Comezón: It's more than an itch. It's a longstanding desire that will never be fulfilled. And, in this novel by award-winning author Denise Chávez, it is also a border town in New Mexico whose denizens' longings are as powerful as they are, all too often, impossible.

"In Urrea's exuberant new novel of Mexican-American life, 70-year-old patriarch Big Angel de la Cruz is dying, and he wants to have one last birthday blowout. Unfortunately, his 100-year-old mother, America, dies the week of his party, so funeral and birthday are celebrated one day apart. The entire contentious, riotous de la Cruz clan descends on San Diego for the events -- "High rollers and college students, prison veternaos and welfare mothers,...

Francisco Jimenez chronicles the experiences he had after his family left Mexico for California when he was just a child.

Four cousins, who were exceptionally close as children, have grown apart and are struggling with their own issues. When tragedy reunites them, will they remember their abuelita's lessons about family and forgiveness--or is a fifteen-year separation too much to overcome? Mari, Erica, Selena, and Gracie are inseparable. They weren't just cousins, but best friends: sharing secrets, traditions, and a fierce love for their abuelita. Then Mari's parents...

"FORECAST: Storm clouds are on the horizon in L.A. Weather, a fun, fast-paced novel of an affluent Mexican-American family from the author of the #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller Esperanza's Box of Saints. L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He's harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life...

"A masterful debut that weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love, and a curse. The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo's marriage is falling apart; daughter Dina, beleaguered by the fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange...