Daniel Aleman Books in Order

Daniel Aleman was born and raised in Mexico City. When he was 17, his family moved to the United States, and he later went to Montreal to study at McGill University. Those moves gave him firsthand experience of building a life across countries, a thread that runs through much of his fiction.

Stories came early. As a child, Aleman liked to draw pictures and explain the stories behind them to his mother. He started writing short stories around age seven, then moved on to longer work as a teenager. For years, writing was simply something he loved doing, before he began pursuing publication more seriously.

He has said he has always been a storyteller.

Aleman's first novel, Indivisible, follows Mateo Garcia, a New York City teenager whose undocumented parents are taken into custody by immigration authorities. Mateo must look after his younger sister, help with the family bodega, and keep sight of his hopes for an acting career. The book puts immigration policy in the background of an intensely personal family story, with friendship, identity, and responsibility all pressing in at once. It won the 2022 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award.

His second young adult novel, Brighter Than the Sun, shifts the focus to Sol, a girl from Tijuana who crosses the U.S. border each day to attend school in San Diego. When her family's restaurant begins struggling, Sol takes on work while trying to protect her plans for college. The novel looks at the exhaustion of commuting, the strain of family expectations, and the lonely feeling of being divided between two places.

His characters often have to grow up faster than they expected.

Aleman later moved into adult fiction with I Might Be in Trouble, a dark comedy set in New York City. Its struggling writer, David Alvarez, wakes after a date to find the man beside him dead, then makes a very bad call to his literary agent. The book brings a more comic and chaotic setup, but it still cares about loneliness, money worries, ambition, and the way people try to reinvent themselves when their plans fall apart.

Across his work, Aleman writes about Mexican and Mexican American characters, close family bonds, queer lives, and people caught between competing versions of home. His books don't treat those concerns as abstract issues. They stay close to the daily details, a school schedule, a family business, a long commute, a difficult phone call, that make pressure feel real. Readers who enjoy emotional, accessible stories with high personal stakes will find a lot to connect with.

Aleman is based in Toronto. He has also spent time in the New York City area and Montreal, and he has a well-documented fondness for books, coffee, Mexican food, and the ongoing search for the city's best tacos.