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THE BOOKS 

click on links below to check out the video trailers

The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories
 

"The stories are clever and sometimes funny, but their real strength is the way they capture today's Latinos — the talk and humor, the swagger and irony. The stories bring to life the contemporary culture of north Denver, the Southwest and Mexico. Ramos has a rich voice. He nails it."

Sandra Dallas in The Denver Post

 

Desperado: A Mile High Noir
 
Featuring Gus Corral from the short story The Skull of Pancho Villa, originally published in Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery (Arte Público Press), this return to book-length crime fiction has been called "brilliant and gripping" by bestselling mystery writer Diane Mott Davidson; a "searing ride" by noted poet and novelist Tim Z. Hernandez; and an "up-to-the-minute portrait of the New America" by the award-winning novelist Michael Nava. Winner of the 2014 Colorado Book Award for Best Mystery. See the video here.

 

King of the Chicanos

 

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King of the Chicanos captures the spirit, energy, and imagination of the 1960s' Chicano Movement — a massive and intense struggle across a broad spectrum of political and cultural issues — through the passionate story of the "King of the Chicanos," Ramón Hidalgo. From his humble beginnings through tumultuous decades of being a migrant farm worker, door-to-door salesman, prison inmate, political hack, and radical activist, the novel relates Hidalgo's personal failures and self-destructive personality amid the political turmoil of the times. This impassioned novel relates the maturation of one man while encapsulating the fever of the Chicano Movement. See the video here.

 

The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz

 

This debut novel in the acclaimed Luis Móntez series introduced a hero unique in detective fiction: a world-weary middle-aged lawyer steeped in the politics, history, and culture of the golden age of Chicano activism. Winner of the Colorado Book Award; Edgar Award finalist.

Twenty years ago, a gang attacked four Chicano student activists and shot down their leader, Rocky Ruiz. Now the survivors, Móntez's former compatriots in the movement, are in danger. One is killed, another beaten, and a third driven into hiding. Enter Teresa Fuentes, a beautiful young lawyer determined to solve the mystery and just as determined to avoid becoming involved with Móntez. To save his friends, Móntez must reexamine the central event of their shared past-the murder of Rocky Ruiz. Just as difficult, he finds, may be to untangle his feelings for Teresa Fuentes.

 

"[O]ffers no shop worn sentimentality. It is a tale about past sins, and how Móntez must wrestle with his part in all that to see clearly in the present. It is a mystery of the human condition, and our need to heal old wounds. We, like Móntez, learn over again that cynicism and regret plague our psyches. But to totally give in is to give up, and that's not the answer either when the smoke clears. Always forward, Rocky would say, ese, because it ain't no big thing." From the Preface by Gary Phillips.

 

The Ballad of Gato Guerrero

 

"But the next time I'm down in Guadalajara I'll make it a point to tell them that a Chicano up in Denver has embraced a traditional genre and transformed it into a separate and distinct voice, and has done it with virtuosity. Manuel Ramos has grabbed the baton and is running with it. The transformation is more than positive. Once in a while, that's the way things happen up here in El Norte." From the Preface by Alfredo Véa, Jr.

 

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