In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is heartbroken, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

Love in the Time of Cholera

Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been hailed not only as one of South America’s greatest literary stars, but also as one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. In this gorgeously wrought, award-winning novel, Vásquez confronts the history of his home country, Colombia.

In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobar’s Medellín cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above.

Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend’s murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friend’s family have been shaped by his country’s recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare.

Vásquez is “one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature,” according to Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and "The Sound of Things Falling" is his most personal, most contemporary novel to date, a masterpiece that takes his writing—and will take his literary star—even higher.

*Winner of the 2014 International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award

The Sound of Things Falling

A tour de force of investigative journalism-this is the story of the violent rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel. Escobar's criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage in a reign of terror that would only end with his death. In an intense, up-close account, award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes details never before revealed about the U.S.-led covert sixteen-month manhunt. With unprecedented access to important players including Colombian president Cisar Gaviria and the incorruptible head of the special police unit that pursued Escobar, Colonel Hugo Martinez-as well as top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden has produced a gripping narrative that is a stark portrayal of rough justice in the real world."

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

Colombia's status as the fourth largest nation in Latin America and third most populous—as well as its largest exporter of such disparate commodities as emeralds, books, processed cocaine, and cut flowers—makes this, the first history of Colombia written in English, a much-needed book. It tells the remarkable story of a country that has consistently defied modern Latin American stereotypes—a country where military dictators are virtually unknown, where the political left is congenitally weak, and where urbanization and industrialization have spawned no lasting populist movement.

There is more to Colombia than the drug trafficking and violence that have recently gripped the world's attention. In the face of both cocaine wars and guerrilla conflict, the country has maintained steady economic growth as well as a relatively open and democratic government based on a two-party system. It has also produced an impressive body of art and literature.

David Bushnell traces the process of state-building in Colombia from the struggle for independence, territorial consolidation, and reform in the nineteenth century to economic development and social and political democratization in the twentieth. He also sheds light on the modern history of Latin America as a whole.

The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself

For decades, Colombia was the 'narcostate'. Now travel to Colombia and South America is on the rise, and it's seen as one of the rising stars of the global economy. Where does the truth lie? 

Writer and journalist Tom Feiling, author of the acclaimed study of cocaine "The Candy Machine", has journeyed throughout Colombia, down roads that were until recently too dangerous to travel, to paint a fresh picture of one of the world's most notorious and least-understood countries. He talks to former guerrilla fighters and their ex-captives; women whose sons were 'disappeared' by paramilitaries; the nomadic tribe who once thought they were the only people on earth and now charge $10 for a photo; the Japanese 'emerald cowboy' who made a fortune from mining; and revels in the stories that countless ordinary Colombians tell. 

How did a land likened to paradise by the first conquistadores become a byword for hell on earth? Why is one of the world's most unequal nations also one of its happiest? How is it rebuilding itself after decades of violence, and how successful has the process been so far? Vital, shocking, often funny and never simplistic, "Short Walks from Bogota" unpicks the tangled fabric of Colombia, to create a stunning work of reportage, history and travel writing.

Short Walks from Bogota: Journeys in the New Colombia

In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forward to being cured and living a safe, predictable life. She watched love destroy her mother and isn't about to make the same mistake.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena meets enigmatic Alex, a boy from the "Wilds" who lives under the government's radar. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?

Delirium (Delirium, #1)

THIS ASTONISHING BOOK by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez chronicles the 1990 kidnappings of ten Colombian man and women--all journalists but one--by the Medellín drug boss Pablo Escobar. The carefully orchestrated abductions were Escobar's attempt to extort from the government its assurance that he, and other narcotics traffickers, would not be extradited to the United States if they were to surrender.

From the highest corridors of government to the domain of the ruthless drug cartels, we watch the unfolding of a bizarre drama replete with fascinating characters Cesar Gaviria, the nation's cool and secretive president; Diana Turbay, a famous television journalist and magazine editor; three indomitable women who are imprisoned for miserable months in a small room with a light perpetually on; an eighty-two-year-old priest with a mission to bring the regime and the cartel to the negotiating table; and Escobar himself, the legendary drug baron who changes his bodyguards daily and maintains a private zoo with giraffes and hippos from Africa.

All of this takes place in a country where presidential candidates and cabinet officers are routinely assassinated; where police go into the Medellín slums to murder boys they think may be working for Escobar; but where brave and honest citizens are trying desperately to make democracy survive.

An international best-seller, News of a Kidnapping combines journalistic tenacity with the breathtaking language and perception that distinguish the writings of Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez. It draws us unto into a world that, like some phantasmagorical setting in a great Garcí­a Márquez novel, we can scarcely believe exists--but that continually shocks us with its cold, hard reality.

News of a Kidnapping

It is astonishing that Simon Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood--he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and never remarried (although he did have a succession of mistresses, including one who held up the revolution and another who saved his life), and he died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.

Bolívar: American Liberator

It is time. The boy must leave his family to serve in the Queen's army. To be chosen is an honor. To decline is impossible. The boy is modified. He is trained for several years, and learns to fight to the death. He proves to the Queen—and to himself—that he is capable of evil. He is just the kind of soldier the Queen wants: the alpha of his pack.

The Queen's Army (The Lunar Chronicles, #1.5)

Oblivion is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written memorial to the author’s father, Héctor Abad Gómez, whose criticism of the Colombian regime led to his murder by paramilitaries in 1987. Twenty years in the writing, it paints an unforgettable picture of a man who followed his conscience and paid for it with his life during one of the darkest periods in Latin America’s recent history.

Oblivion: A Memoir

Magdalena, a river that courses through the heart of Colombia, connects a violent past with the country’s uncertain present. British writer Michael Jacobs struggles to reconcile his love for the land and its people with the dangers that both still present.

Determined to eliminate modern conveniences from his journey, he begins traversing the river by tugboat. He makes an exception for a cell phone that maintains a sporadic signal at best, in efforts to keep in touch with his mother suffering from deteriorating health. Jacobs cannot help but notice the irony of his mother’s dementia and his travels through Colombian townships with the world’s highest incidence of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

While navigating the mysterious river and unfamiliar territory—both emotionally and geographically—Jacobs comes across Gabriel Garcia Márquez, whose own faltering memory shows a growing obsession with the Magdalena River of his youth. When Jacobs and his companions are apprehended by FARC guerillas who turn out to be as quirky and affable as they are intimidating, life begins to imitate the magical realism of Márquez’s signature works. Shortly after being released from captivity, the FARC camp is bombed by the Colombian air force, leaving no likely survivors among his oddly likeable captors. 

Exploring themes of adventure, endings, and “the utter pointlessness of it all,” Jacobs can only forge onward in his reflection of the mystical river.

The Robber of Memories: A River Journey Through Colombia

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Gabriel García Márquez's most political novel is the tragic story of General Simón Bolívar, the man who tried to unite a continent.

Bolívar, known in six Latin American countries as the Liberator, is one of the most revered heroes of the western hemisphere; in García Márquez's brilliant reimagining he is magnificently flawed as well. The novel follows Bolívar as he takes his final journey in 1830 down the Magdalena River toward the sea, revisiting the scenes of his former glory and lamenting his lost dream of an alliance of American nations. Forced from power, dogged by assassins, and prematurely aged and wasted by a fatal illness, the General is still a remarkably vital and mercurial man. He seems to remain alive by the sheer force of will that led him to so many victories in the battlefields and love affairs of his past. As he wanders in the labyrinth of his failing powers-and still-powerful memories-he defies his impending death until the last.

"The General in His Labyrinth "is an unforgettable portrait of a visionary from one of the greatest writers of our time.

The General in His Labyrinth

What does “Colombia” bring to mind? This South American country has sometimes been misrepresented, only known for cocaine, guerrilla groups, coffee, and Shakira’s hips. In 2011, Bryanna Plog spent a year in the country to find out what the headlines might be missing (headlines, that let’s face it, sometimes misspelled the country as “Columbia.”).

As a volunteer middle school English teacher in an impoverished community outside of Cartagena, Colombia, Plog recounts with delightfully understated wit her year traveling Colombia’s cities, deserts, and rain forests (fairly successful ventures), her attempts to hold class on a regular schedule (less successful), and her quest to eat meals that didn’t include rice (a complete and utter failure).

Through her teaching and traveling, Plog realizes Colombia is a place closer to a paradise than a country supposedly off-limits to travelers. Instead of having to survive encounters with drug cartels or avoiding kidnappings, Plog discovered her biggest problems included trying to get her students to pay attention in class, the country’s strangely undrinkable coffee, and the searing Caribbean heat.

"Misspelled Paradise" gives an honest and lighthearted look at the history, culture, and diversity of this complex Latin American country. Colombia may be struggling with poverty and civil conflict, but over the year she gets to know the country and its people, Plog also sees it celebrate its passion for life with raucous street parties powered by champeta, vallenato, and reggaeton music, crates of tiny watery beers, its eighteen national holidays, and a never-ending parade of beauty pageants.

"Misspelled Paradise" is a book for readers of memoir and travel writing and anyone who is interested in travel to South America. It gives an honest looks at the ups and downs of teaching abroad and how one teacher and traveler was surprised and captivated by a culture and country so unlike her own.

Plog takes her readers to the mountainous streets of Bogotá and to the small island of Isla Barú, to the deserts of the Guajira Peninsula and to the jungles of the Amazon rain forest, to the inside of her sweltering classrooms and to the sweeping beaches of the Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

Learn, be surprised, and laugh out loud as you journey through a reinvented Colombia.

Misspelled Paradise: A Year in a Reinvented Colombia

The bloody story of the rise of paramilitaries in Colombia, told through three characters -- a fearless activist, a dogged journalist, and a relentless investigator -- whose lives intersected in the midst of unspeakable terror.

 Colombia's drug-fueled cycle of terror, corruption, and tragedy did not end with Pablo Escobar's death in 1993. Just when Colombians were ready to move past the murderous legacy of the country's cartels, a new, bloody chapter unfolded. In the late 1990s, right-wing paramilitary groups with close ties to the cocaine business carried out a violent expansion campaign, massacring, raping, and torturing thousands.

"There Are No Dead Here" is the harrowing story of three ordinary Colombians who risked everything to reveal the collusion between the new mafia and much of the country's military and political establishment: JesÃºrÃ­Valle, a human rights activist who was murdered for exposing a dark secret; IvÃ¡VelÃ¡uez, a quiet prosecutor who took up Valle's cause and became an unlikely hero; and Ricardo CalderÃ³a dogged journalist who is still being targeted for his revelations. Their groundbreaking investigations landed a third of the country's Congress in prison and fed new demands for justice and peace that Colombia's leaders could not ignore.

 Taking readers from the sweltering MedellÃ­streets where criminal investigators were hunted by assassins, through the countryside where paramilitaries wiped out entire towns, and into the corridors of the presidential palace in BogotÃ¡"There Are No Dead Here" is an unforgettable portrait of the valiant men and women who dared to stand up to the tide of greed, rage, and bloodlust that threatened to engulf their country.

There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia

Gritty Central and South American lives from an underground Colombian literary voice. 
Santiago Gamboa is one of Colombia's most exciting young writers. In the manner of Roberto Bolano, Gamboa infuses his kaleidoscopic, cosmopolitan stories with a dose of inky dark noir that makes his novels intensely readable, his characters unforgettable, and his style influential. 
Manuela Beltran, a woman haunted by a troubled childhood she tries to escape through books and poetry; Tertuliano, an Argentine preacher who claims to be the Pope's son, ready to resort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society; Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary past now confronted with his guilt; Rimbaud, the precocious, brilliant poet whose life was incessant exploration; and, Juana and the consul, central characters in Gamboa's Night Prayers, who are united in a relationship based equally on hurt and need. These characters animate Gamboa's richly imagined portrait of a hostile, turbulent world where liberation is found in perpetual movement and determined exploration.

Return to the Dark Valley

In this fast-paced new novel from Sara Shepard, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars, a tight-knit college town scrambles for answers when an e-mail hack reveals life-changing secrets and scandals.

Aldrich University is rocked to its core when a hacker dumps 40,000 people's e-mails—the entire faculty, staff, students, alums—onto an easily searchable database. Rumors and affairs immediately leak, but things turn explosive when Kit Manning's handsome husband, Dr. Greg Strasser, is found murdered. Kit's sister, Willa, returns for the funeral, setting foot in a hometown she fled fifteen years ago, after a night she wishes she could forget. As an investigative reporter, Willa knows something isn't right about the night Greg was killed, and she's determined to find the truth. What she doesn't expect is that everyone has something to hide. And with a killer on the loose, Willa and Kit must figure out who killed Greg before someone else is murdered.

Told from multiple points of view, Reputation is full of twists, turns, and shocking reveals. It's a story of intrigue, sabotage, and the secrets we keep—and how far we go to keep them hidden. Number one bestseller Sara Shepard is at the top of her game in this brand-new adult novel.

Reputation

Maqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout) is one of the most alluring and memorable characters in the fiction of the last twenty-five years. His extravagant and hopeless undertakings, his brushes with the law and scrapes with death, and his enduring friendships and unlooked-for love affairs make him a Don Quixote for our day, driven from one place to another by a restless and irregular quest for the absolute. Álvaro Mutis's seven dazzling chronicles of the adventures and misadventures of Maqroll have won him numerous honors and a passionately devoted readership throughout the world. Here for the first time in English all these wonderful stories appear in a single volume in Edith Grossman's prize-winning translation.

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

In this riveting and relentless nonfiction thriller, award-winning investigative reporter William C. Rempel tells the harrowing story of former Cali cartel insider Jorge Salcedo, an ordinary man facing an extraordinary dilemma—a man forced to risk everything to escape the powerful and treacherous Cali crime syndicate. 

Colombia in the 1990s is a country in chaos, as a weak government battles guerrilla movements and narco-traffickers, including the notorious Pablo Escobar and his rivals in the Cali cartel. Enter Jorge Salcedo, a part-time soldier, a gifted engineer, a respected businessman and family man—and a man who despises Pablo Escobar for patriotic and deeply personal reasons. He is introduced to the godfathers of the Cali cartel, who are at war with Escobar and desperately want their foe dead. With mixed feelings, Jorge agrees to help them. 

Once inside, Jorge rises to become head of security for Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, principal godfather of the $7-billion-a-year Cali drug cartel. Jorge tries to turn a blind eye to the violence, corruption, and brutality that surround him, and he struggles privately to preserve his integrity even as he is drawn deeper into the web of cartel operations. Then comes an order from the godfathers that he can’t obey—but can’t refuse. Jorge realizes that his only way out is to bring down the biggest, richest crime syndicate of all time. 

Thus begins a heart-pumping roller-coaster ride of intensifying peril. Secretly aided by a pair of young American DEA agents, Jorge races time and cartel assassins to extract damaging evidence, help capture the fugitive godfather, and save the life of a witness targeted for murder. Through it all, death lurks a single misstep away.

William C. Rempel is the only reporter with access to this story and to Jorge, who remains in hiding somewhere in the United States—even the author doesn’t know where—but has revealed his experience in gripping detail. Salcedo’s is the story of one extraordinary ordinary man forced to risk everything to end a nightmare of his own making.

At the Devil's Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel

Written by two leading historians, this deeply informed and accessible book traces the history of Colombia thematically, covering the past two centuries. In ten interlinked chapters, Michael J. LaRosa and German R. Mejia depart from more standard approaches by presenting a history of political, social, and cultural accomplishments within the context of Colombia's specific geographic and economic realities. Their emphasis on cultural development, international relations, and everyday life contrasts sharply with works that focus only on Colombia's violent past or dwell on a Colombian economy deeply dependent on narcotics--a tragic nation that barely functions. Instead, the authors emphasize Colombia's remarkable national cohesion and endurance since the early nineteenth-century wars for independence. Including a photo essay, detailed chronology, and resource guide, this concise yet thorough history will be an invaluable resource for all readers seeking a thoughtful, definitive interpretation of Colombia's past and present.

Colombia: A Concise Contemporary History

"Betancourt’s riveting account…is an unforgettable epic of moral courage and human endurance." – Los Angeles Times

In the midst of her campaign for the Colombian presidency in 2002, Ingrid Betancourt traveled into a military-controlled region, where she was abducted by the FARC, a brutal terrorist guerrilla organization in conflict with the government. She would spend the next six and a half years captive in the depths of the Colombian jungle. "Even Silence Has an End" is her deeply moving and personal account of that time. The facts of her story are astounding, but it is Betancourt’s indomitable spirit that drives this very special narrative - an intensely intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate reflection on what it really means to be human.

«Enchaînée par le cou à un arbre, privée de toute liberté, celle de bouger, de s'asseoir, de se lever ; celle de parler ou de se taire ; celle de boire ou de manger ; et même la plus élémentaire, celle d'assouvir les besoins de son corps... J'ai pris conscience – après de longues années – que l'on garde tout de même la plus précieuse de toutes, la liberté que personne ne peut jamais vous ôter : celle de décider qui l'on veut être.» 

Même le silence a une fin raconte les six ans et demi de captivité d'Ingrid Betancourt dans la jungle colombienne aux mains des FARC. Récit intime d'une aventure qui ne ressemble à aucune autre, voyage hanté, palpitant du début à la fin, c'est aussi une méditation sur la condition des damnés – et sur ce qui fonde la nature humaine.

Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle

Con su característico talento, Laura Restrepo construye un brillante relato en el que se combinan sensualmente el realismo y la imaginación, la radiografía social y el romance A través de una serie de entrevistas, la reportera que narra este relato da vida a un singular grupo de personajes: cazadores de fortuna, jefes guerrilleros, obreros de refinería, y prostitutas. Así intenta descifrar la misteriosa e impulsiva vida de Sayonara, el personaje principal de La novia oscura. Tal una exótica mariposa, enigmática y arrogante, Sayonara trabaja bajo las luces de La Catunga, el burdel del pueblo. Cada mes, Sayonara embruja a los trabajadores de la Tropical Oil Company que bajan de las montañas en busca de un poco de dicha terrenal. Pero estos no son los únicos en sucumbir a los encantos de Sayonara… Su belleza atrae como una llama a una mezcla de personajes que van desde Sacramento, su amigo de la infancia, decidido a rescatarla del pecado, hasta el misterioso Payanés… Esta es la historia de Sayonara, la novia oscura, y revela un universo personal y político que quedará para siempre marcado por su paso.

La novia oscura

This Leading Edge work by Esther and Jerry Hicks, who present The Teachings of Abraham®, will help you understand every relationship you are currently involved in as well as every relationship you have ever experienced.This book uncovers a myriad of false premises that are at the heart of every uncomfortable relationship issue, and guides you to a clear understanding of the powerful creative Vortex that has already assembled the relationships that you have desired. Abraham will show you how to enter that Vortex, where you will rendezvous with everything and everyone you have been looking for.Abraham says: "It is our desire to help you to solve the mystery of those seemingly impossible relationships; to sort out the details of joyously sharing your planet with billions of others; to rediscover the beauty of your differences; and, most of all, to reestablish the most important relationship of all: your relationship with the Eternal, Non-Physical Source that is really you."It is our desire that you experience an enhanced appreciation of your planet; your body; your family; your friends; your enemies; your government; your systems; your food; your finances; your animals; your work and your play; your purpose; your Source; your Soul; your past, your future, and your present. . . ."

The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships

A captivating new book from Wade Davis--award-winning, bestselling author and photographer, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence for more than a decade-- that brings vividly to life the story of the great Río Magdalena, illuminating Colombia's complex past, present, and future in the process
The Magdalena is the lifeline that runs the length of the nation. For centuries, it allowed Colombians to settle their mountainous, geographically unique region--one of the most challenging on the planet. Colombia's complicated history reflects the beautiful, wild and impossible geography of its largest river: in places, it is placid and calm, in other moments, tortured and unpredictable. A cultural wellspring of music, poetry, and literature, in dark times the Magdalena has also served as the nation's graveyard. As the country enters a momentous period of revitalization, Wade Davis explores the three major sections of the river, alto, medio, and bajo, evoking each singular landscape and the people he meets there in poetic, nuanced writing, accompanied by his own striking photography.
At once an absorbing adventure and an inspiring story of hope and redemption, MAGDALENA gives us a rare, kaleidoscopic picture of a nation often reduced to unfair clichés of drug cartels and violence. Through many years of uncertainty, however, the Magdalena never abandoned its people, always returning as a life-giving force, the source of much of the nation's wealth--and its dreams. 
Seamlessly weaving together memoir, history, and a remarkable tale of a nation rising to bring about transformational change, Wade Davis tells the story of this magnificent river with passion and love, and in doing so, tells the epic story of Colombia.

Magdalena: River of Dreams

Dancing Feat is the story of one Englishman's attempt to deal with his appalling dance ability – by dancing his way round Colombia. 

Join inveterate dance coward Neil Bennion as he romps through this land of swashbuckling peaks and luscious coastlines, learning new dances as he goes. When he’s not doing everything in his power to avoid them, that is. 

- Get an insight into Colombian dance: from the urban forms found in nightclubs, to folkloric dances steeped in historical significance. 
- Learn about the truth and legend of this famously troubled country. 
- Meet a people who are amongst the kindest and warmest anywhere on the planet, unless you’re trying to get away with not dancing. 

Some six months after he began, he’s honour-bound to put on a show of the dances he’s learnt. 

But can such a bad dancer really make the necessary transformation? Is it even possible to remember so many dances? And is there a window backstage big enough for an adult male to fit through?

Dancing Feat: One Man's Mission to Dance Like A Colombian

Fernando, a writer, returns to Medellin after an absence of thirty years. He meets Alexis, sixteen years old, a male prostitute and a hitman - a Medellin child - with whom he falls in love. But their tender love is doomed. Alexis needs no reason to kill: like an Angel of Death he opens fire on anybody who rubs him the wrong way. Fernando and Alexis are bound by an intense passion as they wander from church to church, murder to murder. When Alexis is finally killed himself, Fernando unwittingly takes up with his killer. Reminiscent of the best of Genet, Our Lady of the Assassins is a dark, fierce book that squarely lays the blame for Colombia's tragedy on the church and the political elite.

Our Lady of the Assassins

Colombia is a magical country, full of spectacular varied landscapes, rare ecosystems, succulent tropical fruits, salsa and cumbia music, and kind, fun-loving people. The modern culture is a synthesis of Spanish, indigenous, and African traditions, evident in the music, the food, and Barranquilla’s famous Carnaval. The country’s major cities are modern and cosmopolitan, with an international style and consumerism that makes them feel more like cities in the USA than Latin America. Yet, five minutes into the countryside, its distinct rural charms reveal a slower and more bucolic past.   In the collective imagination, Colombia is exotic, lawless, and dangerous—an illegal narcotics trade and the ongoing armed conflict have contributed to its bad-boy image. But things are changing, and there is so much more than that.   Entrenched social inequality has led to strife, manifest in the long-lived left- and rightwing rebel movements and a cycle of appalling violence that has saturated four decades with an undeclared civil war. And still, the Colombians are animated, lighthearted and fun—always ready to laugh and enjoy the moment. They have found strength in each other, in their families, and closest friends who are the cornerstones of their lives. "Culture Smart! Colombia" shows how the country’s rough geography and tumultuous history have shaped modern values and attitudes. It looks at the public realm and at life at home with the family. It introduces you to Colombia’s distinct and delicious cuisine, and reveals what people think about each other, their neighbors, and foreigners. There is advice on the safest ways to get around; on how business is done; and how Colombians communicate. "Culture Smart! Colombia" explains the intricacies of a culture that is both modern and steeped in tradition, international and regional, cosmopolitan and agrarian, very rich and very poor, and after more than four decades of undeclared civil war is happily emerging from tough times and getting ready for the future.

Colombia - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs  Culture

"Forgotten Peace "examines Colombian society’s attempt to move beyond the Western Hemisphere’s worst mid-century conflict and shows how that effort molded notions of belonging and understandings of the past. Robert A. Karl reconstructs encounters between government officials, rural peoples, provincial elites, and urban intellectuals during a crucial conjuncture that saw reformist optimism transform into alienation. In addition to offering a sweeping reinterpretation of Colombian history—including the most detailed account of the origins of the FARC insurgency in any language—Karl provides a Colombian vantage on global processes of democratic transition, development, and memory formation in the 1950s and 1960s. Broad in scope, "Forgotten Peace" challenges contemporary theories of violence in Latin America.

Forgotten Peace: Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Colombia

Set in Los Angeles, in the recent past. The birthplace and graveyard of American myths and dreams, the city harbours a group of people trapped between the beauty of their surroundings and their own moral impoverishment. This novel is a chronicle of their voices.

The Informers

With stolen cash and tickets booked through a shady travel agency, Marlon Cruz and his girlfriend, Reina, have smuggled themselves out of Colombia and into the United States. But on their first night in New York City, they lose each other, and Marlon finds himself cast into the city's immigrant underworld, alone. As he searches for Reina in the bars and boarding houses where illegals congregate, the story of their harrowing cross over the border is retold, mapping the arc of a relationship that has transformed him into a reluctant immigrant.

Paradise Travel

Andrés Caicedo se había propuesto morir joven y dejar obra; así lo hizo. "¡Que viva la música!" fue la única novela que concluyó y es, quizás, su mejor obra literaria, sorprendente por su consistencia narrativa y ritmo desbordante.

Cuenta la historia de María del Carmen Huerta, una joven proveniente de una familia acomodada de Cali que conoce los barrios populares y reniega de los valores sociales establecidos para entregarse a los excesos y al delirio. Ella, como Caicedo, sigue despertando fascinación y asombro entre los lectores de todas las edades como símbolo de la trasgresión y el frenesí.

¡Que viva la música!

Written just before "One Hundred Years of Solitude", this fascinating novel of a Colombian river town possessed by evil points to the author's later flowering and greatness. Translated by Gregory Rabassa.
"More than a prelude...the dazzling sense of place, the colorful idiosyncrasy of character are present for us to marvel over once again."--"The New Republic"
"An openly political novel posing the people of the land against the forces of oppression...it has the virtues of wit and compassion and reveals the foundation upon which the later novels were constructed."--Jonathan Yardley, "Washington Star"
""One Hundred Years of Solitude" is just around the rain-drenched corner."--"Boston Globe"

In Evil Hour

Colombia is the least understood of Latin American countries. Its human tragedy, which features terrifying levels of kidnapping, homicide and extortion, is generally ignored or exploited. In this urgent new work Forrest Hylton, who has extensive first-hand experience of living and working in Colombia, explores its history of 150 years of political conflict, characterized by radical-popular mobilization and reactionary repression. 

"Evil Hour in Colombia" shows how patterns of political conflict, from the mid-nineteenth century to today’s guerilla narco-traffickers and paramilitaries, explain the wear currently destroying Colombian lives, property, communities and territory. In doing so, it traces how Colombia’s “coffee capitalism” gave way to the cattle and cocaine republic of the 1980s, and how land, wealth and power have been steadily accumulated by the light-skinned top of the social pyramid through a brutal combination of terror, expropriation and economic depression.

Evil Hour in Colombia

2019 Winner, Colombia Section, Michael Jiménez Prize, Latin American Studies Association 

 After emancipation in 1851, the African descendants living in the extra-humid rainforests of the Pacific coast of Colombia attained levels of autonomy hardly equaled anywhere else in the Americas. This autonomy rested on their access to a diverse environment—including small strips of fertile soils, mines, forests, rivers, and wetlands—that contributed to their subsistence and allowed them to procure gold, platinum, rubber, and vegetable ivory for export.

 Afro-Colombian slave labor had produced the largest share of gold in the colony of New Granada. After the abolishment of slavery, some free people left the mining areas and settled elsewhere along the coast, making this the largest area of Latin America in which black people predominate into the present day. However, this economy and society, which lived off the extraction of natural resources, was presided over by a very small white commercial elite living in the region’s ports, where they sought to create an urban environment that would shelter them from the jungle.

"Landscapes of Freedom" reconstructs a nonplantation postemancipation trajectory that sheds light on how environmental conditions and management influenced the experience of freedom. It also points at the problematic associations between autonomy and marginality that have shaped the history of Afro-America. By focusing on racialized landscapes, Leal offers a nuanced and important approach to understanding the history of Latin America.

Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia

Luis loves to read, but soon his house in Colombia is so full of books there's barely room for the family. What to do? Then he comes up with the perfect solution—a traveling library! He buys two donkeys—Alfa and Beto—and travels with them throughout the land, bringing books and reading to the children in faraway villages. Beautiful!

Complete with an author's note about the real man on whom this story is based.

Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia

"Como a Rosario le pegaron un tiro a quemarropa mientras le daban un beso, confundió el dolor del amor con el de la muerte". Rosario Tijeras es el violento y violado personaje al centro de este estudio de contrastes ambientado en la Medellín autodestructiva de los años '80. Su mismo nombre -simbólico y contradictorio a la vez- sugiere el conflicto que vive como mujer que se 'convierte' al sicariato para aislarse de la violencia aterradora de las calles. Desde los pasillos del hospital donde Rosario está luchando por su vida, Antonio, el narrador, espera saber si sobrevivirá. A través de él reconstruimos la amistad entre los dos, su historia de amor con Emilio y su vida como sicaria.
Rosario Tijeras es una obra que pertenece al estudio socio-realista Latinoamericano. Es una obra cuya prosa se revela en toda su vitalidad y vena poética.

Rosario Tijeras

On February 13, 2003, a plane carrying three American military contractors - Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes, and Keith Stansell - crashed in the mountainous jungle of Colombia. Dazed and shaken, they awoke battered and covered in blood with automatic rifles pointing at their faces. As of that moment they belonged to the terrorist organization known as the FARC, the military arm of the Colombia Communist Party established in the 1960s. Thus began five-and-a-half years of captivity as these three men struggled to survive the madness of their surroundings. Gonsalves, Howes, and Stansell recount their amazing tale of survival, friendship, and, ultimately, rescue in its entirety for the first time. Revealing the story of their crash, their horrific treatment at the hands of the FARC, what they witnessed as captives, and how they survived, the book provides vivid and gruesome firsthand accounts of their years in the jungle. In their own words, they detail the brutality they endured both physically and mentally at the hands of their captors, describing month-long, unrelenting 'starvation' marches while suffering broken bones, dehydration, exhaustion, and infection. They speak of months of solitary confinement and heavy chains wrapped around their necks that often left them wishing for death. Offering a glimpse inside one of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations, "Out of Captivity" tells the story of how far three Americans were willing to go as they fought to survive for themselves, their families, and each other, providing unflinching insight into: their plane crash into a FARC strategic meeting site, and the FARC's execution-style murders of their crewmembers Tom Janis and Luis Cruz; the U.S. counter-narcotics surveillance role in 'Plan Colombia', including their aerial flights for electronic eavesdropping and FARC communication interceptions; the clandestine role they played as U.S Government contractors in the War on Drugs; their five-and-a-half years of captivity, torture, and deprivation; and, their experiences with other hostages, including their fraught relationship with fellow captive Ingrid Betancourt. This title also provides insight into: how they learned to live off the jungle and survive in some of the world's harshest conditions; how their friendship helped each of them to survive; how spirituality played a role for each during different phases of their imprisonment; the FARC's leaders, activities, movements, and organization; their dramatic rescue by special military units on the ground in Colombia; the reintegration process and the emotional reunions with their families and loved ones; and, how captivity has changed them and what their lives are like seven-and-a-half months after being rescued.

Out of Captivity: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Idyllic colonial towns and fast-paced cities, jaw-dropping mountains and stunning beaches: see it all with "Moon Colombia".

Strategic itineraries for exploring the wild coasts, historic towns, and rural countryside, plus a multi-week trip covering the best of Colombia

Honest advice from local writer Andrew Dier, who provides his American-expat perspective on his adopted home
Full-color maps and photos throughout

The top sights and unique experiences: Stroll along the bougainvillea-strewn cobblestone streets of Cartagena, or explore wildlife preserves, and hike diverse biomes from the Andes to the Amazon. See the ancient ruins of Ciudad Perdida and visit indigenous communities to learn about Colombia's past and present. Swim in the Carribean, or spot humpback whales in the Pacific. Immerse yourself in regional festivals to experience Colombia's diverse music and dance traditions, enjoy nouvelle Colombian restaurants and hopping nightlife of Bogotà, or the perfect weather and locally-grown coffee of Medellín

In-depth coverage of Bogotá, Cartagena and the Caribbean Coast, Boyacá and the Santanderes, Medellín and the Coffee region, Cali and Southwest Colombia, the Pacific Coast, San Andrés and Providencia, and the Amazon and Los Llanos

Background information on the landscape, culture, history, and environment, as well as a handy Spanish phrasebook

Essential insight for travelers on trekking through jungles, accessing remote mountain ranges, and exploring ancient ruins, with tips for traveling safely and respectfully engaging with the local culture
With "Moon Colombia's "practical tips and insider's view, you can plan your trip your way.
Only visiting one region? Try "Moon Bogotá", "Moon Medellín" or "Moon Cartegena &amp; Colombia's Caribbean Coast". Country-hopping in South America? Check out "Moon Peru" or "Moon Ecuador &amp; the Galápagos Islands".

Moon Colombia

The Shape of the Ruins

First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &amp; Francis, an informa company.

Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia

A bold historical novel from "one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature" (Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature).  

 In the early twentieth century, a struggling Joseph Conrad wrote his great novel "Nostromo," about a South American republic he named Costaguana. It was inspired by the geography and history of Colombia, where Conrad spent only a few days. But in Juan Gabriel Vásquez's novel "The Secret History of Costaguana," we uncover the hidden source- and one of the great literary thefts. 

 On the day of Joseph Conrad's death in 1924, the Colombian-born José Altamirano begins to write and cannot stop. Many years before, he confessed to Conrad his life's every delicious detail-from his country's heroic revolutions to his darkest solitary moments. Conrad stole them all. Now Conrad is dead, but the slate is by no means clear- Nostromo will live on and Altamirano must write himself back into existence. As the destinies of real empires collide with the murky realities of imagined ones, Vásquez takes us from a flourishing twentieth-century London to the lawless fury of a blooming Panama and back. 

 Tragic and despairing, comic and insightful, "The Secret History of Costaguana" is a masterpiece of historical invention. It will secure Juan Gabriel Vásquez's place among the most original and exuberantly talented novelists working today.

The Secret History of Costaguana

Levison Wood's famous walking expeditions have taken him from the length of the Nile River to the peaks of the Himalayas, and in "Walking the Americas", Wood chronicles his latest exhilarating adventure: an 1,800-mile trek across the spine of the Americas, through eight countries, from Mexico to Colombia.

Beginning in the Yucatan--and moving south through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama--Wood's journey takes him from sleepy barrios to glamorous cities to Mayan ruins lying unexcavated in the wilderness. Wood encounters indigenous tribes in Mexico, revolutionaries in a Nicaraguan refugee camp, fellow explorers, and migrants heading toward the United States. The relationships he forges along the way are at the heart of his travels--and the personal histories, cultures, and popular legends he discovers paint a riveting history of Mexico and Central America. While contending with the region's natural obstacles like quicksand, flashfloods, and dangerous wildlife, he also partakes in family meals with local hosts, learns to build an emergency shelter, negotiates awkward run-ins with policemen, and witnesses the surreal beauty of Central America's landscapes, from cascading waterfalls and sunny beaches to the spectacular ridgelines of the Honduran highlands. Finally, Wood attempts to cross one of the world's most impenetrable borders: the Dari'n Gap route from Panama into South America, a notorious smuggling passage and the wildest jungle he has ever navigated.

One of the rawest and most exciting journeys of his life, this expedition required every ounce of Wood's strength and guile to survive. "Walking the Americas" is a thrilling personal tale, an accomplished piece of cultural reportage, and a breathtaking journey across some of the most diverse and unpredictable regions on earth.

Colombia

Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez

The Sound of Things Falling

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

Mark Bowden

The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself

David Bushnell

Short Walks from Bogota: Journeys in the New Colombia

Tom Feiling

Delirium (Delirium, #1)

Lauren Oliver

News of a Kidnapping

Gabriel García Márquez

Bolívar: American Liberator

Marie Arana

The Queen's Army (The Lunar Chronicles, #1.5)

Marissa Meyer

Oblivion: A Memoir

Héctor Abad Faciolince

The Robber of Memories: A River Journey Through Colombia

Michael Jacobs

The General in His Labyrinth

Gabriel García Márquez

Misspelled Paradise: A Year in a Reinvented Colombia

Bryanna Plog

There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia

Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

Return to the Dark Valley

Santiago Gamboa

Reputation

Sara Shepard

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

Álvaro Mutis

At the Devil's Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel

William C. Rempel

Colombia: A Concise Contemporary History

Michael J. LaRosa

Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle

Ingrid Betancourt

La novia oscura

Laura Restrepo

The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships

Esther Hicks

Magdalena: River of Dreams

Wade Davis

Dancing Feat: One Man's Mission to Dance Like A Colombian

Neil Bennion

Our Lady of the Assassins

Fernando Vallejo

Colombia - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs Culture

Kate Cathey

Forgotten Peace: Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Colombia

Robert A. Karl

The Informers

Bret Easton Ellis

Paradise Travel

Jorge Franco

¡Que viva la música!

Andrés Caicedo

In Evil Hour

Gabriel García Márquez

Evil Hour in Colombia

Forrest Hylton

Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia

Claudia Leal

Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia

Jeanette Winter

Rosario Tijeras

Jorge Franco

Out of Captivity: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Marc Gonsalves

Moon Colombia

Andrew Dier

The Shape of the Ruins

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia

Steven Dudley

The Secret History of Costaguana