Bøker av Yxta Maya Murray

Laura de León is a radar astronomer who studies Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs) such as threatening asteroids and comets at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. In Los Angeles in 2020, several crises are coalescing. The first strain of SARS-CoV-2 triggers the lockdowns, the city roils with protests of Derek Chauvin's murder of George Floyd and the police killing of Breonna Taylor, while the Bobcat Fire sweeps across the San Fernando Valley. In the midst of these emergencies, Laura is struggling to keep her family alive. Simultaneously, Laura is trying to write the history section of a Congressional report titled the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan. This report will advise Congress that it must develop a system to detect and deflect PHOs, and the section Laura is working on cites several historical meteorite impacts as proof that the Earth is now undefended against a significant impact event. A story about family, love, risk, and science, A History of Hazardous Objects contemplates how experiencing trauma and pain may help us secure a safer and more just world.

"In award-winning legal scholar and novelist Yxta Maya Murray's new novel, federal agent Reyna Rodriguez reports on real-life nuclear reactor meltdowns and accidents that occurred in 1959, 1964, and 1968 at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory"--

These stories magnify and make real the hidden dialogue of society. Readers are left to grapple with the implications and ramifications of the policies and attitudes pervasive in the United States today and question what it means for the future.

Written as a series of web posts, Instagram essays, Snapchat freakouts, rejected Yelp reviews, Facebook screeds, and SmugMug streams-of-consciousness that merge volcanic confession with eagle-eyed art criticism, Art Is Everything shows us the painful but joyous development of a mid-career artist whose world implodesust as she has a breakthrough.

There is a legend of the New World that has endured for centuries: the strange, tragic tale of a King, a Witch . . . and a blue gem of intoxicating beauty said to grant extraordinary power to whoever possesses it. Archaeologist Juana Sanchez, convinced that she's discovered the key to unlocking the mystery of the fabled Queen Jade, ventures into the Central American jungle alonejust ahead of the relentless pounding fury of Hurricane Mitch. When the terrible storm is over, Juana is gone, and an ancient, long-buried jade mine has been uncovered in the mountains of Guatemala, giving new hope to all obsessed seekers of the legendary stone. But it is a different obsession that plunges Juana's daughterscholar and bookseller Lola Sanchezinto the remarkable adventure of a lifetime. For only by following the Queen Jade's perilous, cursed trail can Lola hope to find her vanished mother . . . if it isn't already too late.

La Reina Jade—una piedra preciosa de gran belleza y que, se decía, otorgaba poder a quien la poseyera—era solo una leyenda maya que durante siglos había cautivado a exploradores y sabios que pisaban el Nuevo Mundo, como Beatriz de la Cueva, gobernadora de aquellas tierras en el siglo XVI, o el naturalista y viajero Alexander von Humboldt. Lola conoce bien el poder de seducción de este mito. Buscar la preciada gema azul ha sido la obsesión de su madre, una arqueóloga especialista en la cultura maya, y todo apunta a que su precipitado viaje a Guatemala, ahora devastada por el huracán Match, se debió a que finalmente logró descifrar el misterio de su paradero. Lo último que Lola sabe de su madre es que se adentró en la selva y desapareció. Si quiere encontrarla, deberá seguir sus pasos y descodificar las pistas ocultas en cartas, relatos antiguos y oscuros jeroglíficos, con la esperanza de que la conduzcan hasta la Reina Jade. Una perfecta combinación de aventura y misterio histórico, La Reina Jade cautivará la atención de sus lectores y los dejará embelesados hasta el final.