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The night is huge and structureless. But it is punctuated by our hearts. It's mid-afternoon, the weather is good, father rolls up his shirt sleeves. A dog barks outside, the elm trees rustle, the tap in the bathroom drips. I can hear banging as my brother mucks around in the workshop in the garden. Mama is downstairs running the shop, or rather waiting for the first customer of the afternoon.
What would you do if you discovered that you have superpowers and your best friends also have strange talents and your greatest enemy is the Devil? That's what happened to me, and I went from being the least popular boy in my school to being the most hunted half-angel in the underworld.
Jonas Plum is the name of the candid protagonist of this novel set in the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century. He tells the reader how his uncle and aunt rid themselves of him by putting him on a merchant ship bound for America and how he got lost in the jungle with Professor Clipercuff, who becomes his teacher and companion on his adventures.
Going on holiday, getting hold of some books or playing the piano can turn into a real nightmare for the Monki family. Their bizarre ideas mean their best friend Musa must help them to learn how to think and to solve these problems for themselves.
I'm not going to explain the plot of this novel. You can find that in many places. I only want to say that it is dedicated to the memory of Cassie, Steven, Corey, Kelly, Matthew, Dan, Daniel, Rachel, Isaiah, John, Lauren, Kyle and William, victims of the horrific events at Columbine. If you don't know what that means, do a search.
Pereyra Iraola, the headmaster, has died under strange circumstances. Amparito Conejo, the secretary, who was hopelessly in love with the dead man and is sure that the crime was committed by someone in the school, swears she will find the killer.
Las Hijas de Antonio López (The Daughters of Antonio López) is a settling of scores with life, which never owes us anything however much it takes from us. "What's lost is lost.
David is a member of the Fearless Ones, the gang of friends who appear in the mystery and adventure series of novels written by José María Plaza. He is always telling horror stories to his friends (not always at the best moment), which he gets from an old manuscript he found in his grandfather’s house.
Gorzila, a Japanese monster, travels through Spain with the innocence of a Buddhist monk, the strength of an anarchist and a heart bigger than his two brains. In a narrative somewhere between fable and social chronicle, Orihuela uses his protagonist as an alter ego, joking and ironic.
This book pays homage to an entire generation who lived through a time of upheaval and suffering, not just in Spain but across the planet. It tells stories of simple people who longed, like all of us, for a better world, all with very different solutions seen through different perspectives that ended up as a collective disaster from which the generations to come have had to learn.