Allende's second novel, Of Love and Shadows (1984), is even more explicitly political than her debut. Journalist Irene Beltrán and photographer Francisco Leal are tasked with covering a story about a fifteen-year-old peasant girl rumored to have miraculous powers. The pair fall in love, but their future is threatened when they uncover evidence of atrocities committed by the military.

In her 1987 novel, Eva Luna, Allende narrates the tale of a woman who uses storytelling to navigate a politically unstable Latin American society. Set in a country resembling Venezuela, it follows the orphan Eva Luna as she survives and eventually finds success and fulfillment as a television scriptwriter. Several of Eva Luna's stories are recounted separately in another collection, The Stories of Eva Luna (1990).

Allende's novel The House of the Spirits is frequently compared to the works of Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. His most renowned book is the 1968 masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, which chronicles multiple generations of the Buendía family and their impact on the small town of Macondo.

García Márquez is also a distinguished journalist. In 1986, he published Clandestine in Chile, a non-fiction account detailing an exile's return to Chile during General Pinochet's regime.

Another enchanting story of thwarted love is Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel's acclaimed Like Water for Chocolate (1989), which centers on a woman whose true love marries her sister to remain close to her. Both the novel and its film adaptation achieved worldwide success.

American author Alice Hoffman also weaves tales blending the magical with the mundane. Her 1995 novel Practical Magic, adapted into a 1998 film starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, narrates the story of two sisters whose mystical abilities often create more problems than they solve.

Edward Boorstein's 1977 work Allende's Chile: An Inside View is a nonfiction, albeit partisan, account of Salvador Allende's government. Boorstein, who worked for Allende's administration and lived in Santiago during many of the pro- and anti-government demonstrations, writes from a Leftist perspective, examining the influence of corporate and U.S. interests in the downfall of Allende and his party.