Esta divertida novela relata la búsqueda de un extraterrestre que ha desaparecido, tras adoptar la apariencia de la vocalista Marta Sánchez, en la jungla urbana barcelonesa. Pero el protagonista de la narración no es Gurb, sino otro alienígena que sale en pos de él y cuyo diario constituye el esqueleto de la narración. La verdadera naturaleza del relato es de carácter satírico: Mendoza convierte esta Barcelona, a un tiempo cotidiana y absurda, en el escenario de una carnavalada que revela el verdadero rostro del hombre urbano actual.

Sinai Tapestry, the brilliant first novel of the Jerusalem Quartet,is an epic alternate history of the Middle East in which the discovery of the original Bible links a disparate group of remarkable people across time and space.In 1840, Plantagenet Strongbow, the twenty-ninth Duke of Dorset, seven-feet-seven-inches tall and the greatest swordsman and botanist of Victorian England, walks away from the family estate and disappears into the Sinai Desert carrying only a large magnifying glass and a portable sundial. He emerges forty years later as an Arab holy man and anthropologist, now the author of a massive study of Levantine sex — and the secret owner of the Ottoman Empire.Meanwhile, Skanderbeg Wallenstein has discovered the original Bible, lost on a dusty bookshelf in the monastery library. To his amazement, it defies every truth held by the three major religions. Nearly a century later, Haj Harun, an antiquities dealer who has acted as guardian of the Holy City for three thousand years, uncovers the hidden Bible.Sinai Tapestry is the first volume of the Jerusalem Quartet, which continues with Jerusalem Poker, Nile Shadows,and Jericho Mosaic.

For Sanskrit Aaron Zuckerman, it isn’t easy to believe. Especially when all the people you care about leave.His dad left after the divorce. The love of his life left in second grade. His best friend in Jewish school found God and practically left the planet. Now his yoga-teacher mom is falling in love with her spiritual guru, and she’s threatening to leave, too.In a desperate attempt to keep his family together, Sanskrit tells just one small lie. And for a while it seems to be working. Because people start coming back. Sanskrit might even get the family he always wanted.There’s just one little thing in his way. The truth.Against the setting of modern-day Los Angeles, YA author Allen Zadoff presents a funny and heartbreaking novel about the search for love—and meaning—in a world where everyone is looking for something to hang on to.From School Library JournalGr 7 Up—Sanskrit has a few problems. He’s got a self-absorbed hippie mom and an absentee dad. He goes to a Jewish school and doesn’t believe in God. He has a crush on a girl who hasn’t talked to him since second grade. And his former best and only friend is now a "super Jew." When Sanskrit’s mom doesn’t show up for parent-teacher conferences, he tells a lie that ends up snowballing into a very big one. His mom has fallen in love with a Buddhist guru and is talking about leaving Sanskrit and his sister, Sweet Caroline, to move to India with him. As Sanskrit tries to deal with his lie and prevent his mom from leaving, he learns about love and responsibility, and even makes his peace with God. This novel is well written and has easy-to-like (or hate) characters, but its appeal is likely to be limited to fairly observant Jewish teens, who will understand the references. Other readers won’t quite get the book.— Melissa Stock, Arapahoe Library District, Englewood, COα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Review“…it isn’t the plotline that makes Allen Zadoff’s Since You Left Me special: it’s Sanskrit’s voice. As he lies and lies and lies, as he works through his heartache, deals with his family and comes to terms with his feelings about religion and responsibility, his voice is so snarkily hilarious that you’ll laugh through all of the painful moments.”—Kirkus Reviews“Not many YA books dare to tackle the issues of faith and religion, but Since You Left Me is a rare gift. It grapples honestly and thoughtfully with these topics, and it cares enough about its subject matter not to make light of it, but not to take it too seriously, either. The result is a story that’s hilarious and hopeful--and one you should definitely add to your reading list.”—Pick of the Week, 60SecondRecap“Allen Zadoff tells the story of California’s new Jewish family… a humorous and introspective read for any age.”—The Jewish Daily Forward

La joven pianista Vanessa Sexton había vuelto a su ciudad natal tratando de obtener algunas respuestas de su madre, de la que se había separado hacía doce años. Pero en aquel viaje de reencuentro con su pasado también tenía que enfrentarse a Brady Tucker, el único hombre al que había amado y que ya le había roto el corazón en una ocasión. Vanessa creía que aquel enamoramiento era algo que ya no le podría afectar, pero cada vez que veía a Brady sentía unas emociones que no sabía si estaba dispuesta a aceptar…

Every life has a soundtrack. All you have to do is listen.Music has set the tone for most of Zoe Baxter's life. There's the melody that reminds her of the summer she spent rubbing baby oil on her stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. A dance beat that makes her think of using a fake ID to slip into a nightclub. A dirge that marked the years she spent trying to get pregnant.For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.In the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Zoe throws herself into her career as a music therapist. When an unexpected friendship slowly blossoms into love, she makes plans for a new life, but to her shock and inevitable rage, some people – even those she loves and trusts most – don't want that to happen.Sing You Home is about identity, love, marriage, and parenthood. It's about people wanting to do the right thing for the greater good, even as they work to fulfill their own personal desires and dreams. And it's about what happens when the outside world brutally calls into question the very thing closest to our hearts: family.

«Ночной маршрут».Книга, которую немецкая критика восхищенно назвала «развлекательной прозой для эстетов и интеллектуалов».Сборник изящных, озорных рассказов-«ужастиков», в которых классическая схема «ночных кошмаров, обращающихся в явь» сплошь и рядом доводится до логического абсурда, выворачивается наизнанку и приправляется изрядной долей чисто польской иронии…

This heartfelt and revealing account of Paul Theroux's thirty-year friendship with the legendary V. S. Naipaul is an intimate record of a literary mentorship that traces the growth of both writers' careers and explores the unique effect each had on the other. Built around exotic landscapes, anecdotes that are revealing, humorous, and melancholy, and three decades of mutual history, this is a personal account of how one develops as a writer and how a friendship waxes and wanes between two men who have set themselves on the perilous journey of a writing life.

When Jesse’s family moves to Roanoke, Virginia, in the summer of 1972, she’s 12 years old and already mindful of the schism between innocence and femininity, the gap between childhood and the adult world. Her father, a former pastor, cycles through spiritual disciplines as quickly as he cycles through jobs. Her mother is dissatisfied, glumly fetishizing the Kennedys and anyone else that symbolizes status and wealth. The residents of the Bent Tree housing development may not hold what Jesse is looking for, but they’re all she’s got. Her neighbor speaks of her married lover; her classmate playacts being a Bunny at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club; the boy she’s interested in fantasizes about moving to Hollywood and befriending David Soul. In the midst of it all, Jesse finds space to set up her room with her secret treasures: busts of Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare, a Venus flytrap, her Cher 45s, and The Big Book of Burial Rites, which she reads obsessively. But outside awaits all the misleading sexual mores, muddled social customs, and confused spirituality. Girlhood has never been more fraught than in Jesse’s telling, its expectations threatening to turn at any point into delicious risk, or real danger.

Home is where the bodies are buried.Darkly humorous and heart-wrenchingly beautiful, Jennifer Longo’s YA debut about a girl stuck living in a cemetery will change the way you look at life, death, and love.Leigh sells graves for her family-owned cemetery because her father is too lazy to look farther than the dinner table when searching for employees. Working the literal graveyard shift, she meets two kinds of customers:Pre-Need: They know what’s up. They bought their graves a long time ago, before they needed them.At Need: They are in shock, mourning a loved one’s unexpected death. Leigh avoids sponging their agony by focusing on things like guessing the headstone choice (mostly granite).Sarcastic and smart, Leigh should be able to stand up to her family and quit. But her world’s been turned upside down by the sudden loss of her best friend and the appearance of Dario, the slightly-too-old-for-her grave digger. Surrounded by death, can Leigh move on, if moving on means it’s time to get a life?

Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his family starts to fracture, Mark's life swings out of control and he succumbs to the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas. The way out is heroin.It's no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence — the worlds of the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all.Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred — but a lot of laughs, and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.

Aleksandra RiplijaSkārletaRomāns "Skārleta" sniedz lielisku iespēju atkal atgriezties Tarā, sastapties ar Skārletu un Retu Batleru un vēlreiz izbaudīt lieliskāko mīlas stāstu, kāds jebkad ticis uzrakstīts. Skārleta Aleksandras Riplijas romānā, runājot Reta viņas mūža mīlestības vārdiem -, no brīnišķīgas jaunas meitenes kļūst par brīnišķīgu pieaugušu sievieti.No angļu valodas tulk. latv. val. Valdis Bērziņš, + Alda Vāczemniece Aleksandra Riplija (alexandra ripley, 1934-2004),1994. 411, lpp.+358.lppNoskannējis gramatu un failu izveidojis Imants Ločmelisamerikāņu rakstniece, ir vairāku romānu un filmu scenāriju autore, tomēr pasaules slavu viņa iemantoja, uzrakstot romānu "Skārleta"turpinājumu Margaretas Mičelas slavenajam darbam "Vējiem līdzi".Tāpat kā Skārleta O'Hāra, arī Aleksandra Riplija bijusi īsta dienvidniece. Varbūt tieši tāpēc viņa varēja tik pārliecinoši iejusties savas varones tēlā, izprast viņas domas un izjūtas; Skārletas dzīves stāsts plūst tikpat aizraujoši kā Margaretas Mičelas darbā, tajā mainās notikumi, plosās kaislības un pārdzīvojumi.Šīs grāmatas iznākšana radīja sensāciju: tās pirmpublicējums tika izpārdots ļoti īsā laikā, pārspējot visus pārdošanas rekordus un sajūsminot lasītājus visā pasaulē.Aleksandra Riplija paliek uzticīga Skārletas un Reta garam. Viņas iejušanās spēja Mičelas stilā ir garantija panākumiem.Chicago TribunRiplija ir Amerikas Rozamunde Pilčere.Cleveland Plain DealerAizraujošs!Ladies Home JournalŠī ir Skārletas grāmata… piepildīta ar piedzīvojumiem, roman­tiku, emocijām un Skārletas lēno pārtapšanu un iegūto apjausmu par to, ko patiesībā vēlas viņas sievietes sirds…Winston-Salem JournalTik romantiski… Par šo stāstu ir labas atsauksmes, tajā ir daudz interesantu raksturu un vides tēlojumu. Aleksandra Riplija ir radījusi izcilu darbu.© Izdevums latviešu valodā. Rija 1994

Na oczach czytelnika zostaje powołany do życia wielkomiejski plac, po którym krąży tramwaj. W tej minimalistycznej scenerii zawiązuje się historyjka o dniu powszednim i utajonych namiętnościach mieszkańców: notariusza obarczonego rodziną, studenta radykała, ospałego policjanta, młodej służącej. Sprawy te jednak pozostają w cieniu niejasnej gry, prowadzonej na zapleczach, gdzie ważne są tylko pokątne korzyści niewidocznego personelu, odpowiedzialnego za zewnętrzną oprawę zdarzeń. Wszechobecna, destrukcyjna prowizorka jest wyrazem jego arogancji, która udziela się mieszkańcom, zatruwając uczucia. Ze swej strony pogardzają oni każdym, kto jest od nich zależny. Pogarda wprawia w ruch mechanizm przemocy i wykluczenia, gdy plac zapełnia przybyły tramwajem tłum, nagle pozbawiony dachu nad głową. Im mniej ktoś w tym świecie znaczy, tym więcej cudzych win przychodzi mu dźwigać.

"Rich in character and gorgeous writing." – Jodi PicoultIn January 1945, in the waning months of World War II, a small group of people begin the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines.Among the group is eighteen-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats. There is her lover, Callum Finella, a twenty-year-old Scottish prisoner of war who was brought from the stalag to her family's farm as forced labor. And there is a twenty-six-year-old Wehrmacht corporal, who the pair know as Manfred – who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a Jew from Germany who managed to escape a train bound for Auschwitz.As they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war. Their flight will test both Anna's and Callum's love, as well as their friendship with Manfred – assuming any of them even survive.Perhaps not since The English Patient has a novel so deftly captured both the power and poignancy of romance and the terror and tragedy of war. Skillfully portraying the flesh and blood of history, Chris Bohjalian has crafted a rich tapestry that puts a face on one of the twentieth century's greatest tragedies – while creating, perhaps, a masterpiece that will haunt readers for generations.

This pertinent, timely, intelligent and incredibly compelling exploration of the relationship we have with our own bodies opens in Bali. Natalie, its protagonist, is uncomfortable in her own skin. Her most recent relationship is long since over and she’s become disillusioned with her career as a teacher – adopting a tried-and-tested attempt at self-discovery, she packs her bags to go travelling.

Natalie travels to Bali, New Zealand, Australia, Dublin, rural Ireland and the Netherlands to try and find her place, but her isolation abroad only heightens her sense of unease. Her journey is psychological as well as physical – she is obsessed with her shape, believing herself to be awkward and over-large, recoiling from relationships with men and eating compulsively as a self-destructive reaction to her issues with her weight.

As the narrative unfolds, we gradually become aware of a crucial development in Natalie beginning to take place. This novel engages powerfully with issues that are important to women, and also to people in general, via an incredibly beguiling protagonist – she is intelligent and self-aware, sharp and acute, and able to see the comic side of her predicament. An intensely enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

The great master of farce turns to an exclusive island retreat for a comedy of mislaid identities, unruly passions, and demented, delicious disorderOn the private Greek island of Skios, the high-paying guests of a world-renowned foundation prepare for the annual keynote address, to be given this year by Dr. Norman Wilfred, an eminent authority on the scientific organization of science. He turns out to be surprisingly youthful, handsome, and charming — quite unlike his reputation as dry and intimidating. Everyone is soon eating out of his hands. So, even sooner, is Nikki, the foundation's attractive and efficient organizer.Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, Nikki's old friend Georgie has rashly agreed to spend a furtive horizontal weekend with a notorious schemer, who has characteristically failed to turn up. Trapped there with her instead is a pompous, balding individual called Dr. Norman Wilfred, who has lost his whereabouts, his luggage, his temper, and increasingly all sense of reality — indeed, everything he possesses other than the text of a well-traveled lecture on the scientific organization of science.In a spiraling farce about upright academics, gilded captains of industry, ambitious climbers, and dotty philanthropists, Michael Frayn, the farceur "by whom all others must be measured" (CurtainUp), tells a story of personal and professional disintegration, probing his eternal theme of how we know what we know even as he delivers us to the outer limits of hilarity.

Newly arrived in the backwater town of GroVont, Wyoming, teenager Sam Callahan is initiated into adulthood when he embarks on a period of intense sexual experimentation with sassy, smart Maurey Pierce.

Imagine a year without Christmas. No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That’s just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they’ll skip the holiday altogether. Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a rooftop Frosty, they won’t be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash, they aren’t even going to have a tree. They won’t need one, because come December 25 they’re setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But as this weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences — and isn’t half as easy as they’d imagined.

A classic tale for modern times, Skipping Christmas offers a hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition

Tyla. Baimė. Pasiklydęs laikas. Balansavimas ant nebūties krašto. Baltam rūke ištirpus realybė. Atsimerkite plačiau, nes tai - beprotnamis, kurį vadiname tikrove. Ši knyga - ne paprastas pasakojimas ar lakios vaizduotės pagimdyti fantasmagoriški kliedesiai. Tai iš pasąmonės išleisti protesto proveržiai prieš įsigalėjusią visuomenės santvarką bei tuos nebylius sargus, niekad nepastebimus, bet verčiančius gyventi pagal jų norus.

In the world of fiction reviewing, extraordinary is an over-used word. Yet there really is no other way to describe Chinese author Xinran's second book, Sky Burial. It is extraordinary in so many ways-the subject matter, the setting, the central character, but mostly its authenticity and the author's continuing search for the woman whose life is told here.Sky Burial is the true story of a Chinese woman's 30-year search through Tibet for news of her lost, presumed dead, husband. Xinran is working as a radio journalist on a women's programme when a listener calls in to tell her about Shuwen. Xinran travels hundreds of miles across China to interview her and, over two days, Shuwen opens her heart and reveals her tragic, scarcely imaginable life story. Xinran returns to her life and spends the subsequent 10 years trying to find Shuwen again, researching her story and writing this book-a homage to an ordinary woman's extraordinary life-long search for the truth.The story is a simple one: Shuwen meets her intelligent, idealistic husband-to-be while they are both training to be doctors. After less than 100 days of marriage, Kejun travels to Tibet as a Chinese army doctor and before long, Shuwen is notified that he has died in an "incident". Shuwen decides to join the army herself, travel to Tibet and find out if he really is dead, and if so, how and why he died.And then, as if travelling to a closed country like Tibet as a young woman in the 1950s is not difficult enough, Shuwen quickly becomes separated from her unit and, close to death herself, is taken in by a family of Tibetan nomads. Her transformation from Chinese doctor to nomadic Buddhist is a long, painful and at many turns, deeply distressing one.Sky Burial is a slight book-little more than an extended short story-and yet the ground it covers is immense, not just because of the fascinating glimpse it offers into a land and a people still largely unknown in the West. Despite its tragic themes of loss and survival in one of the world's harshest landscapes, it is an uplifting tale of unwavering loyalty and immeasurable inner strength. -Carey Green

A fine novel from Witi Ihimaera in which a great story about a feisty teenager is interwoven with a dazzling trip through Maori mythology.Stroppy teenager Skylark O’Shea is on holiday with her mother at a town on the coast. But all is not what it seems. What is the threat facing the town and the birds of the forest? Where do the two old charismatic Maori women Hoki and Bella fit in? Skylark becomes embroiled in a prophecy that much to her dismay involves her in an extraordinary journey. Soon she is pitting her wits in a race of breathtaking dimension, a dazzling trip through Maori mythology.This novel by Witi Ihimaera is fascinating and unique. At one level it is a romp and a rollercoaster ride that sometimes reminds you of Lord of the Rings. At other levels it is a brilliant accomplishment of combining this with new ways of exploring Maori myth.