National Book Lovers Day: Perfect new reads for any bibliophile

Edited by The Bronx Is Reading founder Saraciea J. Fennell and featuring an all-star cast of Latinx contributors, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed is a ground-breaking anthology that will spark dialogue and inspire hope.

In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora.

These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth.

Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can‘t Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community. The bestselling and award-winning contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Cristina Arreola, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Naima Coster, Natasha Diaz, Saraciea J. Fennell, Kahlil Haywood, Zakiya Jamal, Janel Martinez, Jasminne Mendez, Meg Medina, Mark Oshiro, Julian Randall, Lilliam Rivera, and Ibi Zoboi.

Personal trauma can take many forms, including what Dr. Randall Bell calls the “difficult Ds”: death, divorce, disease, disaster, and destruction. But any circumstances that you’re having difficulty processing and moving beyond can be considered trauma, he explains. “Trauma affects us all at some point in time,” Dr. Bell said. “But the good news is, we can get through it and actually heal from it.”

In his latest book, Post-Traumatic Thriving: The Art, Science, & Stories of Resilience, Dr. Bell draws upon his decades of experience and scientific research to deliver a three-stage framework — Dive, Survive and Thrive — that can help readers process their trauma, make the conscientious decision to accept help and move forward, and eventually, tap into the energy generated by that trauma to achieve more than they ever thought possible.

Corie Adjmi, award-winning author and women’s empowerment advocate, harnesses the power and relatability of storytelling to help empower women in all areas of life in her multi-award-winning book, Life and Other Shortcomings.

This book illustrates the stories of 12 women, all on a different path in life, with one common overarching theme: the beauty, honesty and compelling nature of the female experience and what it means to be a woman. Through each character’s intimate journey, specific truths are revealed about what it means to be a woman—in a relationship with another person, in a particular culture and era—and how these conditions ultimately affect her relationship with herself. The stories as a whole depict patriarchy, showing what still might be, but certainly what was, for some women in this country before the #MeToo movement.

When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family’s possibly-magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their hometown, in Anna-Marie McLemore’s The Mirror Season.

Graciela Cristales’ whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gift for making enchanted pan dulce. Neighborhood trees vanish overnight, while mirrored glass appears, bringing reckless magic with it.

And Ciela is haunted by what happened to her, and what happened to the boy whose name she never learned. But when the boy, Lock, shows up at Ciela’s school, he has no memory of that night, and no clue that a single piece of mirrored glass is taking his life apart. Ciela decides to help him, which means hiding the truth about that night. Because Ciela knows who assaulted her, and him. And she knows that her survival, and his, depend on no one finding out what really happened.

Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced in her grandmother’s tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her aunts and uncles and cousins, but haunted by the secrets of the family and the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio—even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars.

Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering circle of powerful orisha-like women with tragic real-world wounds, and she vowed to tell their stories—but first she’d have to get off the stairs and join the dance. She’d have to find her language. Weaving together Hudes’s love of books with the stories of her family, the lessons of North Philly with those of Yale, this is an inspired exploration of home, memory, and belonging—narrated by an obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty.

The capital of the country is so big that it can house countless stories hidden in every street, in every house. For this reason, Héctor de Mauleón has taken on the task of capturing some of them, the most shocking and endearing, through the power of the chronicle.

The writer and journalist knows that the city changes, is transformed and we run the risk of not recognizing ourselves in it. Supported by graphic resources such as photographs, sketches, newspaper advertisements and illustrations, this work invites the reader to move in time and space to locate themselves in each era and to adopt those other streets and buildings as their own.

De Mauleón loves the city with its cracks, its faults and its monstrous contradictions. This is a kind of declaration of love where each of us can recognize ourselves as that lover. Divided into two volumes, these chronicles revolve around various themes: meeting points, great transformations, death in the city, outstanding figures and the surprise of everyday life.

After joining forces to save Castallan from an ancient magical evil, Alfie and Finn haven’t seen each other in months. Alfie is finally stepping up to his role as heir and preparing for an International Peace Summit, while Finn is traveling and reveling in her newfound freedom from Ignacio. That is, until she’s unexpectedly installed as the new leader of one of Castallan’s powerful crime syndicates.

Just when Finn finds herself back in San Cristobal, Alfie’s plans are also derailed. The mysterious organization responsible for his brother’s murder has resurfaced—and their newest target is the summit. And when these events converge, Finn and Alfie are once again forced to work together to follow the assassins’ trail and preserve Castallan’s hopes for peace with Englass. But will they be able to stop these sinister foes before a new war threatens their kingdom?

Silence isn’t always golden. In fact, staying silent during critical moments can result in missed opportunities, broken relationships or disastrous decisions, asserts business consultant and award-winning speaker Mary J. Nestor.

Her new book, SAY IT NOW! SAY IT RIGHT! How to Handle Tough or Tender Conversations, provides a straightforward look at the problem people and organizations face by not practicing the art of authentic communication. “Despite the digital revolution, we are connecting more but communicating less,” Nestor notes.“SAY IT NOW! SAY IT RIGHT! provides tips and scripts to help you find your voice and speak up at those critical moments in a way that your message has impact and acceptance.”

Nestor begins by revealing her own early experience with taking a risk and speaking out in a difficult situation. She uses her personal journey plus her background in human resources to inform three main principles of effective communication: timing, delivery and motive, and shares compelling stories that illustrate how to put all three principles into practice in a variety of realistic scenarios.

Love at the Center of Grief is a contemporary “The Notebook” for grieving teens who want to believe in the power of love even when faced with grief, like in “The Fault in Our Stars.”

If only they knew how.

For Gretchen Gardener and Hayden Tucker, Summerfort Grief Center, nestled near Branson, Missouri, offers a place to hope. At the tender age of six, they both endured the losses of their mothers. As children, they bonded as friends, but when puberty hits, romantic crushes develop. Shyness has them doubting every emotion. Who will break the silence - build courage - admit they care?

Summerfort High School awaits this year. Hayden wears Summerfort Eagles’ jerseys, but not everyone on the team accepts this robust loner due to his sensitive nature. Gretchen’s a blend of childish maturity, spouting off unique words and Constitutional factoids. Neither of those talents solves her obsessive behavior at hoarding odd memories. Love at the Center of Grief overflows with equal parts heartache and laughter. Gretchen and Hayden navigate adolescence with hefty layers of grief and widowed dads in tow. Raw, honest emotions pour into grief diaries to their mothers, which explain, through detailed stories, how grief factors into everything.

Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, through obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting - until her therapist encourages her to take a 90-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.

Rachel soon meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam - by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family - and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter’s fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE.

Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt. From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia’s Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals - personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others - that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women.

A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.

A shockingly powerful exploration of the lasting impact of prejudice and the indomitable spirit of sisterhood that will have readers questioning what it truly means to be an ally, from sister-writer duo Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, authors of Dear Haiti, Love Alaine.

Isn’t Being Human Enough? When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic. One of the good ones.

Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind - why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed? - Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected - one that will change everything all over again.

The young dressmaker Sira Quiroga leaves Madrid in the months before the Civil War, carried away by her unbridled love for a man. Together they settle in Tangier, a worldly, exotic and vibrant city where everything unthinkable can come true —even betrayal and abandonment.

Alone and beset by other people’s debts, Sira moves to Tetouan, the capital of the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco. With unspeakable tricks and aided by friends of dubious reputation, she forges a new identity and manages to launch a select atelier in which she serves clients from remote origins and unsuspected present. Written in splendid prose, El tiempo entre costuras is a gripping adventure in which haute couture ateliers, the glamor of grand hotels, political conspiracies and the dark missions of the secret services are fused with loyalty to those to whom we want and with the unstoppable power of love.

Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat. People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it’s hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn’t help.

The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter. But there’s one person who’s always in Charlie’s corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing - he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her? UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS. A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.

For generations, Brown girls have had to push against powerful forces of sexism, racism, and classism, often feeling alone in the struggle. By founding Latina Rebels, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez has created a community to help women fight together. In For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, she offers wisdom and a liberating path forward for all women of color. She crafts powerful ways to address the challenges Brown girls face, from imposter syndrome to colorism. She empowers women to decolonize their worldview, and defy “universal” white narratives, by telling their own stories. Her book guides women of color toward a sense of pride and sisterhood and offers essential tools to energize a movement. May it spark a fire within you.