Cam Northouse of Clayton Fine Books offered these largely Chicano authors to those who enjoyed Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me Ultima:

• Dagoberto Gilb. This Los Angeles native enjoyed critical and commercial success with 1993's The Magic of Blood. The collection of short stories set in the Southwest won the PEN Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. Publishers Weekly describes his latest offering, the novel The Flowers, as "hilarious and thought provoking as it traces the bigotry and alienation among the wildly varied cast of characters."
• Sandra Cisneros. Since 1984's beloved The House on Mango Street, Cisneros has proven herself as a deft poet (Loose Women) and writer of short stories (Woman Hollering Creek). Her 2002 novel Caramelo was reviewed in The Sun as "a sprawling, raucous affair that weaves together several generations of la familia Reyes. ... It's an exuberant celebration of family folklore."
• Oscar Hijuelos. New Yorker Hijuelos was born to Cuban immigrant parents, and is the first Hispanic to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction -- in 1990 for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which has since been made into a feature film and a Broadway musical. The Sun called his 2002 A Simple Habana Melody "a rippling, teasing, occasionally poignant retellling of one Cuban composer's life. ... the book has a feeling of a delicate but delightful trifle."
• Gary Soto. Soto has written poems, novels, children's books and even a memoir. He earned the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal for The Pool Party and was recognized as a National Book Award finalist for 1995's New and Selected Poems, which Publishers Weekly described as "lean and avid," gathering "an impressive force with their quick rhythms and recurrent images."

(Photo by lusi at stock.xchng)