"A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year. A contemporary police procedural with a literary edge. I was rooting for the flawed, but deeply compassionate Melchor Marin from the first page to the last. Highly recommended" M W Craven Two dead at the Adell house . . . But nothing in the duty officer's report can prepare Melchor Marin for what he finds. A wealthy couple tortured to death in an almost ritualistic manner. The little town of Gandesa in the backwater region of Terra Alta, Catalonia, is suddenly at the eye of a media storm. Melchor is no stranger to notoriety. He was sent to Terra Alta to lie low after foiling a terrorist attack. And, before that, he was jailed for his role as driver for a Colombian drug cartel, his decision to join the police inspired by a desire to avenge his mother's murder and a copy of Les Miserables from the prison library. Gradually, the leads in the Adell case dry up, and Melchor is ordered to back off. He doesn't, willing to sacrifice his reputation and career in a ruthless pursuit of the truth. But dusk is already falling on the darkest night of his life. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

"An irreplaceable testimony of the struggle for democracy and tolerance in Latin America." "--El Pais
"
Hector Abad's "Oblivion "is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written memorial to the author's father, Hector Abad Gomez, whose criticism of the Colombian regime led to his murder by paramilitaries in 1987. Twenty years in the writing, it paints an unforgettable picture of a man who followed his conscience and paid for it with his life during one of the darkest periods in Latin America's recent history.

"A remarkable act of personal history: brave, revelatory and unflinchingly honest" WILLIAM BOYD "There is no-one writing in English like this: engaged humanity achieving a hard-won wisdom" DAVID MILLS, The Times Lord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history. Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleading perspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama? Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation.

The Elimination of Morality combines a criticism of utilitarianism with an argument for the futility of bioethics. It challenges the conception of reason in ethics central to both, and argues that a philosophical training confers no special authority to make pronouncements on moral issues. It proposes that pure utilitarianism eliminates the essential ingredients of moral thinking.

"The Elimination of Morality" strikes at the root of the dominant conception of what medical ethics involves. It addresses the fundamental and timely question of the "kind" of contribution philosophers can make to the discussion of medico-moral issues and the work of health care professionals. It has two main objectives. The first is to establish the futility of bioethics. Anne Maclean challenges the conception of reason in ethics which is integral to the utilitarian tradition and which underlies the whole bioethical enterprise. She argues that the enterprise is philosophically misguided - philosophers do not possess moral expertise and have no special authority to pronounce upon moral issues. In particular, she shows that judgments about the morality of killing cannot be founded on a prior philosophical theory of "the value of life". The final chapter demolishes the "medical model" of illness and health which give exaggerated powers to the doctor, and proposes a role for the philosopher in medical education which deprofessionalizes life and death decisions. The second objective is to expose the inadequacy of a utilitarian account of moral reasoning and moral life.

"One of the great novels to have been written in our language" MARIO VARGAS LLOSA "Beautifully written and gripping" Guardian He thought that memories were invisible like light, and just as smoke made light show, there must be a way for memories to be seen... In October 2016, the real-life Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona. It's a difficult time for him: his father, Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few turbulent and intense days, Sergio will recall the events that marked the family's life, and especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his republican family in Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Latin America, not only will do we discover a series of adventures extraordinary by any standards, but also a devastating portrait of the forces that for half a century turned the world upside down and created the one we now inhabit. Retrospective is a revelatory and unforgettable novel. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

_______________ 'His novels probe the sore spots and raw wounds of contemporary Spain, their cunning and complexity leavened by a light touch and an easy, graceful style' - Boyd Tonkin, Independent on Sunday 'The beauty of this intelligently probing novel is that one is left wondering if we ever truly know anything about anybody - that anybody including ourselves' - Scotsman 'Compelling ... the real strengths of the book are in Cercas's unadorned prose, once again deftly translated by Anne McLean, and in his ear for the rhythms of everyday speech' - Guardian _______________ Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016, this novel from the author of Soldiers of Salamis and The Anatomy of a Moment tells the story of three teenage outsiders in post-Franco Spain In the late 1970s, as Spain was adrift between the death of Franco and the rebirth of democracy, people were moving from the poor south to the cities of the north in search of a better life. But the work, when there was any, was poorly paid and the housing squalid. Out of this world of limited opportunities a generation of delinquents arose whose prospects were stifled and whose rebellion would be brief and violent... One summer's day in Gerona a bespectacled, sixteen-year-old Ignacio Canas, known to his few friends as Gafitas, is working in an amusement arcade, when a charismatic teenager walks in with the most beautiful girl Canas has ever seen. Zarco and Tere take over his pinball machine and his life. Thirty years on and now a successful criminal defence lawyer, Canas has tried to put that long, hot summer of drugs, yearning and delinquency behind him. But when Tere appears in his office and asks him to represent El Zarco, who has been in prison all this time, what else can Gafitas do but accept? A powerful novel of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, of true integrity and the prison celebrity can become, Outlaws confirms Javier Cercas as one of the most thrilling novelists writing anywhere in the world today. _______________ 'Cercas adroitly balances the earlier criminal thrills with the later moral and emotional complexities' - New Statesman 'A moving meditation on youth, love, betrayal and the media, as well as an uncompromising political novel. Cercas has yet again expanded our idea of what fiction can do' - Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Secret History of Costaguana

The mayor of Barcelona is being blackmailed. A sex tape from her student days - one she never knew existed. The price: 300,000 euros and her immediate resignation. A political chameleon who swept to power on a populist wave, she has her enemies. Nor can she trust those closest to her. Both her ex-husband and her deputy would profit from her fall. Melchor Marín, living a quiet life in Terra Alta, is tempted back to Barcelona to work the case. But what seemed a simple matter has its roots in far more serious and disturbing crimes. With the mayor on the verge of capitulation, a shock revelation changes everything - not least the course of Melchor's life. At long last, his heart's dark desire is in his grasp. Praise for Even the Darkest Night "A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year" M W Craven "A wonderful novel. I look forward to many more Melchor stories" A N Wilson "The first in what promises to be an excellent series" Guardian Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

"Like Bolano, Vasquez is a master stylist and a virtuoso of patient pacing and intricate structure" LEV GROSSMAN, Time Magazine "Juan Gabriel Vasquez . . . has succeeded Garcia Marquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" ARIEL DORFMAN, New York Review of Books A morally complex, searing set of stories by the award-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling and The Shape of the Ruins (shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2019). A renowned photographer probes a traumatic incident in the life of a fellow guest at a countryside ranch. A chance meeting at a regimental reunion obliges a Korean War veteran to confront a shameful secret. And in the title story, an internet search for a book published in 1887 leads to the discovery of the life of a remarkable woman: Aurelia de Leon, who arrives in Colombia as a child orphan of the Great War, but as a free-spirited adult runs foul of her adoptive country's deep conservatism. The characters in Songs for the Flames are all men and women touched by violence - sometimes directly, sometimes tangentially - but the lives of all of them are irrevocably changed by the experience. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

When the Angel family's beloved home in the Antioquian wilderness falls into danger, they manage to defend it against the guerrillas and, later, the paramilitaries - but at a high price. After their parents' death, Pilar, Eva and Tono have to decide the fate of their father's legacy. While Pilar and Tono want to keep La Oculta, Eva, who experienced something terrible at the old farm house, is determined to sell. As the siblings each struggle with their own problems, their inner conflicts threaten to tear apart not only their home but also their family.

"One of the great novels to have been written in our language" MARIO VARGAS LLOSA "Beautifully written and gripping" Guardian He thought that memories were invisible like light, and just as smoke made light show, there must be a way for memories to be seen... In October 2016, the real-life Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona. It's a difficult time for him: his father, Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few turbulent and intense days, Sergio will recall the events that marked the family's life, and especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his republican family in Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Latin America, not only will do we discover a series of adventures extraordinary by any standards, but also a devastating portrait of the forces that for half a century turned the world upside down and created the one we now inhabit. Retrospective is a revelatory and unforgettable novel. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

"One of the great novels to have been written in our language" MARIO VARGAS LLOSA "Beautifully written and gripping" Guardian He thought that memories were invisible like light, and just as smoke made light show, there must be a way for memories to be seen... In October 2016, the real-life Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona. It's a difficult time for him: his father, Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few turbulent and intense days, Sergio will recall the events that marked the family's life, and especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his republican family in Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Latin America, not only will do we discover a series of adventures extraordinary by any standards, but also a devastating portrait of the forces that for half a century turned the world upside down and created the one we now inhabit. Retrospective is a revelatory and unforgettable novel. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

"To Bury the Dead" is an investigation of a brutal political murder and fascinating literary feud hidden by the dust of the Spanish Civil War. At the end of 1936, five months after Franco and his allies staged their coup against the Republican government of Spain, Jose Robles was arrested by undercover police during the increasingly bitter Civil War. Held under suspicion of treason under false charges, his subsequent detention and eventual execution were kept secret by the government. A close friend of Robles, the writer John Dos Passos, vowed to uncover the truth but was met only with a conspiracy of silence.Ignacio Martinez de Pison picks up the trail where Dos Passos left off, obsessed with discovering the true story. He traces the two men's long friendship, establishes their Republican credentials and tries to discover how and why Robles was killed, an answer that might lead to an explanation of why two of the most famous American writers of the time, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, both committed anti-fascists, went from being close friends to irreconcilable enemies. A story about real people whose lives were caught up in and shattered by political events, "To Bury the Dead" exposes power struggles, ideological feuds and deadly political rivalries.

The renowned Colombian writer Evelio Rosero has never been one to shy away from the darker aspects of his nation's history and society. His magnificent novel Stranger to the Moon portrays a world that seems to exist outside time and place but taps into the dark myths and collective subconscious of his country, with its harrowing inequality and violence. A parable of pointed social criticism, with naked humans imprisoned in a house in order to serve the needs of "the vicious clothed ones," the novel describes what ensues when a single "naked one" privately rebels, risking his own death and that of his fellow prisoners. Each subsequent section of the book adds further layers to the ritualistic and bizarre social order inhabited by its characters. Insects and reptiles are trained as agents and spies against the naked ones, and only the most fortunate humans manage to reach old age by taking up strategic spots near the kitchens and grabbing for the fiercely contested food. Stranger to the Moon is a brave, powerful, and distinctive novel by a writer who arguably holds the strongest claim to the title of Colombia's greatest living author.

*Financial Times Best Summer Books 2022* "A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year. A contemporary police procedural with a literary edge. I was rooting for the flawed, but deeply compassionate Melchor Marin from the first page to the last. Highly recommended" M W Craven A Terra Alta Investigation. Winner of Spain's biggest literary prize - the Premio Planeta When Melchor goes to investigate the horrific double-murder of a rich printer and his wife in rural Cataluna nothing quite adds up. The young cop from the big city, hero of a foiled terrorist attack, has been sent to Terra Alta till things quieten down. Observant, streetwise and circumspect, Melchor is an also an outsider. The son of a Barcelona prostitute who never knew his father, Melchor rapidly fell into trouble and was jailed at 19, convicted of driving for a Colombian drug cartel. While he was behind bars, he read Hugo's Les Miserables, and then his mother was murdered. Admiring of both Jean Valjean and Javert - but mostly the relentless Javert - he decided to become a policeman. Now he is out for revenge, but he can wait, and meanwhile he has discovered happiness with his wife, the local librarian, and their daughter, who is, of course, called Cossette. Slowly at first, and then more rapidly once ordered to abandon the case, he tracks the clues that will reveal the larger truth behind what appears at first to be a cold-blooded, professional killing. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Maria de los Reyes Castillo Bueno (1902-1997), a black woman known as "Reyita," recounts her life in Cuba over the span of ninety years. Reyita's voice is at once dignified, warm, defiant, strong, poetic, principled, and intelligent. Her story--as told to and recorded by her daughter Daisy Castillo--begins in Africa with her own grandmother's abduction by slave-traders and continues through a century of experiences with prejudice, struggle, and change in Cuba for Reyita and her numerous family members.
Sensitive to and deeply knowledgeable of the systemic causes and consequences of poverty, Reyita's testimony considers the impact of slavery on succeeding generations, her mother's internalized racism, and Cuba's residual discrimination. The humiliation and poverty inflicted on the black Cuban community as well as her decision to marry a white man to ensure a higher standard of living form the basis of other chapters. Reyita actively participated in the life of the community--often caring for the children of prostitutes along with her own eight children and giving herbal medicine and "spiritualist" guidance to ill or troubled neighbors. She describes her growing resistance, over five decades of marriage, to her husband's sexism and negativity. Strong-willed and frank about her sexuality as well as her religious and political convictions, Reyita recounts joining the revolutionary movement in the face of her husband's stern objections, a decision that added significant political purpose to her life. At book's end, Reyita radiates gratification that her 118 descendants have many different hues of skin, enjoy a variety of professions, and--"most importantly"--are free of racial prejudice.

Lord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history. Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleading perspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama? Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 "Like Don DeLillo's JFK-themed Libra, the novel is an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction" Glasgow Herald "A masterful writer" Nicole Krauss "Vasquez has succeeded Garcia Marquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" Ariel Dorfman, New York Review of Books "A dazzlingly choreographed network of echoes and mirrorings" T.L.S. It takes the form of personal and formal investigations into two political assassinations - the murders of Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914, the man who inspired Garcia Marquez's General Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and of the charismatic Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, the man who might have been Colombia's J.F.K., gunned down on the brink of success in the presidential elections of 1948. Separated by more than 30 years, the two murders at first appear unconnected, but as the novel progresses Vasquez reveals how between them they contain the seeds of the violence that has bedevilled Colombia ever since. The Shape of the Ruins is Vasquez's most ambitious, challenging and rewarding novel to date. His previous novel, The Sound of Things Falling, won Spain's Alfaguara Prize, Italy's Von Rezzori Prize and the 2014 Dublin IMPAC literary Award. Winner of the Premio Literario Casino da Povoa 2018 Finalist for the Bienal de Novela Mario Vargas Llosa 2016 Finalist for the Premio Bottari Lattes Grinzane 2017 Finalist for the Prix Femina Finalist for the Prix Medicis Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

A chilling allegorical novella by the masterful Colombian writer who poses timeless questions about violence and subjugation, power and freedom. Imagining the darkest of power imbalances in a dystopian world, in which the most vulnerable are held captive and wherein survival depends on the ability to remain anonymous, identity is a threat. Those who have everything would revel in the humiliation of others and identification brings with it the ultimate punishment. When hiding is no longer possible, the only choice may be to rebel. More frightening than the dystopia of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and with elements of the surreal to rival Kafka's Metamorphosis, Rosero's hypnotic tale builds in tension to deliver a crippling emotional punch.

What does it take to pass into another world? The magic in this world is dying. Prophecy tells how the creatures of magic must be moved to Shiri-la before they die with it. The unicorns must ensure this happens, and the Keepers must protect the unicorns. Tangea Ash is a Keeper, but even her unicorn Silverwood questions why she was chosen. Magic binds her to darkness. But there is always a reason. And all must learn to have faith.

WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE 2009 In a small town in the mountains of Colombia, Ismael, a retired teacher, spends his mornings gathering oranges in the sunshine and spying on his neighbour as she sunbathes naked in her garden. Returning from a walk one morning he discovers that his wife has disappeared. Then more people go missing, and not-so-distant gunfire signals the approach of war. Most of the villagers make their escape, but Ismael cannot leave without his Otilia. He becomes an unwilling witness to the senseless civil war that sweeps through his country with a tragic inevitability. In The Armies Rosero has created a hallucinatory, relentless, captivating narrative often as violent as the events it describes, told by an old man battered by a reality he no longer recognizes.

The mayor of Barcelona is being blackmailed. A sex tape from her student days - one she never knew existed. The price: 300,000 euros and her immediate resignation. A political chameleon who swept to power on a populist wave, she has her enemies. Nor can she trust those closest to her. Both her ex-husband and her deputy would profit from her fall. Melchor Marín, living a quiet life in Terra Alta, is tempted back to Barcelona to work the case. But what seemed a simple matter has its roots in far more serious and disturbing crimes. With the mayor on the verge of capitulation, a shock revelation changes everything - not least the course of Melchor's life. At long last, his heart's dark desire is in his grasp. Praise for Even the Darkest Night "A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year" M W Craven "A wonderful novel. I look forward to many more Melchor stories" A N Wilson "The first in what promises to be an excellent series" Guardian Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean