VLP Agency - Fall Narrative Catalogue 2022

By David Pintor

NARRATIVE

The Adventures of Amanda and the Pirate’s Cat Las aventuras de Amanda y el gato del pirata

Lilian Flores Guerra

A mysterious cat appears in the life of Amanda Cabot, revealing a series of secrets that will lead her to embark on incredible adventures to complete her missions and stay safe Along with her faithful friends, she will begin a magical journey through lands where mythical beings will test her courage.

Vol. I The Seventh Emerald

Vol. I La séptima esmeralda

Ediciones del Gato, 2013 | 90 pp | 13,5 X 21 cm Softcover | Age 7+ | ISBN 9789563531299 AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

Amanda must find a jewel that belonged to a former pirate captain to prevent a curse from falling on her family.

“The summer is over. In a few more days school starts, and everything becomes a frenzy of shopping for uniforms, back packs and books. My friends Laura and Francesca, who live on my street, are lamenting the fact that we have to say goodbye to our afternoons on the beach.

Unlike other times, when I would be just like them, complaining about the beginning of a new school year, now my thoughts are anywhere else but here. My face is still the same, my house is still the same, but I feel that everything will be different, after the end of not only the best vacation I remember, but also the greatest adventure of my life.”.

Book Fund Winner, National Council of Culture and Arts of Chile, 2013

In 1680, the English pirate Bartholomew Sharp arrived off the coast of northern Chile After attacking the port of Coquimbo, the captain and his men hid on the island of Juan Fernández

More than three centuries later, the dramatic events on this island will lead Amanda Cabot, a twelve year old girl living in Valparaíso, to embark on an adventure with three new friends: the sailor cat Croc, the wise turtle Shilda and Guayo, the macaw. Amanda must find an

emerald to be returned to the captain, or else, the weight of the curse will fall on her and her family This quest will lead her to travel through the south of Chile, visit the magical Island of Chiloe and even have encounters with mythical local characters, such as La Pincoya and the ghost crew of the Caleuche ship But this adventure will not be without dangers. An evil sorcerer will try to prevent the group from achieving their mission, putting the lives of Amanda and her friends at risk.

Vol. II The Treasure of Collasuyo Vol. II El tesoro de Collasuyo

Ediciones del Gato, 2016 | 150 pp | 13,5 X 21 cm

Age 7+

AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

In this new adventure, Amanda will have to face a series of dangers to find an ancestral treasure in the north of Chile.

“When I was 12 years old, I had one of the most extraordinary experiences a girl of that age can have. I lived with my parents and my younger brother in our house in Cerro Alegre, in the mythical city of Valparaíso, Chile’s main port. Like any other girl, I went to school, hung out with my friends and practiced my favourite sport, artistic gymnastics. My life went by with its usual happiness and occasional sadness, until a legendary character appeared on my doorstep. Then everything changed.

Captain Croc is a Siberian cat who is not content with just the gift of human speech. His seven long lives are riddled with stories of adventure, and he travelled from far away to connect me with my pirate ancestors forcing me on a mission that almost left me living forever on the Caleuche, a ghost ship that, until then, I had thought was only part of the mythology of the Island of Chiloé.”.

Santiago Municipal Literature Award, Youth Literature Category, 2017

After the events that took her to the south of Chile to put an end to the curse of the captain, Amanda Cabot thought that her life would become normal again But soon, mysterious events happen during a family holiday, which would prove that the adventures were far from over Together with her faithful cat, Captain

Croc, and the company of new friends, Amanda must travel a difficult path through the north of the country in search of an ancestral treasure, facing dangerous forces that will take her further and further away from home

Winner of the poetry contest

en Viaje”, Chile, 2020

Lilian Flores Guerra is a writer, editor and journalist She has published both a children and young adults saga and a novel Winner of the Santiago Municipal Literature Award in 2017 (the oldest contest in Chile) and has twice obtained the Chilean Ministry of Culture Book Fund (2013 and 2019) Editor of Ediciones del Gato, a publishing house interested in supporting independent writers and new voices in the Latin American scene.

Mysteries Saga Saga Misterios

Beatriz García Huidobro

This is the fourth book of a saga that has been a best seller in schools for many years. The story of cousins Pablo and Diego and their family together with spectacular natural landscapes, from the driest desert in the world to Patagonia, reveal the narrative talent of one of the most outstanding Latin American authors

Mystery at Patagonia Misterio en la Patagonia

Editorial SM , 2022 | 19 X 12 cm | Softcover | Age 10+ AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

At the ends of the Earth, customs, legends and nature intertwine, and a mysterious situation arises.

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Antonia burst into her brother Pablo's bedroom and said seriously and firmly: Something happens. Diego, her cousin, looked up from the screen. He was finishing up a presentation for Biology class and wasn't distracted when he was focused. Pablo kept throwing the ball into a basket attached to the door. He turned on his back and jumped before hitting the target.

Even with my eyes closed! He exclaimed proudly. You're two centimeters away, anyone can do it answered his sister. I challenge you. Enough of little balls, I am telling you that something is happening.

Amoebas are impressive Diego said . Did you know that, despite being unicellular organisms, they have the ability to produce many diseases? Like amebiasis, which is the best known, but there are others that…”.

In this volume, Diego is invited by his grandfather to know each other at his home in the Chilean Patagonia. The grandfather’s wish is to recover the lost relationship with Diego, who will start to create an emotional bond with the lands where he comes from. Together with his cousin Pablo, Diego will connect with the incredible nature, cattle, customs and legends. One day, a robbery occurs at the grandfather's house, but no one has entered, according to the

police. The suspects are a couple of workers and guests, the children and Grandpa. Someone confesses, but Diego realizes that facts and words do not fit in the puzzle. It is a mystery in the style of those Victorians in which nothing is what it seems. And although the immense and indomitable exterior nature captivates them, they will not rest until they discover the real culprit and the motives.

Mystery at Los Piñones

Misterio en Los Piñones

Editorial SM , 2009 | 131 pp | 19 X 12 cm

Softcover | Age 10+ | ISBN 9789562645997

AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

A family goes to the seaside for vacation. Just before the big party of the weekend, the queen of the event disappears. Cousins Diego and Pablo immerse themselves in the investigation to find her, collaborating with the town police. An agile and entertaining novel with a story that recalls the well constructed plots of Agatha Christie.

Mystery in the Camp

Misterio en el campamento

Editorial SM , 2009 | 170 pp | 19 X 12 cm

Softcover | Age 10+ | ISBN 9789562646000

AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

Diego and Pablo go to a kids' camp in the mountains. Every night, they gather around the fire to tell horror stories, which strangely, seem to come to life the next day: signs are found that scare children. The cousins, together with their new friend Cósima, will try to solve the mystery.

Mystery at La Tirana

Misterio en La Tirana

Editorial SM , 2009 | 172 pp | 19 X 12 cm

Softcover | Age 10+ | ISBN 9789562646444

AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

Cosima's family invites Diego and Pablo to La Tirana, a small town where a big celebration to Virgen del Carmen takes place. While some adults hold business meetings in a nearby city, suddenly papers, information, computers and other things begin to disappear. The children must find out what is going on before it's too late.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award to Beatriz García-Huidobro, FIL Guadalajara, 1997

Beatriz García Huidobro has studies in Pedagogy and Psychopedagogy, and a master’s degree in Literature She has worked as a professor, writer, literary critic and editor She has published several successful novels for adults and children Among the reviews, articles and interviews focused on her work, stand out the ones by the renowned Chilean writers Diamela Eltit and Sergio Missana, and the literary critics José Promis, José Manuel Vial, Carlos Labbé, and Jaime Concha.

Seven Keys to Open Dreams Siete llaves para abrir los sueños

Alfredo Gómez Cerdá

Illustrations by David Pintor

Kalandraka Editora, 2020 | 15 x 23,5 cm

pp | Board book | Age 8+

RIGHTS SOLD IN SPANISH, CATALAN, GALICIAN AND ITALIAN AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES, EXCLUDING CHINA

Finalist Cuatrogatos Foundation Award, 2021

“The students of the school had been waiting for the visit for days. The corridors had been decorated with drawings and, in the hall, they had placed a large portrait of the writer, which the teacher had dared to copy from a photograph. With huge colored letters, they had formed a phrase around him: “Benvenuto alla nostra scuola, Gianni Rodari”…”.

Gianni Rodari, Tomi Ungerer, Astrid Lindgren, Juan Farias, Christine Nöstlinger, Roald Dahl and Gloria Fuertes star in seven stories, a magic number for so many essential figures in the history of contemporary Children's and Young Adult Literature. This narrative tribute by Alfredo Gómez Cerdá is made with ingredients that the characters themselves cultivated throughout their careers: fantasy and creativity. After the anecdote that gives rise to each story, the previous documentation work that encourages readers to delve into the biography and work of these authors shines through. To the point that the border between reality and fiction is blurred, as if these episodes could form part of his life and somehow explain his literary vocation.

Rodari is the architect of a window of escape for a girl in the face of a family drama. Ungerer

fascinates by the ability of his characters to interchange in his own books. Astrid Lindgren acts as an activist against social injustices and environmental aggressions. Farias gives us a lesson about what is important in life: memory, friendship, the territory we inhabit... Roald Dahl lives a disturbing adventure in Transylvania with a mysterious and nocturnal lady. And in dark post war Madrid, Gloria Fuertes receives an unexpected gift from some small and daring neighbors.

David Pintor's illustrations transcend the physical representation of the characters. They are figures capable of reflecting their human significance and seem touched by that kind of magic that, through their books, have made thousands of people dream of in the world.

Thank you, Alfredo Gómez Cerdá, for giving us these seven keys that take us back in time and give us wings again to imagine a better society where boys and girls are capable of creating a new world full of stupendous moral values; and for putting Children's and Youth Literature in its proper and imperishable place. José R. Cortés Criado, Un Abrazo Lector Blog.

Alfredo Gómez Cerdá studied Spanish Philology and specialized in Literature. He began writing plays, but in the 1980s he discovered children's and youth literature. Since then he has published more than seventy titles. He has received, among others, the Altea (1984), Gran Angular (2005), Fray Luis de León (2006), Ala Delta (2008), Cervantes Chico (2008) and the National Prize for Children's and Youth Literature (2009). He appears on the CCEEI Honor List and on The White Ravens, and has been a Spanish candidate for the Astrid Lindgren (2018 and 2019) and Hans Christian Andersen (2018) awards

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There are authors who can change reader’s lives and even become myths. They carry the magic key that allows us to enter a world of beautiful dreams. Seven of them can be found in these pages.

The Mischievous Girls

Las niñas traviesas

Marian Lutzky

Illustrations by Karina Cocq

Cocorocoq Editoras, 2020 | 12 x 16,5 cm | 100 pp

| Age 10+ | ISBN 9789569806124

AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

Three friends in the adventure of living the transition from girls to teenagers. A book about friendship, trust, support, complicity and the changes of adolescence.

“At dusk, when the sky throws its ochre shell over the city, the girls make a pact. Under the fig tree, the hat made of green and pernicious leaves protects them from artificial lights. They do not know their fate yet. They have no certainty of their present yet. What are they, but the constellations on the ground?

As the night thickens the mothers’ scream and wave. The girls, shrouded in the darkness of a corner, enjoy their pranks.”.

Marian Lutzky invites us to read and inhabit the book. To live the mundane experiences within a fantastic world. To recognize how these same experiences, told from the outside, take on more weight than we give them as we experience them in our own lives. Martina Cáceres, Bravas

Under the storms of Valdivia, a beautiful and rainy city in southern Chile, Sayén, Muriel and Ariel experience friendship as only a group of girls can: faithful, rebellious and happy. They grow together with all the passion and rebellion of the end of childhood.

A novel that deals with an intense bond of friendship, heartbreak, anger and questioning in an amazing stage of life. This story resists the weak representation of the media that portrays

girls and women as superficial beings. A story that navigates that depth that relationships between women have. To grow up as a girl is to have doubts, to be a changing being in a dramatic and intense stage of life. A vital place for the formation of one's identity, which is generally built by relying on other women. This novel, perfect for all ages but especially for children and adolescents, is illustrated by Karina Cocq in a beautiful and careful pocket edition.

Honorable Mention Medalla Colibrí IBBY Chile, Youth Fiction Category, 2021

Ministry of Cultures Award, Marta Brunet Category, Youth Section, 2021

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The recognition of the book is a recognition of all childhoods in this complex sociopolitical context, where it becomes even more important to raise our voices for our children who need to be respected, listened to and valued. We can't let girls like the ones in The Mischievous Girls be violated in their fundamental rights.

Marian Lutzky

“By how close Muriel's eyebrows were, Sayén could guess her anger level, a warm anger almost imperceptible, or a fiery one like the ripe pepper from her yard. Muriel used to tie her hair with snail shells, worms picked by herself with salt and matches. Muriel counted them: More than ten are a pest, ten is the western limit. Over there in Ariel's yard are luckier.

Ariel is cautious, collects cacti and succulents in her room They all have the honour of a name. But when Ariel runs, all her discretion fades away. She opens her arms, stretch her legs out to occupy all the space that the air allows her. She runs just like the trees dance with the city wind with no direction. Sayén is interested in all the marine animals. Big ones, little ones, and tiny ones, especially crayfishes. How does it rain in the water? Sayén sinks into the bathtub and imagines an intense shower similar sound. She plays the guitar as if they were rays from heaven.”.

Marian Lutzky is Argentinian She is a special educator and holds a master's degree in Reading Promotion and Children's Literature from the University of Castilla La Mancha She is also co founder of the reading promotion group Qué lindo leer and is responsible for its magazine In parallel to this role, she works as a teacher at the Universidad Austral de Chile and the educational establishment Aliwen. Author of “Las niñas del jardín”.

By Ceciro

YOUNG ADULTS NARRATIVE

Amelia, of Knowledge and Childbirth

Amelia, de saberes y partos

Alejandra Becerra

The story of a mother to her daughter about her transition from the depths of her interior to that physical space called life.

“Amelia opens her arms and takes a deep breath. Her breeze of air caresses her face and her free hair plays with the wind. Today they have told her how she came into the world and something in her has changed forever. She feels the love of her parents to the surface. She is a beloved girl and that makes her completely happy. She goes over and over again, with her eyes closed, the story that her mother has told her: how she was born on the morning of a crescent moon, exactly 12 years ago. Her mother has explained that mammals need privacy to give birth.

Am I a mammal? Amelia asked.

Yes you are! Humans are mammals! Just as a cat or a lioness does to give birth to their young, so do we human females. In a very similar way, only that we have forgotten concludes Rocío.”.

Today they have told her how she came into the world and something inside her has changed forever She is a beloved girl and that makes her completely happy She goes over and over again, with her eyes closed, the story that her mother has told her: how she was born on the morning of a crescent moon, exactly 12 years ago. Her mother has explained that mammals need privacy to give birth.

She has been told that we are mammals, that just as a cat or a lioness does to give birth to her young, so do we human females In much the same way, only she has forgotten us Amelia infects her friends and classmates of this impulse, so that they begin to investigate and investigate what births are like, going from ancient Egypt to their own births.

“Amelia perfectly understands what her mother explains to her. Not long ago she saw her cat Mila give birth to her. It was she herself, in fact, who helped the kitten to feel safe and accompanied by her. In the darkness of Amelia's closet, the cat gave birth to five kittens very calmly and quietly. With the confidence that animality grants, she licked her babies and stretched her body, so that they found the tit one by one. And she knew very well to stay still to regain strength and calmly feed her puppies.

Amelia treasured that experience forever and the beautiful feeling that her cat's grateful look produced in her for offering her company, so sweet and unconditional of hers. Everything was so easy in the arrival of these puppies. The cat rested, ate and drank a lot of water, dedicating the first few days exclusively to feeding her kittens.

Hearing her mother's story and willing to continue unraveling the beautiful mystery of her birth, Amelia invites her friends to talk about it the next day in a more secluded place in the schoolyard.”.

I feel that we have abandoned the physiology of childbirth to only prevent and anticipate pathologies and act around that. For this reason, the need arises to transmit and educate through a didactic, friendly and easy language story, which allows women to know at an early age the power they have over themselves so that they can choose and decide a good company in their childbirth. Alejandra Becerra Morales.

Alejandra Becerra Morales is a Chilean obstetrics certified in Natural Childbirth, at the University of Chile, and Eutony and Homeopathy, at the University of Santiago. She has experience in natural births and birth monitoring in the city of Santiago, incorporating protocols in the private health sector. She has participated as a speaker in various courses, conferences, workshops and congresses, promoting Humanized Childbirth and her clinical experience.

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Behave Like Ladies Compórtense como señoritas

Karen Luy de Aliaga

Illustrated by Toto Duarte

Cocorocoq Editoras, 2021 | 12 x 16,5 cm | 235 pp Softcover | Age 15+ | ISBN 9789569806131

AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

A story of a girl and the construction of her identity, while accepting to be a lesbian with all the wonderful and difficult it can be to recognize herself differently, in the Lima of the 90's.

“A staple in the left parietal. Eighteen stitches. A couple of them stitched over the eyelid with a needle the thickness of a baby's hair. Dr. Lauro, an eighty two year old orthopedic surgeon, said that the seams were well polished, although he couldn't explain why I hadn't lost my eye. As he passes me a small flashlight to check the reaction in the pupils, he comments with a smile “yesterday I treated a boy who had a disco mirror ball fall on his head. Dancing is dangerous. "The boy got a ball, a boy fell on me," I said. The rest of the surgical points were distributed in the eyebrow, confused between old scars from a piercing and a blow to the handrail of my grandmother's stairs when I was four years old. On the way home I think maybe it was a necessary scar, a reminder of how you should NOT do things in your twenties. A warning signal before the repetition of bad steps. The final point or eighteen points of my postponed adolescence.”.

The best Peruvian LGTBIQ Book of the Year by Crónicas de la Diversidad, 2019

Being a lesbian in a conservative country like Peru in the 1990s is not easy The protagonist of this story knows that well An attack in a nightclub on her birthday is the starting point of the story of a girl and the construction of her identity After recounting how they stitched up her wound without anesthesia, she walks through various moments of her life, from a childhood in which she already perceived herself as different to the moment in which she came to be a lesbian, with all the wonderful and

difficult it can be to recognize herself as different

Behave Like Ladies takes place in Lima, a city where friends accompany the experiences of the protagonist Without victimization, the author shares the marginalization and violence of living as a lesbian while making us part of the rebellion of a young generation that calls for a cultural change that cannot be stopped

A book to understand the journey of self-knowledge and acceptance of a lesbian woman, full of moments of a different and misunderstood childhood. It shows the difficulties of not knowing what it means to be a lesbian, how to accept it and how to communicate it within a society full of refusals in the face of diversity and the free choice to love.

“No, I didn't ask for it. I didn't expect it either. I celebrated my birthday in Antro, which is just that, a club, but after all it was our safe place. Then it occurred to me that I deserved it. I was a bad daughter, a bad sister and a bad girlfriend multiple times. I felt that I had already made my payment to the land. My blood, abundant, shed as tribute. My mother sometimes told us that when you laugh a lot, you end up crying. That was just a speech inherited from grandfather to scare and control his entire herd.

All my theories about the hit were absurd.

The last few years, before the trial, I just deleted the moment. I won't be able to erase the scars on my face, but I can erase that day from my lifeline. If I don't remember, it didn't exist. To survive, you know. The images I have of the hospital are similar to a low budget horror movie.”.

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Through friendship, discrimination, violence, shame and sisterhood, Karen Luy de Aliaga makes us spectators of someone else's life. A story that contextualizes the love and lack of love between women, as the complex and liberating process of accepting oneself.

Martina Cáceres, Bravas Magazine.

The anger accumulated over the years will lead the protagonist to also go through episodes of self destruction, depression, alcohol and drugs that are nothing more than a desperate cry to find a place in the world. A place that at this time hundreds of young people, especially women, must be looking for and that at the beginning of the novel they are warned: “If you are reading this book, I want you to know that you are not alone. RESIST». Lector.cl

Karen Luy de Aliaga is Bachelor in advertising, writer and poet born in Lima, Peru She is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Creative Writing at the Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero She is the author of works such as: 2472 kilometros al norte and Mudanza Se was a finalist of the Bienal de Cuento Copé in 2016. Her novel Behave Like Ladies was nominated for best novel of the year by El Comercio Newspaper in 2019 (edition launched in Lima, Peru).

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Toxic Best Friend Amiga tóxica

Cecilia Curbelo

Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, 2022

15 x 20 cm | 320 pp | Softcover| Age 12+

RIGHTS SOLD IN SPANISH (URUGUAY, ARGENTINA AND MEXICO)

AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

Before she came into my life, I existed, period. I was one more in high school, one more in my house, one more in the universe. To me, Julieta Reyes, nothing differentiated me from the billions of human beings that inhabit the planet.

Until I met Nicole. Then, everything changed.

Our friendship is a cluster of sensations in black and white. It is a permanent contrast between bright and opaque. Between joy and sorrow. Between containment and abandonment. Between the extreme happiness of feeling unique and valuable when she tells me a secret, a secret that she only shares with me, and the searing anguish when Niki gets angry and walks away from me. With her there are no middle terms.

If she ignores me, I look for a way to be forgiven. Anything to make up and be best friends again, or "the chosen sisters", as we swore that time when we crossed our little fingers.

Nicole transformed my life.

For better? For worse?”.

Julieta's life changes completely when Nicole crosses her path. Niki is confident, charismatic and after dazzling Juli on their first meeting, she becomes her classmate and new best friend. Thus begins a bond that will immediately become intense, dependent… A friendship that will suffocate Juli, blurring her and turning her into an appendage. And although the best friends swear to tell them everything, Julieta suspects that Niki is hiding something very serious.

Entangled in what she defines as "the web of an oppressive friendship", Julieta will try to put her life back together, even if that means making decisions that fill her with anguish and guilt. What is behind Nicole’s domineering and abusive personality?

An intense and captivating novel, especially recommended for teenagers, that deals with contingent issues of young people such as toxic relationships, self discovery and the ability to recover from family problems and tragedies.

“The discomfort that settled in was one sided. Only I perceived it. Nicole did not seem to have noticed the rarefied atmosphere, and after a few moments, after leaning her head against the trunk of the tree and closing her eyes, as if enjoying the atmosphere, she sat up again and resumed the dialogue as if nothing had happened.

I don't know if I could live in a noisy family, I tell you. I really enjoy the silence. Silence helps me to think, to delve into everything I have in my head, which I assure you are millions of things! She said, and laughed. I cracked a smile too. I must forget the recent event. Nicole hadn't meant to hurt me. I was the one who took the remark about my brothers being 'just my half brothers' too much to heart. Of course, when I want to cover up the mess of thoughts, what I do is listen to rock and metal at full volume.”.

I hope to portray in this new story of toxic friendship a link that helps shed light on the relationships that bind us, limit us or transform us into someone we don't want to be, someone who doesn't bring us happiness. Cecilia Curbelo.

Bartolomé Hidalgo Award, Uruguay, 2012

Golden Book Award for Best selling Book, Uruguayan Book Chamber, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015

Woman of the Year Award for World Peace, 2016 Florencio Award for Best National Author Screenplay, 2018

Cecilia Curbelo. After selling more than 100,000 copies of books, she has turned into Uruguay’s most successful children and youth author. She has a legion of faithful readers from Latin America and Spain. She has a degree in Communication Sciences and has written television, radio and theatre scripts In 2012, she received the Bartolomé Hidalgo award Since then, she has received the Golden Book award for the best selling book for four consecutive years In 2016, she received the Woman of the Year award for World Peace and won the Florencio Award for Best National Author Screenplay in 2018.

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This is the fourth book of a saga that has been a best seller in schools for many years. An intense and abusive friendship that will lead its protagonist to discover who she really is.

ADULTS NARRATIVE

Illust . By Alejandra Acosta

The Angel Woman

La mujer de la guarda

Sara Bertrand

Illustrations by Alejandra Acosta

Babel Libros, 2016 | 19 x 22 cm | 91 pp

Hardcover | ISBN 9789588954103

RIGHTS SOLD IN SPANISH (SPAIN AND COLOMBIA), PORTUGUESE (BRAZIL) AND CATALAN AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

UNESCO Chair Distinction, 2019 New Horizons Bologna Ragazzi Award, 2017

Banco del Libro de Venezuela Award, Youth Literature Category, 2018

“On long summer evenings or on clear nights with a full moon, you can see the most beautiful woman in the world on her horse. This is what she told me. It was just a couple of seconds, like a dream within a dream, like a gust of wind through the sky, or the trail of a shooting star. And then, the image of the woman on the horse. Just imagine that she has travelled over hundred thousand times the distance from Kilimanjaro to Patagonia, but she doesn´t look tired. She is in a hurry, indeed. She stops for a few moments and then speeds away again like a bolt of lighting perhaps to another place where someone may need the eye that she holds in one hand.”.

The Angel Woman is a jewel in blue, with dreamlike images of mysterious beauty that prefigure and amplify the drama and the shots, one realistic and the other fantastic, of the story narrated by Sara Bertrand. Yolanda Reyes, Arcadia Magazine

Jacinta wants to know how her mother will breathe inside the coffin and her aunts tell her that she had better go take care of her siblings. Jacinta remembers from her mother the sound of the spoon hitting her glass when she stirred the milk until it was smooth. Jacinta laughs with her brothers and her father when he can get home early from work and they eat together and in the end he pulls gum and candy out of their ears. Jacinta is a weirdo in a world where other children have mothers. Jacinta does not have a guardian angel but a woman who travels on a blue horse watches over her.

Narrated in the voice of a little girl, the novel tells the story of Jacinta and her brothers, twins who depend on her to survive the death of their mother and the absence of their father. Jacinta manages to move forward with her life together with her brothers and she does it, precisely, by the hand of literature, telling her siblings a story about other children, other abandonments. A story about mourning, childhood and survival; about those little joys that accompany each other in times of pain. A special book to deal with themes such as sorrows, death, illness and brotherhood.

“Since she saw the most beautiful woman in the world, she began to dream about her. Dreams of a girl, dreams like an animated short film where the horse appeared full of yarn hanging from its belly and as tame as a dog. In her dreams, she gave it an apple and the horse swished its tail, a mix of its mane and some pompoms, chewing the apple and making noise with its mouth. The woman laughed beside her. She also dreamed of accompanying her in the evenings, when the sun was setting and María grumbled:

Ouch! It's late, what time did your father say he will come home? Then she dreamed about her. The woman was around 4.3 of height, with sweet gaze and fingers like musical notes, singing a long and melodic song, a song that made her fall asleep and cooed the twins, without having to tell them a story. Because her father was late and Maria left them alone. Every day.”.

A beautiful illustrated book that contains a disturbing story in black and blue about loneliness, death and the early loss of childhood. Of innovative invoice, a work for all ages that constitutes an inexcusable reference in the formation of readers.

Rosa Tabernero, Reading Master’s Director at the University of Zaragoza

Sara Bertrand studied History and Journalism at the Catholic University of Chile, where she currently teaches She writes for Fundación La Fuente and teaches workshops at Laboratorio Emilia She received the New Horizons Bologna Ragazzi Award and the Banco del Libro Award in 2017 for “The Angel Woman” She was included in the White Ravens List 2017 with “No se lo coma” and in 2016 she won the Banco del Libro Award for “Cuando los peces se fueron volando” . She has published in several Latin American and European countries.

A story about mourning and absence, about a childhood that survives despite adversity and abandonment.

Family Album Álbum familiar Sara Bertrand

Planeta - Seix Barral, 2016 | 13,5 x 22 cm

RIGHTS SOLD IN ITALIAN AND SPANISH (MEXICO AND COLOMBIA) AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

Banco del Libro de Venezuela Award, Youth Literature Category, 2022

“The word "patient" is deceptive. It leads to error, since it assumes that those who wait do so meekly. And it is not like that. Health centers make people sick. You wait while everything overflows inside you and, suddenly, the inside is an unfathomable world compared to the outside. Swirls and more swirls shake you as you ask why, why, why. It is true that nobody is free to throw any stone, but in that state, in that alienating category in which you stop being and become someone who waits, you feel the right to point the finger. To say: you, yes, you. And get rid of that discomfort that seems bigger than the evil that afflicts you, a cause that escapes you; a why that is confused with your terrors. And you drown. That woman who is behind the counter and picks up the phone with a condescending smile, seems like a monster to you.”.

In Family Album, memory feels damaged by another, an absent person. The memory seems like someone lost and the story is a living witness. It is a novel that tries to trace the lost. Perhaps the memory endures and that is important to understand the story, or it is a reminder about the story and the resistance. Rodrigo Umaña, Grifo Magazine

This novel tells us about a mother who loses her memory and the experience of a totalitarian regime, where a group of children seem to take care of themselves and discover, along with pain and fear, their first loves. Narrated in the voice of Elena, Family Album reconstructs the story of a family in a dictatorship, its fears and nightmares, always attached to the experiences of a group of children and teenagers who grow up with a

dream: to throw out the dictator, to be free. The dictatorship is then seen through the eyes of these adolescents who try to survive their historical time and the misadventures of their families.

Without neglecting the language and poetic prose, Family Album is a dynamic and daring book, totally pertinent to understand the situation of any country ruled under pressure and authoritarianism.

The love of two cousins in a family environment shattered by the dictatorial regime "of the man with the Mao collar". It is a painfully contemporary and universal story, masterfully written by one of the most outstanding authors in Latin America.

“You ask, and she smiles; you insist, and she smiles; you get up and she looks at you out of the corner of her eye and smiles again, and you want to wipe that stupid smile off her face. The infamy of the neglected, the childhood that returns with you and populates your reality with deformities. You don't want to get used to misfortune as if because it happens to everyone it had to do with you. You want to get better and, above all, think that this is exceptional, that you will go out and walk down the street without running out of breath, that you will remember what you have been and think about what you will be. Even if the inside brings that language from yesterday and returns you over and over again to the same movie from your childhood while you keep waiting for them to call you, to be told, to be made. When you finally leave that room, you wait in the asepsis of a pavilion and feel murmurs; the technologists, nurses and a ballet of people move around, oblivious to the modesty that invades you, because it seems that the inside is escaping and soon you are not only naked under that robe, but also exposed. Because you are the one that is seen, the one that is shown.”.

This is the story of a woman, it is the story of resistance to oblivion, it is a story full of loneliness. From the fear of “no place”. From the search for an identity full of broken images. It is a small refuge. Although everything is shattered, there is memory. –

Ventana de Tinta

SARA BERTRAND

UNESCO Chair Distinction, 2019

New Horizons Bologna Ragazzi Award, 2017

Banco del Libro de Venezuela Award, Youth Literature Category, 2018

Sara Bertrand studied History and Journalism at the Catholic University of Chile, where she currently teaches She writes for Fundación La Fuente and teaches workshops at Laboratorio Emilia She received the New Horizons Bologna Ragazzi Award and the Banco del Libro Award in 2017 for “The Angel Woman” She was included in the White Ravens List 2017 with “No se lo coma” and in 2016 she won the Banco del Libro Award for “Cuando los peces se fueron volando” . She has published in several Latin American and European countries.

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Way Out Afuera

Sara Bertrand

“My dad brought Salvat the same weekend that Rocky arrived, the chicken that Beto won at the school fair. Rocky was super smart, we found out quickly, because my mom let him stay thinking he would freeze to death, and he survived. He got to be old, though he wasn't nice then. They became friends with Salvat, we named him that way because of the encyclopedia that they sold in the newsstands every week. A C, E G, which we complete up to Z.

Rocky and Salvat did everything together, except sleep, because Salvat preferred to get between the gas cylinders and Rocky, behind the washing machine. It was enough for the chicken to see it appear to go to its head. Determined to make them into a famous animal pair, we taught Rocky to jump from chair to chair, fly, and land like a ballet dancer. For Salvat, on the other hand, we put a carrot on the ground and said: “no, Salvat, no”. And the pig looked at us, Beto and me, snorting with disgust, but he didn't eat it. What's more, he didn't move an inch. What they did eat was the grass from the garden, and we took advantage of that land to play at cities: we made roads, water wells, bridges, highways; also, we put Lego houses that, sometimes, Salvat chewed and we had to throw away.”.

Two voices, two identities dissociated by time seem to meet The girl Lili is her adult version and vice versa, building a dialogue that becomes a game of mirrors and memory, because Way Out explores that break of the language, the search to reach the other, even if it is the story itself

A story about childhood, adulthood, death, love and the urge to say to find a way to mean. Through this conversation in two voices we understand the power of memory family, its

narratives and images and the role that these discourses play in the construction of a woman in a country too similar to Chile Sara Bertrand throws herself violently and uneasily against language and its impossibilities, unfolding a risky and beautiful novel, a journey through the multiple twists that combine both emotions and reasons to take us to the limit, where there is no room for binarisms such as forgiveness or fullness.

In her new novel, Sara Bertrand demonstrates once again her great ability to configure identities exposed to the limit of their possibilities. Patricia Espinosa, LUN Newspaper

With a very flexible structure, Bertrand achieves an agile and powerful novel that leaves room for silence and the question of how to build an identity that is not dragged by chance, bitterness or fear. Rodrigo Pinto, El Sábado Magazine (El Mercurio)

“Our dirt garden gave us a sense of ownership, we wanted it, a huge city just for us. Our mom hated it. Every time she went out on the terrace she would yell: “Fucking pig, the garden has turned into a mud pit!” And she chased after him until Salvat hid behind the gas cylinders. The day he ate one of the legs of the dining room chairs, mom threatened us.

Salvat ended up at Grandma's plot No. 2 and every time he felt our car, he would run down the hill to meet us. Sometimes we played hide and seek, we climbed the trees and we called it: “Salvat, Salvat”. And the pig made the earth tremble until it found us.”.

SARA BERTRAND

UNESCO Chair Distinction, 2019 New Horizons Bologna Ragazzi Award, 2017 Banco del Libro de Venezuela Award, Youth Literature Category, 2018

Sara Bertrand studied History and Journalism at the Catholic University of Chile, where she currently teaches She writes for Fundación La Fuente and teaches workshops at Laboratorio Emilia She received the New Horizons Bologna Ragazzi Award and the Banco del Libro Award in 2017 for “The Angel Woman” She was included in the White Ravens List 2017 with “No se lo coma” and in 2016 she won the Banco del Libro Award for “Cuando los peces se fueron volando” . She has published in several Latin American and European countries.

“ ”

A risky and beautiful novel, a journey through the multiple folds that combine both emotions and reasons to take us to the limit, where there is no room for binaries such as forgiveness or fullness.

“

”

The Wanna. Collected stories El Querisque. Cuentos reunidos

Andrea Maturana

“Seeing her there, sleeping in his bed our bed , the first thing that occurs to me is that she is Santiago's sister.

So is the mind.

I've been with him for five years, and it's so painfully intolerable that there's another woman in his bed, that I make up a sister that I know he doesn't have. I even manage to hold my invention for a while, put music in the background, and there I stay, motionless, clearly thinking, «the sister», without hearing the noise that the question makes me, back: «Which sister?!».

Then I hear him, whistling under the rushing water. His whistle dispels the illusion of the sister.”.

I wanted to look into the hearts of the characters beyond their realities. I wanted to look at how many times there may be a wound behind madness, how we can all be crazy or sane at times in life. For me, the Wanna is not a symbol of gender violence, nor of patriarchy, nor of machismo: he is crazy. Andrea Maturana

This volume condenses all the fictions conceived by Andrea Maturana in the artistic genre that gave her a prominent place among the female voices of the New Chilean Narrative. From the 1990s until today, it gathers her two books of stories, (Un)expected (Un)encounters (1993) and Do Not Say (2006), in addition to the story The Wanna. Thirty years have passed and the readers still can feel identified with the protagonists. They recognize their fears, traumas, pain, loneliness and anguish. The imaginary that the author captured in those intimate stories describes very

well the vulnerability of the human being, that which transcends generations and borders. They are stories that contain, embrace, welcome and allow us to connect with others in a genuine way. Because shared fragility, far from weakening society, heals it, unites it and makes it stronger. These stories remind us that we are all in the same search for love and acceptance, and that when we show ourselves as we are, we meet the other face to face, without disguises that create distance, divide and distort reality.

A compilation of Andrea Maturana’s stories that shows how the recurring themes traverse time, leaving testimony to their ever-present urgency.

“Whistling, I think, so he's happy. This makes him happy, taking a shower after having sex with a woman who is not me and who still sleeps in our bed (and she is not his sister, I know), is for him a relaxation that deserves a shower and a whistled song. I shouldn't be there at that time. Why am I there is another story, long and boring. At that moment, I am the one who would most like not to be there. Never have been. In two seconds I shuffle the way of never having been and then I feel like a fool. My mind gets stuck on those things: trying not to happen what has already happened. What a waste of time. Then it occurs to me that it is indeed better not to be there, to do something to disappear. I try to move. Relocate; actually…get out of there. But I can not. I can't no more.”.

Catalyzing the vibrations of the Chile of the Transition, each story problematizes the trauma, the unmentioned pain, the guilt, the hypocrisy; enter the black holes full of silence that are weaving the organization of bourgeois family life. Because it is there, in that cell called family, where these writings seem to place the heart of the conflict. Uncomfortable characters, against the grain, repressed and sometimes abused by patriarchal figures, transvestites of a nonexistent perfection, representing a farce of normality to protect the status quo. Nona Fernandez, writer.

Andrea Maturana is a prominent Chilean writer, translator, biologist and Gestalt therapist. Her first book was (Un)expected (Un)encounters (1993); then came her novels The Hurt (1997) and Do Not Say (2006). Her latest works have been written for children, including Eva y su tan (2005), Life Without Santi (2014), Strange Things (2018), Axolotl (2018) and Secret (2019). Her works have been published in Chile, Spain, Mexico and translated into Korean, Chinese, French, Dutch, English and Portuguese

“ ”

That Beach in the Hamptons

Aquella playa de los Hamptons

Marco Malfatto

FOR ALL TERRITORIES,

CHINA

“Waiting for Merton that morning in his office in Queens, where I had been sitting in high spirits for a quarter of an hour now after being summoned at ten o'clock by Merton himself, I discovered to my alarm and by chance as I crossed my legs that, without any explanation beyond mere wear and tear, I had a hole in the

heel of my right sock the diameter of the Ferris wheel at Coney Island, which plunged me into a state of despondency highly inadvisable to face the meeting in which Merton, as he had announced, was going to commission me to write a script for a new series.

The image was even more discouraging when I remembered how Ann had asked me last night not to neglect my appearance in the meeting with Merton, how she insisted that I go to see Merton in my best clothes, she said, in my best shoes, to go see Merton in my best socks, Ann told me.”.

The recommendation by his therapist of a relaxing walk along the beaches of the Hamptons leads the protagonist of this story to meet a successful television producer whom he has known for a long time, who offers him the possibility of revitalizing his career as a screenwriter, entrusting him with the script of a bucolic family series set in the mountains. However, the only thing that seems to concern him is a hole in his right sock. From that moment on, a reality marked by

delirious and comical obsessions will gradually be revealed. His only redemption seems to be going back to that beach in the Hamptons again and again to find the calm and inspiration he needs to finish his script. With biting humor and playful first person prose, That Beach in the Hamptons is an artfully conceived novel that evokes a narrative game inspired by the blending of the writings of Thomas Bernhard and Woody Allen.

“And I listened to her, I dressed with the best of my wardrobe, but I could not foresee that, that very morning of the appointment with Merton, the sock on my right foot would leave me, that duckling sock, which until then had been my preferred, it would say stop and leave me desolate in such an inopportune way.

I wondered then if that sock wasn't the same one that cried out to me a few days ago while walking on the beach in the Hamptons, when I had the feeling that it didn't keep my heel warm like its pair. At that moment I went to check it, but, surprisingly, Merton appeared walking on the same beach in the Hamptons and everything else became irrelevant.

And the fact is that meeting Merton in the Hamptons was an exceptional event, because I didn't know that Merton bought a house in the Hamptons, and because I didn't usually go to the Hamptons either, least of all going for a walk on that beach in the Hamptons where Merton had bought a house.

After all, I thought as I waited for Merton in his office in Queens, I only went for a walk in the Hamptons at the direction of the therapist at the Michigan nursing home, who had strongly advised me that upon my return to New York , I'll take any opportunity to get closer to the Hamptons. My therapist told me to take a walk in the Hamptons to get some air, to relax, to take a walk in the Hamptons to calm down.”.

Marco Malfatto studied philosophy, psychology and dramatic art in different cities of the American continent, including New York, where he currently resides. He worked as a newspaper delivery boy, reader, proofreader, and hobby writer for The Monday Sheet newspaper in its Spanish edition. With an extensive journalistic career of more than 30 years, he is now making his debut in literary fiction with this delirious comedy set in New York at the end of the eighties of the last century

A novel that reflects, with amusing prose and scathing humor, a reality marked by delusional and comical obsessions.

Until She Goes No More Hasta ya no ir y otros textos

Beatriz García Huidobro

LOM Ediciones, 2003 | 14 x 21,5 cm | 204 pp Softcover | ISBN 9789560007063

SOLD IN FRENCH (FRANCE) AND SPANISH (MEXICO) AVAILABLE FOR ALL TERRITORIES

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The narrative contention supports the development of the argument. In the narrator’s words there is no place for truculence. Pain and humiliation are trivialized by an innocent look that knows evil but refuses to be dominated by it. There is a perfect congruence between this worldview and the form of the discourse. The language construction is impeccable and responds perfectly to the purposes that the story pursues a quality difficult to find in many contemporary Chilean narratives José Promis, El Mercurio, Chile 2013.

This novel takes place during the Unidad Popular, a political alliance period, under the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, and continues until the years following the military coup headed by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973 It narrates the "story of a provincial girl whose natural ingenuity makes her a victim of the deformations of an adult This narrative situation allows the unfolding of a new vision of the rural world, whose beauty hides the merciless harassment of the landlords over the defenselessness of the

servitude, through a language of surprising stylistic elegance and poetic evocative capacity

One of the best novels of the biennium 1996 97" Handbook of Latin American Studies

The other three texts titled “Tide”, “Material Fatigue” and “Japanese Garden” are on different but similar topics: childhood, desolation, and abuse of power

The stylization of the spoken language in the writing makes this novel a masterpiece of feminine and Latin American narrative

“

The dawns are sluggish. The sun slips wearily behind the hills. At its highest point, it begins to set. At that time, Amelia is finishing her work and leaves everything prepared for the arrival of the men. Sometimes she manages to meet up with Jose, running towards the thicket of hawthorns. And there are some days when my brothers and my father arrive before she has the opportunity to get away. Amelia tends to their needs in silence, while the density of the sunset blends with the heaviness of the evening.

I approach the hawthorns. Jose has his head lowered and at times looks up with an expectant gaze.

Winter is approaching. They are thinning the thickets and Jose no longer comes”.

Beatriz García Huidobro has studies in Pedagogy and Psychopedagogy, and a master’s degree in Literature. She has worked as a professor, writer, literary critic and editor. She has published several successful novels for adults and children. Among the reviews, articles and interviews focused on her work, stand out the ones by the renowned Chilean writers Diamela Eltit and Sergio Missana, and the literary critics José Promis, José Manuel Vial, Carlos Labbé, and Jaime Concha

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award to Beatriz García-Huidobro, FIL Guadalajara, 1997

A novel that shows the wounds of sexual abuse in a country that is falling apart.

Closed Road Ahead Camino cerrado

Paula Ilabaca

“They always said I was the best. Maybe they were right, maybe I did stand out from the others. I always handled what they requested, did whatever they told me. I held truth and justice in my hands and used them to get the job done; pain and death were always nearby and I became immersed in both. With my hands open or closed, I was there. This could be my story or not. This could be the story of three friends growing up, and me falling into a deep, endless spiral of encounters. I see myself, a young woman, digging into whatever he suggested and instructed, into the lives of other people, into their grieving and silences, into their difficulties. I see myself in an echo of basins and cells, in holes I called memories. I look at myself in a mirror that keeps on bending, the mirror of my face. I lie, dream a lot, telling myself: it’s late, it’s late, Leiva, and you’ll run to work and see him, yes, you’ll see him again standing in front of you, like that morning, but he won’t be burned; you’ll see him alive and you’ll have him in front of you, and you won’t know what to do.”.

Her narrative reflects a compelling oral tone, both everyday and also niche specific. When the narration plunges into the twists and turns of detective terminology or the labyrinth of investigation protocols, one believes it. This is a writing that persuades me. As a reader I buy it all... And I want more. Patricio Contreras, Hipergrafía

In Santiago at the end of 2006, when the criminalization of femicide in Chile did not yet exist, Homicide Brigade detective Amparo Leiva, at the height of her career as a police officer, had to face the investigation for murder of a woman at the hands of her lover. That crime scene will open old doors from her past and bring an old case that marked her

beginnings as a detective. On the verge of an important destination to another city and involved in an administrative summary, admired by her police procedures and, at the same time, questioned by her peers, Leiva will be entangled in a threatening plot which only her memories will manage to bring her back to the light

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The protagonist of this narration is an introverted detective, charged with an unapproachable sadness but firm in her decisions, and respected by her colleagues from the Homicide Squad, a meritorious fact that usually becomes a burden that, however, the character knows how to lead. With this, her second police novel the first was The Rule of Nines , Paula Ilabaca establishes herself as one of the most relevant voices in the cultivation of this genre at a national level. Patricia Espinosa, LUN Newspaper

“I was your best detective. I imagine you reading the documents spread over your desk, cell phone in hand. You keep calling me. I see the orange light on my cellphone flash, once, twice, three, four, nine missed calls. You’re probably smoking another cigarette. When you leave the office, they’ll ask you if you need a lift home. I know you, though, you prefer to drive. You go back to your office, sit in your big chair and look at the picture of your unit on the left side of your desk. You look at each of us, thinking: she was my best detective. I imagine you crumpling a piece of paper, the report on my situation. You angrily toss it in the trash. Then you look at Urquiza, that seducer; you look him up and down. Why had you thought it a good idea to pay off an old debt by letting him join the Unit? Why did you accept to mix him with the men and women who you had trained for years? Urquiza, standing in the corner of the group, with his hand at his waist. Urquiza saying with his body that he’s standing there because he’s the tallest. He smiles cynically, with his blond, slicked back hair, serious, but with greenish brown eyes staring at the camara, slightly exposing his shoulder holster and service gun. I’m also in the picture, sitting to the right of our boss, far from Urquiza, with my black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, a clean face, dark mascaraed eyes, and a soft glow on my lips. I don’t smile, I hardly ever smile; that’s my thing, my way of saying don’t fuck with me. I was your best detective, and this time, Deputy Commissioner Cuevas, I let you down.”.

PAULA ILABACA

Pablo Neruda Award, 2015

Floral Games Award, 2014

Critics of Literary Press Award in Chile, UDP, 2010

Paula Ilabaca is a Chilean writer, teacher and editor. Master in Higher Education, Bachelor in Hispanic American Language and Literature, Bachelor in Education and Teacher of Spanish. She has twice received the Literary Creation Scholarship awarded by the National Book and Reading Council in Chile Among her publications we find in poetry Peninsulas, RIL Editores (2019), The Loose Pearl, Editorial Cuarto Propio (2009) and the novel The Rule of Nine, Emecé (2015).

The Rule of Nines

La regla de los nueve

Paula Ilabaca

A journey between the police novel,

the reality described by its

journey

not

“You’re not allowed to sleep on call. You have to answer the phone, coordinate operations, how many police go out, how many stay at the station. Do they need experts at the crime scene? What are the characteristics of the scene? You have to keep track of how many vehicles are in the parking lot, that nothing is missing, that everything functions as it should. You’re not allowed to raise your voice or turn up the volume on the battery powered radio. Sometimes, depending on the supervisor’s mood, you get certain freedoms, but there’s almost always a supervisor who’s never in the mood. You’re not allowed to talk on the phone: they’re not ours, they belong to the government. Anything you say can be misinterpreted. That night, however, our shift supervisor was laid back. We listened to music, commented old cases, recalled friends who had died in the line of duty, others debated an old chess game.”.

Three friends turn to poetry, friendship, and fleeting romances to bear living in a country that has initiated a transition back to democracy, after nearly two decades of dictatorship It’s the 90s in Santiago, Chile’s capital, and they live amongst the mirage of democracy and happiness Three members of a dysfunctional family: a father who left, a single

mom and her son trying to make ends meet Three detectives work on a case like no other, attributing a provisional and practical meaning to death The Rule of Nines is Paula Ilabaca’s first novel it is an exhaustive story, meticulous in detail, relying on multiple narrators who reflect the bewildering violence and division

have built present day

▪

A broken relationship between a mother and her son, who has always felt estranged from her. What is happening to Gabriel? Is he merely a problem child or maybe an incipient sociopath?

▪ A young university student from a working class neighborhood: his sexual forays turn into the delirium he needs to survive.

▪ This Chilean neo noir novel features two homicide detectives: Cuevas and Leiva, a mentor pupil tasked with solving an enigmatic murder case Ilabaca’s first novel introduces these complex and relatable characters and comes back to further develop them in her later fiction

“ ”

Paula Ilabaca has written a dark, passionate, and heartbreaking novel that combines elements of romance with noir in a subtle and chilling style. Patricia Espinosa, LUN Newspaper

“We were in a warehouse next to the old house now used as the Homicide Unit headquarters. In the warehouse we slept and worked in groups to resolve the cases. We operated like a clan. If something happens to one of us, the rest are willing to die for him. That’s how we were trained: we must have a strict spirit of assembly. That’s what we call it. That’s how we are. We speak in code that only we understand, codes of nobility and honor. It was six in the morning and the night had been calm: our superior had given us permission to sleep and we followed orders. Each of us slept sporadically. In general, we preferred to stay up all night because you can feel even more tired with just two hours of sleep, but we tried to rest. The night was calm and we’d finished all our work. When it was my turn to go to sleep, I set my alarm and drifted off right away. A few minutes after I woke up the phone rang.”.

PAULA ILABACA

Pablo Neruda Award, 2015

Floral Games Award, 2014

Critics of Literary Press Award in Chile, UDP, 2010

Paula Ilabaca is a Chilean writer, teacher and editor. Master in Higher Education, Bachelor in Hispanic American Language and Literature, Bachelor in Education and Teacher of Spanish. She has twice received the Literary Creation Scholarship awarded by the National Book and Reading Council in Chile. Among her publications we find in poetry Peninsulas, RIL Editores (2019), The Loose Pearl, Editorial Cuarto Propio (2009) and the novel The Rule of Nine, Emecé (2015)

The Secret of the Animals

El secreto de los animales

Antonio Fernández

“He sees Lily everywhere. Not as before, when he saw her as a memory, wandering like a ghost on the corridors of his mind. This time it is really her… flesh and bones; her name, story and photograph appear in every conversation, every newspaper, and on every corner.

A few days ago, his flat mate, Elisa, asked him if he heard about “that British girl”, ignoring his relationship with that British girl, and his utter and complete fascination with knowing as much as possible about her sudden disappearance.

Salvador has read every article and news report about Lily’s case, his obsession so driving that he ended up losing his job; he had spent too many hours analyzing the details of the tragedy these past three days, which resulted in the abandonment of his duties as a journalist for the Manhattan’s Choice, a small and archaic newspaper from which he got fired just moments ago. Now, he’s returning home with a few of his affairs and a bitter taste on the back of his mouth.”.

The disappearance of Lily Hayes shakes the world: a successful journalist, mother and friend of all She vanishes in the Falkland Islands without a trace The lack of progress in the police investigation leads Salvador Villagrán, a Chilean journalist eternally in love with Lily, to travel in search of her to the Malvinas archipelago, a place as remote as it is enigmatic

Once there, Salvador is received by Tessa Bennett, Lily's childhood friend and two other disappeared Without an apparent plan, they compare their theories looking for some light along the way, until the accidental discovery of the corpse of a fourth involved prompts their

investigation: a note with the name of an animal tells them that they are taking part in a cruel and incomprehensible game, which has its roots in a common childhood on these islands

A game that seemed innocent then, but ended with the discovery of military bodies after the war, implying the loss of innocence and the breakdown of that stage of their lives

New deaths and more disappearances are intertwined in a thriller that will transport the reader to this painful archipelago still in recent memory, of a difficult cold that penetrates the human relationships of those who visit and live on the islands

“The wagon for line J on the subway is almost empty. Salvador opens his little notepad to write down some thoughts related to Lily’s case, but he forgets them the second the tip of his pen reaches the paper. He then starts to sketch, once again, Lily’s profile. He starts with her eyes, almost transparent. Then, with broader, imperfect strokes, he traces the side of her face, and then her long neck, which reminds him of a Victorian lady. It is not difficult for him to remember her; on the contrary, he can remember every detail within a second of closing his eyes.”.

A crime thriller novel for young adults and adults that takes place in the Malvinas Islands, a territory that few novels have dared to explore.

The book reports on the 1982 conflict, the current political situation and the geography of the archipelago in a well documented way.

Fluent, captivating and addictive storytelling. It has high doses of mystery, romance, drama, humor and unexpected twists and revelations that occur only when the author reveals them.

The dialogues involve the reader with the dynamism of each character, all free of stereotypes and also easily identifiable, achieving empathy from the very first pages.

Antonio Fernández is a Chilean filmmaker from the Chilean Film School, a certified writer in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto and in Screenwriting from the New York Film Academy. He has worked in advertising and film production companies. He has published stories and narratives in different books and platforms, such as the anthology Nostalgia bajo cero (2020). Winner of the 2021 International Latino Books Awards for Best Fiction Book by multiple authors; in the virtual cultural center Alas de Cuervo (2021); the book Santiago in 100 words: the 100 best stories of the 20th edition of the contest (2021) and in the anthology La casa en el arce (2022) First place in “El Cajón en 100 palabras” contest with El limonero (2021)

They are in the Malvinas Islands and the game has begun again, but they are no longer the children of that time. The journalist Salvador Villagrán travels to the ends of the world in search of his missing friend to reveal dark and painful secrets of the history of the island and his people.

The Eternal City La ciudad eterna

César Farah

FOR ALL TERRITORIES

In the 1st century A.D., a political crime shakes Rome. The fire will destroy everything but truth. A novel that pays tribute to the highest tradition of the historical genre.

“Dark, the whole city still slept. The city that would be eternal, immortal, the city that would never cease to be.

There was no noise, the smell of earth and wood permeated the room. A rooster crowed. The wind was cold in the winter dawn and the color of the night gave way to the first light, which dyed the rising morning blue. The rooster crowed again. The light took on a lighter tone, still blue, but it was definitely not night anymore.

Quinto rolled over on the bed and stretched, it was time to get up. He pushed back the wool blanket and sat on the edge of the pallet.”.

In the Rome of 62 A D , the mutilated and raped body of a young patrician woman is found far from her home, in the Subura, the most popular neighborhood in the city Lucius Geminius Celsus, former legionnaire, exemplary Roman and member of the Urban Cohort the empire's police , is the first at the scene of the crime Cornelia Merga Ocella is also there, an enigmatic and sensual woman with a privileged intelligence and a mysterious past Together they will embark on a dizzying investigation to clarify the brutal murder and little by little they will be involved in a much

larger conspiracy than they imagined, which will take them to the highest spheres of power of the empire and that will even endanger their lives

With a relentless pace and remarkable historical precision, The Eternal City delves into the beginnings of Christianity, at a time when it was still considered a sect within the empire, outlines a very different Nero from the one thought to be known, and proposes an origin of the burning of Rome that we will not find in the history books

With vivid descriptions of everyday life in the 1st century AD. this novel builds captivating adventures and endearing characters. An argument that combines the police mystery, the historical novel and the political plot, as well as proposing a new and fresh vision around historical figures, such as Nero, Peter the Apostle or Paul, the founder of the Church.

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The Eternal City places the reader in the middle of a coherent and well recreated pre Christian Rome, where the main historical characters of the time roam, who will turn the narrative into a novel of intrigues with a high historical component that travels through the beginning of the Christianity and the great fire of Rome under the reign of Nero. Lector.cl

“Quinto rubbed his eyes and groped for the jar of water to wash his face, which he did while still sleepy. The apartment was small, made up of a bedroom and a room that served as a kitchen, dining room, and living room (although part of the food was cooked in the patio or directly on the street). Even so, he was lucky: he lived alone and that was one of the good flats in the insula, the apartment building in which he lived. Quinto had a good job as a tavern manager, a popina to tell the truth. Thanks to that job he could pay for that room, a real luxury for a single man. His house was located on the second floor of a building with apartments that rose on six overcrowded floors, as were almost all the insulas, but his cubicle was the only one that had direct access to a tiny patio that he shared with the ground floor of the building that was attached to his and, being exactly the same, it also rose six stories upwards.”.

César Farah (Guillermo Pilgrim) is a novelist, playwright, critic, theater director and academic. He has written the novels El Gran Dios Salvaje and Trilogía Karaoke, as well as the dramaturgical trilogy Piezxs para ciudadanxs con vocación de huérfanxs. In addition, he is the author of the play El monstruo de la fortuna, premiered in Madrid in 2021. He has also written and directed the dramatic pieces Alameda, Medea, Vaca sagrada, Tender and Cobras o pagas.

The Black Tulip Collection La colección de los tulipanes negros

Juan José Vidal Wood

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From the very title of his novel, the Chilean writer Juan José Vidal Wood opens a series of questions that the main character Lucas Vascones will resolve. As the author himself, Vascones is a Chilean based in China, who is knowledgeable about the language, its culture and the martial arts, thus the plot will lead us safely to immerse ourselves in a natural way through all these elements, without impositions Vivian Lavin (Chilean Academy of Language Award , 2017)

A fast paced, engaging novel of suspense and intrigue where secret desires, ambitions, and a long forgotten mystery come together on a historical journey through Europe and Asia Lucas Vascones is a Chilean who has lived in Shanghai for many years One afternoon he receives a call that jerks him out of his routine: his old martial arts master has died, and his funeral will be held in Kunming, in southern China Lucas decides to attend, though with some reservations: ten years earlier, a dispute with Tang brought their relationship to an abrupt and definitive end At the funeral, Master Tang’s widow approaches Lucas and asks him to write her husband’s posthumous

biography Alfred Tang had been a celebrity in martial arts circles: after starring in a number of martial arts films, he went on to build an international empire of prestigious martial arts academies

At first, Lucas tries to evade the proposal but ultimately accepts, prompted by his curiosity as well as his own secret dream of becoming a writer Mrs Tang hands him a set of boxes filled with material so that he can start his research In one of the boxes Lucas finds a journal filled with notes, a tiny picture of the sixteenth century Italian missionary Mateo Ricci, and a beautiful drawing of a library with books in all different colors

“ Mrs. Tang passed me a few sticks of incense. Master Tang’s body had been laid out in a dark coffin, some three meters away from where we were standing. Two cushions had been placed on the ground for people to kneel on. Someone lit the incense in my hand, I knelt and began to bow my head in a gesture of respect. My two hands held tight to the incense sticks, which I raised up to my forehead. I tried to hold my breath, but suddenly, from somewhere deep inside my throat, the violent sound of a hiccup escaped my mouth. Again I tried not to breathe, and tried counting up to 15, but it was useless: by the time I hit 10, another hiccup disrupted my counting. In spite of this I tried to maintain a dignified stance, leaning forward three times as I had been told was part of this traditional ritual. Close to the coffin I placed the still burning incense sticks in a large iron incense burner with sand at the bottom, so that they might continue smoldering. They joined hundreds of other, already burnt out incense sticks. A pungent smell hung in the air. I got up, and as I walked back over to the coffin, I let out another hiccup, this time silently, and I saw my master’s face. I had never told him why I had decided to give up traditional Tai chi chuan and Kung fu. One day I simply stopped calling him, stopped going around to his house. I knew he had asked some of the other students about what had happened to me, but the truth is I just never worked up the nerve to tell him that I no longer believed in what he was teaching me”.

Bewildered by the discovery, Lucas enlists help from Tang’s daughter, who connects him to an old friend of her father’s, a university professor by the name of Yan. Lucas meets with Professor Yang, who tells him about the black tulips, a collection of books that had once belonged to the sixteenth century Jesuit missionary Mateo Ricci, who was born in Italy but lived and died in China.

The professor fills him in on several details, most interestingly the name of the last known owner of the “black tulip” book collection, a businessman from southern China. Professor Yang also shows Lucas some old film footage

from the 1950s featuring a young Alfred Tang practicing the cha cha cha with a beautiful, exotic woman by the name of Vicky Cifuentes. The professor tells Lucas that if he wishes to find the collection and learn more about Alfred Tang, he must call on the beautiful Vicky. To Lucas’ surprise she is still alive, living in Hong Kong. Lucas decides to visit her, and this short trip becomes the first step on a series of unforgettable events that will lead him through Asia and Europe, where his life will change in the quest to uncover the truth about the books, about his martial arts master, and about history itself.

Juan Jose Vidal Wood is a Chilean lawyer who later studied Chinese at Wuhan University (China). He also holds an MBA from the Haute École de Commerce (HEC) in Paris. He has been living in Asia for many years. Where besides working and traveling, he practices martial arts His literary influence is varied, from Latin American and American writers to crime novels, as well as Chinese classics

Coyhaiqueer

Ivonne Coñuecar

Negro Ediciones,

is a quality work that relies on the memory of self fiction to reconstruct a complex scenario in which the characters are highlightly displayed. In this dynamic, Elena and Jota have chosen not to hide from their sexual orientation, they choose to grow up and survive in a place that even if it is uncomfortable, at the the end, belongs to them- El Desconcierto, Chile 2019

Novel Santiago Municipal Literature Award,

Coyhaiqueer carries out an analysis of Coyhaique's (Chile’s Patagonia) daily life during the eighties and nineties. There she explores forbidden topics such as suicide, the LGBTI world, HIV, the militarization of Patagonia, classism, the concept of family not conceived as relatives but as lasting friendships, drugs, youth, the obligation of young people to

seek for success outside the city, uprooting and wounds inflicted through time, among others.

Through the protagonist, Elena, the author develops in fourteen chapters a narrative linked to the chronicle. This is the first novel by Ivonne Coñuecar with which she consolidated as one of the best young writers from very southern literature.

This novel shows us a world prior to social networks, where isolation is not only geographical.

“We call it the capital, Macondo, Ithaca, Twin Peaks, Coyhaiqueer. We stuck with the last name, we were proud of our differences. It would never again be a silent place where life would occur on the sly, assembling and disassembling like a Rubik's cube, until matching the right color..."[...] "There were days when time stopped, we would go to the Indian's Stone, and if it hadn't been for the river following its course, we would have thought that we had died or that we were frozen. It was so easy to be dead or frozen at the end of the world. We tried to say things that could only be told with the eyes, we learned to hold our silence, especially when we were at the Indian's Stone, so close to slipping and saying goodbye. The wind came with such intensity that we could barely hear ourselves. We would be infinite and young, dancing drunk, walking around in the early morning, asking where to go next; watching the sunrise from the viewpoints with sore eyes and laughing about anything. That place we called a city because we wanted it to be a city, and we wanted to grow without growing, and to feel that there would be someone to hold us, and someone waiting for us at home when we decided to return. And there were so many eyes watching that we learned to look at ourselves in, that was the moment I knew and dared to feel desire for a girl. I defined my position. We defined our positions …”.

Ivonne Coñuecar is a Chilean poet, journalist, and narrator who has also participated in audiovisual projects. Her versatility is shown in the Patriagonia Trilogy (LOM, 2014) as well as in the various anthologies in which she has participated She works as an editor and conducts creative writing workshops Author of the poetry book Chagas (2010) and several times a fellow of Chile’s Ministry of Culture. She received the Honourable Mention at the Eduardo Anguita National Poetry Contest and was the winner of the 2019 Santiago Municipal Literature Award for her novel Coyhaiqueer

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