Books by Jorge Amado

The arrival of an intoxicating mulatto girl from the backlands changes the lives of the inhabitants of a provincial Brazilian town.

Banished for promiscuity, Tieta returns to the seaside village of Agreste after 26 years. Thinking she is now a rich, respectable widow, her mercenary family welcomes her with open arms. But Tieta is forced to reveal her true identity to save the town's beautiful beaches from ugly development.

A classic Brazilian “Western” full of romance and adventure, violence and courage, and peopled with wonderfully earthy characters from the legendary author’s childhood. “Set in Bahia at the turn of the century, Showdown is brimming with the gunmen, fugitives, prostitutes and other characters who settled that sunbaked northeastern state.”—The New York Times “[Jorge] Amado has returned to some of his earliest, most radical concerns, confronting Brazilian society, memory, and mythmaking, and aiming to show, by anecdote, how the Brazil of the modernizing present has buried its (criminal) past.”—Commentary “The Brazil [Amado] writes about in Showdown shares many of the traditions of the American frontier, and that is something Americans can relate to.”—Linda Grey, former Bantam president and publisher “Showdown is a combination of the old Amado, who wrote Bahian historical novels, and the new Amado, with the spirit of Gabriela.”—Gregory Rabassa, National Book Award–winning translator of Showdown

As if in answer to their calll, Captain Vasco Moscosco de Aragao (newly retired) arrives and soon has the townspeople enthralled with his tales of ocean-going daring and romance. But just as Vasco is about to be unmaksked the Ita limps into port with her flag at half mast and her captain dead at the wheel.

A big, brawling novel of waterfront life in Bahia, packed with cardsharpers, prostitutes, pimps, drunks and homeless Don Juans and Messalinas. The things that happen in Shepherds of the Night are bound to happen once the cleverest of the Don Juans marries an out-of-town prostitute and tires of her;