Here are 97 books that After Hours on Milagro Street fans have personally recommended if you like
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I write romance with Latinas on top. Strong, confident, and successful women (or women on their path to success) who are also sex-positive and know what they want are featured in all my work. I’m passionate about this type of representation of my community because until recently, it has been incredibly difficult to find. While the stories of our struggles are important stories to tell and read, I want to read more stories of our triumphs. Latina women have among the lowest reading for fun rates of any group, but why would we read for fun when we are not seeing our reflection anywhere on the page? This is why representation is so important.
Sierra Simone is the queen of diversity inclusion in romance. The Thornchapel series is my favorite by her. While I do recommend you start with Book 1, A Lesson in Thorns, Book 2 is where we get St. Sebastian Martinez’s voice and perspective.
St. Sebastian is the first character I ever read in romance that embodied the otherness I felt growing up Mexican-American.
This book is extremely taboo and not for the faint of heart. Come for a diverse cast with the dreamiest narrative voice (think an adult, BDSM, version of the secret garden), and stay for characters you will fall in love with.
I'm an outcast and a loner, named for death itself. Fate wasn't supposed to have plans for me.
But then she came back--the girl I once kissed in a thorn-covered chapel in the woods. She came back, and I could no more resist her than I could pry out my own heart. And by some trick of fate, she wants me as much as I want her. The only problem? She also wants the man who owns Thornchapel, Auden Guest.
And so do I.
Eight years ago, I did something to Auden, something terrible. He hurt me back the only…
As a historical romance reader, I’m a sucker for stories about the glamorous aristocracy falling in love. While Regency and Victorian romances have explored feminism for at least the last two decades, the genre often falls short of asking more of itself. Of course the debutante shouldn’t need a man – but while the story liberates her, it doesn’t take any notice of the non-aristocratic, non-Anglican, non-White, less-abled, and/or non-cishet straight characters around her. I yearned for stories that required my favorite aristocrats to acknowledge, examine, and leverage their privilege. All five of these authors deliver – without forgetting our favorite tropes and genre conventions!
In research for my own books, I have learned how present the British were in the Caribbean for centuries.
Yet it is not often that I find Caribbean characters when reading historical romances. That is one of the reasons I was so excited to pick up A Caribbean Heiress in Paris– and I was not disappointed!
In this novel, you get a heroine who is trying to defend her identity on three fronts: as a businesswoman, as a mixed-race woman, and as a woman who does not want marriage to be the solution to her problems.
Much of the hero’s growth is discovering how to witness and learn about Luz Alana’s challenges without barging in and “solving” them.
This is a great read with a delightful plot, new insight into Caribbean-European history, and an endearing romance.
'A Caribbean Heiress in Paris is a triumph!' Sarah MacLean
'Historical romance at its very best - fresh, lush and full of steam!' Sophie Jordan
Paris, 1889.
Luz Alana Heith-Benzan, heiress to the Cana Brava rum empire, has sailed all the way from Santo Domingo with one purpose: expanding her family's business.
Enter James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick. From their first tempestuous meeting, Luz Alana is conflicted - why is this titled, and infuriatingly charming, Scottish man so willing to help her?
Evan might have his own reasons for supporting Luz Alana but every day they spend together makes…
I write romance with Latinas on top. Strong, confident, and successful women (or women on their path to success) who are also sex-positive and know what they want are featured in all my work. I’m passionate about this type of representation of my community because until recently, it has been incredibly difficult to find. While the stories of our struggles are important stories to tell and read, I want to read more stories of our triumphs. Latina women have among the lowest reading for fun rates of any group, but why would we read for fun when we are not seeing our reflection anywhere on the page? This is why representation is so important.
Whenever I need a low-angst, light-hearted rom-com, Carla Luna is my go-to. White Wedding is my favorite of hers, featuring hot, Mexican-American chef, Rafael Sanchez.
Rafael breaks every common stereotype of the Mexican man. Incredibly patient, gentle, and loving, he is the perfect cinnamon-roll hero for Victoria Blackwood.
The premise of this book is everything. Our heroine, Victoria, is stuck planning a wedding. It just so happens the groom is her ex. Enter Rafael to cater the wedding. Oh, did I forget to mention he was her one-night stand she ran out on? Yes, this book is as delicious as it sounds.
This book made me laugh out loud, embarrassingly, in public places. Perfect for a weekend escape into a happy world.
Take one lavish holiday wedding. Add one evil ex and his bridezilla. And toss in a smoking-hot chef from the past. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Victoria Blackwood has spent years trying to redeem herself after falling victim to a blackmail scheme that cost her father thousands. So, when he insists she coordinate a big Christmas wedding at her family’s winery, she can’t say no. Even if the groom is her ex, and the caterer just quit.
For Rafael Sanchez, a last-minute call to cater a huge society wedding is a golden opportunity. If he can prove he’s up to…
As a food scientist, I’ve always been interested in the processing of food and developing new recipes. Foodie fiction can take us into that process, showing us the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to run a foodie business and how to create dishes that people will love, even if you can only taste them through your imagination. And food and books just go together! Or am I the only one reading while eating?
This is a cute rom-com featuring unique characters, food, and nosy families. Being Puerto Rican, I gravitated immediately to the Puerto Rican flag on the cover.
I loved everything about it: the characters (especially the abuelos), the setting of the Puerto Rican restaurant and the whiskey distillery, the Spanish sprinkled every now and then, and the plot.
I was rooting for Kamilah and Liam to fulfill their career goals and fall in love. I loved that both Kamilah and Liam are flawed and need to grow in order to achieve their goals and have a mature romantic relationship.
“Utterly charming… A Proposal They Can't Refuse is a surefire winner!” —Mia Sosa, USA Today bestselling author of The Worst Best Man
Natalie Caña turns up the heat, humor and heart in this debut rom-com about a Puerto Rican chef and an Irish American whiskey distiller forced into a fake engagement by their scheming octogenarian grandfathers.
Kamilah Vega is desperate to convince her family to update their Puerto Rican restaurant and enter it into the Fall Foodie Tour. With the gentrification of their Chicago neighborhood, it's the only way to save the place. The fly in her mofongo—her blackmailing abuelo…
I’m an author and illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a Latin American, I think it's important to have books with stories about our realities and culture that feature Latino people as the protagonists. I hope you enjoy my recommendations!
If you are like me, you enjoy stories about grandparents. This book is about a granddaughter's relationship with her grandmother, and the embarrassment she feels about the yellow handkerchief her grandmother uses.
I love everything Cynthia Alonso illustrates, and this book is no exception. The illustrations are playful and colorful, depicting the bond between these two characters in a beautiful way. I also like that the text includes some Spanish words.
In the end, the character realizes that her grandmother's yellow handkerchief makes her unique, and the legacy is passed on, a beautiful takeaway.
A child confronts conflicting feelings of embarrassment and love for her Mexican abuela in this moving, personal story from Newbery- and Pura Belpre Award-winning author Donna Barba HigueraMy abuela wears an old yellow handkerchief that her grandmother gave to her.I don't like the yellow handkerchief.When a young girl feels ashamed of her family for being "different" and subconsciously blames her abuela, she gradually grows to not only accept but also love the yellow handkerchief that represents a language and culture that once brought embarrassment.Inspired by the personal experiences of award-winning author Donna Barba Higuera and expressively illustrated by Cynthia Alonso,…
I'm a fifth-generation Arizonan, a former staff writer for the Arizona Republic, and a lifelong student of the Grand Canyon State. One of my very favorite things to do is travel the backroads of this amazing state and talk with the astonishing people who live there. Along the way, I wrote eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award. My day job is at Chapman University, where I am an English professor.
Cities all over the country were busy wrecking their own architectural heritage in the mid-20th century during the heyday of “slum clearance,” but Tucson experienced an especially painful loss: multiple blocks of irreplaceable colonial townhouses in Barro Viejo turned to dust for the sake of an ugly convention center.
Lydia Otero explains how and why this was allowed to happen with the exactitude of a scholar and the muted outrage of one who came from the community mourning the loss.
On March 1, 1966, the voters of Tucson approved the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project--Arizona's first major urban renewal project--which targeted the most densely populated eighty acres in the state. For close to one hundred years, tucsonenses had created their own spatial reality in the historical, predominantly Mexican American heart of the city, an area most called "la calle." Here, amid small retail and service shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues, they openly lived and celebrated their culture. To make way for the Pueblo Center's new buildings, city officials proceeded to displace la calle's residents and to demolish their ethnically diverse neighborhoods,…
I wrestled with big questions as a child, particularly concerning gender inequality. I was aware of the issue as young as 7 years old. I didn’t even feel comfortable challenging the way things were until I was a young adult. Thus began my journey of researching, studying, and embracing women’s rights and gender equality. I feel very passionate about presenting those big questions earlier in the lives of girls, so they start feeling comfortable challenging the places where things don’t make sense, or the areas where inequality still exists. There is a need for more books like these in the market, but I hope you enjoy this list!
Addie Ramirez, the main character of Tumble, is the kind of girl who takes charge of her situation—whether it’s searching for her father or meeting new people or speaking her mind about wrestling.
I felt such a personal connection to Addie; she loves her stepdad, but she still wonders about her father and embarks on a journey to find him and get to know him. And along the way, she meets her wrestling family and learns firsthand how powerful women wrestlers can be.
I loved that readers get to see powerful women in a sport traditionally dominated by men!
Twelve-year-old Adela "Addie" Ramirez has a big decision to make when her stepfather proposes adoption. Addie loves Alex, the only father figure she's ever known, but with a new half brother due in a few months and a big school theater performance on her mind, everything suddenly feels like it's moving too fast. She has a million questions, and the first is about the young man in the photo she found hidden away in her mother's things.
Addie's sleuthing takes her to a New Mexico ranch, and her world expands to include the legendary Bravos: Rosie and Pancho, her paternal…
As a university professor, I often teach popular women’s writing, and I realized that I needed to teach Latinx popular fiction as well. Women’s popular writing in the United States reflects but also shapes the way women see themselves in a global neoliberal world. After I had written an article on class and Chicanx and Latinx fiction, I also realized that class and race are key to thinking about how Latinas/Chicanas both create and follow market trends in an effort to “better” themselves in addition to showing how various Latinas/Chicanas see each other in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender.
Vallejo painstakingly lays out the way some Mexican Americans, usually the poorest of the minorities, struggle to make it into a specifically American middle class. She details how these Latinas/Latinos carefully shape themselves, and in turn are shaped by corporate and state interests, into an ethnicity that is for the most part deracinated and stripped of their more obvious “ethnic” attributes (as a small example, most drop the accent marks in their names). For my book, a look at the middle-class Latinx is a look at the desires and strivings of Latina writers and characters of Chica Lit.
Too frequently, the media and politicians cast Mexican immigrants as a threat to American society. Given America's increasing ethnic diversity and the large size of the Mexican-origin population, an investigation of how Mexican immigrants and their descendants achieve upward mobility and enter the middle class is long overdue. Barrios to Burbs offers a new understanding of the Mexican American experience.
Vallejo explores the challenges that accompany rapid social mobility and examines a new indicator of incorporation, a familial obligation to "give back" in social and financial support. She investigates the salience of middle-class Mexican Americans' ethnic identification and details how…
By Jada Benn Torres and Gabriel A. Torres Colón
Author
Why are we passionate about this?
We met as “baby anthropologists” in graduate school and have stuck together ever since. With Jada’s training in genetic anthropology and Gabriel’s training in cultural anthropology, we’ve accompanied each other to our various field sites throughout the Caribbean, Spain, and the US Midwest. Aside from our book, each of us has authored many peer-reviewed publications, including an award-winning article in the journal Human Biology. Though we both have our own independent research agendas, our interests overlap on several topics including genetic ancestry. Our different anthropological training and our mutual love for our discipline always makes for interesting perspectives on a variety of topics.
Alex Chávez is a cultural anthropologist, but he is also a musician, and his artistic abilities are on full display in this beautifully narrated and analytically sharp ethnography of huapango arribeño across the US-Mexican social spaces. Chávez allows us to reimagine Mexican migrants as much more than the protagonists of the social problem of migration. Instead, we can see how expressive culture is a significant aspect of migrant lives. This book is also a theoretical heavyweight for those looking for more than a beautifully crafted ethnographic description.
In Sounds of Crossing Alex E. Chavez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and poetics of huapango arribeno, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. Following the resonance of huapango's improvisational performance within the lives of audiences, musicians, and himself-from New Year's festivities in the highlands of Guanajuato, Mexico, to backyard get-togethers along the back roads of central Texas-Chavez shows how Mexicans living on both sides of the border use expressive culture to construct meaningful communities amid the United States' often vitriolic immigration politics. Through Chavez's writing, we gain an intimate look at…
Namrata Poddar is an Indian American writer of fiction and nonfiction, literature and writing faculty at UCLA, and Interviews Editor for Kweli where she curates the series, “Race, Power and Storytelling.” Her work has explored ways in which writers from across the world decolonize Literature. Her debut novel, Border Less, was a finalist for Feminist Press’s Louise Meriwether Prize, longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and featured in several media outlets including the “Most Anticipated” 2022 books for The Millions and Ms. Magazine. She holds a PhD in French literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Transnational Cultures from UCLA.
Written in 46 short vignettes, this is a coming-of-age story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. Yet the novel is anything but one protagonist’s story, as it consistently juxtaposes Esperanza’s story with stories of secondary characters who make a brief appearance in the novel to seldom reappear and tie loose ends of the “sub-plots”: Marin, Louie, Alicia, Geraldo, Rafaela, Minerva, and others. Narrative continuity via a protagonist’s psychological journey that is a key trait of coming-of-age novels, or of mainstream Western or realist novels at large, is repeatedly disrupted here, making the reader wonder, who isthe novel’s protagonist?: Esperanza, Mango Street, or its Brown community, or young Latina girls and women in a 20th century USA, alluded by “las Mujeres” to whom the book is dedicated.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes-sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous-Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.
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