Books
I have written about cocaine smugglers, abducted children, kidney failure, sex work, food, migration and second chances. Admittedly, nobody could accuse me of choosing a niche.
Or the Bull Kills You
O el toro te mata
A bilingual collection of essays about kidney failure, dialysis and transplantation — and a love letter to Spain’s public healthcare system.
Written in Valencia as illness overturned my life, the book follows the journey from diagnosis and dialysis to a kidney transplant and its turbulent aftermath. It is about fear, friendship, bureaucracy, black humour and the extraordinary people who keep strangers alive.
English and Spanish editions available.
Puta Madre
Daniela Arango arrives in Valencia from Colombia and builds a new life from the margins. What begins with survival becomes Empanadas de Puta Madre — a business, a family and, eventually, something much larger than she ever imagined.
Raw, funny and compassionate, Puta Madre is a novel about migration, sex work, motherhood, ambition and the stubborn human appetite for reinvention.
“Daniela is such an intriguing character, someone you find yourself rooting for almost immediately… Raw, funny, compassionate and full of humanity.”
Beyond Puta Madre
Más allá de Puta Madre
Daniela has survived. Now she must learn how to live with success.
Her culinary empire is expanding across Spain and into Europe, bringing investors, cameras and expectations. But visibility has a price. Her son is building an independent life, old secrets refuse to remain buried, and Don Mateo — the man who helped make everything possible — is seriously ill.
A novel about consequence, grief, reputation and what happens after the supposed happy ending.
Earlier books
White Gold
The inside story of Operation Klondyke, the extraordinary investigation that uncovered a plot to bring half a tonne of almost pure Colombian cocaine into Britain through the Scottish Highlands.
Based on interviews with smugglers and Customs officers, White Gold follows the hunters and the hunted from Ullapool to Málaga, Gibraltar and Venezuela — a story of organised crime, drunken incompetence, violence and occasional outright farce.
“A great story, full of hilarious characters.”
FHM
No One Takes My Children
The true story of Donya Al-Nahi’s fight to recover her four children after her Iraqi husband abducted them and fled to the Middle East.
It is a dramatic account of one mother’s refusal to surrender — and of the determination that later led her to help other parents whose children had been taken abroad.
“A mother’s love can move mountains.”
The Sun