Living in Madrid after the devastating events of A Spy By Nature, former spy Alec Milius struggles to live below the radar as an investment banker, until the disappearance of a prominent politician places him in the middle of an international conspiracy.

A whodunit set in the art world. The protagonist is Julia, an art restoration expert in Madrid who is cleaning a 15th Century painting. The painting shows a duke and his knight playing chess and the story begins when, with the aid of x-rays, Julia discovers an inscription hidden in a corner, "Who killed the knight?"

"After the IT firm where she works shuts down, Lucía has a vision of her future career as a taxi driver, brought on by the intoxicating opera floating through her apartment's air vent. She obtains her taxi license and meets the neighbor responsible for the music. Calaf, he says, is his name, also the name of the character from Puccini's Turandot and the name of the bird Lucía received on her 10th birthday from her long-since-dead mother. When Calaf...

"When Matthew Lewis's The Monk was published in 1796, readers were shocked by this gripping and horrific novel. Lewis's story, which drove the House of Commons - of which he was a member - to deem him licentious and perverse, follows the abbot Ambrosio as he is tempted into a world of incest, murder, and torture by a young girl who has concealed herself in his monastery disguised as a boy. As Ambrosio spirals into hell, the reader encounters an array...

"Chef Sadie Montgomery's life is changed forever by an intense moonlit encounter in Madrid with infamous Alejandro de Alegon. The sizzling anticipation he sparks tempts virgin Sadie all the way to his Spanish castle and into his bed. She's never known anything like the wild passion Alejandro unleashes. But their night of illicit pleasure soon turns Sadie into Spain's most scandalous headline: Pregnant with Alejandro's Baby!"--Back cover.

"Susana Macaya, a young gypsy girl raised as a paya, disappears after her bachelorette party. Her body is found two days later: the victim has been brutally tortured following an unusual and atrocious ritual. Her sister Lara suffered the same fate seven years ago, on the eve of her wedding, but the murderer is serving a sentence in prison: has someone imitated his terrible methods or is an innocent person imprisoned? Inspector Elena Blanco, a veteran...

"Buitrago enjoys an international reputation, but this is the first of her works to be translated into English. Translation is a highly inventive one in which Peden has created a playful, lush language appropriate to the erotic and culinary ambience of original work, La señora de la miel (1993). Teachers and students might wish for an introduction to the cultural traditions and society that are the target of Buitrago's irony"--Handbook of Latin American...