Displaying books 97-144 of 153 in total

The Immortalists

2018

by Chloe Benjamin

A deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children -- four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness -- sneak out to hear their fortunes. Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco. Dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy. Eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate. Bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality. The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. 

Casas vacías

2018

by Brenda Navarro

Casas vacías habla del dolor de las mujeres ante la desaparición de un hijo y de su propia vida. Es una novela que también cuestiona la maternidad y abre la posibilidad de un diálogo sobre cómo se enfrentan las maternidades no solicitadas y que son impuestas socialmente. La maternidad, que casi siempre asociamos con la felicidad, también puede ser una pesadilla: la de una mujer cuyo hijo desaparece en el parque donde estaba jugando, y la de aquella otra mujer que se lo lleva para criarlo como propio

Brenda Navarro ha conseguido un prodigio: caminar siempre, sin caerse nunca, sobre la delgada línea que separa –pero también une– el olvido y la memoria, la esperanza y la depresión, la vida privada y la vida pública, la pérdida y el encuentro, los cuerpos de las mujeres y el acto político. Casas vacías estremece de forma tan devastadora como ilumina: brillante y extrañamente esperanzadora.

An Unkindness of Ghosts

2017

by Rivers Solomon

Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster.

Embattled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.

Al final mueren los dos

2017

by Adam Silvera

Imagina un mundo en el que una organización les avisa a las personas la inminencia de su muerte. Imagina que comenzó la cuenta regresiva. Imagina cómo vivirías tu vida... en solo un día. ¿Estarías listo para decir adiós?

Al final mueren los dos es un canto a la fuerza arrolladora de la vida, que transformará para siempre tu forma de comprender el tiempo, la amistad y el amor. En un presente alternativo, donde es posible predecir la muerte con un plazo de veinticuatro horas, Mateo Torrez y Rufus Emeterio acaban de recibir la llamada más temida: la misma que te avisa de que ha llegado tu hora final.

En circunstancias normales, es poco probable que Mateo y Rufus se hubieran conocido. Pero sus circunstancias no son normales en absoluto. Porque les quedan, a lo sumo, veinticuatro horas de vida. Y han decidido recurrir a Último Amigo, la aplicación de citas que te permite contactar con alguien dispuesto a compartir tu carga. Mateo y Rufus tienen un día, puede que menos, para disfrutar de su recién nacida amistad. Para descubrir cuán frágiles y preciosos son los hilos que nos unen. Para mostrar al mundo su verdadero yo.

Temporada de huracanes

Con un ritmo y un lenguaje magistrales, Fernanda Melchor, autora de Falsa liebre explora en esta obra las sinrazones que subyacen a los actos más desesperados de barbarie pasional. Una novela cruda y desgarradora en la que el lector quedará envuelto, atrapado por las palabras y la atmósfera de terrible, aunque gozosa, fatalidad.

Un grupo de niños encuentra un cadáver flotando en las aguas turbias de un canal de riego cercano a la ranchería de La Matosa. El cuerpo resulta ser de la Bruja, una mujer que heredó dicho oficio de su madre fallecida, y a quienes los pobladores de esa zona rural respetaban y temían. Tras el macabro hallazgo, las sospechas y habladurías recaerán sobre un grupo de muchachos del pueblo, a quienes días antes una vecina vio mientras huían de casa de la hechicera, cargando lo que parecía ser un cuerpo inerte.

A partir de ahí, los personajes involucrados en el crimen nos contarán su historia mientras los lectores nos sumergimos en la vida de este lugar acosado por la miseria y el abandono, y donde convergen la violencia del erotismo más oscuro y las sórdidas relaciones de poder. 

Eleanor Oliphant está perfectamente

2017

by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant está perfectamente es una novela cálida y divertida que despierta el intelecto y nos hace reír. Eleanor Oliphant siempre dice lo que piensa y lucha por dejar de ser alguien con pocas habilidades sociales. Se ha preparado un calendario vital cuidadoso y estricto para evitar interacciones sociales: los fines de semana los pasa sola comiendo pizza congelada y bebiendo vodka, y todos los miércoles habla con su madre.

Pero todo cambia cuando Eleanor conoce a Raymond, el informático de la oficina. Juntos abandonarán la soledad en la que han estado viviendo. Esta es la historia de una heroína fuera de lo común, cuya inexplicable rareza e ingenio descarado la llevará a darse cuenta de que la única manera de sobrevivir en el mundo real es abriendo su corazón a la amistad.

All Systems Red

2017

by Martha Wells

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Hourglass

2017

by Dani Shapiro

Hourglass is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time--abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience. With courage and relentless honesty, Dani Shapiro opens the door to her house, her marriage, and her heart, and invites us to witness her own marital reckoning--a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.

Drawing on literature, poetry, philosophy, and theology, Shapiro writes gloriously of the joys and challenges of matrimonial life, in a luminous narrative that unfurls with urgent immediacy and sharp intelligence. Artful, intensely emotional work from one of our finest writers.

The Polygamist's Daughter

2017

by Anna LeBaron

A memoir from Anna LeBaron, daughter of the polygamist and murderer Ervil LeBaron. Ervil's criminal activity kept Anna and her siblings constantly on the run from the FBI. Often starving, the children lived in a perpetual state of fear--and despite their numbers, Anna always felt alone. Would she ever find a place she truly belonged? Would she ever be anything other than the polygamist's daughter?

A shocking true story of murder, fear, and betrayal, The Polygamist's Daughter is also the heart-cry of a fatherless girl and her search for love, faith, and a safe place to call home.

Dear Ijeawele

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.

Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions -compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive- for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

Binti

2017

by Nnedi Okorafor

The thrilling sequel to the Hugo and Nebula-winning Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and a finalist for the 2018 Hugo and Nommo Awards.

It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places. And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders. But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace. After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?

Un revólver para salir de noche

Un revólver para salir de noche, escrita por Monika Zgustova, es una obra que sigue su exploración de la figura femenina en el siglo XX. En esta ocasión, la autora se enfoca en Véra Nabokov, la esposa de Vladimir Nabokov, quien desempeñó un papel clave en la vida y el éxito del renombrado escritor.

Véra Nabokov es retratada como una mujer de gran claridad, que eligió dedicar su vida al triunfo de su esposo. Ella fue la primera en leer los manuscritos de Vladimir, encargándose de transcribirlos y prepararlos para su publicación. Además, Véra organizó la vida de la familia Nabokov durante su exilio, viviendo primero en Berlín, luego en París y, finalmente, en Estados Unidos. Allí convenció a Vladimir de cambiar al inglés y centrarse en la novela, hasta que volvieron a Europa y se establecieron en Suiza.

La novela también explora las dinámicas de poder en la relación de los Nabokov, cuestionando si Véra era realmente independiente o si su existencia giraba completamente en torno a su marido. La narrativa se sumerge en las complejas interacciones de Nabokov con otras mujeres y el impacto que tuvieron en su vida y obra, a pesar de los esfuerzos de Véra por mantener el control.

El problema de los tres cuerpos

Los nueve textos reunidos en El problema de los tres cuerpos muestran la fuerza narrativa de su autora, quien fue distinguida con el Premio Nacional de Cuento Joven Comala 2016. En estas páginas, la fluidez de la prosa va de la mano con la aspereza de los temas, y la crudeza de las situaciones se alía con el sentido del humor.

El libro evoca un equilibrio enrarecido, que a cada momento está a punto de romperse. El desbordamiento es el punto de partida de sus historias. Sicarios y prostitutas, hombres postrados por la enfermedad y los accidentes; amantes que, tras el abandono, sólo pueden agravar sus fracturas vitales son algunos de sus personajes. Aunque se encuentran acechados permanentemente, la escritora no cae en una mirada catastrofista. Por el contrario, en sus cuentos la violencia no es un agente exterior, que altera el curso de los acontecimientos, sino que forma parte esencial de ellos, como una semilla que aguarda con paciencia el momento perfecto para estallar.

La fragilidad que se apodera de los protagonistas los humaniza y revela su auténtica intimidad. Después de todo, como se lee en una de estas páginas, el curso de nuestras vidas es una “ecuación imperfecta”.

Convenience Store Woman

2016

by Sayaka Murata

Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.

Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech patterns so that she can play the part of a normal person. However, eighteen years later, at age 36, she is still in the same job, has never had a boyfriend, and has only few friends. She feels comfortable in her life, but is aware that she is not living up to society's expectations and causing her family to worry about her. When a similarly alienated but cynical and bitter young man comes to work in the store, he will upset Keiko's contented stasis--but will it be for the better?

The Unseen World

2016

by Liz Moore

Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that David’s mysterious history comes into question.

When his mind begins to falter, leaving Ada virtually an orphan, she is taken in by one of David’s colleagues. Soon she embarks on a mission to uncover her father’s secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood. What Ada discovers on her journey into a virtual universe will keep the reader riveted until The Unseen World’s heart-stopping, fascinating conclusion.

Umami

2016

by Laia Jufresa

Ana quiere plantar una milpa en su traspatio, en plena Ciudad de México. Pero en la tierra hay altos contenidos de plomo y la privada donde vive está plagada de ausencias. Su hermana murió, sus papás están de luto y sus hermanos de campamento; su única amiga se fue a buscar a quien la abandonó cuatro años atrás. Menos mal que queda Alfonso.

Alfonso es un antropólogo especializado en alimentación prehispánica. Es viudo y dueño de la privada Campanario. Él mismo la diseñó a partir de un esquema de la lengua humana y dio a las casas el nombre de cada uno de los cinco sabores que percibimos: Dulce, Salado, Amargo, Ácido y Umami.

En duelo, los habitantes de la privada desearían echar el tiempo atrás. Tejida al revés, esta novela se los permite. Mientras Ana remueve la tierra y clava las semillas, sus vecinos hurgan en el pasado. Pero el traspatio de la memoria está minado con preguntas: ¿Quién fue mi mujer? ¿Por qué se fue mi mamá? Y, ¿cómo es posible que se ahogara una niña que sabía nadar? Umami constituye una propuesta literaria original en su afán por explorar la amplia gama de sensaciones y emociones que el ser humano -en distintas etapas de la vida- experimenta.

Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego

Las autodenominadas «mujeres ardientes», que protestan contra una forma extrema de violencia doméstica que se ha vuelto viral; una estudiante que se arranca las uñas y las pestañas, y otra que intenta ayudarla; los años de apagones dictados por el gobierno durante los cuales se intoxican tres amigas que lo serán hasta que la muerte las separe; el famoso asesino en serie llamado Petiso Orejudo, que sólo tenía nueve años; hikikomori, magia negra, los celos, el desamor, supersticiones rurales, edificios abandonados o encantados... En estos doce cuentos el lector se ve obligado a olvidarse de sí mismo para seguir las peripecias e investigaciones de cuerpos que desaparecen o bien reaparecen en el momento menos esperado. Ya sea una trabajadora social, una policía o un guía turístico, los protagonistas luchan por apadrinar a seres socialmente invisibles, indagando así en el peso de la culpa, la compasión, la crueldad, las dificultades de la convivencia, y en un terror tan hondo como verosímil.

«El terror, en los cuentos de Mariana Enriquez, se desliza como un jadeo de agua negra sobre baldosas al sol. Como algo imposible que, sin embargo, podría suceder» (Leila Guerriero).

Becoming Nicole

2015

by Amy Ellis Nutt

The inspiring true story of a transgender girl, her identical twin brother, and an ordinary American family’s extraordinary journey to understand, nurture, and celebrate the uniqueness in us all.

When Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys, they thought their lives were complete. But it wasn’t long before they noticed a marked difference between Jonas and his brother, Wyatt. Jonas preferred sports and trucks and many of the things little boys were “supposed” to like; but Wyatt liked princess dolls and dress-up and playing Little Mermaid. By the time the twins were toddlers, confusion over Wyatt’s insistence that he was female began to tear the family apart. In the years that followed, the Maineses came to question their long-held views on gender and identity, to accept and embrace Wyatt’s transition to Nicole, and to undergo an emotionally wrenching transformation of their own that would change all their lives forever.

Becoming Nicole chronicles a journey that could have destroyed a family but instead brought it closer together. 

The Argonauts

2015

by Maggie Nelson

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson is a genre-bending memoir that intertwines the author's personal narrative with a deep engagement in literary and theoretical texts. At the heart of this work is a story of romance between Nelson and her partner, artist Harry Dodge, whose experiences of gender transition and reassignment intersect with Nelson's journey through pregnancy.

This reflective, poignant exploration of motherhood, desire, and identity is grounded in an intimate portrayal of the author's queer family life. Nelson challenges the societal norms surrounding sexuality, gender, marriage, and childrearing, advocating for radical individual freedom and the value of caregiving.

Through her narrative, Nelson conducts a rigorous examination of philosophical and theoretical discourses, tracing the contours of what iconic theorists have to say about the complexities of contemporary social structures. The Argonauts is thus not only a memoir but also an impassioned argument for the embracement of unorthodox forms of love and kinship in the modern age.

The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

 The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story.

The Art of Asking

2014

by Amanda Palmer

Rock star, crowdfunding pioneer, and TED speaker Amanda Palmer knows all about asking. Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her as she surfed the crowd (and slept on their couches while touring). And when she left her record label to strike out on her own, she asked her fans to support her in making an album, leading to the world's most successful music Kickstarter.

Even while Amanda is both celebrated and attacked for her fearlessness in asking for help, she finds that there are important things she cannot ask for-as a musician, as a friend, and as a wife. She learns that she isn't alone in this, that so many people are afraid to ask for help, and it paralyzes their lives and relationships. In this groundbreaking book, she explores these barriers in her own life and in the lives of those around her, and discovers the emotional, philosophical, and practical aspects of The Art of Asking.

Part manifesto, part revelation, this is the story of an artist struggling with the new rules of exchange in the twenty-first century, both on and off the Internet. The Art of Asking will inspire readers to rethink their own ideas about asking, giving, art, and love.

The Eighth Life

Six romances, one revolution, the story of the century.

At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified- this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste... 

Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the centre of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia's is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century. 

Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends. 

Station Eleven

Station Eleven, an audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame, and ambition, is set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse. Day One: The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. Week Two: Civilization has crumbled.

Year Twenty: A band of actors and musicians, known as the Travelling Symphony, move through the territories of a changed world, performing concerts and Shakespeare at the settlements that have formed. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the world every hopeful survivor has tried to rebuild.

Moving backward and forward in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: celebrated actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan, a bystander warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife, Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend, Clark; Kirsten, an actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed "prophet."

Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the fragility of life, the relationships that sustain us, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

Bad Feminist

2014

by Roxane Gay

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

All the Light We Cannot See

2014

by Anthony Doerr

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See is a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane.

When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr's combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

Men Explain Things To Me

2014

by Rebecca Solnit

In her comic, scathing essay "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note-- because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, "He's trying to kill me!" 

This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf 's embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women.

The Luminaries

2013

by Eleanor Catton

It is 1866, and young Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk.

Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky. The Luminaries is a brilliantly constructed, fiendishly clever ghost story and a gripping page-turner, richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust.

The Interestings

2013

by Meg Wolitzer

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed.

In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding.

The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken. Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.

La ridícula idea de no volver a verte

2013

by Rosa Montero

«Éste es un libro sobre la vida... apasionado y alegre, sentimental y burlón.» ROSA MONTERO.

Cuando Rosa Montero leyó el maravilloso diario que Marie Curie comenzó tras la muerte de su esposo, y que se incluye al final de este libro, sintió que la historia de esa mujer fascinante que se enfrentó a su época le llenaba la cabeza de ideas y emociones. La ridícula idea de no volver a verte nació de ese incendio de palabras, de ese vertiginoso torbellino. Al hilo de la extraordinaria trayectoria de Curie, Rosa Montero construye una narración a medio camino entre el recuerdo personal y la memoria de todos, entre el análisis de nuestra época y la evocación íntima. Son páginas que hablan de la superación del dolor, de las relaciones entre hombres y mujeres, del esplendor del sexo, de la buena muerte y de la bella vida, de la ciencia y de la ignorancia, de la fuerza salvadora de la literatura y de la sabiduría de quienes aprenden a disfrutar de la existencia con plenitud y con ligereza.

Vivo, libérrimo y original, este libro inclasificable incluye fotos, remembranzas, amistades y anécdotas que transmiten el primitivo placer de escuchar buenas historias. Un texto auténtico, emocionante y cómplice que te atrapará desde sus primeras páginas.

The Good House

2013

by Ann Leary

A funny, poignant and revealing novel that’s become a huge word-of-mouth hit in the USA.

Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman's life - middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn't one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage 'an intervention' and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn't Hildy enjoy a drink now and then?

The Righteous Mind

2012

by Jonathan Haidt

'A landmark contribution to humanity's understanding of itself' The New York Times.

Why can it sometimes feel as though half the population is living in a different moral universe? Why do ideas such as 'fairness' and 'freedom' mean such different things to different people? Why is it so hard to see things from another viewpoint? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion?

Jonathan Haidt reveals that we often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgemental and self-righteous. He explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and how moral values are not just about justice and equality - for some people authority, sanctity or loyalty matter more. Morality binds and blinds, but, using his own research, Haidt proves it is possible to liberate ourselves from the disputes that divide good people.

Bringing Up Bébé

The secret behind France's astonishingly well-behaved children. When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn't aspire to become a "French parent." French parenting isn't a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even French parents themselves insist they aren't doing anything special.

Yet, the French children Druckerman knows sleep through the night at two or three months old while those of her American friends take a year or more. French kids eat well-rounded meals that are more likely to include braised leeks than chicken nuggets. And while her American friends spend their visits resolving spats between their kids, her French friends sip coffee while the kids play.

With a notebook stashed in her diaper bag, Druckerman-a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal-sets out to learn the secrets to raising a society of good little sleepers, gourmet eaters, and reasonably relaxed parents. She discovers that French parents are extremely strict about some things and strikingly permissive about others. And she realizes that to be a different kind of parent, you don't just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.

Greek Lessons

Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, as he is also grappling with his own plight—losing his sight.

For her, the pain is multifaceted: the loss of both her mother and custody of her nine-year-old son within a short span of time. For him, it stems from growing up between Korea and Germany, the conflict between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing independence. Yet, through their shared suffering, they form a profound connection. Their voices intersect with startling beauty as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

Greek Lessons is a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.

The Song of Achilles

2011

by Madeline Miller

A thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War from the bestselling author of Circe.

A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.

Ready Player One

2011

by Ernest Cline

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. 

The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

Rules of Civility

2011

by Amor Towles

In the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.

Elegant and captivating, "Rules of Civility" turns a Jamesian eye on how spur of the moment decisions define life for decades to come.

The Psychopath Test

2011

by Jon Ronson

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry is a compelling exploration into the world of psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and others who study them. Bestselling journalist Jon Ronson delves into a potential hoax that has been played on the world's top neurologists, leading him into the heart of the madness industry.

An influential psychologist, convinced that many CEOs and politicians are actually psychopaths, teaches Ronson to identify these individuals through subtle verbal and nonverbal clues. With his newfound skills, Ronson navigates the corridors of power, encountering a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud, a CEO renowned for his psychopathy, and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who claims his sanity.

Through his journey, Ronson not only uncovers the mystery of the hoax but also reveals the disturbing truth that those at the forefront of the madness industry can be as mad as those they study. He highlights how increasingly, ordinary people are defined by their most extreme traits.

Papeles falsos

Papeles falsos, primer libro de Valeria Luiselli, está compuesto por una serie de ensayos narrativos de temas diversos, donde la constante es el registro de la original mirada de la autora, siempre presta a encontrar detalles o conexiones entre ideas de muy diverso orden, ecos de un pensamiento que por fuerza obliga al lector a repensar. La escondida tumba de Brodsky en Venecia; la inclasificable y elusiva saudade portuguesa; el lenguaje como ruptura con la «infancia previa a la infancia», son algunos de los ingeniosos pretextos para el despliegue de una escritura precisa, que nos deja la impresión de estar presenciando en persona esas particularidades, guiados por un lúcido filtro que sugiere múltiples variaciones de una realidad que se transforma con el pasar de su lectura.

The Life You Can Save

2009

by Peter Singer

In The Life You Can Save, Peter Singer compellingly lays out the case for why and how we can take action to provide immense benefit to others, at minimal cost to ourselves. Using ethical arguments, illuminating examples, and case studies of charitable giving, he shows that our current response to world poverty is not only insufficient but morally indefensible. And he provides practical recommendations of charities proven to dramatically improve, and even save, the lives of children, women and men living in extreme poverty.

The Life You Can Save teaches us to be a part of the solution, helping others as we help ourselves.

The Red Parts

2007

by Maggie Nelson

The Red Parts chronicles the uncanny series of events that led to Nelson's interest in her aunt's death, the reopening of the case, the bizarre and brutal trial that ensued, and the effects these events had on the disparate group of people they brought together. But The Red Parts is much more than a "true crime" record of a murder, investigation, and trial. For into this story Nelson has woven an account of a girlhood and early adulthood haunted by loss, mortality, mystery, and betrayal, as well as a look at the personal and political consequences of our cultural fixation on dead (white) women.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2006

by Muriel Barbery

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a novel by the French professor of philosophy, Muriel Barbery. Set within an elegant hôtel particulier in Paris, the story revolves around two main characters: Renée, the concierge, who is typically short, plump, middle-aged, and inconspicuous, with an unexpected passion for art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture; and Paloma, a twelve-year-old resident of the building, who is talented, precocious, and has decided to end her own life on her thirteenth birthday unless she can find something worth living for.

The narrative follows Renée who, despite her position, conceals a world of intellectual wealth and refined tastes beneath a veneer of simplicity. Similarly, Paloma hides her exceptional intelligence behind the facade of a mediocre pre-teen. When a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives at the building, their lives begin to change as they discover kindred spirits in each other.

Humorous and full of biting wit, the story exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous and explores rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors, evoking a sense of kinship and understanding of human complexities.

The Three-Body Problem

2006

by Cixin Liu

The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin.

After a spate of apparent suicides among elite scientists, nanotech engineer Wang Miao is asked to infiltrate a secretive cabal. During his investigation, Wang is inducted into a mysterious online game that is the key to humanity's place in the cosmos and the key to the extinction-level threat it now faces.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

In Edinburgh in the 1930s, the Lennox family is having trouble with their youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.

Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history?

Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.

The Year of Magical Thinking

2005

by Joan Didion

An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief.

"In this dramatic adaptation of her award-winning, bestselling memoir (which Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times called "an indelible portrait of loss and grief . . . a haunting portrait of a four-decade-long marriage), Joan Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play. The first theatrical production of The Year of Magical Thinking opened at the Booth Theatre on March 29, 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare.

Never Let Me Go

2005

by Kazuo Ishiguro

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes a devastating novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss.

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

Ishiguro explores what it means to have a soul and how art distinguishes man from other life forms. But above all, Never Let Me Go is a study of friendship and the bonds we form which make or break while we come of age.

The Namesake

2003

by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world -- conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail — the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase — that opens whole worlds of emotion.

La sombra del viento

Un amanecer de 1945, un muchacho es conducido por su padre a un misterioso lugar oculto en el corazón de la ciudad vieja: el Cementerio de los Libros Olvidados. Allí encuentra La Sombra del Viento, un libro maldito que cambiará el rumbo de su vida y le arrastrará a un laberinto de intrigas y secretos enterrados en el alma oscura de la ciudad.

Ambientada en la enigmática Barcelona de principios del siglo XX, este misterio literario mezcla técnicas de relato de intriga, de novela histórica y de comedia de costumbres, pero es, sobre todo, una tragedia histórica de amor cuyo eco se proyecta a través del tiempo. Con gran fuerza narrativa, el autor entrelaza tramas y enigmas a modo de muñecas rusas en un inolvidable relato sobre los secretos del corazón y el embrujo de los libros, manteniendo la intriga hasta la última página.

Los detectives salvajes

1998

by Roberto Bolaño

Entre la narrativa detectivesca, la novela «de carretera», el relato biográfico y la crónica, Los detectives salvajes está considerada por la crítica y el público de todo el mundo como una de las mejores y más originales ficciones escritas en las últimas décadas.

Dos jóvenes poetas latinoamericanos, Arturo Belano y Ulises Lima, emprenden una aventura que transcurrirá durante varias décadas y cruzará distintos países. Símbolo de la rebeldía y la necesidad de ruptura con la realidad establecida, sus vidas representan los anhelos de toda una generación. La búsqueda en 1975 de la misteriosa escritora mexicana Cesárea Tinajero, desaparecida y olvidada en los años posteriores a la revolución, sirve de inicio a un viaje sin descanso marcado por el amor, la muerte, el deseo de libertad, el humor y la literatura.

En esta novela está esbozado, como si de un juego de cajas chinas se tratara, todo el deslumbrante universo literario y personal de Roberto Bolaño.

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