Otto Biersma Orden de los libros (cronológico)

A young woman named Calista meets the famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder in the sweltering summer of 1976. She knows nothing about him or his work, but this chance encounter will change her life for good. But while Calista is thrilled with her new adventure, Wilder himself - struggling to raise the money for his next feature film - is living with the realisation that his star may be on the wane. In his new novel that is, by turns, funny, tender and profoundly truthful, Jonathan Coe turns his gaze to the nature of time, fame, family and nostalgia. When the world is catapulting towards change, do you hold on for dear life or decide it's time to let go?

Los lectores conocen a Oliver Sacks por sus fascinantes libros sobre los misterios de la mente a partir de asombrosos casos psiquiátricos. Ahora, aplica su perspicacia y humanismo a su propia vida, ofreciendo un ejercicio de introspección que revela una peripecia vital intensa y compleja. Relata su marcha de Inglaterra y llegada a Estados Unidos, su confesión de homosexualidad a su madre y su reacción, así como su relación con su hermano esquizofrénico. Comparte su primera experiencia sexual en Ámsterdam, su última relación sexual al cumplir cuarenta y su posterior celibato voluntario. Reflexiona sobre el sexo y el amor como motores de la vida, sus inicios como psiquiatra en los años sesenta y sus investigaciones sobre una enfermedad olvidada, así como sus intensas relaciones con pacientes y su abuso de anfetaminas. También menciona su amistad con poetas como Auden y Thom Gunn, y su fugaz relación con figuras como Robert De Niro y Robin Williams. Habla de su afición a las motos y viajes nocturnos por el desierto de California, así como su interés en la halterofilia, el culturismo y la natación. En suma, es una autobiografía emocionante y desgarradamente honesta que refleja su aventura intelectual.

Mary Anne Schwalbe was an educator who worked at Harvard University before devoting herself to the cause of refugees, as founding director of an organisation that brought her to the world's most desperate places. But her story here begins at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, accompanied by her publisher son, she is waiting for chemotherapy treatments to begin. As they've always done, they talk about what they're reading, and the conversation grows into tradition: soon they are reading the same books in order to talk about them as Mary Anne is given her treatments. The books they read range from classic to popular, from fantastic to spiritual, and we hear their passion for reading and their love for each other in their dynamic and searching discussions around each one. They also explore how books tell you not only what you need to do in your own life but also in the world. An inspiring and profoundly moving book: Will's love letter to his mother, and theirs to the printed page

An incredible publishing story, this epic war novel was crafted over thirty years by a decorated Vietnam veteran and became a New York Times best seller for sixteen weeks, as well as a National Indie Next and USA Today best seller. Hailed as a "brilliant account of war," it tells the timeless tale of young Marine lieutenant Waino Mellas and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are thrust into the mountain jungles of Vietnam. As they transition from boys to men, they face not only the North Vietnamese but also the relentless monsoon rains, mud, leeches, tigers, disease, and malnutrition. Compounding their struggles are the racial tensions, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers within their ranks. When the company finds itself surrounded by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines confront the raw terror of combat, an experience that will change them forever. This visceral and spellbinding narrative captures the essence of youth at war, transforming the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice. It serves as a parable of war, highlighting the redemptive power of literature and the universal themes of human resilience and brotherhood.

Cuando Jonathan Safran Foer iba a convertirse en padre empezó a preocuparse por la forma más responsable de alimentar a su hijo. ¿Cuáles son las consecuencias de comer animales para la salud? ¿Cuáles los efectos económicos, sociales y ambientales? ¿Por qué comemos animales? Mezclando con maestría filosofía, literatura, ciencia y narración de sus propias aventuras detectivescas, Comer animales explora el origen de nuestros hábitos alimenticios: desde las costumbres nacionales a las tradiciones familiares, pasando por una atroz falta de información. Con una profunda perspicacia, un equilibrado sentido ético y una creatividad desbordante, Safran Foer revela la espeluznante verdad sobre el precio pagado por el medio ambiente, el Tercer Mundo y los animales para que podamos tener carne en nuestras mesas. Comer Animales ha sido un éxito que ha despertado las pasiones y los debates más encendidos en Estados Unidos, Italia, Francia o Alemania. Éste no es sólo un libro sobre qué comemos: el sorprendente talento de Safran Foer apela a nuestra moral y responsabilidad como individuos y a nuestras esperanzas como sociedad. Pocas veces un libro ha dado tanto que hablar.

Winner of the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas. One of the Ten Best Books of the Year - The New York Times Book Review 'Vivid, graphic and poignant' Washington Post 'Powerful and moving . . . An impressive success' New York Times Book Review '[A] jazzy, sinewy debut . . . Thomas's urgent, quicksilver prose makes even the darkest moments of this novel shine' O' the Oprah Magazine On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, the unnamed black narrator of Man Gone Down finds himself broke, estranged from his white wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his kids in school and make a down payment on an apartment for them to live in. As we slip between his childhood in inner city Boston and present-day New York City, we discover a life marked by abuse, abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it's like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life and the urge to escape that sentence.

A young man is fighting for his life.Into his room walks a bewitching woman who believes she can save him.Their journey will have you believing in the impossible.The nameless and beautiful narrator of The Gargoyle is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and wakes up in a burns ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned. His life is over he is now a monster.But in fact it is only just beginning. One day, Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles, enters his life and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly burned mercenary and she was a nun and a scribe who nursed him back to health in the famed monastery of Engelthal. As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life and, finally, to love.

The mesmerizing "New York Times "bestseller by the author of "Night Film" Marisha Pessl's dazzling debut sparked raves from critics and heralded the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some--a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel--with visual aids drawn by the author--that has won over readers of all ages.