"A new collection of electric, searing stories from award-winning, bestselling author Juan Gabriel Vasquez. The characters in Songs for the Flames are men and women touched by violence -- sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing -- but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire, and by unexpected encounters and unyielding forces. A photographer becomes obsessed with the traumatic past that an elegant woman, a fellow guest staying at a...

Everyone has heard the saying at least once in their life, "What happens in this house stays in this house". Imagine being raised in a household and hearing those words over and over again. Raymond Kramer has anger issues but having grown up in a house where his parents drilled the same motto in his head when he was younger. How Raymond dealt with his kids proves to be a bit more drastic than other parents, but he saw nothing wrong with it. Having...

Nápoles, hoy, es una ciudad bella y terrible: es el reino de la camorra, y los chicos que crecen allí lo hacen bajo su influjo. Una pandilla formada por diez de ellos se lanza a la conquista de la ciudad: provienen de familias normales, les gusta lucir calzado de marca y tatuarse el símbolo de su banda. Liderados por Nicolas Fiorillo, alias Marajá, el grupo de adolescentes utiliza las motos como los forajidos de las películas del Oeste usaban...

What has to happen so that we are forced to redefine our idea of childhood? The appearance of thirty-two violent children of unknown origin completely disrupts the life of San Cristóbal, a small tropical city encased between the jungle and the river. Twenty years later, one of its protagonists wrote this luminous Republic, a chronicle woven of facts, evidence and rumors about how the city was forced to reformulate not only its idea of order and violence...

1970, Ciudad de México. Maite trabaja como secretaria, pero solo vive para una cosa: la siguiente entrega de «Romance secreto». Las protestas estudiantiles y la inestabilidad política asedian la ciudad, pero ella se evade de todo gracias a esas maravillosas historias de pasión y riesgo. La vecina de la puerta de al lado, una atractiva estudiante de arte llamada Leonora, parece llevar una vida repleta de intriga y romance, algo que Maite envidia....

"El corredor es un alarido de metal y literatura cuya virtud primordial es llevar al lector a un paroxismo, a esa exaltación propia de los derviches y pilotos cuyos bólidos están avizorando, en fracciones de segundo, la pared donde habrán de estrellarse, el fuego donde serán desgarrados por engranajes y ángulos enfurecidos. Alejandro Vázquez Ortiz ha logrado escribir un mecanismo narrativo cromado, con varias capas de pintura, donde conviven...

Ugly is not an easy book to read. The subject matter is not easy to deal with. Ugly deals with physical and emotional abuse. Many people do not understand the dynamics of domestic abuse. Why, they wonder, would a woman stay with a partner who was abusive? The answers are simple. Lack of self-esteem, a feeling of powerlessness, no positive role models, lack of resources...take your pick. Singly, or in combination, all can factor into a woman feeling...