Titles starting with M from j. vint books

An aging Cuban-American musician living in a flop house in East Harlem in the early 1980s recalls his youthful success: in 1949, as he and his brother played the dance halls of New York, they became known as the Mambo Kings. Postwar New York was an exciting place for Cesar and Nestor Castillo, and the lush, sensuous music they played, and the many women they loved, are pleasant memories for the ailing Cesar.

With an uptight businessman father and a preoccupied, fashion-designer mother, ten-year-old Jimmy finds life at home difficult. He is not doing well at school, nor is he good in sports--but he can draw. He finds solace in creating superheroes, and his talent comes to the notice of a popular boy at school. The two work on a comic strip together, but Jimmy discovers that doing what he loves best and on his own--despite his failures--is what really gives him the self-respect he needs.

E. L. Doctorow digs deeply into American history once again in this epic tale of Sherman's march to the sea--a 60-mile trail of death and destruction--toward the end of the Civil War. Mingling real historical figures with imagined ordinary people, Doctorow offers a panoramic view of the South and of the war in a story that encompasses a dedicated battlefield nurse, a black ragtime pianist, a young and beautiful slave named Pearl, a brutal good ol' boy addicted to violence--and, of course, the hot-blooded Sherman and his scorched-earth military tactics that, for all their brutality, may have hastened the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves.