Esquivel's second novel, 1996's The Law of Lave, opens with the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan, the future site of Mexico City. Many centuries later the reincarnated actors of this earlier drama confront each other as an astroanalyst, her missing soulmate, and a planetary presidential candidate.

The House of the Spirits (1982) by Chilean Isabel Allende is a magical story about a Latin American family that survives internal and external pressures.

Whitney Otto's 1991 novel, How to Make an American Quilt, focuses on women sharing the stories of their lives as they Sit together and sew a quilt.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Written by Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1967, is considered the classic example of magic realism. This novel explores several generations of a Latin American family set against the age of revolution.

The recipes in Ntozake Shange's 1982 novel...