The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Pan's Labyrinth (2007)

Such Small Hands - Andres Barba

Only in Spain - Nellie Bennett

Only in Spain - Bennett, Nellie

Summary: Shares the author's experiences after leaving her retail job in Australia to travel to Spain and learn flamenco dance, detailing her lessons in Seville, and her eventual move to Madrid.

Kirkus Reviews
A peripatetic Australian's account of how a flamenco dancing hobby led to high adventures in music, food and love in Spain.Bennett was a bored shop girl who worked at a high-end department store in Sydney. Tired of two years of mind-numbing, dead-end routine, she shook up her world with flamenco dance lessons, and she immediately fell in love with the glamour, fire and romance of the dance. Soon, she realized she wanted more than to simply take lessons; she wanted to "dream [her] life and live life like it was a dream" by making flamenco the center of her world. She decided to continue her dance studies in the ancient city of Seville in southern Spain. For six weeks, Bennett danced by day and immersed herself in flamenco bar culture by night. She learned to relish the pleasures of flirting on the dance floor with handsome, dark-eyed Spanish men, who made her feel as though she was "the star of her very own Broadway musical." The vegan Bennett even learned to enjoy savory tapas dishes made from meat. By the end of her stay, she knew she would return. Brimming with intentions to live in Spain indefinitely and aspirations to become a professional flamenco dancer, she flew to Madrid several months later. She attended the famous Amor de Dios flamenco academy and then danced with dangerously seductive neighborhood residents when she could no longer afford to go to the academy. After being kidnapped by a gypsy boyfriend who wanted to "marry" her by taking Bennett home with him, she fell in love with a Basque man with whom she lived for three years. Only after her lover asked her what she wanted did the author recognize her one truest passion: to travel forever into the beautiful unknown.Lightweight, footloose good fun. Copyright Kirkus 2014 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Hotel Florida - Amanda Vaill

Hotel Florida: true love, death, and the Spanish Civil War - Vaill, Amanda

Summary: "A spellbinding story of love amid the devastation of the Spanish Civil War Madrid, 1936. In a city blasted by a civil war that many fear will cross borders and engulf Europe--a conflict one writer will call "the decisive thing of the century"--six people meet and find their lives changed forever. Ernest Hemingway, his career stalled, his marriage sour, hopes that this war will give him fresh material and new romance; Martha Gellhorn, an ambitious novice journalist hungry for love and experience, thinks she will find both with Hemingway in Spain. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, idealistic young photographers based in Paris, want to capture history in the making and are inventing modern photojournalism in the process. And Arturo Barea, chief of Madrid's loyalist foreign press office, and Ilsa Kulcsar, his Austrian deputy, are struggling to balance truth-telling with loyalty to their sometimes compromised cause--a struggle that places both of them in peril. Hotel Florida traces the tangled wartime destinies of these three couples against the backdrop of a critical moment in history. As Hemingway put it, "You could learn as much at the Hotel Florida in those years as you could anywhere in the world." From the raw material of unpublished letters and diaries, official documents, and recovered reels of film, Amanda Vaill has created a narrative of love and reinvention that is, finally, a story about truth: finding it out, telling it, and living it--whatever the cost"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
As if civil war wasn't torturous enough, the Spanish Civil War had the misfortune to become entangled in larger global issues of ideology on the eve of WWII. That subtext added to the complexity of deciphering who was friend or foe as Francisco Franco overthrew the government and leftist rebels fought back. Thousands of miles away, Ernest Hemingway saw the war as a way to revive a flagging career and get back his zest. Martha Gelhorn, an ambitious young journalist, also saw a career opportunity and a chance to make a lover of Hemingway. In Paris, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, lovers and idealistic photographers, saw a chance to capture history in the infancy of photojournalism. Arturo Barea and Ilsa Kulcsar were press officers torn between telling the truth and struggling to support their crumbling cause. Vaill taps unpublished letters and diaries as well as official documents to bring intimacy and immediacy to a new look at the war from the perspective of three couples whose paths crossed. This is high drama and an assemblage of characters uniquely suited to appreciate and record it. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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The roads to Santiago - Derry Brabbs

The roads to Santiago: the medieval pilgrim routes through France and Spain to Santiago de Compostela - Brabbs, Derry

Summary: Brabbs traces the four main routes within France leading to Santiago de Compostella, the third most important pilgrimage destination for medieval travelers. His photographs of the journeys are breathtaking, showing the tiny towns and grand cathedrals where the pilgrims took, and still take, shelter. In many towns of France and Spain the scallop symbol of St. James can still be found at wayside inns and hostels. Brabbs has written an informative and lively text to accompany his photos. This not only gives the background of the pilgrimage sites and the purpose behind the journey, but also describes the personal reactions of one who followed the same path as thousands over the centuries. Today there are more than religious reasons for making a pilgrimage to Compostella, but, as Brabbs shows so beautifully, anyone who follows the old roads there cannot avoid being affected by the journey.

Derry Brabbs is regarded as one of England's finest photographers within the sphere of heritage and landscape, with over 20 illustrated books to his credit. His stunning color photographs for the worldwide best-seller James Herriot's Yorkshire contributed to its success. He is the author of several beautifully photographed titles celebrating England's landscape and architectural legacy. His other titles for Frances Lincoln include The River Thames, Hadrian's Wall, A Year in the Life of Rutland, A Year in the Life of the Welsh Marches and Coast to Coast with Wainwright.
- (Mbi Pub Co)

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Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote - Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de

Summary: Presents the classic early-seventeenth-century Spanish novel of chivalry and abiding optimism, depicting the exploits of a knight who attempts to bring justice and truth to the world.


Choice Reviews
Literary and critical interest in Cervantes and his masterpiece continues to thrive. Translations of the Quixote, now reaching the age of 400, appear with some regularity, including such recent ones as Burton Raffel's The History of That Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quijote de la Mancha (CH, Mar'96) and the "Penguin Classics" edition by John Rutherford, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (2000). Grossman has previously translated works by such major contemporary Latin American authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (e.g., Love in the Time of Cholera, CH, Sep'88; The General in His Labyrinth, CH, Feb'91) and Mario Vargas Llosa; she also wrote The Anitpoetry of Nicanor Parra (CH, Sep'76). Turning to Cervantes and 17th-century Spain, she has now produced an excellent translation in crisp, clear English evoking the vital essence of the original Spanish in language, characters, time, and place. The great novel becomes more accessible in a version capturing nuances of style and phrase. Including helpful explanatory notes and an introduction by Harold Bloom, this translation joins such recent works as Maria Antonia Garces' Cervantes in Algiers (CH, Feb'03); The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, ed. by Anthony Cascardi's (CH, Apr'03); and Barbara Fuchs' Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity (CH, Sep'03). Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. Copyright 2004 American Library Association.

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Captain Alatriste - Arturo Perez-Reverte

Captain Alatriste - Perez-Reverte, Arturo

Summary: In a first installment of a new series of historical novels by the author of The Queen of the South, wounded seventeenth-century Spanish soldier Alatriste works as a swordsman-for-hire in Madrid, but when his latest job takes an unexpectedly deadly turn, he realizes he is in the employ of one of the Spanish Inquisition's most dangerous figures. Simultaneous. - (Baker & Taylor)


Publishers Weekly
International bestseller Pérez-Reverte (The Club Dumas) offers a winning swashbuckler set in 17th-century Spain. Hooded figures, apparently acting on the behalf of Fray Emilio Bocanegra, "president of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition," hire famed soldier Capt. Diego Alatriste to murder two Englishmen who have come to Madrid. One of the hooded figures, however, begs Alatriste (out of earshot of the others) only to wound the pair. When Alatriste and his fellow assassin, an ill-humored Italian, surprise the British, the captain is impressed by the fighting spirit they show, and he prevents the assassination from taking place. (The Italian, infuriated, swears eternal revenge.) When the Englishmen turn out to be on an important mission, Alatriste suddenly finds himself caught between a number of warring factions, Spanish and otherwise. Splendidly paced and filled with a breathtaking but not overwhelming sense of the history and spirit of the age, this is popular entertainment at its best: the characters have weight and depth, the dialogue illuminates the action as it furthers the story and the film-worthy plot is believable throughout. Agent, Howard Morhaim. (May 5)
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