Why am I passionate about this?
Iāve loved mystery novels since picking up my older sisterās Agatha Christie collection as a pre-teen. Over the years Iāve come to love novels with badass women detectives, especially when the world-building pulls you into a place and time that is almost an additional character, where you can feel the weather, smell the buildings, and taste the fear. And it certainly doesnāt hurt to add a social justice angle. Having read so many, I finally decided to write my own mystery set in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights where I grew up, not anywhere near the Hollywood version.
Veronica's book list on badass female detectives on location
Why did Veronica love this book?
This Cemetery of Books series prompted my wife and me to repeatedly interrupt our reading with āCheck out this passageā comments. ZafĆ³nās prose and Lucia Gravesā translation are that beautiful. In the final book, they superbly depict repressive, Franco-era Barcelona and characters like Alicia Rico, who carries the pain and scars of the Spanish civil war while uncovering injustices with the help of book lovers who safeguard banned books and deep secrets. We visited Barcelona before reading the series but welcomed this return to Las Ramblas and other locales.
1 author picked The Labyrinth of the Spirits as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
As a child, Daniel Sempere discovered among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books an extraordinary novel that would change the course of his life. Now a young man in the Barcelona of the late 1950s, Daniel runs the Sempere & Sons bookshop and enjoys a seemingly fulfilling life with his loving wife and son. Yet the mystery surrounding the death of his mother continues to plague his soul despite the moving efforts of his wife Bea and his faithful friend Fermin to save him.
Just when Daniel believes he is close to solving this enigma, a conspiracy moreā¦