Four Author Interviews to Help with your Summer Reading

Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez

Dirty Girls on Top

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez jump-started the Latina chick-lit movement when she published the best-selling Dirty Girls Social Club five years ago.

Now she's back with a sequel, Dirty Girls on Top,which follows Lauren, Usnavys, Rebecca, Amber, Sara and Elizabeth as they navigate through marriage, kids, careers and boyfriends during their mid-30s.

It's easy to want to call the breezy, sexy book a Latina version of Sex and the City. But Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez says she doesn't like that comparison.

"It's good; it's just very different from what I do," she said recently. "With the first Dirty Girls, I was the Latina Terry McMillan. And with the second one, I'm the Latina Candace Bushnell. Hopefully by the third Dirty Girls book, I can just be me."

Here's more from the 39-year-old author, who'll sign copies of the new book tonight at Borders.

Lesley Téllez

The first Dirty Girls book seemed to end on a pretty final note. Why did you want to write a sequel?

I did leave some story lines open, actually, by design in that book. I didn't feel like I was finished with those characters. I felt like I could just keep writing. I immediately wanted to do the sequel but was advised by my publisher to do a few books in between. Which in retrospect, I'm not sure was the best choice. Read more about Alisa and Dirty Girls on Top here.

Read more about Alisa and Other Authors on the Great New Books site.