Benito Pérez Galdós, considered Spain’s most important novelist after Cervantes, wrote 77 novels, several works of theater and a number of other tomes during his lifetime (1843–1920). His works have been translated into all major languages of the world, and many of his most highly regarded novels, those of the contemporary period, have been translated into English two, three and even four times over. Of the few “contemporary novels” of Galdós that until now have not come to light in English, The Forbidden is certainly among the most noteworthy. The story line concerns a wealthy philanderer, José María Bueno de Guzmán, who attempts to buy the favors of his three beautiful married cousins. He is successful with the first, Eloísa, a grasping materialist who falls deeply in love with him. Then he rejects her in order to attempt to seduce the youngest, Camila. Meanwhile, the third, the pseudo-intellectual María Juana, jealous, seduces José María. But it is Camila, healthy, impetuous and wild, who resists his temptations and holds our attention. The novelist and critic Leopoldo Alas, Galdós’s contemporary, calls her “the most feminine, graceful, lively female character that any modern novelist has painted.” As a naturalistic study, in the manner of Balzac in particular, principal characters of Galdós’s other novels (El doctor Centeno, La de Bringas, La familia de León Roch) become fleetingly visible in The Forbidden. In addition, the entire Bueno de Guzmán family gives evidence of the naturalistic emphasis on heredity: they all display certain physical or mental disorders. Eloísa has a morbid fear of feathers, María Juana often feels that she has a tiny piece of cloth caught in her teeth, José María suffers bouts of depression, an uncle is a kleptomaniac, one of the relatives writes letters to himself, etc. At the same time, this novel shows the foibles of Spanish society where status is determined by one’s associates, by the wearing of finery, and by living on borrowed money. In their history of Spanish literature, Chandler and Schwartz call Galdós “the greatest novelist of the nineteenth century and the only one who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with great novelists like Balzac, Dickens and Dostoievsky.” The Forbidden, written at the height of the author’s creative powers, is a major work and its publication for an English-speaking audience is long overdue.

Magicians, necromancers and astrologers are assiduous characters in the European golden age theatre. This book deals with dramatic characters who act as physiognomists or palm readers in the fictional world and analyses the fictionalisation of physiognomic lore as a practice of divination in early modern Romance theatre from Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno to Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Thomas Corneille.

Cecilia Valdés is arguably the most important novel of 19th century Cuba. Originally published in New York City in 1882, Cirilo Villaverde's novel has fascinated readers inside and outside Cuba since the late 19th century. In this new English translation, a vast landscape emerges of the moral, political, and sexual depravity caused by slavery and colonialism. Set in the Havana of the 1830s, the novel introduces us to Cecilia, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta, who is being pursued by the son of a Spanish slave trader, named Leonardo. Unbeknownst to the two, they are the children of the same father. Eventually Cecilia gives in to Leonardo's advances; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. When Leonardo, who gets bored with Cecilia after a while, agrees to marry a white upper class woman, Cecilia vows revenge. A mulatto friend and suitor of hers kills Leonardo, and Cecilia is thrown into prison as an accessory to the crime. For the contemporary reader Helen Lane's masterful translation of Cecilia Valdés opens a new window into the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba and the Caribbean. There are the elite social circles of European and New World Whites, the rich culture of the free people of color, the class to which Cecilia herself belonged, and then the slaves, divided among themselves between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in the New World, and those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the rich people in Havana. Cecilia Valdés thus presents a vast portrait of sexual, social, and racial oppression, and the lived experience of Spanish colonialism in Cuba.

Dispensationalism continues to provoke heated debate within the Christian world. Highly acclaimed theologian, Dr. Charles C. Ryrie, addresses this crucial issue from the perspective of classic dispensationalism. He confronts the views of covenant theology, historical premillennialism, ultradispensationalism, and, in this revised edition, the increasingly popular progressive dispensationalism. In his best-selling book, Dispensationalism Today, written more than thirty years ago, Dr. Ryrie made this complex subject more understandable for thousands worldwide. This revised and expanded version of that book will prove to be an invaluable reference tool for your library.

A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula is the second comparative history of a new subseries with a regional focus, published by the Coordinating Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association. As its predecessor for East-Central Europe, this two-volume history distances itself from traditional histories built around periods and movements, and explores, from a comparative viewpoint, a space considered to be a powerful symbol of inter-literary relations. Both the geographical pertinence and its symbolic condition are obviously discussed, when not even contested. Written by an international team of researchers who are specialists in the field, this history is the first attempt at applying a comparative approach to the plurilingual and multicultural literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. The aim of comprehensiveness is abandoned in favor of a diverse and extensive array of key issues for a comparative agenda. A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula undermines the primacy claimed for national and linguistic boundaries, and provides a geo-cultural account of literary inter-systems which cannot otherwise be explained.