Our Lady of the Night

Our Lady of the Night
Author: Mayra Santos-Febres
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2009-07-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061900923

From internationally-acclaimed novelist Mayra Santos-Febres comes a carnal, epic novel about the life of Isabel “La Negra” Luberza--a legendary Puerto Rican madam who, by the end of World War II, became the most powerful woman on the island. Born into poverty and then abandoned by her mother, Isabel "La Negra" Luberza blossoms into a supremely sensual young woman. Obsessed with attaining aristocratic status—armed with incredible physical presence, indomitable ambition, and keen intelligence—she meets Fernando Fornarís, the man who will forever change her life. With a parcel of land given to her by her rich, white married lover, Isabel transforms herself into a hard-edged and merciless businesswoman—abandoning her own newborn son to become Puerto Rico's most feared and respected madam, a collector of society's secrets, a queen of the notorious brothel that emerges as the island's true political and economic heart. Set against the rich backdrop of the Caribbean and the United States during the tumultuous years of World War II, Mayra Santos-Febres's Our Lady of the Night is a breathtaking novel of passion, power, and the devastating price of achieving everything one wishes for.

Our Lady of Everyday Life

Our Lady of Everyday Life
Author: María Del Socorro Castañeda-Liles
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2018
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190280395

For Mexican Catholic women in the United States, devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe-La Virgen-is a necessary aspect of their cultural identity. In this masterful ethnography, Mar a Del Socorro Casta eda-Liles considers three generations of Mexican-origin women between the ages of 18 and 82. She examines the Catholic beliefs the women inherited from their mothers and how these beliefs become the template from which they first learn to see themselves as people of faith. She also offers a comprehensive analysis of how Catholicism creates a culture in which Mexican-origin women learn how to be "good girls" in a manner that reduces their agency to rubble. Through the nexus of faith and lived experience, these women develop a type of Mexican Catholic imagination that helps them challenge the sanctification of shame, guilt, and aguante (endurance at all cost). This imagination allows these women to transgress strict notions of what a good Catholic woman should be while retaining life-giving aspects of Catholicism. This transgression is most visible in their relationship to La Virgen, which is a fluid and deeply engaged process of self-awareness in everyday life.

Sirena Selena

Sirena Selena
Author: Mayra Santos-Febres
Publisher: Picador
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429980281

From the author of Urban Oracles comes Mayra Santos-Febres's Sirena Selena: somewhere between "The Blue Angel" and "Kiss of the Spider Woman" rises the legend of Sirena Selena, the diva-siren of the Caribbean whose boleros seduce and torment whoever dares listen. Discovered by Martha Divine in the backstreets of San Juan, picking over garbage, drugged out of his mind and singing boleros that transfix the listener, a fifteen year old hustler is transformed into Sirena Selena, a diva whose uncanny beauty and irrisistable voice will be their ticket to fame and fortune. Auditioning for one of the luxury hotels in the Dominican Republic, Selena casts her spell over Hugo Graubel, one of the hotel's rich investors. Graubel is a powerful man in the Republic, married with children. Silena, determined to escape the poverty and abuse s/he suffered as a child, engages Graubel in a long seduction in this mordant, intensely lyrical tragi-comedy - part masque, part cabaret - about identity (class, race, gender) and "the hunger and desire to be other things."

Our Lady of the Nile

Our Lady of the Nile
Author: Scholastique Mukasonga
Publisher: Archipelago
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2014-09-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0914671049

Friendship, deceit, fear, and persecution at an elite boarding school for young women in Rwanda, fifteen years before the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi . . . “Mukasonga’s masterpiece” (Julian Lucas, NYRB) Scholastique Mukasonga drops us into an elite Catholic boarding school for young women perched on the edge of the Nile. Parents send their daughters to Our Lady of the Nile to be molded into respectable citizens and to escape the dangers of the outside world. Fifteen years prior to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, we watch as these girls try on their parents’ preconceptions and attitudes, transforming the lycée into a microcosm of the country’s mounting racial tensions and violence. In the midst of the interminable rainy season, everything unfolds behind the closed doors of the school: friendship, curiosity, fear, deceit, prejudice, and persecution. With masterful prose that is at once subtle and penetrating, Mukasonga captures a society hurtling towards horror.

Our Lady of Happy Endings

Our Lady of Happy Endings
Author: Jenifer McVaugh
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2016-10-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1460256123

In the snow-drenched Canadian winter of 1995, poet Mimi Clement succumbs to writer’s block. She will do anything to summon enough faith to get her through another cold, drab day, even if she has to pray for it. Her brother Damon tells her she needs a man, not faith, but he kindly drives her to the airport to begin a pilgrimage. High in the mountains of western México, Mimi finds Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso - Our Lady of Happy Endings. This virgin wears a rosary of skulls carved by an admirer: “memento mori.” Mimi takes it as a sign. For nine days Mimi says her remembered rosary prayers, as she struggles not to forget death. Ignore the sensuous temptations of paradise: memento mori! Tune out the screams of fighting cocks and the rumours of macho abuses: memento mori! Turn a blind eye to the discovery of a lost El Greco masterpiece. Memento mori! There is no better place to look for faith than in the close-up of a new reality.

Our Lady of Babylon

Our Lady of Babylon
Author: John Rechy
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802193137

“A funny, sexy, stylistically elegant, tongue-in-cheek rewriting of history” from the New York Times–bestselling author of City of Night (Booklist). A retelling of the stories of the fallen women of history, recounted by an eighteenth-century lady who realizes that these women’s lives bear a remarkable resemblance to her own. Told by a mystic that her dreams are memories of past lives, she must face the public to vindicate all women falsely accused of crimes. “Mr. Rechy’s renditions of these seemingly familiar stories can . . . be surprisingly fresh, creating an ominous sense of tragedy and doom.” —The New York Times Book Review “With a colorful ribbon of feminist revisionism festooning its New Age wrapping, Rechy’s latest novel indulges in past-life grandiosity and some scandalous speculation about the erotic lives of Adam, Medea and Jesus, among others.” —Publishers Weekly “Subversive and quite funny . . . A fictional absolution of women known historically as ‘whores’ . . . framed by a deadly serious look at erotic history and a formidable exploration of the power of words and their interpretation to alter our existence.” —Booklist “Rechy writes gracefully, and sometimes poignantly, of the fate of fallen women over the centuries.” —The Washington Post

Our Lady of Darkness

Our Lady of Darkness
Author: Fritz Leiber
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1497616735

A horror author is drawn into a mysterious curse in this World Fantasy Award–winning novel from the author of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. Fritz Leiber may be best known as a fantasy writer, but he published widely and successfully in the horror and science fiction fields. His fiction won the Hugo, Nebula, Derleth, Gandalf, Lovecraft, and World Fantasy Awards, and he was honored with the Life Achievement Lovecraft Award and the Grand Master Nebula Award. One of his best novels is the classic dark fantasy Our Lady of Darkness, winner of the 1978 World Fantasy Award. Our Lady of Darkness introduces San Francisco horror writer Franz Westen. While studying his beloved city through binoculars from his apartment window, he is astonished to see a mysterious figure waving at him from a hilltop two miles away. He walks to Corona Heights and looks back at his building to discover the figure waving at him from his apartment window—and to find himself caught in a century‐spanning curse that may have destroyed Clark Ashton Smith and Jack London.

Our Lady of the Nations

Our Lady of the Nations
Author: Chris Maunder
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2016-02-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191028193

Our Lady of the Nations is a detailed and scholarly overview of the apparitions of Mary in 20th-century Catholic Europe. Chris Maunder discusses apparitions in general and how they are interpreted in Catholicism by, for example, Karl Rahner and Benedict XVI. The role of women and children as visionaries is considered, including issues concerning changing views of gender, children's spirituality, and the protection of minors. He covers cases that are well known and approved by the Church (Fatima, Beauraing, Banneux, and Amsterdam), others that are well known but not approved (such as Garabandal and Medjugorje), and many that are neither well known nor approved, such as those in Belgian Flanders or Nazi Germany in the 1930s, or in France, Italy, or Germany after the Second World War. Resources include academic studies of particular apparitions, some Catholic theological and devotional literature, and occasionally travel writing. There is also coverage of material in French which is not known to the English reader. Shrines and visionaries are believed to be indicators of the presence of Mary. In the visionary perspective, she has appeared in order to reassure her followers and to warn of divine judgement. Her messages echo doctrinal Catholic Mariology with some innovations, but also express a deep dissatisfaction with the events and trends of the 20th century, from communism to Nazism to liberalism and religious indifference. While the Marian cult evolves according to new templates for apparitions and developments in Mariology, the fundamental message of presence, consolation, and admonition remains constant.

Ladies of the Night

Ladies of the Night
Author: Gene Simmons
Publisher: Phoenix Books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2008
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1614670382

Gene Simmons mega-rock star, businessman, marketing genius and self-proclaimed free spirit follows up his best-selling books Kiss And Make-Up and Sex Money Kiss with Ladies of the Night, an examination of the history of prostitution. Simmons makes the case that men have been stepping out on women since the beginning of time, and that the practice is not about to stop. For that reason alone, Simmons argues that prostitution should be legalized. He argues that prostitution is a victimless crime that could be made safe and become a large source of tax revenues. Simmons, who has never used a lady of the night, believes no one should have to pay for sex, whether it is through prostitutes or marriage. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, Simmons' book is an arresting, informative, humorous and outrageous exploration of the world's oldest profession, drawing on human nature, history, science and public policy.