Bruno Blog

In this blog we are always recommending books and this month, those who already know their holiday destination, I hope they also thought of which book or books will accompany them during their leisure time. Today, one of the novelties of the season, the new book by Malenka Ramos, LA PRINCESA DE MÁRMOL Y CRISTAL (The princess of marble and crystal) which is a fantastic summer reading. It has all the ingredients to keep you hooked because Malenka uses the mystery again and makes us believe what it’s not… And adding new elements to the story like love and a charismatic female protagonist, which help make it an addictive novel.

Samuel Ross is a writer and a psychiatrist known by his studies of criminal behavior. After a night of drunkenness, he’s the witness of the death of Arturo Coelho, partner of the businessman Markus Pastrana, investigated for embezzlement of funds, arms trafficking and the missing of several young women. He remembers it all like a dream, bits and pieces in his brain without any order until a week later he receives a letter: Salomé, the young woman who took the life of that man, describes him every minute of that terrible night and asks him for a favor, his help. The same night Salomé shows up at Samuel’s home. She needs to tell him her story, confess her reasons that lead her to all that madness- A story about love, pain, about the most inhuman cruelty. A story that will change the life of our protagonist forever. Because in this story… Nothing is what it seems.

Malenka Ramos already has a name in the publishing world and for me, she’s one of the women that deserves even more, because she manages all the registers, which is not easy, and this happens because she’s a great reader, since always, and that is captured on every page.

June is characterized by for many things: it’s summer, even though it doesn’t look like it, school is over, and we are lucky to celebrate the Madrid Book Fair. I love el Retiro full of stands, the excitement of the authors, the publishers and the librarians, and also the people who fill the weekend this wonderful park with the intention of spending a family day, where books are important. This fills me with joy because it’s a way to cultivate the power of reading in the family, something basic so children and teenagers get to know that a book can always be a good life or traveler companion.

Some of our authors have been signing: Paz Castelló with her thriller LA LLAVE 104, a lucid portrait of the crisis and a denunciation of political corruption. Alejandro Palomas has been also there with UN SECRETO, the new story of Guille that already made us fall in love with UN HIJO, or Emma Lire with PONE EN MI PIEL, the novel that shares the story of Petrus Gonsalvus, the King from the Canary Islands, who stars the real tale of The Beauty and The Beast. Jordi Tello, writer of 1816, EL AÑO QUE NO HUBO VERANO, was also in Madrid to sign his latest prose book full of thoughts and inspirational quotes about love breakups. Víctor Amela with YO PUDE SALVAR A LORCA, a charming novel both for the lovers of Garcia Lorca and for those who are not so fond of him, David Lozano, who has just published the children book series  Mayra Brócoli, and Ana Alcolea, writer of the children book EL FANTÁSTICO MUNDO DE LA ÓPERA, were also among the guests of the Book Fair. Finally, Francesc Miralles is signing books this weekend of the book I talked about last week, LA BIBLIOTECA DE LA LUNA, a unique story that, despite taking place in the moon, tells a very human story with the inspirational touch present in Francesc’s style, who never ceases to surprise us with his literary talent.

For those who have never come to the Fair, I highly recommend it, because the place is perfect and the atmosphere is amazing. This is where I leave you with this video we created in the agency so you can write down the books that will accompany you this summer on the beach or on the mountain. Holidays are a wonderful time to find a moment to get hooked on a book.   

I am very excited to write this blog because Francesc Miralles is back with another novel. LA BIBLIOTECA DE LA LUNA (the Moon Library), a wonderful book that mixes the traditional with the futuristic flawlessly. As always, Miralles is ahead in time and creates a great character, a tycoon called Kumar, who establishes the first human colony in the moon, Exovillage, for the richest ones. Verne, a linguist that works in a call center, is in love with Moira, a telecom engineer that lives in Exovillage and suffers from “space melancholy”. However, Verne manages to move to the moon to work as a librarian (the printed books were banned from Earth to avoid deforestation) and he will find texts that seek intellectual perfection. When Verne starts exploring the moon surface, he comes across a rare hermit that will become his Zen Master.

With this novel, Miralles knows how to manage, as always, two of the things that make his literature unique and special. A human story, even though it takes place in the moon, with inspirational touches that make this a perfect novel that will surely work, because in addition of a great story, provides the reader with some values  such as the conservation of paper versus the problem of deforestation, the true love and small inspirational pills that will make the reader underline the whole Miralles’ book. A learning of life that the reader carries in his backpack. Spectacular and quick to read, Miralles surprises again with his literature and that fans of his bestseller LOVE IN A LOWERCASE will not be disappointed. Thank you Francesc for making a better world with your novels, although sometimes I think we will have to move to the moon to live in peace.

When I tell people that I work with books, almost everybody is interested in knowing more, and when you keep talking and tell them you work as a literary agent, people feel more curious, because nobody knows what this job is about. The truth is that the work of a literary agency, a person who defends the writer’s rights, who intermediates between the publisher and the author, which was the basic task, is growing bigger and everyday we are more involved in more processes, because the world of books is changing and transforming. As a consequence, our work is also changing, and in addition, we need to use our creativity or we stay behind. We locked ourselves in a past that was way much better and that prevents us from evolving.  For this reason, reading the book by Ferran Martínez helped me: 13 canastas para ganar en los negocios (13 baskets to win in the digital businesses), published by Economía Digital, is a guide to understand the working of the new economy and which are the key processes to be successful in business. Under the claim focus-see-measure-execute-win, Martínez establishes, in thirteen concepts, resemblances between the high competition sports and the business: “to progress you have to have a disruptive mentality, that is to say, apply creativity in your daily tasks”. The truth is that this is something I’ve been trying to apply in my agency for a long time now; however, the world of books is still a world where the old and the modern are at war that makes us advance slowly, but this thought about the new economy and the economical and technological field from Ferran’s perspective, encourages me not to give up and keep reinventing myself.

Ferran Martínez, after a successful career in the Spanish basketball, in which he accumulated 156 internationals with Spain -and with the Euroleague basketball in 1994- he took up his other great passion: the economy. He’s now a successful businessman and ambassador for the United States of the Economic Confederation of Andorra, Martínez acknowledges that the values that sport taught him have been applied to the economy: “pressure, excellence and teamwork rule today the functioning of markets”. For this reason, the author not only describes the changes in the economic scenario but also gives the readers advice to make the most of their savings.

From crypto coins to blockchain, the new economy provides new business opportunities to “those brave people that dare to go further and add value to their product/service” says the author. This way, Ferran recommends to mix teamwork, creativity, talent and training to be successful in this new stage of the economy, that is not that far as we think and that we will have to face someday.

Any love breakup is painful, on both sides. It is evident that the abandoned suffers more than the one who abandons, but putting an end to a relationship is never an easy task because you leave one part of yourself in the other, many shared moments that remain in your memory, even if you don’t want to recognize it. These happy moments that you seldom enjoy but that leave you a good taste in your mouth almost impossible to forget. However, love is a flame that cannot be extinguished, because then it is very difficult to light it again, and we all need to feel this flame sometime during the day. We all need to feel loved, and when we lack this, there’s something inside us that it’s not properly working.

Jordi Tello is the writer of 1816, EL AÑO QUE NO HUBO VERANO (the year without summer), a small book in shape but big inside. Each sentence, each word, is perfectly measured and properly placed so you can feel the pain when you lose someone you love, when one day this person vanishes like the smoke.

I found Jordi thanks to Instagram, because his writings surprised me, they made me feel, and I read a lot because of my job, even texts I find in the social media, always in order to find something capable to move me. And his writings in particular made me laugh, cry, recall old moments full of passion, and I was surprised with myself because I did something that I have never done before: sending a message to a stranger, just to congratulate him for his writings. He answered me, kindly, and told me that he was about to publish a book with Urano, with Esther Sanz as his publisher, a person that I know very well because she’s one of the best and she’s also an amazing writer. I wasn’t surprised by this pairing, and I assure you that my intention wasn’t to recruit this boy, but just to tell him he had the sufficient talent to publish a book, but as Esther already have found him, I thought my relationship with Jordi ended there.

However, Jordi contacted me again and told me he was working on a new text and invited me to read it. I just loved it. Short texts but very deep, full of feelings, that aroused something in me once again. And now, here we are, Esther as his publisher, and I will try to take these texts to the next level. There are a lot of books that talk about love breakups, but not as Jordi does. I didn’t find books that talk openly about love, passion and madness, but also about doubts and sadness, about knowing how to forgive, in a few sentences and words. This is pure narrative poetry that switches on the warning lights of all the hearts. A short book to read quickly, that we can’t place in a particular genre, but we know something for sure: it’s pure feeling and makes me feel so much that I will leave on my nightstand to read the proper page when I sense my heart is fragile.