#graydon house

MISS DEL RIO: A NOVEL OF DELORES DEL RIO, THE FIRST MAJOR LATINA STAR IN HOLLYWOOD by Bárbara Mujica

Book Summary: In the tradition of Marie Benedict's The Only Woman in the Room and Adriana Trigiani's All The Stars in the Heavens, a stunning biographical historical novel set over five decades about Mexican actress Dolores del Río—the first major Latina star in Hollywood, member of Tinseltown's glamorous inner circle with notables such as Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich, and proud Mexican woman who helped pioneer Mexican cinema's Golden Age.

She was known as the most beautiful woman in the world, but Dolores del Río was more than a pretty face. 1910, Mexico: As the country’s revolution spreads, Dolores, the daughter of a wealthy banker, must flee her comfortable life in Durango or risk death. Her family settles in Mexico City, where, at 16, she marries the worldly Jaime del Río. But in a twist of fate, at a party she meets an influential American director who recognizes in her a natural performer. He invites her to Hollywood, and practically overnight, the famous Miss del Río is born. In California, Dolores’s star quickly rises, and her days become a whirlwind of movie-making and glamorous events. Swept up in Tinseltown’s glitzy inner circle, she takes her place among film royalty such as Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles. But as her career soars to new heights, her personal life becomes increasingly complicated, with family tragedy, painful divorce, and real heartache. And when she’s labeled box office poison amid growing prejudice before WWII, Dolores must decide what price she’s willing to pay to achieve her dreams, and if her heart and future instead lie where it all began... in Mexico. Spanning half a century and narrated by Dolores’s fictional hairdresser and longtime friend, Miss del Río traces the life of a trailblazing woman whose legacy in Hollywood and in Mexico still shines bright today.

My Review: A fascinating book about Dolores Del Rio, the first Latina star in Hollywood. It was a riveting and fascinating read, I learn who Dolores del Rio was because all knew was related to some pictures. I discovered a clever woman and how hard her life was. The author did an excellent job in developing the characters and describing the fascinating historical background. There's a lot of research and this book made watch a Del Rio's movie and read something more about her. Good storytelling, character development, and well researched historical background. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Graydon House and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Author: Bárbara Mujica is the bestselling author of four novels, including Frida, which was translated into 17 languages. She is also an award-winning short story writer and essayist whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Miami Herald, among others. A professor emerita of Spanish at Georgetown University, she grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Author Website: http://www.barbaramujica.com/contact-1.html Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Barbara-Mujica-Author-340343149394891/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/blmujica Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/284429.B_rbara_Mujica

Exclusive Cover Reveal: Ben and Beatriz by Katalina Gamarra

Today on the site I’m thrilled to be sharing the cover of Ben and Beatriz by Kataline Gamarra, a pan m/f reimagining of Much Ado About Nothing releasing from Graydon House on August 2, 2022! Here’s the story: Beatriz Herrera is a fierce woman who will take you down with her quick wit and keen intellect. And after the results of the 2016 election worked hard to erase her identity as a queer…

Title: Dragon Fires Everywhere Author: Hazel Beck Pub Date Sep 23 2025 Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing, Graydon House My Review: What a very different paranormal romcom this proved to beWith witchcraft, dragons and much more to see. A fight against evil, a hope for unity and peaceWhere opinions may differ but dissent will cease. The Joywood Coven have been in control for yearsThe…

The Book:  The Weekend Retreat by Tara LaskowskiPublished December 26, 2023 by Graydon HouseDate read: January 13, 2024 The Characters:  Siblings Harper, Richard, ZackRichard’s wife ElleZack’s girlfriend Lauren ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon This page contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this…

BIG LITTLE SPELLS by Hazel Beck (Witchlore, #2) - EXCERPT

A smart, modern Rom-Com about a witch banished from her coven who seeks help from the only person who can prove she’s not a threat to witchkind—her annoyingly immortal childhood crush.

Rebekah Wilde was eighteen when she left St. Cyprian, officially stripped of her magic and banished from her home. Ten years later she’s forced to return to face the Joywood Coven, who preside over not just her hometown, but the whole magical world.

The Joywood are determined to prove Rebekah is a danger to witchkind, and she faces a death sentence if she can’t prove otherwise. Rebekah must seek help from the only one who knows how to stop the Joywood—the ruthless immortal Nicholas Frost. Years ago, he was her secret tutor in magic, and her secret, impossible crush. But the icy and frustratingly handsome immortal is as remote and arrogant as ever, and if he feels anything for Rebekah—or witchkind—it’s impossible to tell.

Now, she’s no longer a child…and this time what sparks between Nicholas and Rebekah is more than just magic…

Buy Links:

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ISBN: 9781525804724 Publication Date: August 29, 2023 Publisher: Graydon House

The Author:

HAZEL BECK is the magical partnership of a river witch and an earth witch. Together, they have collected two husbands, three familiars, two children, five degrees, and written around 200 books. As one, their books will delight with breathtaking magic, emotional romance, and stories of witches you won’t soon forget. Find them at www.Hazel-Beck.com.

Social Links: Author Website: https://hazel-beck.com/ Facebook: Hazel Beck Instagram: @hazelbeckauthor Goodreads: Hazel Beck

EXCERPT

Chapter One

You don’t have to be an exiled witch under threat of the death penalty should you cast the faintest little spell to feel the magic in Sedona, Arizona.

But it doesn’t hurt.

The full moon is shining, high and bright, making the red rocks glow outside my little bungalow. The air is soft and dry instead of swollen with Missouri’s trademark humidity, which I’m not sorry to leave behind.

If it was up to me, I would never have gone back to Mis­souri at all.

Because one thing exile has taught me is that magic is as much a habit as anything else. Unnecessary at best. Danger­ous at worst. An addiction, in other words.

These days I am all about recovery.

Except for tonight. Tonight, admittedly, has been a bit of a relapse.

I breathe out and try to blow away the past while I do.

I’m standing out in my little yard, my head tipped toward the Arizona sky and my shoes kicked off so I can feel the earth and as many vortexes as possible. Because I’m a hippie, I tell myself. Just a run-of-the-mill Sedona hippie. Hair down, feet bare, crystals hanging all around like every other New Ager around here.

Not magic, just vibes.

But before I manage to fully ground myself here, I feel something grab me, like a huge, magical hook around the center of me—but inside out. It’s dark. Hard. Kind of slimy, really—and it makes my stomach heave.

This *particular *magical tug is a summons, yanking me out of the life I fought so hard to build, all on my own. Not for the first time.

Not even for the first time tonight.

Though this summons is harsher than the one before. Meaner.

I know instantly it’s not him.

Because he *yanked me back to St. Cyprian too, but it didn’t hurt when he did it. It’s not supposed to hurt at all, and he made it feel almost *good—

But I stop thinking about the maddeningly beautiful, im­possible immortal witch who ruined my life once already, and start worrying about me.

There’s only one reason for me to be dragged back home against my will. And it’s been a long night already. My sister, Emerson, who I haven’t seen in person in a decade, formed her very own coven made up of our closest friends and one ob­noxious immortal. Then, together, we all fought off a major, magic-induced flood that would have submerged the town of St. Cyprian and most of Missouri.

The final jerk makes Sedona disappear into a blur of red, then there’s a *whooshing *sensation while whispered words fill the air around me.

Rebekah Wilde, come before us, the voices command me.

And I’m back.

Right where I don’t want to be.

I’m standing outside a farmhouse across the river from my hometown. And instead of the terrifying wave of water and my sister ready to dive into the middle of it all like the first time I showed up here tonight, the river has settled down. The fight is over.

Or…maybe it’s only just begun.

Because a quick glance around shows me that Emerson is standing outside in the cool April night, looking like the fierce Warrior she is, her eyes blazing gold with all her newly redis­covered power. Jacob North, our old friend and a Healer—and, I think, my sister’s new love—stands with her and doesn’t look any worse for the intense healing he did when we came much too close to losing Emerson earlier.

Behind them is Zander Rivers, my cousin, looking un­characteristically grim for a guy who used to make the role he was born into—a Guardian—seem a lot more fun than the name suggests. Next to him is Georgie Pendell, Emerson’s best friend, whose entire family has been witch Historians—and actual historians who run the town’s local-interest museum—as long as anyone can remember. And last but never least, El­lowyn Good. *My *best friend. And also the Summoner who helped Emerson contact me once Emerson remembered she was a witch, despite the Joywood spell that took those magic memories away from her for ten whole years.

Across from them stand all the members of the Joywood, the ruling coven based here in my hometown of St. Cyprian, MO. The authoritarian, bullying, small-minded coven that cheated me out of the life I was supposed to have.

Seven dictatorial witches I had no intention of laying eyes on again.

I feel a rush of a very old, too-dark fury inside me—but stop myself. It’s practically a reflex at this point. I don’t do outsize emotion or high drama anymore. I don’t do *dark. *That would lead directly to my death, and I’ve always been pretty clear about wanting to stay alive.

If I hadn’t wanted to *live—my *life on *my *terms—I would have stayed here. I would have let these petty Joywood tyrants wipe my mind the way they wiped my sister’s, taking away any hint of ever knowing magic.

I tell myself that I’ve forgiven them. I chant it inside me, *not *like one of the spells forbidden to me, but like a mantra. They were only doing their jobs, following their laws, as stu­pid as those laws might be. I forgive them because forgive­ness is mine to give. I don’t need to carry the bitter taste of St. Cyprian and its ruling coven with me. I chose to leave all of this behind. I still choose it.

Something—not quite a shadow—moves in my peripheral vision, and I see *him *too. Nicholas Frost, the one and only immortal witch. Some people call him a traitor.

I call him all kinds of things and unlike most, have done it to his face. But now is not the time to air *all *my oldest grudges.

His gaze from halfway across a field makes everything in­side me…change. Not so much that dangerous black fury any longer. This is something else. A different kind of heat.

I don’t want to acknowledge it. Or him. Especially not with this audience.

Even if, for a moment, it feels as if the two of us are all alone here.

I have to remind myself that we’re not.

I forgive you, I think at him, in my smuggest internal voice. The best of a decade of recovery programs right there. And even though I can’t—won’t—use a witch’s usual telepathic version of conversation, I suspect he hears me anyway. Be­cause his dark blue eyes gleam.

From all the way across the tall grass.

“Rebekah Wilde,” booms a voice I recognize entirely too well, even though I haven’t heard it in a decade. Carol Simon, the Joywood coven’s Warrior and therefore the leader of…ev­erything involving witches the world over.

I force myself to look at her, hopefully without my feelings all over my face, and decide that teenage me was right. Her frizzy hair really is unforgivable.

“You have been summoned here, to the site of your infrac­tion, to answer for your offense,” she intones.

I finally take note of the fact that she and her cronies hauled me into this field, but not into the group of my friends and family who also *infracted *tonight. I’m standing halfway be­tween them and the Joywood. As tempting as it is to think that’s just carelessness, I know better.

They don’t do careless.

I slouch where I stand, because even being across the river from my hometown makes me want to behave like the sulky teenager I was when I lived here. That’s what Carol and her buddies likely see anyway, so why not live down to their worst expectations? I’ve always been excellent at that.

I lock eyes with Felicia Ipswitch, the Joywood’s Diviner and my personal nemesis, and smirk a little. And just like that, it might as well be tenth grade when Felicia was the high school principal and I was a problem. A problem she thought she could solve with draconian detentions and the kind of pun­ishments that would send human teachers to jail—but witch students heal up better.

Turns out I’m not over high school, which doesn’t really do a lot for the sullen *peace and love *vibe I’m trying to exude here.

I look away from that evil old hag to find Emerson look­ing at me like I’m an answer. That’s not unusual. My sister always thinks there is one. And better yet, that she can find it and implement it.

I know better, because I made my own way out in the world, relying on nothing and no one but me. I learned the hard way that life and the world often have no answers, no neat little bows. For anyone, witch or human.

I tell myself that it gives me great internal peace to accept this knowledge, and maybe it will, someday. I grit my teeth and think peace, please.

Especially when Carol starts to speak again. Peace, love, light, I chant inside me. No spellwork here. No witchcraft. Just words of power that anyone could use while anointing themselves in essential oils and rearranging their houses for better feng shui.

“I know you must think you did something big here to­night,” Carol is saying, as if she’s never heard anything dumber in her life. Her voice is so persuasive that I have to pinch myself to remember that no, we weren’t giggling over a Ouija board, pretending we weren’t pushing it while we clearly were. We actually fused together the way all the books say true covens should, fought some gnarly dark magic, and won. *Almost *at the expense of my sister’s life.

“But I’m afraid all you really did, Emerson and Rebekah, is break the terms set down before you when you failed your pubertatum.” She glances around. “And the rest of you broke *several *laws aiding them.”

The word *pubertatum *has not gotten any less obnoxious in the ten years I haven’t heard it spoken aloud. It’s an ugly Latin word for a coming-of-age ceremony where witches in their eighteenth year are required to demonstrate their pow­ers so they might take their places in witch society. Pass the test and you answer a few questions to be herded into one of the seven witchkind designations. Warrior, Guardian, Sum­moner, Healer, Historian, Praeceptor, or Diviner.

Fail the test, like Emerson and I did, and you get to be a zombie or an outcast.

“I have power, Carol. You can’t deny that,” Emerson says, with her usual bouncy forthrightness, like she’s flabbergasted at the possibility that Carol would bother *trying *to deny such a thing. When it’s so obvious.

I really have missed my sister.

“You told me I had none.” Emerson points to me now. “You told *us *we have no power at all. You were wrong. And then, all this power inside me you said I didn’t have fought off *your *obliviscor.”

I expect rage. Carol has never been one for being told she’s wrong. Her mind wipe spell wasn’t supposed to have failed. But Carol surprises me.

She titters, and her cronies all laugh along with her. I re­mind myself that it’s *supposed *to make me feel wrong and stu­pid and vaguely humiliated. That’s what they do. Better to rule us by making us hate ourselves.

“And you’ve turned a simple testing error into some…ne­farious plot? I do worry, Emerson, that fighting off the obli­viscor addled your senses.”

“We just saved St. Cyprian and possibly all of witchkind, Carol,” my sister says, and not angrily. Just like she’s reciting facts, inviting Carol to come aboard. She even smiles. “You’re welcome.”

And I know hate is for the weak. Forgiveness is power. Blah, blah, blah.

But Carol Simon makes the case for blood feuds, forever. Especially when she rolls her eyes.

“We saved witchkind with no help from you,” Emerson continues, as if she doesn’t see any eye-rolling. Because she won’t give up. Emerson never, *ever *gives up.

Even when she should.

“As a concerned, dedicated St. Cyprian citizen who also happens to be chamber of commerce president, I have to won­der,” Emerson tells Carol. But she also casts an eye over the rest of them, these fixtures of St. Cyprian and my witchy past that I did not miss at all. Like Maeve Mather, the Joywood’s Summoner, who used to go out of her way to be mean to my grandmother. Just because she could. “Why, I’m asking my­self, did the ruling body of all witchkind not only turn a blind eye to the obvious imbalance in our power source that’s been making the rivers rise so dangerously, but also fail to help us fix it? Why did *we *have to stop it?”

“I assume because you wanted attention,” Felicia says. It is a familiar sentence, meant to be pure condemnation. She used to use it all the time as a precursor to her nasty little punish­ments. My gaze moves across the dark field to find Ellowyn’s, and I can tell from my best friend’s expression that she’s re­membering the same thing I am.

All of high school, basically. When Principal Ipswitch dedi­cated herself to what she called our reprehensible, attention-seeking behavior.

What amazes me is how little I’ve thought about high school since leaving Missouri. Deliberately. And tonight, it’s like I never left.

“I saw the darkness at the heart of the confluence myself,” Emerson says with a great calm I certainly don’t feel. Espe­cially since I saw it too. That terrible, encroaching dark, eat­ing the world whole. It had hunkered there where the three rivers meet, waiting malevolently. And then, tonight, it ex­ploded. Emerson, with our help, destroyed it. My heart starts kicking at me again, a riot of panic, like it’s still happening.

“Are you accusing us of something?” Carol asks, and she’s scarily good at this. She sounds on the verge of laughter, yet somehow almost hurt. As if she cares deeply what Emerson thinks of her. Of them.

I worry this will work on my sister. Because the truth is, Emerson has no power here. She’s too honest, and this is pol­itics. Power. It’s ego and control. Emerson is a lot of things I roll my eyes at all the time, but she’s never been ruled by ego or greed.

Not like these witches.

“I’m pointing out facts,” Emerson says, sounding patient now. My sister has never met a windmill she didn’t try to charge head-on. “And the facts are, we saved St. Cyprian. You could have helped us, Carol. But you didn’t.”

“Oh, Emerson.” Carol sounds sad. Legitimately sad, which would require emotions on her part. And I’m pretty sure ve­lociraptors don’t have emotions. “Why would we *deliberately *choose not to help save the place where we live? How does that make sense?”

Emerson blinks. “You tell me.”

I want to give a short TED talk on gaslighting and master manipulators, but this is *not *the time. It’s still not clear whether this is an execution or not. Carol did mention infractions of the pubertatum rules, and last I heard, me using magic the way I did tonight is a capital offense. Emerson wasn’t supposed to be *able *to do it. I claimed I *could *do it, but was exiled be­cause they said I had no real power—only the shameful, un­safe urge to use borrowed force. Either way, using witchcraft as an exile is about as forbidden as you can get.

I can always be counted on to rebel when it will do me the most harm.

There’s a part of me that wants to turn to Nicholas Frost, the only other being here who isn’t standing with a group. He’s the one who came up with the goddamned pubertatum back when the earth was young, or so they taught us in school. He is considered the first Praeceptor—the teacher of all teachers, but not in a safe little classroom way. Praeceptors in his day taught armies of witches, then wielded them.

But I know better than to look to him for help.

Looking at him at all is fraught enough when you were once a teenage girl with a teenage girl’s unwieldy crush. Those things are hard to vanquish.

“We saved St. Cyprian,” Emerson says again, as if saying it enough will get through to Carol when as far as I know, *nothing *has ever gotten through to Carol.

“Maybe you did save the town,” Felicia says, with her little sniff of disdain that I remember all too well. “But if you did, it was for your own gain and nothing more.”

I want to say that at least that’s better than doing it for at­tention, but I don’t, because I’m evolved as fuck.

My sister’s eyes narrow. And here’s the thing that most people don’t know about Emerson Wilde. She expends a lot of energy trying to convince the people around her to see the error of their ways. She embodies the notion that if you lead a horse to water in the right way, it really will drink.

But when she’s done, she’s done.

As her little sister, I know this better than anyone. So, I step in to stop the impending storm. “This seems straightforward to me,” I say, doing my best to sound as if all this carrying on is a waste of energy, and I low-key resent it. And as if I’m some kind of authority here. “Emerson has some magic. Let her take the test again.”

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