Two Exes. One holiday adventure. Merry Ex-Mas? Seventeen-year-old Lila Beckwith's parents just left for vacation, and Lila's all set to throw the holiday party of the season. But when her Christmas-obsessed little brother, Cooper, discovers that global warming is melting the North Pole, he and his best friend, Tyler, take off on a runaway mission to save Santa. Lila has to get Cooper safely home before her parents get back on Christmas Eve. But the only person who can help her is Tyler's older brother, Beau -- a.k.a. Lila's musician, anti-everything ex-boyfriend. It'll take more than a Christmas miracle for Lila and Beau to overcome their differences and find their fugitive brothers. But could a journey destined for disaster help these polar opposites fall in love...all over again?

Overall Winner of the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature High Mas: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture explores Caribbean identity through photography, criticism, and personal narrative. Taking a sophisticated and unapologetically subjective Caribbean point of view, the author delves into Mas—a key feature of Trinidad performance—as an emancipatory practice. The photographs and essays here immerse the viewer in carnival experience as never before. Kevin Adonis Browne divulges how performers are or wish to be perceived, along with how, as the photographer, he is implicated in that dynamic. The resulting interplay encourages an informed, nuanced approach to the imaging of contemporary Caribbeanness. The first series, “Seeing Blue,” features Blue Devils from the village of Paramin, whose performances signify an important revision of the post-emancipation tradition of Jab Molassie (Molasses Devil) in Trinidad. The second series, “La Femme des Revenants,” chronicles the debut performance of Tracey Sankar’s La Diablesse, which reintroduced the “Caribbean femme fatale” to a new audience. The third series, “Moko Jumbies of the South,” looks at Stephanie Kanhai and Jonadiah Gonzales, a pair of stilt-walkers from the performance group Touch de Sky from San Fernando in southern Trinidad. “Jouvay Reprised,” the fourth series, follows the political activist group Jouvay Ayiti performing a Mas in the streets of Port of Spain on Emancipation Day in 2015. Troubling the borders that persist between performer and audience, embodiment and spirituality, culture and self-consciousness, the book interrogates what audiences understand about the role of the participant-observer in public contexts. Representing the uneasy embrace of tradition in Trinidad and the Caribbean at large, the book probes the multiple dimensions of vernacular experience and their complementary cultural expressions. For Browne, Mas performance is an exquisite refusal to fully submit to the lingering traumas of slavery, the tyrannies of colonialism, and the myths of independence.

Anyone who travels today through the Catalan territory will be drawn to several farmhouses that not only show their age, but the characteristic features of a wealthy peasantry. If they are on a leisure trip, it is even possible that they have a meal or even spend some nights in one of these houses, and perhaps in that solitude, they will be able to admire the wild nature that surrounds them. But this way of life also seems to suggest that things were not always the same. Catalan masos were specific operating units around which men articulated and rearranged the Catalan agricultural, livestock, and forested areas for centuries. In fact, in many of these farmhouses the accumulated documents reveal the remença, that is, the servile origins of their holders. The same holders that would constitute a sort of rentier aristocracy in the nineteenth century, thanks to the work of masovers. In this book, which was made possible thanks to the richness of the archives of the region, some members of the Centre de Recerca d'Història Rural of the Universitat de Girona aim to get the reader acquainted with the main historical processes that shaped and differentiated masos from the early Middle Ages until today. That is, from the birth of an agricultural system to its end.

Overall Winner of the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature High Mas: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture explores Caribbean identity through photography, criticism, and personal narrative. Taking a sophisticated and unapologetically subjective Caribbean point of view, the author delves into Mas—a key feature of Trinidad performance—as an emancipatory practice. The photographs and essays here immerse the viewer in carnival experience as never before. Kevin Adonis Browne divulges how performers are or wish to be perceived, along with how, as the photographer, he is implicated in that dynamic. The resulting interplay encourages an informed, nuanced approach to the imaging of contemporary Caribbeanness. The first series, “Seeing Blue,” features Blue Devils from the village of Paramin, whose performances signify an important revision of the post-emancipation tradition of Jab Molassie (Molasses Devil) in Trinidad. The second series, “La Femme des Revenants,” chronicles the debut performance of Tracey Sankar’s La Diablesse, which reintroduced the “Caribbean femme fatale” to a new audience. The third series, “Moko Jumbies of the South,” looks at Stephanie Kanhai and Jonadiah Gonzales, a pair of stilt-walkers from the performance group Touch de Sky from San Fernando in southern Trinidad. “Jouvay Reprised,” the fourth series, follows the political activist group Jouvay Ayiti performing a Mas in the streets of Port of Spain on Emancipation Day in 2015. Troubling the borders that persist between performer and audience, embodiment and spirituality, culture and self-consciousness, the book interrogates what audiences understand about the role of the participant-observer in public contexts. Representing the uneasy embrace of tradition in Trinidad and the Caribbean at large, the book probes the multiple dimensions of vernacular experience and their complementary cultural expressions. For Browne, Mas performance is an exquisite refusal to fully submit to the lingering traumas of slavery, the tyrannies of colonialism, and the myths of independence.

En una frontera sin límites e incomprensible, Héctor Charles no puede concebir la idea de dónde está, quién es ni quién fue, pero sospecha que será juzgado por una fuerza superior divina y hasta por él mismo. Héctor desciende a regiones infernales al ser obligado a revivir sistemáticamente cada uno de sus actos y los que a toda costa intenta ocultar y olvidar. Por no poder discernir en su posición inanimada su real identidad, el hombre sufre las consecuencias derivadas de la intrínseca pasión que lo llevó a un final insospechado, no solamente para él, sino para todos aquellos que en vida lo rodearon. At a limitless and incomprehensible border, Hector Charles cannot comprehend where he is, who he is, or who he was; but he suspects that he will one day be judged by a divine higher power and even by himself. Hector is descending into hellish depths as he is forced to systematically relive each of his actions, actions he tries to hide at all costs and longs to forget. As he is unable to discern his real identity in this inanimate position, he suffers the consequences that result from the intrinsic passion that brought him to an end that neither he nor all who knew him in life could have foreseen. I would like to add a credit for the artist Jorge Posada, who provided his paintings for the covers of both books. Covers by Colombian artist Jorge Posada http://www.jorgeposada-art.com

Este libro sintetiza A lo largo de mi vasta carrera como protesista y ocularista me he nutrido de experiencias de profesionales, de pacientes y de investigación. Este libro reúne todos estos conocimientos e investigaciones para contribuir aún más a la excelencia de la profesión de ocularista. En este trabajo hago referencia a todos los puntos necesarios a considerar en la adaptación de prótesis oculares y trato con el paciente, desde la anatomía del ojo, tumores y cirugías más frecuentes, implantes de órbita, prótesis oculares, mis inventos y rehabilitación palpebral. En síntesis todo lo que pueda mejorar dramáticamente la calidad de vida de los pacientes.

Más allá del fi nal es un libro de fábulas y aventuras, donde el personaje principal se marcha en un viaje para ayudar a una familia a buscar la cura para su hijo menor. Muchas cosas se presentan en el camino, pero él, que es de una fe inquebrantable, va sorteando todos los obstáculos que se encuentra a su paso. El sacrifi cio es inmenso, durmiendo a la intemperie por largos días y algunas veces pasando hambre por la escasez de alimentos. Este hombre no solo es el guía espiritual del grupo, sino también el responsable de guiarlos hasta la ciudad que han elegido para llevar el enfermo a curar. Después de caminar varios días llegan al primer poblado, donde conocen a un personaje muy pintoresco que se une al trío para ir en su ayuda. Así se va desarrollando el drama de esta peripecia que los llevará de la mano por todo el viaje, disfrutando del paisaje, que es descrito de forma grata y conociendo a los personajes que se van sumando a esta aventura que usted se deleitará hasta el fi nal.