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No sirve de nada; uno puede cantarse coros a sí mismo, admirar a caníbales, estar doscientos años bajando por el tronco de un árbol al que antes había trepado; uno puede encerrar al mes como a un loco, en inofensivas cruzadas ir de peregrinación a Palestina con toda una quincallería en el cuerpo, escuchar a Buda, amansar a Mahoma, creer en Cristo, vigilar un capullo, pintar una flor, malograr la aparición de una fruta; uno puede también ir detrás del sol, así que éste se dobla; enseñar a los perros a maullar, a los gatos a ladrar, devolverle todos los dientes a un centenario, cosechar bosques, regar calvas, castrar vacas, ordeñar bueyes; uno puede hacerlo todo con excesiva facilidad (termina uno tan rápidamente con todo), aprender la lengua del hombre de Neanderthal, cortar los brazos de Shiva, quitar de las cabezas de Brahma los Vedas que están anticuados, vestir los Vedas desnudos; impedir que en los cielos de Dios canten los coros de ángeles, espolear a Lao-Tse; incitar a Confucio a que asesine a su padre, arrebatarle a Sócrates la copa de cicuta; quitarle de la boca la inmortalidad; uno puede…, pero no sirve de nada, no hay nada que sirva para nada, no hay qué hacer, no hay más pensamiento que éste: ¿cuándo se dejará de asesinar?<

LAS VOCES DE MARRAKESH Elias Canetti traducción y prólogo de José Francisco Yvars En 1954 Elias Canetti viajó a Marrakesh; de sus incursiones por los barrios árabe y judío de la ciudad recogió voces, olores, gestos e imágenes, que bosquejó justo tras su regreso a Londres. Todo esto se convirtió en algo más que en un mero libro de viaje. Canetti describe situaciones y personajes con gran precisión y los examina escrupulosamente. Trata de descubrir cuanto acontece a esta extraña gente, e indaga acerca de su postura sobre la muerte. Canetti nos brinda aquí sus notas de viaje, auténticas impresiones personales que exponen el proceso arduo de apropiación de un mundo diferente.

Elias Canetti (1905-1994) nació en el seno de una familia hispanohablante de judíos sefardíes en Rustchuk (Bulgaria). En 1911 la familia se trasladó a Inglaterra; posteriormente a Viena, 1916, y a Frankfurt. En 1924 regresó a Viena, donde se doctoró en Química en 1929. Se estableció en Inglaterra en 1938. Su primer libro, y su única novela, fue AUTO DE FE (1936), concebida como la primera de una serie. Tuvo mucha más repercusión en la Europa continental que en Estados Unidos e Inglaterra, donde no alcanzó un reconocimiento general hasta la edición corregida y aumentada de 1965. A partir de esta novela, Canetti se centró en la historia, la literatura de viajes, el teatro, la crítica literaria y la escritura de sus memorias. MASA Y PODER (1962) se abre con la afirmación: "No hay nada que el hombre tema más que el toque de lo desconocido", frase que capta el estilo aforístico de Canetti y también una de sus mayores preocupaciones, la influencia de las emociones en las inclinaciones racionales. Sus tres volúmenes de memorias, LA LENGUA ABSUELTA (1977), LA ANTORCHA AL OÍDO (1980) y EL TESTIGO ESCUCHADOR (1985), abarcan su vida antes de la II Guerra Mundial, describiendo su existencia peripatética y un mundo centroeuropeo que se desvanecía. Le fue concedido el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1981.

Vintner Lucie Montgomery—The Merlot Murders (2006), The Chardonnay Charade (2007)—is getting ready for the harvest at her vineyard near Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. When she attends a lecture at Mount Vernon, she learns about the wines that Thomas Jefferson discovered in France and brought to George Washington. The lecturer later turns up dead, and Lucie suspects that the murder is related to the authenticity of a bottle of Chateau Margaux supposedly purchased for Washington that will be auctioned at a charity fundraiser she is planning. As Lucie investigates, her beloved grandfather comes to visit from France and provides valuable historical information about the wines to be auctioned, leading to the discovery of fraud and betrayal in the wine world, as well as World War II ties that some local aristocracy would prefer to leave hidden. This will have broad appeal for its wine lore and historical detail and has enough action to keep the pages turning fast.<

Making a go of the family's Virginia vineyard after her father's death (in The Merlot Murders, 2006) would be hard enough for amateur sleuth Lucie Montgomery, even without an occasional dead body turning up. First Georgia Greenwood, controversial aspiring politician and second wife of the local doctor, is found dead at the edge of the vineyard, disfigured by chemicals used on the vines; then the young man alleged to be her lover disappears. Lucie finds motives abounding among the locals as she seeks the truth, but she's also concerned about losing her brash but capable head winemaker, worried about her younger sister's binge drinking, and becoming involved with a rich Brit who wants to buy a vineyard. This second entry in Crosby's series is nicely plotted and paced until the too-abrupt ending, when a previously sensible if overinquisitive Lucie goes alone to confront the murderer. But what might otherwise be a pedestrian mystery stands out because of its Civil War–based local history and winemaking detail.<

Lucie Montgomery is recuperating in France from an automobile accident that left her dependent on a cane. When her brother calls to tell her that their father, Leland, has died, she returns to the family estate in Virginia. She finds that both the house and the vineyards have been badly neglected due to her father's gambling and shady business deals. Her brother, Eli, needs money to support his new wife's expensive tastes, and he has persuaded their younger sister, Mia, to sell the estate. Before the funeral, Lucie's godfather tells her that Leland's death was not accidental and that the possible sale of the land played a part in the murder. Lucie must uncover the truth about the murder if she is to ensure the vineyard's survival.<

When a tornado rips through Montgomery Estate Vineyard and unearths a grave in an abandoned field, police inform Lucie Montgomery that the odds are good someone in her family is responsible—possibly for murder. But she has more to worry about than buried secrets.A clash between her charming new farm manager and her winemaker, Quinn Santori, tests her complicated romantic and professional feelings for Quinn, fueling the winery’s combustible atmosphere. Meanwhile eerie ghost stories make her think twice about allowing Civil War reenactors to use a field near the grave site—until the spirits of her own family’s past converge for a most unexpected outcome.<

When Lucie Montgomery finds the body of prominent wine merchant Paul Noble hanging from a beam in his art studio not far from her Virginia vineyard, she is unwittingly dragged into Noble’s murky past. Once a member of the secretive Mandrake Society, Noble might have aided in a cover-up of the deaths forty years ago of a disabled man and a beautiful young biochemist involved in classified government research.

A seemingly innocent favor for an old friend of her French grandfather sends Lucie to California, where she teams up with Quinn Santori, who walked out of Lucie’s life months earlier. Soon Lucie and Quinn are embroiled in a deadly cat-and-mouse game that takes them from glittering San Francisco to the legendary vineyards of Napa and Sonoma, and back home to Virginia, as they try to discover whether a killer may be seeking vengeance for the long-ago deaths. As Lucie and Quinn struggle to uncover the past, they must also decide whether they have a future together. Blending an intriguing mystery with an absorbing plot, vivid characters, and a richly evoked setting, should be savored like a glass of fine wine.

Virginia vintner Lucie Montgomery returns in her fifth mystery. This time she begins by visiting Washington, D.C., during cherry-blossom season. Lucie is excited and intrigued to meet up with an old friend, Rebecca Natale, who is working as an assistant to a philanthropist and investment counselor. But the next morning Lucie is asked to identify Rebecca’s clothes, found in a rowboat floating in the Potomac. Is her friend staging an elaborate disappearance, or could this be suicide, or even murder? Clues include messages to be found in the writings of Alexander Pope and in the history of the War of 1812. As Lucie travels back and forth between her Montgomery Estate Vineyard and various D.C. venues, the wine business and her relationship with winemaker Quinn Santori begin to take a backseat to solving the mystery of Rebecca’s disappearance. The meticulously researched historical background—always a hallmark in Crosby’s novels—is nicely balanced by an intriguing mystery.<

Esta es una historia tierna e inocente, fiera y salvaje, entrañable y cálida, cruel y despiadada.

Es una historia tejida con recuerdos, ilusiones y esperanzas, pero teñida también de fracasos, decepciones y derrotas…

Es la crónica de una España que la guerra partió en dos… para obligarnos de nuevo a juntarla. Es una historia que nos pertenece un poco a todos… porque entre todos hacemos la Historia.

With a second CSI spinoff hitting the airwaves this fall, the timing couldn't be better for this intriguing memoir by a leading forensic anthropologist. The only full-time state employee in her field, Craig utilizes her expertise to identify victims from the tiniest remnant of tissue or bone. The author's reputation as an international expert on human anatomy led her to reconstructing faces of the dead from skull fragments to aid the police. Her credentials involved her in many notorious cases, most notably Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing and the destruction of the World Trade Center. In each instance, her dedication, professionalism and knowledge played key roles; Craig's scientific analysis established that more than one-third of the dead at Waco had died before the fire as a result of a mass murder-suicide by the Branch Davidians. She also rebutted claims that the real bomber of the Murrah Federal Building had died in the explosion by proving that a mysterious severed limb actually belonged to a victim. Despite occasional gratuitous gross-out details concerning maggots, Craig does a good job of explaining her science to the layperson and portraying the nitty-gritty everyday realities of her job.

***

Teasing Secrets from the Dead is a front-lines story of crime scene investigation at some of the most infamous sites in recent history.

In this absorbing, surprising, and undeniably compelling book, forensics expert Emily Craig tells her own story of a life spent teasing secrets from the dead.

Emily Craig has been a witness to history, helping to seek justice for thousands of murder victims, both famous and unknown. It's a personal story that you won't soon forget. Emily first became intrigued by forensics work when, as a respected medical illustrator, she was called in by the local police to create a model of a murder victim's face. Her fascination with that case led to a dramatic midlife career change: She would go back to school to become a forensic anthropologist-and one of the most respected and best-known "bone hunters" in the nation.

As a student working with the FBI in Waco, Emily helped uncover definitive proof that many of the Branch Davidians had been shot to death before the fire, including their leader, David Koresh, whose bullet-pierced skull she reconstructed with her own hands. Upon graduation, Emily landed a prestigious full-time job as forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a state with an alarmingly high murder rate and thousands of square miles of rural backcountry, where bodies are dumped and discovered on a regular basis. But even with her work there, Emily has been regularly called to investigations across the country, including the site of the terrorist attack on the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, where a mysterious body part-a dismembered leg-was found at the scene and did not match any of the known

victims. Throughcareful scientific analysis, Emily was able to help identify the leg's owner, a pivotal piece of evidence that helped convict Timothy McVeigh.

In September 2001, Emily received a phone call summoning her to New York City, where she directed the night-shift triage at the World Trade Center's body identification site, collaborating with forensics experts from all over the country to collect and identify the remains of September 11 victims.

From the biggest news stories of our time to stranger-than-true local mysteries, these are unforgettable stories from the case files of Emily Craig's remarkable career.

«En cuestión de pocos meses, fui testigo de dos de los acontecimientos que más temo en la vida: la muerte de un hijo para sus padres y la muerte de una mujer joven para sus hijos y su marido. Alguien me dijo entonces: eres escritor, ¿por qué no escribes nuestra historia? Era un encargo, y lo acepté. Empecé, pues, a contar la amistad entre un hombre y una mujer, los dos supervivientes de un cáncer, los dos cojos y los dos jueces, que se ocupaban de asuntos de sobreendeudamiento en el tribunal de primera instancia de Vienne (Isère). En este libro se habla de la vida y la muerte, de la enfermedad, de la pobreza extrema, de la justicia y, sobre todo, del amor. Todo lo que se dice en él es cierto». Así presentaba Emmanuel Carrère la edición francesa de este libro verdaderamente extraordinario: inolvidable, desgarrador, de una potencia narrativa inaudita. De vidas ajenas recibió el Premio Globe y otros galardones y la prensa cultural francesa lo eligió mejor novela del año.<