{"product_id":"velvet-was-the-night-isbn-9780593356845","title":"Velvet Was the Night","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eGOOD MORNING AMERICA\u003c\/i\u003e BUZZ PICK • From the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eMexican Gothic\u003c\/i\u003e comes a simmering historical noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of the missing woman they’re both desperate to find.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review,\u003c\/i\u003e NPR, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post, The Boston Globe,\u003c\/i\u003e New York Public Library, \u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal Sentinel, BookPage, She Reads, Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e • “An adrenalized, darkly romantic journey.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMexico in the 1970s is a dangerous country, even for Maite, a secretary who spends her life seeking the romance found in cheap comic books and ignoring the activists protesting around the city. When her next-door neighbor, the beautiful art student Leonora, disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMexico in the 1970s is a politically fraught land, even for Elvis, a goon with a passion for rock ’n’ roll who knows more about kidney-smashing than intrigue. When Elvis is assigned to find Leonora, he begins a blood-soaked search for the woman—and his soul.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSwirling in parallel trajectories, Maite and Elvis attempt to discover the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, encountering hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies. Because Mexico in the 1970s is a noir, where life is cheap and the price of truth is high.“[\u003ci\u003eVelvet Was the Night\u003c\/i\u003e] is a noir with a heart of gold, and it’s a narrative in which the empathy we feel for its characters ultimately reveals an important truth: That Moreno-Garcia is not only a talented storyteller but also an incredibly versatile one.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eNPR\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“An absolute flex . . . [\u003ci\u003eVelvet Was the Night\u003c\/i\u003e] left me marveling at what kind of sorceress Moreno-Garcia must be as she reworks genre after genre, weaving in Mexican history and culture, satisfying familiar cravings without resorting to mere pastiche. The most tantalizing suspense of all comes with wondering what she’ll do next.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSlate\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Moreno-Garcia proves her prowess as a historical fiction powerhouse again.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBuzzFeed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Immensely satisfying, refreshingly new and gloriously written . . . Moreno-Garcia mashes up Anglocentric genres with midcentury Mexican history, resulting in a brew flavored with love, heartbreak, violence, music and unsettling dread. . . . The gift of this book, and Moreno-Garcia’s storytelling, is how it imbues this well-worn genre with added strength, grace and even musicality.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“An enthralling tale that’s as fun as it is mysterious . . . The characters are fascinating, the tone lush and romantic, and it’s all wrapped up in a mystery with twists and turns one likely won’t see coming. . . . [Moreno-Garcia is] the sort of author whose works automatically end up on your ‘must-read’ list.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“The author’s previous novel, \u003ci\u003eMexican Gothic\u003c\/i\u003e, turned the screw on the traditional ghost story; here she gleefully pries hard-boiled noir from the cold, white hands of Chandler and Hammett.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eOprah Daily\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A delicious, twisted treat for lovers of noir. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a masterful writer who pulls you into her dark world and never lets you go. From the suspenseful, slow-burn plot to the crisp, desperate characters, you will be obsessed.”\u003cb\u003e—Simone St. James, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sun Down Motel\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A lush, magnificent trip into a world of danger and discovery. Not to be missed!”\u003cb\u003e—S.A. Cosby, author of \u003ci\u003eBlacktop Wasteland\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eRazorblade Tears\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A rich novel with an engrossing plot, distinctive characters, and a pleasing touch of romance. Readers won’t be able to put it down.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fans of Moreno-Garcia’s other novels will relish this title, as will noir aficionados and readers who like stories about everymen and women rising to the occasion.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s hard to describe how much fun this novel is. . . . A noir masterpiece.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A winner that brings together a romance-fiction obsessed secretary and a lovelorn enforcer during the brutally suppressed student riots in 1970s Mexico City.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eSilvia Moreno-Garcia\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eVelvet Was the Night\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMexican Gothic\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGods of Jade and Shadow\u003c\/i\u003e, and a bunch of other books. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award–winning \u003ci\u003eShe Walks in Shadows\u003c\/i\u003e (a.k.a. \u003ci\u003eCthulhu’s Daughters)\u003c\/i\u003e. She has been nominated for the Locus Award for her work as an editor and has won the British Fantasy Award and the Locus Award for her work as a novelist.\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eJune 10, 1971\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe didn’t like beating people.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEl Elvis realized this was ironic considering his line of work. Imagine that: a thug who wanted to hold his punches. Then again, life is full of such ironies. Consider Ritchie Valens, who was afraid of flying and died the first time he set foot on an airplane. Damn shame that, and the other dudes who died, Buddy Holly and “The Big Bopper” Richardson; they weren’t half bad either. Or there was that playwright Aeschylus. He was afraid of being killed inside his house, and then he steps outside and wham, an eagle tosses a tortoise at him, cracking his head open. Murdered, right there in the most stupid way possible.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOften life doesn’t make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life’s a mess. That’s probably why he loved music and factoids. They helped him construct a more organized world. When he wasn’t listening to his records, he was poring over the dictionary, trying to memorize a new word, or plowing through one of those almanacs full of stats.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo, sir. Elvis wasn’t like some of the perverts he worked with, who got excited smashing a dude’s kidneys. He would have been happy solving crosswords and sipping coffee like their boss, El Mago, and maybe one day he would be an accomplished man of that sort, but for now there was work to be done, and this time Elvis was actually eager to beat a few motherf***ers up.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe hadn’t developed a sudden taste for blood and cracking bones, no, but El Güero had been at him again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEl Güero was a policeman before he joined up with Elvis’s group, and that made him cocky, made him want to throw his weight around. In practice being a poli meant shit because El Mago was the egalitarian sort who didn’t care where his recruits came from—­ex-­cops, ex-­military, porros, and juvenile delinquents were welcome as long as they worked right. But the thing was El Güero was twenty-­five, getting long in the tooth, and that was making him anxious. Soon enough he’d have to move on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe chief requirement of a Hawk was he needed to look like a student so he could inform on the activities of the annoying reds infesting the universities—­Trotskos, Maoists, Espartacos; there were so many flavors of dissidents Elvis could barely keep track of all their organizations—­and also, if necessary, f*** up a few of them. Sure, there were important fossils, like El Fish, who was twenty­seven. But El Fish had been in one political shenanigan or another since he was a wee first-­year chemistry student; he was as professional as porros got. El Güero hadn’t achieved nearly as much. Elvis had just turned twenty-­one, and El Güero felt the weight of his age and eyed the younger man with distrust, suspecting El Mago was going to pick El Elvis for a plum position.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLately El Güero had been making snide remarks about how Elvis was a marshmallow, how he never went on any of the heavy assignments and instead he was picking locks and taking pictures. Elvis did what El Mago asked, and if El Mago wanted him to pick the locks and snap photos, who was Elvis to protest? But that didn’t sway El Güero, who had taken to impugning Elvis’s masculinity in veiled and irritating ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A man who spends so much time running a comb through his hair isn’t a man at all,” El Güero would say. “The real Elvis Presley is a hip-­shaking girlie-­man.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“What you getting at?” Elvis asked, and El Güero smiled. “What you saying ’bout me now?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Didn’t mean \u003ci\u003eyou\u003c\/i\u003e, of course.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Who’d you mean, then?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Presley, like I said. The f***ing weirdo you like so much.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Presley’s the king. Ain’t nothin’ wrong in liking him.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yankee garbage,” El Güero said smugly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd then, when it wasn’t that, El Güero decided to use an assortment of nicknames to refer to Elvis, none of which were his code name. He had a fondness for calling him La Cucaracha, but also Tribilín, on account of his teeth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn short, Elvis was in dire need of asserting himself, of showing his teammates that he wasn’t no f***ing marshmallow. He wanted to get dirty, to put all those fighting techniques El Mago made them learn to good use, to show he was as capable as any of the other guys, especially as capable as El Güero, who looked like a f***ing extra in a Nazi movie, and Elvis had no doubts that his dear papa had been saying “heil” real merrily until he boarded a boat and moved his stupid family to Mexico. Yeah, El Güero looked like a Nazi and not any Nazi but a gigantic, beefy motherf***ing Nazi, and that’s probably why he was so pissed off, because when you look like a blond Frankenstein it’s not that easy to blend in with no one, and it’s much better to be a shorter, slimmer, little dark-­haired f***er like Elvis. That’s why El Mago kept El Güero for kidney-­smashing and he left the lock picking, the infiltrating, the tailing, to Elvis or El Gazpacho.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEl Gazpacho was a guy who’d come from Spain when he was six and still spoke with a little bit of an accent, and it goes to show that you can be all European and pretty much fine because that dude was as nice as could be, while El Güero was a sadist and a bully with an inferiority complex a mile wide.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eF***ing son of an Irma Grese and a Heinrich Himmler! F***er.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut facts were facts, and Elvis, only two years with this group, knew that as the most junior of the lot he had to assert himself somehow or risk being sidelined. One thing was clear: there was no f***ing way he was headed back to Tepito.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTherefore, it’s no surprise that Elvis was a bit nervous. They’d gone over the plan, and the instructions were clear: his little unit was to focus on snatching cameras from journalists who would be covering the demonstration. Elvis wasn’t sure how many Hawks would be coming in and he wasn’t quite sure what the other units would be doing, and really, it wasn’t like he was supposed to \u003ci\u003eask\u003c\/i\u003e questions, but he figured this was a big deal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStudents were heading toward El Monumento a la Revolución, chanting slogans and holding up signs. From the apartment where Elvis and his group were sitting they could see them streaming toward them. It was a holy day, the feast of Corpus Christi, and he wondered if he shouldn’t go get communion after his work was over. He was a lapsed Catholic, but sometimes he had bouts of piousness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eElvis smoked a cigarette and checked his watch. It was still early, not even five o’clock. He went over the word of the day. He did that to keep his mind sharp. They’d kicked him out of school when he was thirteen, but Elvis hadn’t lost his appreciation for certain types of learning, courtesy of his \u003ci\u003eIllustrated Larousse\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe word of the day was \u003ci\u003egladius\u003c\/i\u003e. He’d picked it because it was fitting. After all, the Hawks were organized in groups of a hundred, and they called the leaders of those groups “the centurions.” But there were smaller units. More specialized sub-­groups. Elvis belonged to one of those; a little goon squad of a dozen men headed by El Mago, further subdivided into three smaller groups with four men each.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGladius, then. A little sword. Elvis wished he had a sword. Guns seemed less impressive now, even if he’d felt like a cowboy back when he first held one. He tried to picture himself as one of those samurais in the movies, swinging their katanas. Now wasn’t that something!\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eElvis hadn’t known anything about katanas until he joined the Hawks and met El Gazpacho. El Gazpacho was all over the Japanese stuff. He introduced Elvis to Zatoichi, a super fighter who looked like a harmless blind man but who could defeat dozens of enemies with his expert moves. Elvis thought maybe he was a bit like Zatoichi because he wasn’t quite what he appeared to be and also because Zatoichi had spent some time hanging out with the yakuza, who were these crazy dangerous Japanese criminals.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGladius\u003c\/i\u003e. Elvis mouthed the word.\u003c\/p\u003eNew York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic","brand":"Del Rey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302563827941,"sku":"NP9780593356845","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593356845.jpg?v=1767743397","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/velvet-was-the-night-isbn-9780593356845","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}