LETRAS

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life. Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Leves amores Katherine Mansfield Mansfield, una de las voces más importantes del modernismo literario, ya había escrito más de ochenta piezas de ficción cuando tenía apenas 23 años, lo que muestra su gran productividad desde muy temprana edad. Esta edición presenta una selección de relatos (algunos de los cuales nunca habían sido traducidos al castellano, e incluso en inglés son poco conocidos) que la autora escribió cuando era todavía una niña, así como varios que quedaron inconclusos debido a su muerte prematura a los 34 años. Muchos de ellos contienen elementos autobiográficos en clave y todos llevan el sello inconfundible que la hizo célebre. Además, se dan a conocer por vez primera en español aspectos curiosos y poco conocidos de su obra, como unos aforismos que se apartan de su estilo habitual, un cuento que estuvo oculto hasta 1988 y una serie de microrrelatos que sorprenden por su vanguardismo y que revelan la capacidad de Mansfield para experimentar con nuevas formas narrativas confirmándola como una de las autoras más originales y modernas de su época.