Scorching novel from a star of Cuban fiction. Second Conde mystery set in languid Havana.

In 1762, British forces mobilized more than 230 ships and 26,000 soldiers, sailors, and enslaved Africans to attack Havana, one of the wealthiest and most populous ports in the Americas. They met fierce resistance. Spanish soldiers and local militias in Cuba, along with enslaved Africans who were promised freedom, held off the enemy for six suspenseful weeks. In the end, the British prevailed, but more lives were lost in the invasion and subsequent eleven-month British occupation of Havana than during the entire Seven Years' War in North America. The Occupation of Havana offers a nuanced and poignantly human account of the British capture and Spanish recovery of this coveted Caribbean city. The book explores both the interconnected histories of the British and Spanish empires and the crucial role played by free people of color and the enslaved in the creation and defense of Havana. Tragically, these men and women would watch their promise of freedom and greater rights vanish in the face of massive slave importation and increased sugar production upon Cuba's return to Spanish rule. By linking imperial negotiations with events in Cuba and their consequences, Elena Schneider sheds new light on the relationship between slavery and empire at the dawn of the Age of Revolutions.

This is the first comprehensive history of the culturally diverse city, and the first to be co-authored by a Cuban and an American. Beginning with the founding of Havana in 1519, Cluster and Hernández explore the making of the city and its people through revolutions, art, economic development and the interplay of diverse societies. The authors bring together conflicting images of a city that melds cultures and influences to create an identity that is distinctly Cuban.

DIVAn ethnography of sexual identity formation in contemporary Cuba./div

Studies the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba, where the violent entrenchment of slavery occurred while slaves in Haiti successfully overthrew the institution.

From the grimy streets of the Upper 9th Ward in New Orleans, to the urban stockades of Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, BlacK SheeP traces Duce's poignant and haunting journey from college-life, to thug-life, to eternal-life. Life was hard knock in the hood where Duce grew up in a rotting shotgun house with his mother and younger brother. He and his best friend, Jason, were both intellectually gifted teens who struggled together to find a place in society, while abiding in the mire of drugs and poverty in their community. Duce and Jason's tenacity however, set them on opposite pathways - Jason became the neighborhood "Dope Man," and Duce became a "College Boy." By the time Duce graduated from Southern University, it seemed he had it all - honorable grades, an attractive, high-society girlfriend, and a scholarship to attend grad school at Big State, a large flagship university in a rural midatlantic college town. But when he arrived at Big State, culture-shock knocked him off his high horse. Ultimately, his world crashed and he lost everything. When he returned home he couldn't escape the drug culture in his community. At the pith of his despair, he met a young black counselor named Coby in his court-ordered treatment program. Coby felt spiritually compelled to break Duce's defenses and uplift him through black empowerment. However, as Coby helped Duce overcome his demons, he began to unleash the ghosts in his own past. By fate, Duce, Jason and Coby were pieces of the same puzzle, posted on a platform of social injustice, government corruption and street life. The connection they had could be the insight they needed to make life make sense, or the dagger that would rip their souls apart.

“In this intelligent novel Hammesfahr has etched with precision the thoughts of a woman on the edge of madness.”—Der Spiegel Cora Bender killed a man. But why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of proof or witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and began his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora’s past, a harrowing descent into a woman’s private hell. Hailed as Germany’s Patricia Highsmith, Petra Hammesfahr has written a dark, spellbinding novel. At the top of the bestseller list, The Sinner has been reprinted sixteen times and sold over 760,000 copies at home. Translated into eleven languages, this is the first Hammesfahr title published in English. Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, left school at thirteen, became pregnant by an alcoholic at seventeen, and began writing novels at the age of forty. Her first thriller was turned down 159 times, but eventually success arrived. Hammesfahr has written over twenty crime and suspense novels. She also writes scripts for television and film. She is married with three children and lives near Cologne.