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Estudio en escarlata / El signo de los cuatro / Las aventuras de Sherlock Holmes / El perro de los Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Patrick Süskind - 1985
As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.
I Spit on Your Graves
Boris Vian - 1946
He was also a French translator of American hard-boiled crime novels. One of his discoveries was an African-American writer by the name of Vernon Sullivan. Vian translated Sullivan's I Spit on Your Graves. The book is about a 'white Negro' who acts out an act of revenge against a small Southern town, in repayment for the death of his brother, who was lynched by an all white mob. Upon its release, I Spit on Your Graves became a bestseller in France, as well as a instruction manual for a copycat killer whose copy of I Spit on Your Graves was found by the murdered body of a prostitute with certain violent passages underlined. A censorship trail also came up where Sullivan as the author was held responsible for the material. It was later disclosed that Vian himself wrote the book and made up the identity of Vernon Sullivan! This edition is a translation by Vian, that was never published in America. I Spit on Your Graves is an extremely violent sexy hard-boiled novel about racial and class prejudice, revenge, justice, and is itself a literary oddity due to the fact that it was written by a jazz-loving white Frenchman, who had never been to America.
Follow Your Heart
Susanna Tamaro - 1994
Originally published in Italy, "Follow Your Heart" won the coveted Premio Donna Citta di Roma and sold over 800,000 copies in that country alone before hitting bestseller lists throughout the rest of Europe. Now North American readers can enjoy the novel that has won over the world.It begins in late autumn 1992 as an elderly Italian woman, prompted by the knowledge of her encroaching death, sits down to write a letter to her granddaughter now grown and living in far-off America. Through these moving reflections, we see one life laid bare--joys, sorrows, regrets, and all. And through the eyes of a woman nearing the end of her days, we come to understand what life experience has taught her: that no matter what the stakes, we must look within ourselves and gather the courage to follow our hearts.
Bartleby & Co.
Enrique Vila-Matas - 2000
D. Salinger, Bartleby Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is an utterly engaging work of profound and philosophical beauty.
The Moorland Cottage
Elizabeth Gaskell - 1850
Through the example and guidance of her mother—who dotes on Edward constantly—and her mentor, Mrs. Buxton, Maggie learns that self-sacrifice is the key to living a fulfilled life. The precursor to and arguably the template for George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, this feminist masterpiece begs the question How much personal happiness can one forgo in the name of duty and devotion to another? Maggie’s love story, Edward’s perfidy, and the dramatic conclusion at sea all blend together seamlessly to make this story a timeless tale.
The Devil's Advocate
Morris L. West - 1959
In an impoverished village in southern Italy, the life and death of Giacamo Nerone has inspired talk of sainthood. Father Blaise Meredith, a dying English priest, is sent from the Vatican to investigate—and to try to untangle the web of facts, rumors, and outright lies that surround Nerone's life and death. With spiritual frailty as a backdrop, The Devil's Advocate reminds us how the power of goodness ultimately prevails over despair.
You Will Be Mine
Natasha Preston - 2018
Partying is the perfect way to let loose from the stress of life and school, and Lylah hopes that hitting the dance floor with Chace, her best friend, will bring them closer together. She's been crushing on him since they met. If only he thought of her the same way...The girls are touching up their makeup and the guys are sliding on their coats when the doorbell rings. No one is there. An envelope sits on the doormat. It's an anonymous note addressed to their friend Sonny. A secret admirer? Maybe. They all laugh it off.Except Sonny never comes home. And a new note arrives:YOUR TURN
The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant
Pablo Tusset - 2001
This renowned Internet blogger, daytime sleeper, and dedicated hedonist is yanked into family business matters when the president of the business, his older, accomplished brother, disappears. Thus begins The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant, an easy-riding, reluctant-detective story. Tusset's prodigious talents as both a satirist and creator of one of the most hilarious underachievers in recent memory make this an exquisitely entertaining read.
Sun Storm
Åsa Larsson - 2003
A Stockholm attorney, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the revivalist church his charisma helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and a dogged policewoman. But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark, wrenching, and impossible to guess....From the Hardcover edition.
The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas
Tracy Mack - 2006
Sherlock Holmes stories captured readers' imaginations for more than a century. Now Tracy Mack and Michael Citrin will capture the hearts of a new generation with a unique new twist on these beloved mysteries. Few know: Holmes was assisted by a band of devoted boys, street urchins who loved to solve mysteries, called the Baker Street Irregulars. These boys go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone undetected. Now, in this exciting tale, Wiggins, Ozzie, Simon, and the rest--with the aid of Pilar, a gypsy girl--help Sherlock Holmes solve the case of the deaths of the Amazing Walendas.
Wilt
Tom Sharpe - 1976
Ahead of him at the Polytechnic stretch years of trying to thump literature into the heads of plasterers, joiners, butchers and the like. And things are no better at home where his massive wife, Eva, is given to boundless and unpredictable fits of enthusiasm -for transcendental meditation, yoga or the trampoline. But if Wilt can do nothing about his job, he can do something about his wife, in imagination at least, and his fantasies grow daily more murderous and more concrete. After a peculiarly nasty experience at a party thrown by particularly nasty Americans, Wilt finds himself in several embarrassing positions: Eva stalks out in stratospheric dudgeon, and Wilt, under the inspiration of gin, puts one of his more vindictive fantasies into effect. But suspicions are instantly aroused and Wilt rapidly achieves an unenviable notoriety in the role of The Man Helping Police With Their Enquiries. Or is he exactly helping? Wilt's problem -although he's on the other side of the fence -is the same as Inspector Flint's: where is Eva Wilt? But Wilt begins to flourish in the heat of the investigation, and as the police stoke the flames of circumstantial evidence, Wilt deploys all his powers to show that the Law can't tell a Missing Person from a hole in the ground.
The Assassini
Thomas Gifford - 1990
It is 1982. In the Vatican, priestly vultures gather around the dying Pope, whispering the names of possible successors. In a forgotten monastery on Ireland's gale-swept coast, a dangerous document is hidden, waiting to be claimed. And in a family chapel in Princeton, New Jersey, a nun is murdered at her prayers. Sister Valentine was an outspoken activist, a thorn in the Church's side. When her brother, lawyer Ben Driskill, realizes the Church will never investigate her death, he sets out to find the murderer himself--and uncovers an explosive secret.The Assassini. An age-old brotherhood of killers. Once they were hired by princes of the Church to protect it in dangerous times. But whose orders do they now obey?The Assassini marks the triumphant retum of a master at the peak of his powers--the first novel in more than a decade from the acclaimed author of The Wind Chill Factor.
Look at Me
Jennifer Egan - 2001
She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied.With the surreal authority of a David Lynch, Jennifer Egan threads Charlotte’s narrative with those of other casualties of our infatuation with the image. There’s a deceptively plain teenaged girl embarking on a dangerous secret life, an alcoholic private eye, and an enigmatic stranger who changes names and accents as he prepares an apocalyptic blow against American society. As these narratives inexorably converge, Look at Me becomes a coolly mesmerizing intellectual thriller of identity and imposture.