Hello, Dawna. I do not know the books you mentioned, but if you want programmes focused in conversation, I would highly recommend Assimil series "with Ease"... There is "Spanish with Ease" (and many other languages. Their system is based on tons of dialogues and they provide very helpful expressions that will be very useful from the beginning. Also, their grammar explanations are extremely accurate, though not too heavy for learners who are not used to grammar terms. The only "but" would be that their books are somewhat expensive, you can get them at a good price on Ebay most of the time. Also, you may want to check Living Language. They have an interesting system, also based on dialogues, they have lots of activities and they also have very useful expressions. The problem with them is that their books have a lot of typos. Just to give you an example, they latest version of their Russian programme has over 45 typos in the first book alone and I have found 16 typos in the first 4 chapters of the same book of the same programme for Hebrew. But... if you can overlook that, it will be a very good system. Other than that, I would recommend Colloquial series, by Routledge. They have lots of dialogues, though they also have other activities. The one thing I do not like about their books is that sometimes there is a big gap between one chapter and the next, so it is sometimes a bit of shock for the learner just making it through one chapter and then finding too much new information in the next chapter. Again, I would highly recommend Assimil above all. I hope this is helpful for you.

Dawna, i enjoy travel to Spain myself and quite often the only topic i ever tried in sarting a conversation with the locals is: asking for directions. Having said that, i do feel the need to have a broad set of readily available topics in my artinary. I came across a set of topics recommended by Benny Lewis. https://www.fluentin3months.com/conversational-spanish/ Never tried them myself, but they look ok. Wishing you all the success in future coversations in Spanish.

Estimada Dawna, I didn't know about the books you mentioned. I've taken a look at them and the questions from The Book of Questions seem rather complex for a beginner. I found some questions, from the poet Pablo Neruda. It may be not what your are looking for, but they are beautiful though: ¿Cómo saben las estaciones que deben cambiar de camisa? http://www.ingenieria.unam.mx/dcsyhfi/material_didactico/Literatura_Hispanoamericana_Contemporanea/Autores_N/NERUDA/libro.pdf