Author Lucha Corpi participates in the Arkansas Literary Festival

Author Lucha Corpi will attend the Arkansas Literary Festival, which will take place from Friday, April 9 to Saturday, April 10, 2010.  She will present her latest novel in the Gloria Damasco mystery series, Death at Solstice (Arte Público Press, 2009).  Her presentation time is TBA.

For more information about the Gloria Damasco mystery series, click here.

About the Book

Chicana detective Gloria Damasco has a ''dark gift,'' an extrasensory prescience that underscores her investigations and compels her to solve numerous cases. This time, the recurring vision haunting her dreams contains two pairs of dark eyes watching her in the night, a phantom horse and rider, and the voice of a woman pleading for help. But most disquieting of all is Gloria's sensation of being trapped underwater, unable to free herself, unable to breathe.

When Gloria is asked to help the owners of the Oro Blanco winery in California's Shenandoah Valley, she finds herself on the road to the legendary Gold Country. And she can't help but wonder if the ever-more persistent visions might foreshadow this new case that involves the theft of a family heirloom, a pair of antique diamond and emerald earrings rumored to have belonged to Mexico's Empress Carlota.

Soon Gloria learns that there's more to the case than stolen jewelry. Mysterious accidents, threatening anonymous notes, the disappearance of a woman believed to be a saint, and a ghost horse thought to have belonged to notorious bandit Joaquin Murrieta are some of the pieces Gloria struggles to fit together. A woman's gruesome murder and the discovery of a group of young women from Mexico being held against their will in an abandoned house send Gloria on a fateful journey to a Witches' Sabbath to find the final pieces of the puzzle before someone else is killed.

Corpi weaves the rich cultural history of California's Gold Country with a suspenseful mystery in this latest installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series.

About the Author

Luchas Corpi is a poet, novelist, and children's book author.  She has written three other mystery novels featuring Gloria Damasco: Black Widow's Wardrobe (Arte Público Press, 1999), Cactus Blood (Arte Público Press, 1995) and Eulogy for a Brown Angel (Arte Público Press, 1992). Her children's books include Where Fireflies Dance / Ahi, donde bailan las luciernagas (Children's Books Press, 1997) and The Triple Banana Split Boy / El niño goloso (Piñata Books, 2009).

Praise for Death at Solstice

“Corpi has constructed a twisting story line that confounds her intelligent detective and the reader at every turn. This will please readers looking for a fast-paced tale with a Hispanic cultural background.”

—Library Journal

“This multilayered plot full of California history and Latin American lore will interest a wide variety of mystery readers.”

—BOOKLIST