Narrator

Roxanne Hernandez

Roxanne Hernandez
  • In the magnificent feast of Clarice Lispector’s books, her crônicas―short, intensely vivid newspaper pieces―are the delicious canapés.

    “The things I’ve learned from taxi drivers would be enough to fill a book. They know a lot: they really do get around. I may know a lot about Antonioni that they don’t know. Or maybe they do even when they don’t. There are various ways of knowing by not-knowing. I know: it happens to me too.”

    The crônica, a literary genre peculiar to Brazilian newspapers, allows writers, or even soccer stars, to address a wide readership on any theme they like.

    Chatty, mystical, intimate, flirtatious, and revelatory, Clarice Lispector’s pieces for the Saturday edition of Rio’s leading paper, the Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, take the forms of memories, essays, aphorisms, and serialized stories. Endlessly delightful, her insights make one sit up and think, whether about children or social ills or pets or society women or the business of writing or love.

    This new, beautifully translated work presents a new aspect of the great writer―at once off the cuff and spot on.

  • 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 object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them—could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another.

    Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humor, The Family Izquierdo is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.

  • The daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon grew up as a shy, timid child in a small midwestern town during the 1960s. Targeted by school bullies and dismissed by many of her teachers, she worried that people would find out the truth: that she was INTF. Incompetent. Nerd. Terrified. Failure. This feeling stayed with her well into her twenties when she was told that “girls can’t do science” or “women just don’t know how to handle machines.”

    Yet in the span of just six years, Cecilia became the first Latina pilot to secure a place on the United States Unlimited Aerobatic Team and earn the right to represent her country at the Olympics of aviation, the World Aerobatic Championships. How did she do it?

    Using mathematical techniques to overcome her fear, Cecilia performed at air shows in front of millions of people. She jumped out of airplanes and taught others how to fly. She learned how to fund-raise and earn money to compete at the world level. She worked as a test pilot and contributed to the design of experimental airplanes, crafting curves of metal and fabric that shaped air to lift inanimate objects high above the earth. And best of all, she surprised everyone by overcoming the prejudices people held about her because of her race and her gender.

    Flying Free is the story of how Cecilia Aragon broke free from expectations and rose above her own limits by combining her passion for flying with math and logic in unexpected ways. You don’t have to be a math whiz or a science geek to learn from her story. You just have to want to soar.

  • This groundbreaking multicultural anthology shares moving personal stories about the impacts of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

    An estimated 5.7 million Americans are afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease, including ten percent of those over sixty-five, and it is the sixth leading cause of death. But its effects are more pervasive: For the nearly six million sufferers, there are more than sixteen million family caregivers and many more family members. Alzheimer’s wreaks havoc not only on brain cells—it is a disease of the spirit and heart for not only those who suffer from it, but also for their families.

    This groundbreaking anthology presents forty narratives, both nonfiction and fiction, that together capture the impact and complexity of Alzheimer’s and other dementias on patients, as well as their caregivers and family. Deeply personal, recounting the wrenching course of a disease that kills a loved one twice—first they forget who they are, and then the body succumbs—these stories also show how witnessing the disease and caring for someone with it can be powerfully transformative, calling forth amazing strength and grace.

  • The Living Infinite is based on the true story of the Spanish princess Eulalia, an outspoken firebrand at the Bourbon court during the troubled and decadent final years of her family’s reign.

    After her cloistered childhood at the Spanish court, her youth spent in exile, and a loveless marriage, Eulalia gladly departs Europe for the New World. In the company of Tomás Aragón, the son of her one-time wet nurse and a small-town bookseller with a thirst for adventure, she travels by ship, first to a Cuba bubbling with revolutionary fervor then on to the 1893 Chicago World Fair. As far as others are concerned, she is there as an emissary of the Bourbon dynasty and a guest of the Fair. Secretly, she is in America to find a publisher for her scandalous, incendiary autobiography, a book that might well turn the old world order on its head.

    Acevedo’s new novel is an atmospheric and gripping tale of love, adventure, power, and the quest to take control of one’s destiny. Bourbon Spain, Revolutionary Cuba, and fin de siècle America are vividly rendered, and Eulalia’s personal rebellion will resonate with many listeners.

  • A dazzling look at Mayan mythology incarnate from New York Times bestselling author Steve Alten

    For two thousand years, the Mayan Calendar has prophesied the end of mankind on a date equating to December 21st, 2012. As that day approaches, greed, corruption, economic collapse, and violence seem to be pushing our species to the predicted brink of disaster. But there is another doomsday threat looming in our near future, a very real threat that can wipe out not only humanity but our entire planet.

    Phobos: Mayan Fear, Steve Alten’s third book in the Mayan prophecy-based Domain series, is a doomsday rollercoaster ride of adventure that follows Immanuel Gabriel to the end of the world and back again for one last shot at salvation. During Immanuel’s journey with his deceased grandfather, archaeologist Julius Gabriel, Julius reveals everything the Mayans knew and feared—from the secrets of creation that predate the Big Bang to the existence of extraterrestrials that have come to Earth to save our species.

    The universe is not what it seems, nor is human existence. The ticking clock of physicality that begins at conception and terminates with our final breath is neither the end nor the beginning, but an elaborate ruse constructed as a test.

    We are failing miserably.

  • What happens to us when we die? Is there really an afterlife? Do we possess a soul? Does God exist? For Michael Gabriel, the answers to these questions lie in another dimension, a realm of eternity where there is no concept of time, only pure life force, pure existence, and pure evil.

    Now, as was foretold five hundred years ago in the Mayan Popol Vuh, Michael’s sons are born: white-haired, azure-eyed Jacob, blessed with inhuman physical prowess, intelligence, and insight into the cosmos, and dark-haired Immanuel, who refuses his genetic calling, desiring only a normal life. Only the combined powers of the Gabriel twins can resurrect their savior-father and save the human race from an eternity of repeating its own self-destruction.

    But on this fateful day another child is born. Exposed to the uglier side of existence and empowered by her posthuman genetics, the beautiful, schizophrenic Lilith will travel down a darker path that leads to eon-distant Xibalba (the Mayan version of Hell) and an epic battle of good versus evil and the final destiny of the human race.

  • An asteroid impacts Earth, forever changing life on our planet. Only the object wasn’t an asteroid …

    For thirty-two years, archaeologist Julius Gabriel investigated the Mayan calendar, a 2,500-year-old enigma of time and space that predicts humanity will perish on December 21, 2012 (the winter solstice). Julius believes that certain mysterious sites: the Great Pyramid of Giza, Stonehenge, the giant desert drawings of the Nazca Plateau, the temple of Angkor Wat, the Pyramid of the Sun, and the key site—the Kukulcán Pyramid at Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán Peninsula, site of the ancient asteroid impact—represent pieces of a global puzzle linked to the salvation of our species. Ridiculed by his peers, Julius dies before he can solve the doomsday prophecy. Now, only one person can prevent our annihilation—Julius’ son, Michael, a patient locked up in a Miami mental asylum.

    Miami, 2012. Psychology major Dominique Vazquez reports to a Miami asylum to complete her graduate internship. The new director assigns her to a special patient—Mick Gabriel, a paranoid schizophrenic with a high IQ. Mick attempts to charm her into believing his father’s theories of the apocalypse so he can escape. What Dominique doesn’t realize is that she represents Mick’s last hope of saving humanity.

    Fall equinox, 2012. As it has done for a thousand years, a serpent’s shadow appears on the northern balustrade of the Kukulcán Pyramid. As a rare galactic alignment occurs, a deep space radio transmission reaches Earth, activating the remnants of an object buried long ago in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the beginning of the end.

  • Las Aventuras de Bella & Harry es una colección de libros que narra las escapadas de un cachorro llamado Bella, de su hermanito Harry, y de su familia según exploran las vistas y sonidos de nuevas y excitantes ciudades de todo el mundo. Esta colección ofrece una manera informativa y excitante de presentar a los niños todo sobre viajes, países y costumbres diferentes, su historia, sus puntos de interés y demás; lo que seguro se ganará el afecto de nuestros pequeños oyentes.

    Comparte momentos con Bella y Harry en su viaje familiar por Londres, y visita el Puente de la Torre (Tower Bridge), el Palacio de Buckingham, Stonehenge y otros lugares destacados. Por el camino presentarán típicos platos gastronómicos.

    A continuación, únete a Bella y a Harry en su viaje familiar por París, mientras descubren el Louvre, la Torre Eiffel, el Arco del Triunfo y otros fascinantes lugares. No faltará una introducción para nuestros jóvenes de la cocina local y de algunas frases básicas en francés.

    Prosigue tu viaje uniéndote a Bella, a Harry y a su familia en su viaje por Barcelona, descubriendo Las Ramblas, La Sagrada Familia y el Parque Guell, entre otros lugares magníficos. También oirás hablar de la cocina local (caso de las tapas) y frases útiles en catalán.

    Por último, sigue a Bella y Harry en su viaje por la Ciudad de Nueva York en plena Navidad. Los cachorros se pasearán por la Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue), sin perderse de vista el gran árbol navideño del Rockefeller Center, yendo a patinar sobre hielo, visitando el Radio City Music Hall y demás; todo mientras degustan los típicos bocados urbanos neoyorquinos.

    Las cómicas y informativas aventuras de Bella y Harry estimularán la imaginación de nuestros niños, fomentando una sed especial de conocimiento del mundo en el que habitan.

  • Snatched is the electric tale by the New York Times bestselling author of Blow, Bruce Porter, that tells the true story of a woman caught between two worlds, with her life dangling in the balance.

    Raised an aristocrat in Colombia and educated in European schools, Pilar transfixes everyone with her charm and her guile. She also falls for dangerous men and finds herself drawn into the highest levels of the cocaine trade.

    After two failed marriages and a harrowing escape from the drug life, she settles down to a quiet existence in Florida with her children—until her second husband tries to cut short his prison term by giving her name over to members of a new task force being formed by the DEA. They induce Pilar, now a middle-aged woman, to infiltrate the Cali cartel as the head of a vast money-laundering sting.

    Named Operation Princess, the scheme leads to the seizure of tens of millions of dollars, along with some $500 million worth of cocaine and the exposure of hundreds of high-level traffickers, becoming one of the most daring and successful stings in DEA history.

    But Pilar plays her part too well. Her success as a money launderer gets her kidnapped and then ransomed by a band of guerrillas in South America—and the United States government refuses to negotiate. It’s left to her low-level handlers in the DEA to get her back before her kidnappers discover they have a federal agent in their clutches.

  • Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel—welcome to the surprisingly potent world of the novelette. The award-winning magazine Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show has been an online haven for this powerful form of storytelling since 2005. Now its editors have selected their all-time favorite science fiction novelettes from the magazine's eight-year history and reprinted them together in one big book of reading pleasure. Anything that is remotely possible—futures near and far, artificial intelligence and alien encounters, alternate timelines and alternate theories about creating universes, planet-eating black holes and lunar racetracks—is all here under the big tent of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.

    This anthology features stories by such award-winning authors as Orson Scott Card, Wayne Wightman, Aliette de Bodard, Eric James Stone, Mary Robinette Kowal, Stephen Kotowych, Jackie Gamber, Greg Siewert, Jamie Todd Rubin, Brad R. Torgersen, and Marina J. Lostetter, plus an all-new essay by Orson Scott Card about writing the character of Ender.

  • They are hunting us.

    In this sweeping, threaded narrative of the global phenomenon known as the Vampire Wars, mankind is unwittingly infected by a millennia-old bacteria unknowingly exhumed by a scientific expedition in Antarctica. Now, in some rare cases, a person's so-called junk DNA becomes activated. Depending on their racial and ethnic heritage, they begin to manifest one of the many diverse forms of the "others" that are the true basis for the legends of supernatural creatures. These aren't your usual vampires and werewolves—it goes much deeper than that.

    Conceived by Jonathan Maberry, V Wars features stories from various frontlines as reported by such contributors as Nancy Holder, Yvonne Navarro, James A. Moore, Gregory Frost, John Everson, Keith R. A. DeCandido, and Scott Nicholson—as well as Maberry himself, of course. The result is a compelling series of tales that creates a unique chronicle of mankind's response to this sudden, hidden threat to humanity.

    The narrators of this audio production include Grammy, Emmy, Tony, and Audie award winners.