LETRAS

Todo el mundo sabe que a Haruki Murakami le apasionan tanto la música moderna y el jazz como la música clásica. Esta pasión no sólo le llevó a regentar en su juventud un club de jazz, sino a impregnar de referencias musicales la mayoría de sus obras. En esta ocasión, el escritor japones comparte con sus lectores sus querencias, sus opiniones y, sobre todo, sus ansias de saber sobre el arte musical. Para ello, a lo largo de dos años, Murakami y su amigo Seiji Ozawa mantuvieron estas deliciosas conversaciones sobre piezas de Brahms y Beethoven, de Bartók y Mahler, sobre directores de orquesta como Leonard Bernstein y solistas excepcionales como Glenn Gould. Así, mientras escuchan discos y comentan distintas interpretaciones, el lector asiste a jugosas confidencias que le contagiarán el placer inacabable de disfrutar de la música con oídos nuevos.

Joan Sample is not living the life she expected. Now a widow and an empty-nester, she has become by her own admission something of a recluse. But after another birthday spent alone, she is finally inclined to listen to her sister, who has been begging Joan to reengage with the world. With Emmie’s support, Joan gathers the courage to take some long-awaited steps: hiring someone to tame her overgrown garden, joining a grief support group, and even renting out a room to a local college student. Before long Joan is starting to feel a little like herself again. Across town, Maggie Herbert works mornings as a barista, tending to impatient customers before rushing to afternoon nursing classes. She lives with her alcoholic father, ducking his temperamental outbursts and struggling to pay the household bills. But her circumstances brighten when she finds a room for rent in Joan’s home. In the unexpected warmth of her new situation, Maggie finds a glimmer of hope for a better life. But will Maggie’s budding attraction to one of her favorite customers ruin the harmony she’s only recently found with Joan? Meanwhile, what is Joan to make of the mysterious landscaper who’s been revitalizing her garden—a man who seems to harbor a past loss of his own?

In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan. As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, as does Eric, and while there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie. As she and Eric discover love, the war escalates and Emilia finds herself in extreme danger, fearing for her life and questioning her identity and her destiny.

In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

Jackie Howard returns to the Walter ranch after a summer in New York. She needed space―and got it. But she doesn't know where things stand with her and Cole Walter after that goodbye kiss. Over the summer, she stopped texting him. She never stopped thinking about him. Still, with Cole living off in town to work at Tony's garage before he heads off to college, Jackie thinks it'll be easy to avoid him―only to find that when she sees him face to face at last, it's, well... impossible to resist him. Things are getting complicated: he's the boy she can't get off her mind, and the Walters have become the family she loves and needs. How can Jackie move forward when she's afraid of taking the next step?

Kazami, joven estudiosa de literatura, in­vestiga el misterio que rodea a un libro de cuentos titulado N.P. Su autor, Tekase, pasó gran parte de su vida en Estados Unidos y se suicidó a los cuarenta y ocho años, dejando dos hijos. Cuando Kazami conoce a éstos, detecta de inmediato una estela de locura en los ojos de esos her­manos tiernamente incestuosos. Pero otra muchacha obsesionada por ese mismo li­bro se cruzará en el camino de Kazami, que pronto se verá envuelta en un inextricable laberinto del que nacerá un amor salvaje, desenfrenado.