Books in the Galician Wave series

André Santomé Lobeira is a teenager whose parents divorced when he was five. He puts on a front at school to defend himself against the bullies Raúl Pernas and Héctor Solla, who do everything they can to make his life miserable. He starts deliberately getting low marks in the hope they will ignore him. This encourages his grandfather to intervene, and André goes to live with his grandparents, who run a restaurant, The Birdhouse, in the garden of which his grandfather has an orphanage for birds. André finds a baby cut-throat finch, a finch with a red line across its neck, and keeps it as a pet. He is torn between two girls - Halima, a Moroccan girl in his class whose mother died as they were crossing into Spain, who helps him stand up to the bullies; and Dove, a girl he meets on the Internet, who helps him with his homework and when his grandfather falls ill. Dove arranges for them to meet in person, but André is afraid this will ruin their friendship and feels a strange sense of betrayal to the other girl in his life, Halima. He almost wishes Dove had never arranged their meeting... Fina Casalderrey is one of Galicia's foremost writers of young adult fiction, with over forty works to her name. She is the recipient of the Spanish National Prize for Literature and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Other titles in the series Galician Wave include: "Black Air" by Agustín Fernández Paz, "The Painter with the Hat of Mallows" by Marcos Calveiro and "Dragal I: The Dragon's Inheritance" by Elena Gallego Abad.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown," writes H. P. Lovecraft at the start of his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature". In real life, the author Agustín Fernández Paz, Galicia's answer to H. P. Lovecraft, is reading the newspaper and comes across a classified ad for a haunted house. He imagines what would happen if someone answered that ad. Then what would happen if they went to see the house and liked it. Then what would happen if they had enough money and decided to buy it. And finally what would happen if they went to live there and discovered that the house was really haunted. This is the plot of "Winter Letters", one of the best-selling Galician novels of all time. The house will bring to mind, for older readers, the Bates' home in Alfred Hitchcock's film "Psycho". Inside the house is a book of prints that may remind younger readers of Tom Riddle's diary in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". However this may be, the reader is sure to be drawn in by the force and power of the narrative, which is as smooth and sinuous as the sirens' song heard by Ulysses from the sanctuary of the mast of his ship. Agustín Fernández Paz is the author of another novel in English, "Black Air", about a psychiatrist's race against time to save his patient from a malignant presence, the Great Beast. He was awarded the Spanish National Prize for Literature in 2008 and is Spain's nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Other titles in the series Galician Wave include: "Dragal I: The Dragon's Inheritance" and "Dragal II: The Dragon's Metamorphosis" by Elena Gallego Abad, "Dove and Cut Throat" by Fina Casalderrey, "The Painter with the Hat of Mallows" by Marcos Calveiro and "I Love You Leo A. Destination Somewhere" by Rosa Aneiros.

Clara Soutelo is a sixteen-year-old girl who spends her summers in the town of Vilarelle in Galicia. She descends from a well-to-do family that was on the winning side in Spain's Civil War and that occupies the manor house in Vilarelle. All the local families look up to them, and Clara has taken this attitude for granted. That is until the summer of 1995, when a skeleton is discovered in the manor house during restoration work. It has been walled up for many years, perhaps since the time of the Civil War, and the skull has a bullet hole. Clara also discovers a ring bearing the initial "R". What is the identity of the victim, and who wielded the murder weapon? The search for the discovery of the truth will lead Clara into her family's inglorious past through the witness of the town's inhabitants, and will also sow the seeds of romance between her and a young mechanic by the name of Miguel, descendant of the bookbinder Ishmael, with whom she shares the secret pleasure of reading. Other titles in the series Galician Wave include: "Heart of Jupiter" by Ledicia Costas, "I Love You Leo A. Destination Somewhere" by Rosa Aneiros, "Dragal I: The Dragon's Inheritance" by Elena Gallego Abad, "The Painter with the Hat of Mallows" by Marcos Calveiro and "Dove and Cut Throat" by Fina Casalderrey.

The Roman poet Ovid's famous book of poetry Metamorphoses contains a succession of women who are changed into something else after they have been raped. One of these is Medusa, the Gorgon, daughter of the sea deities (and also siblings) Phorcys and Ceto. She is reputed to have been a ravishingly beautiful maiden, with striking hair, who received the attention of many suitors. She was raped by the god of the sea, Neptune, in Minerva's temple. In anger at this desecration of her temple, Minerva turned Medusa's hair into serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that it would turn any who looked at it into stone. The Greek hero Perseus, son of Jupiter and the mortal Danaë, was sent by the king of Seriphos, Polydectes, who desired Perseus' mother and wished to get Perseus out of the way, to behead the Gorgon. For this purpose, he received help from the gods: a shield of polished bronze, winged sandals, an adamantine sword and Hades' helm of darkness (or invisibility cloak). According to the myth, he beheaded her in her sleep and used her head as a weapon before giving it to Minerva. But who is the real victim here? Medusa suffers for her beauty. She is raped by a god and punished by another. People then avoid looking her in the eye in case they are turned to stone. And how does the myth of Medusa relate to two students in Galicia in their final year at school, Sofía and Lupe, who after a fancy-dress dinner, in the early hours of the morning, are picked up by two men and sexually assaulted? What will the reaction of their classmates be? Will they be prepared to look them in the eye? And how will the girls themselves respond to this assault in a society that may prefer to sweep its acts of indecency under the carpet and turn a blind eye? Head of Medusa is a story of wrongdoing, friendship, renewal and moral courage.

Mara’s parents run the Sunset Hotel in Bico, a small town on the coast of Galicia. The Sunset Hotel is a family hotel, with old-world charm, the kind of place people come back to back year after year. Mara is almost eighteen and has taken the liberty of staying out all night and going to the disco with some friends. She has then hooked up with Tucho and brought him back to the hotel for a little intimacy, only her mother, who seems to have an inbuilt tracking device, finds out. The next day, Mara is unaware there has been an accident in front of the hotel, a hit-and-run. It just so happens that the victim of the accident is Tucho’s previous (or not so previous) girlfriend. Mara for her sins is forced to do a stint in reception, where she checks in a hesitant, but not unattractive young man, Antón, who is staying with his mother and her husband. Mara and Antón become friends and investigate together the past of Mara’s great-uncle, Paco, the previous owner of the hotel, who died some months earlier. It isn’t only Mara’s family that hides secrets, however, since Antón’s family appears to harbour some secrets of its own. The summer holidays, which had looked like being a succession of boring revision classes, turn out to be much more eventful and illuminating than anyone could have imagined. Iria Misa is the author of several young adult and children’s novels in Galician. She is the recipient of the Jules Verne Award for Young People’s Literature. She works as a secondary-school teacher.

The 'barefoot shadow' in this story is Elsa's great-aunt, Sagrario, who always goes about the house without shoes. A sense of guilt hangs around the figure of her great-aunt, which intrigues Elsa. When Sagrario dies and turns up in the coffin wearing a pair of pretty high heels, she is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.

The Luzada is a café in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia. The café has its share of cosmopolitan visitors and different languages who share the smoky atmosphere and the products of the coffee machine. Everyone's fears and aspirations seem to find a shelter in this place, albeit some are on the table, while others remain hidden.

Paulo's grandfather suffers from Alzheimer's. The one person he never forgets is his grandson, Paulo, even though he calls him Sinbad the Sailor and they have adventures together at sea (in the sitting room), fighting the filibusters. One Sunday, Paulo's grandfather goes missing, and Paulo will have to find out where he is.