Ulises Linares (not his real name) is a conman who engages in lonely hearts and romance cons. At almost 30, and after the death of his father, he’s feeling a pressure to pull a con that will give him some stability. He decides to pursue Perla Inclan, a woman whose family once owned a reasonably successful coffee company in Puerco Ahogado (which means “drowned pig”), in the mountains of Veracruz. But Perla is no easy mark. And her niece, Inés, clocks him pretty quickly. The […]

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work has been hit-or-miss for me in the past. I liked Gods of Jade and Shadow, loved Mexican Gothic, but didn’t much care for The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. I’m happy to report though, that I very much enjoyed The Bewitching. This is a gothic horror novel, following three young women across three different timelines. The main storyline follows Minerva, a graduate student in the 1990s, who is writing a graduate thesis about obscure horror novelist Beatrice Tremblay. The second timeline follows Minerva’s great-grandmother Alba as a young […]