The three women I have written about in this book struggled with their life choices, their fears, and limitations due to their circumstances. My pearls of wisdom come from gaining insight and learning from their life experiences and my own. I will simply give you my take on life. I hope that you can find the help you need to navigate your life on your own terms. This book is also about living and dying! Don't get scared. I think you will find it very positive and uplifting!

Through this translation of As Três Marias the literary achievements of Rachel de Queiroz may at last be judged and appreciated by the English-reading public. Since none of her four novels has previously been translated into English, The Three Marias will be, for many non-Brazilians, an introduction to this nationally known South American author whose books have been widely praised for their artistic merits. Her literary works are colored by her projected personality, by an intense feeling for her own people, by an omnipresent social consciousness, and by personal experiences in the arid backlands of her native state of Ceará. Basing this story on certain of her own recollections from the nineteen-twenties, Rachel de Queiroz tells of a girl growing up in the seaport town of Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil. Fred P. Ellison, whose special field is Brazilian and Spanish-American literature, has captured in his translation the author's graceful style and simplicity of language, and has successfully retained the perspective of an idealistic and gradually maturing girl.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST • From the award-winning, internationally bestselling Spanish author of A Heart So White comes an immersive, provocative novel propelled by a seemingly random murder. "Sometimes startling, sometimes hilarious, and always intelligent ... Marías [has] a penetrating empathy."—The New York Times Book Review Each day before work María Dolz stops at the same café. There she finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Observing their seemingly perfect life helps her escape the listlessness of her own. But when the man is brutally murdered and María approaches the widow to offer her condolences, what began as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement. Invited into the widow's home, she meets—and falls in love with—a man who sheds disturbing new light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder mystery brilliantly encased in a metaphysical enquiry, a novel that grapples with questions of love and death, chance and coincidence, and above all, with the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told.

My Portuguese grandmother is the best chef in the world. No, really. I spent a great deal of my childhood in my grandparents' kitchen, and eating my grandmother's food. Maybe it's the nostalgia; the longing for those days, years ago, when I would help her make linguiça, knead the dough to make one of her wonderful breads, or just gladly wait for dinner to be served and devour it enthusiastically. That might be it, but I think it's more than that. My grandmother and her four sisters have mastered the ability to create beautiful, delicious dishes while also evoking that nostalgia-or how the Portuguese would call it, "Saudade,"-by way of the foods they have been making their entire lives. This is a tribute to them and to their love for all of us.

A Study Guide for Alberto Rios's "Island of the Three Marias," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.