LETRAS

En el convulso México prerrevolucionario de finales del siglo XIX Emilia Sauri crece en el seno de una fami­lia liberal. Durante su infancia, transcurrida entre con­versaciones políticas, infusiones y remedios natura­les, tiene la fortuna de aprender el mundo de quienes viven con ingenio, avidez y entereza. Con los años, Emilia se convierte en una mujer que lucha por sus convicciones y se niega a renunciar a sus sentimientos, enfrentando las limitaciones impues­tas a su condición femenina y el peligro de amar locamente a dos hombres: a Daniel Cuenca, un aventurero y revolucionario que pobló sus sueños infantiles y, ya en su madurez, a Antonio Zavalza, un médico que bus­ca la paz en medio de la guerra civil. Sensacional contadora de historias, Ángeles Mastretta retrata la de una pasión entretejida con la de un país a su vez apasionado, la de una guerra y de una fami­lia, y la de algunas vocaciones desmesuradas. Regida por la mejor tradición de las novelas costumbristas, Mal de amores fue galardonada con el prestigioso Pre­mio Rómulo Gallegos en 1997, y es hoy una obra que­rida y siempre recomendada por cuantos se han perdi­do, o encontrado, entre sus páginas.

Vic Wood has her priorities: scrape by on her restaurant wages, take care of her younger brother Henry, and forget their mother ever existed. But Vic’s careful life crumbles when she discovers that their long-missing mother belonged to the Acheron Order—a secret society of witches tasked with keeping the dead at bay. What’s worse, Henry inherited their mother’s magical abilities while Vic did not, and he has been chosen as the Order’s newest recruit. Determined to keep him safe, Vic accompanies Henry to the isolated woods in upstate New York that host the sprawling and eerie Avalon Castle. When she joins the academy despite lacking powers of her own, she risks not only the Order’s wrath, but also her brother’s. And then there is the imposing, ruthless, and frustrating Xan, the head Sentinel in charge of protecting Avalon. He makes no secret of wanting Vic to leave.

From the art of liars, the monsters came . . . Ever since art gave life to bloodthirsty shadows, creative works have been forbidden and talented creators sacrificed to the Sinless—the immortal royals who feast on human blood in return for their protection. Inana’s secret storytelling nearly got her killed once, and she’ll be damned if she’s ever caught again. With a bounty on her head, she keeps to the city’s dark underbelly, where she earns a meager living from thrill-seeking patrons desperate to hear her illicit fiction. Until Dominic, a Shadowbane, catches one of her performances. Dominic is a half-Sinless monster hunter as fearsome as his prey. But to complete his hunt, he needs an artist to summon the shadows . . . he needs Inana. Dominic delivers an ultimatum: Serve him or he’ll claim her bounty. When survival is all Inana has left, the choice is clear—at least until she can betray him and leave him for dead. As their tense alliance leads them into the heart of danger, dark secrets unravel—about each other, their world, and the threats they face. But the greatest risk of all is the desire growing between them. There’s something more sinful than lust at play, and it could bring the world to its knees.

After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on Bea’s dime. Usually the responsible one, Bea isn’t about to admit exactly why she’s suddenly decided to visit, but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure hidden somewhere in the western US? Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother’s wild larks. But Christy believes she’s onto something—and she’s arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, Bea and Christy find themselves embroiled in a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either could have imagined.

Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, tres personajes extraordinarios por lo que el autor sentía un profundo apego. Su inquietud vital los aleja de la contención de Goethe decidido a autoconstruirse: La fórmula para la vida según Goethe es la representada por el círculo: un alinea cerrada, la redondez absoluta que abarca toda existencia, el eterno retorno a uno mismo.

During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences fashionable society for the first time, both its pleasures and its pitfalls. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine’s love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father’s mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, Cather learns the danger of an active imagination. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, this is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen’s works.

Shy and penniless Fanny Price is brought up on her uncle Sir Thomas Bertram’s estate, Mansfield Park, as an act of charity. Sir Thomas also owns land— and benefits from the labor of enslaved people— in the Caribbean colony of Antigua. Fanny is miserable until her kind cousin Edmund Bertram takes her under his wing. Having secretly fallen in love with him, Fanny suffers severely when his head is turned by the captivating Mary Crawford. Fanny’s quiet fortitude makes Mansfield Park one of Austen’s most psychologically astute novels.

A Farewell to Arms is one of Ernest Hemingway’s most popular books, a masterpiece that is not only among the greatest novels to come out of World War I but also one of the most profoundly moving in the American canon. Based on Hemingway’s own experience volunteering with the Red Cross in Italy during World War I, and written when he was only thirty, it tells the story of Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver, and Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. For Frederic, Catherine’s kindness and beauty shore him up against the carnage of battle; for Catherine, Frederic’s strength and devotion are a lifeboat in the sea of grief over her first love. Through injury, surgery, and the psychic fallout of war, they maintain an overwhelming desire to be together, even as forces conspire to keep them apart. Hemingway captures the intensity of both love and war with the taut immediacy and spare, understated eloquence that are his hallmarks, reminding us why this novel—his first bestseller—endures as a favorite, and why the Nobel laureate ranks among our most treasured writers.

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.