Jennine Capo Crucet Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Jennine Capó Crucet is a Cuban published author.

She was born to her Cuban parents and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her debut story collection was picked as a Best Book of the Year by the Miami New Times and the Miami Herald. It was the winner of the Iowa Short fiction Award, the 2010 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, and the 2010 John Gardner Award.

She has been a finalist for the UC Irvine Latino Literary Award and the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize. She writes but in addition to that Jennine also serves as a college counselor at a nonprofit community-based organization that works with South Central and downtown Los Angeles teens.

Jennine graduated from Cornell University. She splits her time between Los Angeles and Miami. She received the Winthrop Prize & Residency for Emerging Writers and has won scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Jennine has written many stories and they have been published in magazines that include Gulf Coast, Epoch, Ploughshares, the Southern Review, the Los Angeles Review, and more. The book reviews that she has penned have been featured in the New York City bi-weekly L Magazine.

Make Your Home Among Strangers is the debut novel from Jennine Capó Crucet. If you have been looking for an original new story to read, check out this book from a new voice in fiction!

Lizet is the main character in this story. Like the author, she is the daughter of two immigrants from Cuba. She is also the first person in her family to attend high school and graduate. She decides that she is going to apply to an elite college in secret and gets in.

Her parents are not happy at all that she is leaving the city of Miami when they find out. They are also going through a divorce and in the middle of it all her father decides to sell her childhood home. This means that her older sister, who is a newly single mother, her mother, and Lizet without a steady income of their own and trying to find a place where they can live.

Lizet is going through tons of turmoil and starts off college. Even though she is on campus, the privileged world there seems utterly strange to her. So does her new awareness that she is not just who she is as an individual, but she is also a minority.

She quickly finds out that this is going to be very difficult. She is going through a tough time both socially and academically and so decides to go home to visit for Thanksgiving. Once she is there, she is massively overshadowed by Ariel Hernandez’s visit. He’s a little boy and his mother died while on their way out of Cuba together on a raft.

The immigration battle that comes after puts Miami in the spotlight for the entire nation, drawing Lizet’s family into national coverage. Trying to deal with her responsibilities at college but also dealing with what the people she loves need, Lizet is going to have to contend with difficult choices that could change the course of her life forever.

This is a unique story that is sometimes funny that tells the story of a young girl who is trying to be an American today while also dealing with cultural, political, and generational forces. What will happen, and can she find her way in the world? Read this book to find out!

Say Hello to My Little Friend is the 2024 novel from Jennine Capó Crucet. It was a finalist for the 2024 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Check out the book that so many others loved and see why people like Sergio de la Pava are saying it is a ‘truly rare object’!

Moby Dick meets Scarface or something like this in a darkly funny novel that is all about the attempt of one young man to try and capitalize on the murky legacy of his mother and influenced by the magic of Miami.

Ismael Reyes goes by the name Izzy. He is many things in life, one of those things being a failed Pitbull impersonator. He knows that he isn’t the type to be a gangster or someone like Scarface, but he doesn’t see why that should hold him back.

He grew up in the city of Miami, and that has made him in to the type of person who wants to be the King of the 305. He wants the money and the respect and the power that he thinks would come along with it too. Then he finds himself the recipient of a letter requesting that he cease and desist from the legal team of Pitbull.

To top it all off, he’s living in the garage of his aunt that has been turned into an efficiency. Izzy decides that it’s time for things to change and decides to turn himself into a new man, a version of Tony Montana for the modern age.

Izzy eventually finds himself in front of a tank that houses the captive orca Lolita at the Miami Seaquarium. The orca is enrapturing, and shows how powerful she and the water around her are as they permeate everything from his memories to Miami’s sinking streets.

This starts as the story of one man named Izzy and turns into a strange dream that is unique as the city that it takes place in. Can the truth around Izzy’s origin and his escape from Cuba as a boy be found?

This is the story of forces of nature, of America and Cuba, of the danger of going after an inheritance, and the limits of love and what life is like in its absence. Powerful and compelling, this is a strong second novel from Crucet that will have readers clamoring for more. Read this book for yourself and find out why people like Nana Kwame Adjel-Brenyah are saying that this book is a ‘masterclass’ when it comes to pace and precision and calling it ‘brilliant’!