SARA PARETSKY, página 2 de 5

The feisty, tough and shrewd heroine appears in her third adventure in the V.I. Warshawski series, from one of Americas greatest female crime writers.

La detective Victoria Warshawski, mujer independiente, solitaria, aparentemente dura e incapaz de ordenar su vida doméstica y sentimental, vuelve a hacerse cargo de la causa de los desheredados encarnada en dos de sus vecinos: una anciana que vive sola con sus perros y cuya presencia incomoda a los nuevos residentes del barrio y el entrañable señor Contreras, que le pide su ayuda para localizar a un antiguo compañero de trabajo desaparecido cuando hacia averiguaciones sobre las condiciones de jubilacion de la empresa en la que ambos trabajaban. En esta doble actividad, Warshawski se asomara a la problematica de los ancianos en una sociedad despiadada que no duda en aprovecharse de sus miembros mas desfavorecidos.

La investigadora privada V. I. Warshawski, experta en karate y tiradora mortal, es contratada por el vicepresidente de uno de los bancos más importantes de Chicago para que encuentre a la novia de su hijo Peter, misteriosamente desaparecida. Cuando le piden que abandone la investigacion, la detective se niega y halla una pista que la convierte en la principal enemiga de una peligrosa organizacion integrada por asesinos a sueldo y pistoleros sin escrupulos. Valor seguro es un thriller habil y refrescante, una inteligente combinacion de humor acido y suspense. Sara Paretsky, una de las escritoras de best-sellers de mayor exito de Estados Unidos, consigue atrapar al lector con un estilo agil y eficaz y una protagonista sencillamente irresistible.

Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago's Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. The girls include daughters of some of Chicago's most powerful families: The grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is one of the world's wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is the Illinois Democratic candidate for Senate. For V. I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Sophy Durango? Or to Chaim Salanter's childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania? As V.I. struggles for answers, she finds herself fighting enemies who are all too human.

"New York Times-bestselling author Sara Paretskys brilliant protagonist V.I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes.V.I. Warshawskis closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. When Kittys daughter finds her life is in danger, she calls Lotty, who, in turn, summons V.I. to help. The daughters troubles turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets, and silence, whose origins go back to the mad competition among America, Germany, Japan and England to develop the first atomic bomb. The secrets are old, but the people who continue to guard them today will not let go of them without a fight."

The seventeenth V.I. Warshawski thriller from one of America''s greatest female crime writers, and winner of Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award 2015. Twenty-five years ago, Stella Guzzo beat her daughter to death and then walked up the street to play bingo at her parish church. Chicago detective V.I. Warshawski grew up with the Guzzo family. She dated Frank Guzzo when they were teens and knew Stella''s murderous rages first-hand, so she was relieved when a judge sent Stella to prison for a long stretch. V.I. and Frank went their different ways, V.I. to university and law school, Frank to marriage, children, and a job as a truck driver. She didn''t think about the family again until the day Frank came to her office, wanting V.I. to help his mother with an exoneration claim. The detective wants no part of Stella Guzzo''s world, but she realizes how hard life has been for Frank, stuck in the gang-ridden streets around Chicago''s dead steel mills, and she doesn''t feel able to say no. V.I. starts asking questions, but the answers leave her puzzled. Was Stella''s daughter Annie the ardent girl V.I. remembers, looking for a college education as a way out of South Chicago? Or was she a calculating, amoral person, as Stella claims? And what about the lawyers Annie worked for - why did they insist on representing Stella in her murder trial? V.I.''s inquiries put her smack in the path of a notorious Mob enforcer. When she gets jumped in her old ''hood, her biggest question becomes whether she will live long enough to find the answers.

P.D. JAMES called her "the most remarkable" of today's suspense writers. STIEG LARSSON loved her work so much, he named her in his novels. And now SARA PARETSKY returns with the most extraordinary novel of her legendary career: FALLOUT. Before there was Lisbeth Salander, before there was Stephanie Plum, there was V.I. WARSHAWSKI. To her parents, she's Victoria Iphigenia. To her friends, she's Vic. But to clients seeking her talents as a detective, she's V.I. And her new case will lead her from her native Chicago... and into Kansas, on the trail of a vanished film student and a faded Hollywood star. Accompanied by her dog, V.I. tracks her quarry through a university town, across fields where missile silos once flourished -- and into a past riven by long-simmering racial tensions, a past that holds the key to the crimes of the present. But as the mysteries stack up, so does the body count. And in this, her toughest case, not even V.I. is safe. Exciting and provocative, fiercely intelligent and witty, FALLOUT is reading at its most enjoyable and powerful. "

This new series of Bookworms offers younger readers the chance to enjoy lively and accessible adaptations of the best classic and modern fiction. Each title is highly illustrated to engage the reader in the world of the book and help with specific vocabulary. Accompanying exercises make all these titles suitable for use in class or at home.