After suddenly being orphaned, twelve-year-old Consuelo reluctantly moves in with her American grandmother while hoping to return soon to her Mexican American family. Consuelo, a recent arrival in Los Angeles, becomes involved in finding the criminals who are committing mysterious local robberies. Intrigue & danger weave a web around young Consuelo as she is thrust into a new life in unfamiliar surroundings & an exciting mystery that begs to be resolved.

After suddenly being orphaned, twelve-year-old Consuelo reluctantly moves in with her American grandmother while hoping to return soon to her Mexican American family.

One Friday evening Daniel de Luc, an elusive crime writer with a deep love of poetry, disappears from a Camps Bay apartment while cooking pasta. His wife Paola, desperately worried after days of hearing nothing, is contacted by an eccentric stranger who claims to have known her missing husband under a different name and warns her not to look for him. Paola soon learns that her husband was involved in the shadowy world of the international sex industry, where well-heeled women pay men to become the anonymous fathers of their children. As her neat, controlled existence is turned inside out, Paola struggles to keep a level head and find her own humanity while trying to outwit her enemies and stay alive. The result is a fast-paced thriller that shifts between Cape Town and Paris, blending realism with the fantastic and pitting love against the attraction of sexual adventure.

The Signe family is blessed with two daughters. Consuelo, the elder, is thought of as pensive and book-loving, the serious child-la niña seria-while Mili, her younger sister, is seen as vivacious, a ray of tropical sunshine. Two daughters: one dark, one light; one to offer comfort and consolation, the other to charm and delight. But, for all the joy both girls should bring, something is not right in this Puerto Rican family; a tragedia is developing, like a tumor, at its core. In this fierce, funny, and sometimes startling novel, we follow a young woman's quest to negotiate her own terms of survival within the confines of her culture and her family. magazine "Judith Ortiz Cofer has created a character who takes us by the hand on a journey of self-discovery. She reminds readers young and old never to forget our own responsibilities, and to enjoy life with all its joys and sorrows."--Bessy Reyna, MultiCultural Review

When Elena and her little brother, Carlos, leave their Mexican seaside village to search for their immigrant father in Los Angeles, they encounter intrigue, crime, mystery, friendship, and love.

After Tessa's father inexplicably makes her change her summer plans, she spends the summer wondering what he is hiding, experimenting with magic spells, and making a new friend.