When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep by Sylvia Sellers-Garcia (Riverhead) has been selected by Las Comadres, the national Latino organization, in cooperation with the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Borders®, for the January National Latino Book Club Pick. Officially launched in June, the book club meets monthly at select Borders stores nationwide to discuss English-language works written by Latino authors.

About When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep:

The award-winning debut novel that "brings to mind the atmosphere and tension of Gabriel García Márquez."( Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women)

Nítido Amán knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn't know why his family left. Raised in the States by his immigrant parents, they never talked about it. When Nítido loses his father to Alzheimer's disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent and Nítido realizes that his links to the past are disappearing.

Seeking answers, Nítido travels to Guatemala against his mother's wishes. Upon his arrival in the small town of Río Roto, he is mistaken for the new priest, and decides to play the part. From his parishioners, he catches tantalizing and frightening glimpses of the buried history he's aching to know. In a place shrouded in secrets, Nítido is at once determined and frightened to unearth the unnamed horrors it has seen.

With her elegant, hypnotic prose, this marks Sellers- García's arrival as a distinctive new voice in fiction.

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Flexibility is key to Fido's longevity. A simple stretching routine can drastically improve your pup's mood and also stave off some unwanted discomforts of aging. Muscular imbalance and tightness in your pup can lead to orthopedic issues such as dysplasia, arthritis, and consequently pain. You can't stop body breakdown completely as your dog goes through life, but you can definitely keep pain to a minimum with some simple, consistent moves.

In Stretch Your Dog Healthy, I provide stretches (with accompanying photos) for your dog's entire body. Range of motion exercises allow for proper hydration of the muscle and connective tissue, as well as the joints. This movement is integral to the total health of your dog's body. Since the body tends to overprotect by hindering movement with inflammation, a gentle stretch can actually override this "fear" response and encourage healing to take place.

Luckily, veterinary medicine is beginning to tout the efficacy of hands-on therapies such as stretching and massage. Many veterinary surgeons have shared with me their astonishment at the improved rates of recovery for dog's receiving immediate post-operative "hands-on" care. The animals had increased range of motion, required less pain medication, and returned to normal functioning more quickly. In other words, this movement most certainly facilitated and stimulated healing.

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I just got an email from Laura Miller, founder of Salon.com, who's set up a blog to plug her own book, and she says she thinks of it as the equivalent of a special features DVD, with deleted scenes, bloopers, alternate endings and so on. With this in mind, here's the one bit of The Lost Art of Walking that I hated to cut, though I could see the reason to do it:

I once led a walking tour of Munich. It was part of a literary festival about the writer and the city. The invited writers had to conduct walking tours, the city seen through foreign eyes - that sort of thing. I accepted the challenge, but as the time to go to Munich approached I wished I was something other than a writer; or at least somebody with an act that could be performed in the street.

I took it far too seriously, as is my way. I was living in New York at the time, and I spent a lot of time fretting about what I was going to do. I walked the streets of thinking I needed a concept, an idea. And as I walked I looked for signs of German influence in New York. In a perfect world I might have come across the Lederhosen district, or the Munich Bar and Grill, but I was prepared to settle for much less.