A powerful, iconic setting, a prestigious college in Venice. A unique, shy and stubborn protagonist who fights for her dream. A story that celebrates the power of wishes, the importance of friendship and the meaning of your roots.
Believing in yourself alone can truly take you far.

Write, write, write: these are the words scribbled on a piece of paper that Andrea – a half-Irish young woman with long, iconic red hair, who’s a slightly self-conscious introvert – is clutching obsessively while wandering lost through the Venice calle. It is everything her mother taught her when she was a child. Three simple words that even now show her the way to her dream: to be a journalist. She has finally got into one of the world’s most prestigious journalism schools – Longjoy College. What she has learnt there is not enough. Because everything in the lecture rooms is motivated by ambition and there are people who will do anything to stand in her way.

The Street Kids is the most important novel by Italy’s preeminent late 20th Century author and intellectual, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The Street Kids tells the story of Riccetto, a poor urchin who lives on the outskirts of Rome. Readers meet him at his first communion in 1944 during the German occupation of Italy. In the years that follow, drifting ever further from family and friends, Riccetto moves from petty theft to more elaborate cons and finally to prostitution. He is arrested and jailed after trying to steal some iron in order to buy his fiancée an engagement ring.
Pasolini’s message of rebellion and transgression is as important today as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

The idea for this novel came to Pasolini suddenly, almost urgently; according to the author, “the story of Una vita violenta took shape almost out of the blue one night in 1953 or 1954, while I was finishing Ragazzi di vita”. The two novels share similar narrative materials and were written one after the other, thus they are somehow related: once again, the protagonists are boys from working-class suburbs of Rome, and the novel tells their stories and their tragic journey through life. The idea for this novel came to Pasolini suddenly, almost urgently; according to the author, “the story of Una vita violenta took shape almost out of the blue one night in 1953 or 1954, while I was finishing Ragazzi di vita”.

A critique of capitalism, the middle-class, the loss of individuality, the Catholic Church and property speculation: all this, and much more, can be found in Scritti Corsari, possibly the most penetrating and controversial work written by Pasolini. Between 1972 and 1975, the author published in “Corriere della Sera”, the newspaper that more than any other represented the respectable middle-class, his critical, almost cruel analysis of late 20th century society – an analysis that is still relevant today.

Milo is a disabled kitten: a fairy tale for all ages, about friendship, love and resilience.

Milo is a completely black kitten, the only survivor of his litter, affected by a disorder of the nervous system. Milo zigzags, wobbles, falls backwards and, in particular, cannot jump. When even Mummy Cat leaves him, Milo seems doomed to a bad ending… But then one stormy night he meets a girl who will change his life: Milo now has a home, a patient, caring new human mummy and many friends: Virgil the seagull, G-Attila the miniature scorpion and Julia the hedgehog. His difficulties aren’t over, of course, but love and the invaluable advice of those close to him will help Milo appreciate his uniqueness, his strength and life’s beauty.

Illustrations by Giacomo Bagnara.

A stark, powerful novel that tackles a subject nobody talks about: fat-shaming, obesity – from bullying, to self-harm, prejudice, perfectionism and acceptance. A book about addictions – food, love, pharmaceutical drugs – that undermines every stereotype.

English sample available

“‘It’s very easy,’ my mother says. ‘Just stick two fingers down your throat.’ She encourages me. She didn’t teach me how to put on make-up – she taught me how to vomit.”

There’s the weight you can’t lose, even after you’ve lost it all. Matilde knows that. She began putting on weight at the age of six and has been hungry all her life. By the age of sixteen, she weighs 80 kilos, by eighteen 48. Laxatives, diuretics and irrepressible attacks of vomiting. Until, following an abusive relationship, she exceeds 130 kilos. She is so obese that she cannot find shoes and bras that fit and cannot even manage to put on her tights. So obese that she is afraid of breaking chairs. And when she leaves home there is always someone looking at her with contempt, who absolutely wants to tell her she has a problem, tell her what to do and how. So Matilde shuts herself at home for three years, has everything delivered and pretends she’s normal on social media. But what does normal mean?

A touching coming-of-age novel. A Naples rich in myths and legends waiting to be discovered.

In Naples, on a cold winter’s night, a newborn baby girl is abandoned in the baby hatch at the hospital of Annunziata. Around her neck, a copper necklace with two objects: a rusty key and a very old coin. Adopted by a kind, originally working-class family, Fanny grows up in the countryside that dominates the city. She spends her childhood in solitary adventures, exploring old ruins and seeing shadows in her dreams; for this she is nicknamed janara, witch. She is almost fourteen when she discovers by chance the truth about her past. Angry, she runs away from home and finds shelter in a cave by the sea, Fanny is alone and has with her only the two objects with which she was abandoned. And even though it feels it is an impossible undertaking, she decides to go searching for her real parents. Across a secret Naples where mysterious gods are worshipped, the dead mingle with the living and old legends seem to come alive, Fanny unearths a story of love and death that leads her to discover her origins and perhaps the origins of an entire city.

 A strong, exciting protagonist.

An ordinary and yet extraordinary woman.

A secret she cannot reveal even to her family.

English sample available

Aba Abate is the mother of two teenagers and the wife of Paolo, a naturally optimist advertising man. Aba does everything in her power to keep her family united although this is not always easy. Almost never easy, actually, because of her job. Because Aba Abate is also Ice: a spy and not a harmless civil servant, as her family thinks. Aba runs a network of mosque infiltrators and learns from one of her informers of some terrible news and a pressing deadline: a week from now, a little boy, a suicide bomber, is coming to Italy. So Ice has to intervene in person, in the field, if she wants to intercept the young man before he leaves Libya. However, none of the plans implemented yield the hoped-for results, and Aba’s entire world – both personal and professional – seems to come crashing down…

What are the lies concealed behind cosmetics? What is the link between the price and the quality?

Beatrice Mautino puts herself in the shoes of those who walk into a shop and want to buy harmless, effective products and not be swindled by advertising.

Bestseller list

Is talcum powder really carcinogenic? What about hair dyes? What are the dangers involved in using eye pencils and mascara made from carbon black, history’s earliest black pigment? Is there such a thing as vegan eyeshadow? Glitter: how is it produced? What is it? Beatrice Mautino responds to these daily questions about cosmetic products by means of nice case studies and stories. This is a book that takes the side of the consumer, trains us to read between the lines of a label and contains no advertising – only tips, real tips to help us avoid scams and false promises.

A relationship on the rocks, the 21st century environmental crisis, the decline of Rome’s Great Beauty. These are just a few of the elements that make this debut novel into a ruthless mirror of our times.

English sample available – 2 editions

The De Stefanos seem like the perfect couple: good-looking, wealthy, and successful. Emanuele, their eighteen-year-old son, who studies in London, has managed to overcome his dyslexia. Once again, they spend New Year’s Eve in her parent’s house. Unfortunately, nobody knows that the De Stefanos haven’t lived together for over a year. A victim of her own defeatist melancholy despite her psychologist’s support, she has never been able to voice her feeling of unease and takes refuge in online dating sites. Pretending to be his wife’s victim, he has embarked on a relationship with a new member of staff at the firm where he works and is living with his friend and colleague Moses, an anarchic, environmentalist Bostonian. And while they are both intent on eating each other alive in silence, against the backdrop of a crisis that does not involve only the couple but is a symbol of what the world is going through, tragedy strikes and it is young Emanuele who gets to pay the price.

The greatest representative of Strategic Therapy: 500,000 copies sold!
Pleasure, fear, pain and anger: these are the four emotions that rule our lives. We can now learn to manage them to the best of our ability so that we can feel comfortable with ourselves and others.

Even as babies, we experience instinctive reactions to events that concern us: we feel pleasure when something is good for us, pain when, on the contrary, it is something bad, fear when we sense danger and we respond with anger to a threat. These constitute the four roots of our genetic heritage, and we have used them to weave the complex affective, sensory, sentimental and emotional fabric that defines us. It is therefore of paramount importance to fully understand them and all their facets – neural, physiological and psychological – precisely to avoid being overwhelmed and enslaved by them.
Strategic Therapy teaches us to keep an eye on them so that we can go back to being in control of our emotions.

Do you feel too sensitive, fragile, different? You are not alone.
In this book, part memoir, part thoughtful and practical advice, Federica Bosco shares her experiences while teaching us the skills to enjoy the bright side of being a highly sensitive person.

Hypersensitivity — also known as being a “highly sensitive person” (HSP) — is not a disorder. It is a condition that affects 20% of the world population. Together with the feeling of inadequacy — which is very natural, you don’t need to be a HSP to have experienced it at least once in your life! — hypersensitivity has benefits, such as being able to “read” the mood of a room and taking into account subtle cues when making a decision.
In this inspiring and relatable memoir, Federica Bosco opens up about her fears and about how she learned to turn her weakness into a strength. She believes knowing that you have hypersensitivity is the first step to changing your life. It wasn’t until she was finally able to give herself permission to embrace her imperfect self that she was able to recognize the strength of her sensitivity and to find solace and, yes, happiness.

How to Turn Your Sensitivity into a Strength
For all the people who have constantly been told they are “too sensitive” and need to “toughen up,” here comes a warm and uplifting book written by a woman who spent years feeling as though there was something wrong with her, until she discovered that she was not alone.

A must read for anyone who has ever felt inadequate.

Key points
– Hypersensitivity is a trending topic.
– 20 percent of the world population falls into the category of Highly Sensitive People.
– You do not need to be Highly Sensitive to relate to this subject. Feelings of inadequacy are very natural. Most people feel inadequate at some point in their life.
– Though being Highly Sensitive is a natural and healthy condition and it has a number of unique
gifts, if left undiagnosed it can damage lives and relationships.

The simple life and extraordinary achievements of Oreste and Arturo Squinobal, carpenters and mountain guides, as well as climbers who rose to fame between the 1970s and 80s thanks to their incredible feats in the Alps and Himalayas.

With an afterword by Paolo Cognetti.

Full English translation available

Amid family anecdotes and stories about expeditions to their beloved Aosta Valley, in North-West Italy, preparations are underway for their greatest adventure: the ascent to Kangchenjunga, the third tallest mountain on earth (8,586 metres), on the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim. Oreste succeeded in 1982, without an oxygen cylinder.
But Kangchenjunga gives the Squinobal brothers an opportunity to rethink their roots, the Walser culture of the Gressoney valley where they grew up, and in particular everything they have in common with the Sherpa people and the Nepalese.
A thought-provoking and, above all, exciting story at a time when expeditions to the most famous summits of the world are nothing more than a lucrative business, and, pushed by advertising and profit, often turn into tragedies.

With the help of experts in child nutrition, Valter Longo has developed the first viable nutrition programme for family health, which gives children a good start so they may live healthily until the age of 110.

A new programme of healthy nutrition for the family, in view of a long, disease-free life.

A scientific guide to changing children’s negative eating habits and raising the whole family’s awareness: a programme that will revolutionise the health of all those who follow it.

In Europe 1 in 3 children is overweight or obese by the age of 11. The 1000-day theory: the importance of nutrition during pregnancy and the first two years of a child’s life.

The issue of child obesity is becoming an emergency that now concerns not only the United States but all European countries. Unfortunately, if present-day children do not change their eating habits they are going to live less and with more illnesses than their parents. In this book, the author has worked with child experts and specialists, as well as nutritionists, to explain the importance of laying the foundations of a long and healthy life beginning from pregnancy. Longo provides an analysis and an avant-garde nutrition and health plan: a study that aims to debunk myths and prevent or reduce excess weight and the progression of illnesses caused by what can we can call the worst eating habits in history. This book, however, avoids dieting extremes: a combination of traditional cuisine in Italy and other long-living nations – as well as science and recent studies in chemistry – is the key to a generous nutrition programme which does however have anti-ageing properties.

The effect of food on a long and healthy life begins early in life.

All the proceeds from the book will be donated to the non-profit organisation Create Cures, towards the nutrition education of children and adults, patient assistance, and research into alternative and integrated treatments for serious diseases.

The allure of physics turned into wonderful novels
“Gabriella Greison is Italy’s physics rockstar.” Geo – Rai

The previously untold story of the genius who was supposed to build an atomic bomb for Hitler: Werner Heisenberg.
A dark chapter in history, told from an original and surprising viewpoint that restores a voice and humanity to the extraordinary minds who changed the world in the 20th century.

On 3 May 1945, the great German scientist Werner Heisenberg and nine other physicists are arrested and held by the Americans in an English country house, Farm Hall.

For six months, secret listening devices scattered all over the house intercept every conversation of theirs. The Allies are worried that Hitler is trying to build an atomic device and want to find out what stage the German nuclear programme is at. Only ten percent of these intercepts have been disclosed up to now. This is a novel about all the rest.

A sentimental journey across the land of the tsars, the Soviets, the nouveaux riches and the most beautiful literature in the world, narrated candidly and humorously by the author through his adventure-filled, true experience.

“For me, Russia is where I became an adult. I arrived in 1991, when it was still the Soviet Union, I was there during the 1993 revolution, […] I stood in line to buy bread, I bought a Raketa watch, […] I took part in the first festival of avant-garde art, […] I did the entire Trans-Siberian journey without getting off once, […] I slept on a bench in the rare books section of the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg, […] I found, for the first time, the courage to give a woman flowers. In this book there’s that and a few other things, there are thirty years that have overturned the world’s largest country, which is miraculously still the same amazing place it was the first time I went there.”

A young literature teacher makes his debut with a novel that voices the feelings and issues of Millennials. The story of a budding love and a mystery that has to be solved.

Bestseller List – English Sample and Synopsis Available

Gioia is seventeen and does not fit in with her peers; she does not follow fashion and tends to hide herself under baggy clothes. She is not interested in parties, but she does have one passion, albeit an odd one, that makes her happy: she collects untranslatable words in languages from all over the world. Gioia’s solitude is interrupted by a sudden encounter with a boy who goes by the name of Lo. For the first time Gioia feels that someone is able to understand her world. They meet more and more often and their friendship slowly develops into love. But Lo disappears one day, and Gioia has no idea where to look for him. She has no idea that Lo is hiding a secret. A secret that only she can discover. She is the only one who can decipher the clues he has left for her. As she follows the clues, Gioia will have to make a choice and learn that the verb to love has many different sides to it.

The true story of Gerda Taro, a photojournalist killed during the Spanish Civil War at the age of twenty-six. A free, joyful woman who challenged the darkness of the 1930s, rediscovered through the eyes of those who loved her.

Full English translation available

August 1937. A sea of red flags makes its way through Paris. It is Gerda Taro’s funeral procession. She was the first photographer to die on the battlefield, who that very day would have turned twenty-seven. Robert Capa in the front row is devastated: he is the one who taught her to use her Leica camera, and together they covered the Spanish War and were willing to die for a country that was not theirs in the name of freedom. In the crowd are all the people who were somehow linked to Gerda: among them is Willy Chardack, her eternal loyal knight, to whom the irresistible girl preferred Georg Kutitzkes, now fighting in the International Brigades. Decades later, these two make an intercontinental phone call that triggers the creation of a multi-faceted novel based on original sources with Gerda as its beating heart. It is her heartbeat that weaves together faraway places and times, giving life to the Polaroids taken by these young adults during the 30s, whilst facing the economic depression, the rise of Nazism, and the hostility towards refugees, which in France targeted above all Jews and leftwing supporters like them.

A counter-history of Italy from the 1950s to the present day. After fifteen years of research, Bruno Arpaia constructs a compelling novel that weaves together events and stories of his adventurous investigations, brings together elusive characters, unresolved cases and uncomfortable truths, lays them bare and shows us that the most logical version of facts is not always the most truthful.

Towards the late 1950s, Tom il Greco was the head of the CIA in Rome. Throughout his long career, he had a hand in the most obscure secrets of international politics, from the Kennedy assassination to the apprehension of Che Guevara and the coup in Chile. There are, however, state secrets and political intrigues that even the shrewdest men cannot keep under control, and Tom knows this very well. Attacks that hit Italy’s resources hard in the field of electronics and nuclear energy, propelling it to its current decline. Secrets which, at this late stage, it no longer makes sense to conceal.

The Times book of the Month, Prix Bête Noire 2019, Prix Nouvelles Voix du Polar.
Bestseller – over 280,000 copies sold 

Full English translation available

In a quiet village in the middle of a centuries-old forest surrounded by mountains, a series of violent acts take place. Police inspector and profiler Teresa Battaglia is called back from the city when the first body is found in the woods, a naked man whose face has been disfigured and eyes gouged out. Teresa immediately realises that the killer has some sort of psychosis, a theory that is later confirmed by a series of victims who have all been subjected to horrendous mutilation. The kidnapping of a newborn baby causes the situation to escalate. For inspector Battaglia, this is the beginning of a race against the clock, one that is worsened by a personal burden that makes everything more difficult. Teresa is fighting a battle against herself: against her body which is weighed down by her age and the diabetes that is continually creeping up on her. She is also battling against her mind, which used to be an invincible weapon and has now become her worst enemy, one that is making her lose her lucidity and confidence as it gnaws away at her memory.

How and why plants are going to change (and save) our planet.
A ‘green’, innovative essay by the manager of the interdisciplinary project that created the world’s first plant-inspired robot, which features at the heart of Stefano Mancuso’s bestseller, Plant Revolution.
The scientist who invented the first robot inspired by plants relates the incredible meeting between biology and technology that is rewriting our future and perhaps even our very survival as a species. From robotics for nature by nature.

English sample available

Written from inside one of the planet’s most avant-garde scientific laboratories, Barbara Mazzolai’s The Genius of Nature tells us how science is trying to discover Nature’s hidden secrets and about the meeting between biology and technology that’s taking place, and which is destined to rewrite the future of our species.
What can plants teach us? Which of their secrets could help us build a better future, less gloomy than the one we are now beginning to glimpse? Will technology ever be able to reproduce the hidden, clean power of the plant world? The answer to all these questions lies in the pioneering work of the woman who invented the first ever robot inspired by the plant world. Perfectly adapted to their habitat, plants represent an evolutionary alternative that’s practically a mirror image of that of the animal world: while humans and animals have evolved by prioritising traits linked to movement and speed, it is slowness that’s at the heart of the plant world’s resilience. If, until yesterday, we had no doubt which of the two strategies was the most successful, nowadays the odd doubt does arise, triggered by the global ecological crisis we have unleashed.

From her extraordinary viewpoint as a key player in the ongoing bio-technological revolution, with scientific rigour and excellent communication skills, Mazzolai offers inspiration and enlightening thoughts concerning the present and future of the “blue planet”.

A protagonist with a proud, indomitable personality, sometimes brusque, always compassionate. A highly atmospheric setting.
A very talented, international-level author.
200,000 copies sold

Chief Inspector Teresa Battaglia is fighting her private war against Alzheimer’s, which should force her to resign, when she gets involved in a peculiar, eerie investigation. It all begins with a painting being recovered. The last painting of an elderly painter who has lived isolated since the end of the Second World War, shut away in self-imposed silence. The riddle of the Sleeping Nymph – the title of the portrait – is concealed in its very creation: lab tests show that the ink used to paint it is blood from a human heart. As Inspector Massimo Marini, unaware of Teresa’s illness, struggles to regain his strength and mental clarity after a very painful personal event, the case of the Sleeping Nymph suddenly explodes when a new victim appears. A man, whose only body part found is his heart, torn out of his chest and exhibited as a kind of warning at the gates of a village in the Alps. The secrets of this isolated and in many ways mysterious valley are about to be revealed, and someone in the shadows will do anything to keep them concealed…

A novel about relationships, in which two sisters make peace in order to unveil the mystery of a lost mother and a broken family.

Nora doesn’t recognise anyone at her father’s funeral. After all, she hasn’t been in touch with any of these people, old friends and relatives, for over forty years, except for her sister Apolline. It is to them that the solicitor appointed to read the will entrusts a diary written by their mother about what happened after she ran away from the family. Devastated by the discovery of so many details concerning their parents, the daughters decide to follow the woman’s tracks. A moving journey between present and past in order to close a circle and discover that some bonds are so strong that they survive any abandonment.

The secret of the Google, Facebook and Amazon search engines? It’s an algorithm!

From shopping on Amazon to finding a partner on the Internet, a large proportion of the technological progress in our era is due to the application of sophisticated, brilliant tools: algorithms. They manage everything: music, finances, publishing… and will soon also control hospitals and politics. In other words, they have conquered the world! But what are they, actually? Ennio Peres, Italy’s greatest and most authoritative maths populariser, explains it to us in a simple, entertaining and immediate way.

The author worked on the TV series of the year, Chernobyl, produced by HBO.
A perfect combination between a historical, technical and political reconstruction, and a human story.

A fascinating new and comprehensive account of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Contains over 45 photographs.

Full English original version available – over 30,000 copies sold

At 01:23:40 on 26th April 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl’s fourth nuclear reactor. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands and crippled the Soviet Union. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated and inaccurate stories. This book, the result of five years’ research, presents an accessible but comprehensive account of what really happened. From the desperate fight to prevent a burning reactor core from irradiating eastern Europe, to the self-sacrifice of the heroic men who entered fields of radiation so strong that machines wouldn’t work, to the surprising truth about the legendary ‘Chernobyl divers’, all the way through to the USSR’s final show-trial. The historical narrative is interwoven with the story of the author’s own spontaneous journey to Ukraine’s still-abandoned city of Pripyat and the wider Chernobyl Zone. Complete with over 45 photographs of modern-day Pripyat and technical diagrams of the power station, Chernobyl 01:23:40 is an enthralling story of an event, described at the compelling pace of
a novel.

An investigative book that recreates the history of the discovery of the Mafia in the United States.

English sample available

Thanks to the examination of numerous archive sources, an extensive American bibliography and newspaper research, as well as the first-hand, unpublished testimony of lawyer Ronald Goldfarb, former prosecutor at the Organized Crime Section, the author reconstructs the story of Joe Valachi, considered history’s first supergrass, the son of grindingly poor Italian immigrants in New York, and the truth about the Robert Kennedy method, the first example of an anti-Mafia pool.

A story of true, touching symbiosis. A delicate, original memoir.
With realism and humour, the author tells us about the strong, complicit affection that binds a dog and its owner and at the same time she explores a much older event, that of her relatives who escaped deportation during the Second World War.

Entertaining and humorous, to be read over an afternoon, possibly while patting your dog’s head.
A revival of this short but profound and moving story in a new extended edition. With period black and white illustrations.

With an honest, unprejudiced pen, Ritanna Armeni breaks down taboos and tells the story of an ordinary person, a young woman who believed in Mussolini, a Fascist woman. A great, female fresco of the last decade of the Fascist period.

Born in 1920, Mara is thirteen when this story begins. She lives in Rome. Her father is a shopkeeper, her mother a housewife. Her best friend Nadia, a staunch Fascist, takes her to hear Mussolini in Piazza Venezia unbeknown to her parents. She is a girl like so many others, who enjoys reading and wants to be a writer or a journalist when she grows up. She harbours many dreams and hopes: to study Latin literature and become beautiful and independent like her aunt Luisa, with her small hats and her quick, confident step. The future seems within reach, safe under the eyes of the Duce, displayed between two armchairs in her lounge. This is what Mara thinks of Benito Mussolini, and so do many other Italians who rush to stand beneath the balcony in Piazza Venezia. That is until doubt worms its way in, producing little cracks, opening wounds and altering individual and collective fates.                                Telling the stories of women, their desire for freedom, emancipation, revolution but also love, tenderness, a family, knowledge and wholeness. This is where Ritanna Armeni’s true talent lies.

A family saga in which love, passion, solitude and betrayal are depicted against the background of great historical upheavals in the early 20th century.

A powerful historical fresco that takes us into Italy’s cosmopolitan environment of the Belle Époque, to the Vienna of joyous apocalypse, the Germany of the Great War then the Weimar Republic, already tainted by budding Nazism, and, finally, to the young and entrancing Buenos Aires of the Thirties.

This novel was written in parallel in French and Italian.

The Frieda of the book title is Frieda von Richthofen, the daughter of a German officer, cousin of the Red Baron and, above all, the muse and wife of D.H. Lawrence. A highly attractive seductress, she is the source of inspiration and passion for the protagonist and narrator of the novel, Joachim von Tilly.

The eleventh descendant of Count von Tilly of Hanover, Joachim seems destined to follow in his father’s footsteps at the helm of the family steelworks. But the road already mapped out for him by this constricting heritage soon turns into an escape that takes him to Naples and Capri, then Vienna, Berlin and, finally, Buenos Aires.

Joachim’s endless escape is studded with encounters, love affairs, hopes and betrayals. These lines, read by Joachim in a mysterious book discovered in Buenos Aires, perhaps suffice to summarise his adventurous life: “Man believes that his decisions extend over a large sphere of action when they actually merely sway between flight and nostalgia.”

A classic and at the same time very modern novel with a publishing history full of adventures. A few hundred copies of Frieda were already published in 2015 when it attracted the attention of reviewers and critics. It made the selection for the Campiello prize but had to be withdrawn because of the low print run and an insufficient number of copies to be sent to all the judges. But the press had fallen in love with it by then and there was an increasing number of reviews. Now, Ponte alle Grazie is relaunching this author with an international flavour, a kept promise of Italian literature.

A book for learning the 72 words that symbolise and encompass the essence of Japan and its profound philosophy, and for realising that true happiness is one that is shared.

English sample available – Long seller beloved by booksellers

Wa means harmony but, like all Japanese words, it stands for a lot more. Actually, Wa is all that’s gentle, serene and moderate, and also everything Japanese. Wa is a prefix, like a seal stamped on things and notions. Japan uses Wa to teach us its most important lesson: that beauty, joy and the spirit of community are built with solid commitment, through constant work on oneself, learning patience, and doing things with care and never to the detriment of others.

A journey through 72 words, like the 72 Japanese seasons, which, every five days, allow the possibility of self-renewal.

Sophie’s World meets Italian art in a very special title that is both a guide and a coming-of-age novel, a starting point for knowledge and an incentive to travel.

English sample available – Bestseller List

David is a graduate student in art history at the University of Halifax in Canada. Thanks to a scholarship he embarks on an exciting journey across Italy to discover the treasures he has been studying all his life. Twenty different cities in twenty days, a kind of modern Grand Tour in the footsteps of illustrious predecessors like Goethe. David’s thoughts and comments about important topics, places and artists – different in every chapter – appear in the e-mail dialogue between him and his mentor, the extraordinary lecturer who chose him to be his pupil.
A cornucopia of history, art and culture, told in simple, clear language accessible to all.

A well-established bestselling author enjoyed by 1,500,000 readers.

A new epic exploit of adventurer Oswald Breil and his wife, the archeologist Sara Terracini.

Present day. During a long sea crossing with her famous husband, the adventurer Oswald Breil, archeologist Sara Terracini is assigned the translation of an ancient diary discovered in a monastery in Lisbon. It is the memoir of Alessandro Terrasini, a great 18th-century Italian navigator who turns out to have been Sara’s distant ancestor.

Lisbon, 1755. In town on business, Terrasini finds himself caught up in a clash between slave traders, criminals and éminences grises that makes him forsake his country in order to save his life. In Congo, he finds shelter and the love of an indigenous woman. This union bears twins, the only living witnesses to something shocking, something nobody must know, which is why they are destined constantly to flee in order to survive…

After twenty years abroad, Guido has come back to work as a gardener in the mountains where he was born. Guido is like the valley’s villas gardens: old-fashioned and full of secrets.
And when he finds the body of an unknown woman in an abandoned garden, Guido finds it very hard to keep his secrets safe and pretend he has no past.

In a neglected garden that is part of a large villa occupied only for two weeks in the summer, Guido immediately notices two things that should not be there: a bright yellow, unmistakable Ginkgo Biloba leaf – with no Gingko trees in sight –, and a blonde young woman lying dead on the ground, wearing a long, elegant dress of the same blue as her eyes, open wide and staring blankly. There is also that hint of an old, familiar scent which only he, thanks to his sharp sense of smell, has noticed on the crime scene. Even though he is trying to keep a low profile, that unknown young woman and her sad fate become an obsession for Guido, and he cannot resist the temptation to start a personal investigation. With only the Ginkgo Biloba leaf as a clue, something that for some reason he decides not to mention it to the police, he begins a search through the valley where he was born, where everybody knows each other but people prefer to keep quiet, a valley forgotten by the rest of the world where seemingly nothing ever happens. But where, however, things are stirring up and long hidden secrets are about to be unburied.

Over 1,500,000 copies sold

TV series available on Disney+!

THE BESTSELLING ITALIAN BOOK OF 2019

Among the 10 best selling first novels of 2021 in France !

The saga of a great Sicilian family who, in just over a century, experienced fame, wealth and power, but was also engulfed in love affairs and betrayals, dark secrets and cruel acts of revenge. A story both epic and intimate, bathed in the colors of the Mediterranean and sparked by overwhelming passions. An extraordinary story, told by an extraordinary writer.

Full English translation available

From the 1800s to the 1930s, the Florios are the «uncrowned kings of Sicily»: restless and ambitious, single-minded and determined to be richer and more powerful than anybody else. They start as grindingly poor spice sellers, but they quickly move on to tuna fishing, to foundries and finally to the Marsala wine that conquers the world. Shrewd businessmen and entrepreneurs, the Florio men are also stubborn, arrogant, philanderers and slaves to passions and they often find themselves forced to choose between ambition and sacrifice. Strong and resolute, the Florio women may be caring mothers, alluring mistresses or wounded wives, but they always strive to find their place in the world. From Vincenzo, the founder of the Florio empire, to Ignazio, his grandson, who squanders the family fortune on legendary parties; from Giovanna, iron-willed but love-starved, to the legendary Donna Franca, idolized by kings and poets, the author draws on history with both hands, dispels the mists of time and restores the Florios’ extraordinary, contradictory and fascinating vitality.

TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE STARTING WITH COLOURS.

We spend our time seeking perfection outside us, always feeling “insufficient”. And yet the secret to being and feeling special is within everybody’s reach but we don’t know it. Thanks to this method, you can discover your own, personal colour palette, find the shades that make the most of you and learn how to enhance your charm and uniqueness.
Armocromia is not an ordinary user’s guide to matching colours but a unique book that will restore the colour of happiness to your life.

Sometimes, being happy is simply a matter of the right combination.

Discover the magic power of colour science

Discover the magic power of colour science
– Why red lipstick doesn’t suit everybody.
– Rules and secrets for matching patterns.
– How to distinguish warm colours from cool colours.
– A stuffed wardrobe and yet nothing to wear.
– Colours that suit everyone and other urban myths.
– Why black rules over our wardrobes.
– Pink and other “girly” colours.
– … and much more.

From clothes to the home, from beauty to inner equilibrium: find the colours that are your friends and those that are your enemies.

Website entirely in English: https://www.rm-style.com/?lang=en

For anyone who is always feeling bloated, anyone who wishes to lose weight, and anyone who wants to detox, a scientific and effective method devised by one of the most important digestion specialists for over 30 years, so that we may be in harmony with our second brain – the intestine.

The Adamski method of the friendly intestine focusses on two essential elements: explaining the best way of taking food, divided into fast and slow, and how to relate to your body in order to achieve a state of general wellbeing. This method helps us keep our body, mind and muscles healthy, teaches us not to neglect breathing, and explains the best techniques for facilitating defecation.

An authoritative book about food and mental health, written by a psychiatrist and nutritionist, Stefano Erzegovesi, who for some time now has been dealing with the impact food has on the brain, as well as on a series of conditions such as anxiety, stress and depression.

Neuroscience and nutrition: cutting edge research has revealed a link between mood swings and eating habits. Depression is one of health’s emergencies; by 2030 it is going to be the most widespread chronic condition in the world. When it comes to diet, most people’s concerns involve weight loss, fitness, heart health and longevity. But what we eat affects more than our bodies; it also affects our brain. And recent studies have shown that diet can have a profound impact on mental health conditions ranging from ADHD to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, OCD, dementia and more.
This book therefore teaches us how to regulate mood and emotions with nutrition, with an active journey that helps create a stable, happy lifestyle.

Did you know that blueberries can help you cope with the after-effects of trauma?

Gauging intervals between meals in order to optimise the effect of detox.

Is there something we can do through nutrition and lifestyle to reduce the inflammation of the body and brain?

Broccoli and onions stimulate the production of serotonin, which sends messages of calm and good mood to the brain.

Did you know green leaves are also called natural Viagra?

There’s fibre and fibre: a manual on the best fibres for your health.

The saga of the man who would become Julius II, the warrior Pope. He was the “enemy of the Borgias”. He lived among intrigues, forbidden love affairs and murders. Everything for a single objective: to become Pope.

For the readers of Matteo Strukul’s international bestseller “The Medicis”

August 1471. A young friar arrives in Rome and joins the rest of the population outside St Peter’s. Only he is not just anybody. He is Giuliano della Rovere, the nephew of the new Pope. And this is the first day of his new life, a day that will mark his fate: after witnessing the solemn coronation of his uncle, Giuliano is involved in a crazy whirlwind of celebrations in the city taverns, then risks death in an ambush before finding safety in the arms of an irresistibly alluring girl. This is Rome’s welcome to this humble young monk, who quickly learns his lesson. Only the strongest and most determined survive in the quagmire that is the Roman Curia. And so begins the ascent of Giuliano, who discovers that he has a burning ambition, equal only to his attraction for Lucrezia Normanni, the woman who will remain at his side for years to come, even bearing him a daughter. Years spent confronting his great adversary, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, and secretly plotting against the Florence Medicis. And all that to prepare for an inevitable event: the death of his uncle, the Pope, and the opening of the conclave. Here comes the opportunity to acquire absolute power. But Giuliano will discover that for the moment, destiny has other plans for him…

A novel about an important, long-forgotten chapter of history. The story of Le Portatrici (Bearers), women of all ages who, during the First World War, in the theatre of war in Carnia, in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli, were called upon to help the men in the trenches by carrying up food supplies and ammunition first, then dead bodies down the mountain.

English sample available

The theatre of war of the Carnia region is a series of sharp peaks, defence lines isolated on the summits and thousands of young men driven to exhaustion. The command turns to the local population with a desperate plea for anyone to help them. The women from the neighbouring valleys respond to the appeal. Women of all ages, from thirteen to sixty, accustomed to hard work, and who, for centuries, have carried heavy wicker baskets on their backs, but are also used to a life of hardship that has forged resilient spirits and minds with exceptional moral fibre. Among them, there is brave Agata, who would sooner eat cheese crusts than deprive her invalid father of even just a soup made of herbs. There is the exuberant Viola, who, for the love of an Alpino artillery man, carries forty-two kilos’ worth of projectiles on her back. There is Lucia, a mother of four with quiet strength, the point of reference for everybody else. They are friends, companions. They know these mountains better than anyone else and are the protagonists of this novel. A story of women, of hard work, of compassion, and of hope.

This is a story written by a very special cat: the first philosopher cat in the world, who combine
humorous musings about humankind and philosophical meditations.
A book suitable for both children and adults, whether they are cat lovers or not.

This is the story of a cynical cat who offers his readers an insightful view of the world, with the ironic awareness of someone who sees himself as a superior being, and rightly so.
We will fall in love with him and his life of encounters, dangers, friends, enemies and masters, as well as his answers to life’s questions: the same that we (stupid) humans have been asking for thousands of years.
This story allows us to understand why, if we are lucky, one day we will be entrusted to a cat. And why felines – wisely, silently, and stealthily – have always ruled the world.

A compelling first novel about the hardness of becoming adult.
A story set during a summer in the 1980s, about the devastating power of first love and about discovering the limitations and faults of adults.
A gentle yet powerful story, poetical yet true, intense yet light, that tackles universal themes: human limitations and frailty, fear and courage, the sorrow of loss, separation and defeat, but also the strength to be reborn.

The story evokes the atmosphere of Niccolò Ammaniti, I’m not scared, and Call me by your name by André Aciman.

It’s June, the month of sunshine. Marco is out jogging when he sees a poster advertising a photography exhibition. The picture takes him back to the fateful summer of 1982, when he was fourteen and spending a month’s holiday in a small fishing village in the south of Italy. A holiday for swimming, excursions with friends and family life, characterised by a challenging relationship with his father and his parents’ marital difficulties, until Marco meets two people –
mesmerising and essential, kind and strange – who help him grow up. Achille, the village fool and idiot savant, and the beautiful wild, and restless Maria, who loves fire and whose sensuality and aura of mystery leads him to perform deeds he never thought possible. Until the tragic epilogue when the two young people are separated for ever, or so they think.
A light-touched and at the same time insightful prose that delves into the layers of adolescence and reveals its journey towards knowledge and emancipation.

English sample available

A quality debut novel, powerful language that bluntly narrates the lives of two frail, damaged brothers, the victims of seclusion and degradation, tortured by a sense of guilt that rules over their lives, and which they must face.

In the imaginary outskirts of a tiny Sicilian village, Antonio and Paolo, two brothers aged nineteen and twenty-two, have been living alone since their father died and their mother left home. Together, they have built an everyday routine that apparently works despite its extreme precariousness, a present in which, however, there is no room for developing future projects and they are constantly overwhelmed by the struggle for survival. It is the summer. Antonio is looking for a job and Paolo trying to keep his. Hallucinating nights with friends, parties, days spent by the sea, evenings of drink, sex and drugs. Then, one seemingly quiet day, something snaps. As though by some petty astral conspiracy, old skeletons leap out of the cupboard and shallowly buried past demons resurface: the young men’s mother returns after running away from her violent husband years earlier, an old, a dormant love comes knocking at the door of one of the brothers and crimes never atoned appear on the horizon of the other…

Clumsy, funny, pathologically nosey and, above all, misanthropic, Martina lives in a lighthouse on a remote island in the Mediterranean. It is up to her to solve the mystery of the death of her elderly island neighbour, when she is not the least interested in other people. Although that might actually not exactly be the case.

English sample available

Martina has done everything to have a normal life. She has gone to parties, family dinners, and had the odd boyfriend. But, after years, she has realised that she doesn’t enjoy human company. As a matter of fact, she can’t stand it. She has discovered herself to be an incurable misanthrope. The only solution is to go away, far away. So she decides to relocate to a lighthouse on a remote island in the Mediterranean. Only, her solitary existence made up of just wind, sea and sky is disturbed by an invitation to dinner from the elderly resident of the neighbouring island. She certainly can’t refuse and is surprised by how little this man speaks – apparently even more of a misanthrope than she is… However, a few days later, she receives the terrible news that the elderly neighbour has hanged himself. Martina is in no way convinced by the theory of suicide. So much so that she begins to wonder if the few sentences uttered by the man at dinner could be nothing but clues for her, a request for help. And so she starts to investigate.

The new series of detective novels starring Marshal Maccadò, newly appointed to the Bellano police station on Lake Como, and his difficulty in settling in, and not just because of the local weather.

1929. In the third case in the series, we find Corporal Misfatti in some difficulty: he must appear before Marshal Maccadò but unfortunately his uniform smells of fried food, the inconvenient result of the copious fried onion-based dinner his wife served him.

And to tell him what, anyway? That last night wretched Salvatore Chitantolo was found roaming across the land, bleeding heavily and in a daze, saying that he saw a man in his underpants running away in that direction? Another one of his fantasies, of course. But, wait a minute, just what exactly was a man doing in his underpants, in the middle of the night, in the town streets? And why was he running?

A graphic novel which tells in bold strokes the true story of young Islam, who spent three years in the Islamic state. As a prisoner.

An international case that moved and shocked the world.

Islam comes from Oujda, a small city in Morocco. She is no different from any other 19-year-old girl and she has a dream: to leave her country and move to London in order to become a fashion designer. But in order to fly the nest she must first get married and that is why she uses muslim.net, a forum to look for a husband. She finds him – a handsome, kind man, originally from Afghanistan but with a British passport. But what seems at first like the first step towards her dream turns into the start of a nightmare that lasts three years, which she spends as a prisoner of ISIS and her captors.

This is a story written by the most important librarian cat in the world, who combine
humorous musings about humankind and philosophical meditations.
A book suitable for both children and adults, whether they are cat lovers or not.

This is the story of a century-old library where the human custodian is always supported by a feline custodian; where cats teach one another languages and all the knowledge contained in books, as well as an infinity of other things, The story of a cat born near the Nile and the sand dunes. Abducted as a kitten and landing in the library, he is given the name of Jorge Luis by Isis the cat, and so begins his apprenticeship as Librarian Cat.

A hearing and speech impaired child who loses everything, a painful secret kept for twenty years, and two tormented souls seeking each other.

Family relationships, absences, harboured wounds, secrets and the principal themes of the intimist novel, immersed in a plot full of suspense, like in Jodi Picoult’s books.

English sample available

Leo is six years old. He was born deaf and uses sign language and the language of love with his family. But the time has come to start school, so Leo is sent far away from home, to a special school where sign language – the language of animals, according to the Gospel – is forbidden. His life suddenly becomes hard and unfathomable. One night, in 1964, during a heavy snowfall, Leo disappears. Police enquiries and searches lead nowhere: no one ever hears from him again. At least not until nineteen years later, when Michele, a former school friend of Leo’s, arrives in the consulting room of his sister Anna, a psychologist. He starts telling his story, starting from that winter’s night.

A bittersweet, nostalgic novel that visits all the generations in order to meditate on the meaning of friendship at any age and the importance of taking risks – always.

An intense, poignant story about the best years of our lives.

Bestseller list

Benedetta is spending yet another New Year’s Eve with her old friends, the same ones who, back in the Eighties, would spend their afternoons sitting on their mopeds, smoking and gossiping and who are now forty-somethings tackling divorce, unpalatable kids, botox and the Peter Pan syndrome. What they all have in common after thirty years is waiting for an opportunity, a new possibility, a meeting or something around the corner. In Benedetta’s case, this is a delayed text message, which could mean picking up the strands of a love that time has not severed, which might have been true love and is now quickening the beat of her heart again. Until the unexpected happens and life comes up with a surprise – although not always the way one expects. So it is now a matter of finding the courage to abandon the lifeboat and starting to swim in the sea of maturity. True maturity.

A thriller in which a former policeman investigates the death of his son, in a grey, inhospitable Rome that receives him like a stranger and forces him to challenge ghosts from the past.

Valerio is a former policeman with a bad break-up behind him. He is now a petrol station attendant far from the city and his family. However, a tragic telephone call takes him back to Rome to identify the lifeless body of his son, found on the bank of the Tiber. The theory is suicide, but Valerio cannot believe that Ettore, a strong young man, devoted to others and with an extraordinary sense of justice, could have carried out such an act. His faint suspicion soon becomes certainty when another unexpected call muddies the waters. Sara, his former colleague in the police, tells him something that doesn’t add up in the reconstruction of events. So Valerio, a former policeman but even more a father, has no choice: he leaves the status quo and decides to bring the truth to light… the very truth for which his son has been murdered by someone whose interests were different from his, and who, in order to protect them, did not hesitate to eliminate him

A story about the sense of responsibility, the power of secrets, the force of friendship and the importance of the past in understanding who we really are.
A little-known episode of the Second World War, a difficult page in history that features Trieste and Istria during the war and post-war period, amid ethnic and political conflicts in a complex international setting.

English sample available

As a little girl, Francesca witnessed something very much beyond her. Something connected with her grandmother and her friends, whom she pretends to have forgotten. Francesca has never known what her role is in their lives, their friendship and their promises of redemption with regard to a war that extinguished every dream. The time has now come, however, to discover it, because somebody has called on her to remember – an old man on his deathbed said that only she, Francesca, knows the truth. And the history that seemed so distant is now only a step away.

Antonio Ligabue: the story of the great painter’s youth, perfectly balanced between historical documentation and imaginary reconstruction.

From his birth in Switzerland, as the child of an unmarried mother, to his expulsion from the country, this is a vivid, intense novel about the coming of age of Ligabue, one of the most singular, greatest artists of the last century.

The splendid history of hieroglyphs.
Over 200 hieroglyphs, each with its own story, a journey between history and magic to discover the traditions and writing of one of the best-loved peoples of the Ancient World.

This is the story of Ancient Egypt from a privileged and original point of view: its writing. Hieroglyphs are miniature drawings that represent the world as it was then, from geography to great institutions, and above all its daily life, always viewed subjectively. The same way as our emojis, these signs conveyed a state of mind, such as distress, joy and love. Just think of the symbol representing the sparrow, destroyer of crops, which, if used at the end of a sentence, expresses all that is bad, small and nasty.
Hieroglyphic writing is at once profound and fun: it allows us to go back in time and look at the world through the eyes of the Ancients and penetrate that lost world.

Breathing, Relaxing, Finding Yourself. for an anxiety-free, stress-free life.

The effects of chronic stress on health are well known: damage to the immune system, hypertension, infertility, depression. An increasing number of experts agree on a gentle and not pharmaceutical approach in order to fight it. One of the most powerful tools to activate our self-healing ability is also the most under-estimated: breathing.
Starting with the most natural act, with the help of breathing techniques for all levels, this book teaches us to reconnect with our best resources so that we may reach the objectives that truly matter.

Apple, pear, hourglass, rectangle, oval: what is our body shape?
A guide to proportions in order to learn to appreciate and finally love our bodies.

A manifesto against the notion of standardised beauty, because every body is different and what’s truly important is to be able to appreciate it.

Through an objective and analytical method with rules and measurements, Rossella Migliaccio teaches us how to discover the physical type we belong to. Only beware – size and weight do not matter! These are not calculations aimed at defining the umpteenth perfection criterion. Because knowing our body and being able to interpret its proportions is the first step towards learning to appreciate it, highlighting its strengths and the unique, special characteristics of our appearance. Because true beauty lies entirely in harmony.

Website entirely in English
https://www.rm-style.com/?lang=en

A wedding in Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Simona’s American dream seems to come true. Only reality is very different from what she had expected. Married life is a culture battle even as early as breakfast time: biscuits versus peanut butter. And then Trump and Covid came to intensify existing differences… The couple becomes a triangle: America becomes a steady, cumbersome presence. A light, fun book but that is able to describe the more deeply-rooted differences between Italy and the U.S. as seen from a specific viewpoint: a couple’s arguments.

English sample available

Simona falls in love with America very quickly, picturing it as the world of Woody Allen’s films, Friends and Sex And The City and, later on, that of Michelle and Barack Obama. In New York, where she is a correspondent for an Italian magazine, she meets Dan, falls in love and her American life begins in earnest. Exactly one month after their wedding, Donald Trump wins the elections, to the world’s surprise. Simona’s American dream is shattered, she feels well and truly conned. She is forced to open her eyes to a reality that is far from perfect. Her survival technique: blaming her husband for all that’s wrong in the United States. And so their arguments, from what you’re supposed to eat for breakfast, to which jacket to buy, to what to write on a card become an excuse for discussing more important topics, such as health, money management and the social injustice that permeates the country where pragmatism reigns supreme and where everyone is his and her own entrepreneur.

Written with: Dan Gerstein is the founder and CEO of Gotham Ghostwriters, America’s premier ghostwriting agency, and a nationally recognized political analyst. A native of Connecticut, Gerstein spent more than a decade as a speechwriter and communications strategist for Senator Joe Lieberman. He went on to become a political consultant and commentator in New York, writing frequently for the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and the New York Post and appearing on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. Today Gerstein, 53, spends of his time helping CEOs and tech geniuses birth their books, rooting for his beloved Boston Red Sox and Celtics, and playing with his babies Ella and Ugo.

2500 patients cured, 30 years of experience, 30 published books translated worldwide. The greatest representative of Strategic Therapy: 400,000 copies sold!

A wonderful book that offers winning strategies against what has become to all intents and purposes the social crisis of our times, all the more exacerbated by the recent pandemic: loneliness.

There is a feeling that the over 65s and the under 30s have in common now more than ever: loneliness. The feeling of being alone is caused first and foremost by the very technology that allows us to be constantly connected with one another. That’s right, connected but with no physical contact, so no actual body (which gives tenderness), no voice (for storytelling), no gestures and no eye expression (that conveys emotions). After all, the proximity of a body, of touching, hugging, mutual support and recognition is at the root of social coexistence, cooperation and of being together.
Giorgio Nardone shows us how our present loneliness can be treated, understood and resolved.

A manual for surviving the current epoch-making changes and finding happiness by starting with ourselves.

Never before has humanity been in such a disorientated, powerless position as during the current historical era of epochal proportions – we have economic inequality, devastating climate change and migration. Alberto Simone starts with the premise that the world’s troubles derive chiefly from the catastrophic state of our inner eco-system. The challenge lies in the theory that precisely because human beings and nobody else have created these conditions, it is with human beings that we must begin in order to try and mend the damage within us. A concrete aid for tackling the present and planning the future.

The extraordinary testimonial of the doctor – a young woman in Codogno, the centre of the outbreak in Italy – who diagnosed the first of coronavirus in Europe and who, thanks to her tenacity and skill, managed to draw the attention of the entire world.

Codogno. A night at the hospital. The hustle and bustle of the emergency department: among the routine admissions, a strange case of pneumonia. Annalisa is on duty in Intensive Care when they bring in Mattia. Young and healthy, and yet his condition has suddenly deteriorated and he now has trouble breathing. Why is the treatment not working? What is Mattia’s body fighting? Annalisa has many questions and no answers but she was taught that a good doctor must listen. So she goes to Mattia’s wife and listens. In what the woman tells her the word that stands out is “China”. It is 20 February and for just over a month now there has been news of a mysterious virus that is killing in Wuhan. It is not circulating in Italy, however, and according to the Italian health protocol, Mattia is not in the risk category. Even so, Annalisa wastes no time and urgently has a swab taken. It’s positive. Mattia is the first Italian patient to be diagnosed with Covid-19.
This is the story of Annalisa and the team at the Codogno hospital, of how, among success and failure, grief and hope, it was for months the shield against the spreading epidemic. But it is also a story about patience, tenacity and ingenuity. Above all, it is a story of treatment.

A powerful, iconic setting, a prestigious college in Venice. A unique, shy and stubborn protagonist who fights for her dream. A story that celebrates the power of wishes, the importance of friendship and the meaning of your roots.
Believing in yourself alone can truly take you far.

Andrea is very close to achieving her goal but instead of focusing on her studies, her thoughts fly to Dublin: that’s where her roots are and that’s also where she is sure her mother left something important. She therefore leaves for Ireland to try and discover who she really is and to heal the wound caused by her mother’s death. However, Andrea is never alone when she has a sheet of paper and a pen. They’re her shield, her strength and her life.

An old spinning top in a Rome shop window takes Giulia back to her youth, the fight for freedom against the Nazi enemy and, above all, her first love.

A hymn to women, their strength and their hearts, capable of withstanding any blow.

In 1940s Rome, a new love blossoms beneath the Nazi yoke. Giulia, a young woman who until now has used her delicate fingers only to touch the keys of a piano, has to grab a pistol in order to defend what she believes in. Fear vanishes when she’s at Leo’s side but, unfortunately, the young man disappears after an enemy attack. Moreover, this object, a spinning top Leo gave his beloved in case anything happened to him, is nowhere to be found. At least until many years later when Giulia, now elderly, finds herself staring at that same top in a shop window, and powerful memories come flooding back. All she can do is share her story with her granddaughter Flavia and tell her that it’s not true that the memory of loved ones leaves a hollow inside us. On the contrary, it always fills us with their protection, and all you have to do is not be afraid of listening to its echo, however distant.

A collection Pasolini’s writings about the most beautiful sport in the world.

A collection of texts in which Pasolini writes about what he himself describes as “the last holy representation of our times”. His passion for it is well documented, and not just as a spectator: there are many black-and-white photos of him, wearing shorts and football boots with studs, running after the ball. Not least, the match on 23 March 1956, between a team of writers and representatives of a working-class Rome suburb. Among the writers, there was Bassani, Cancigni, Garboli, Sermonti, Giagni, Cibotto and a very young Pasolini.

Contains a preface by Gabriele Romagnoli, journalist and writer.

After an absence of five years, Francesco Pecoraro returns to writing with his vitriolic pen that etches on the paper a novel that is unforgettable, digressive, moving, ruthlessly funny and deeply painful: a precise depiction of the socio-moral decline of our times.

The protagonist is a seventy-year-old retired man, a former Art History researcher with a modest civil service career behind him. From his 20th-century, middle-class, physically declining viewpoint, he tells us about his own mediocre existence and also the current life and story of a district in the City of God (Rome, although it is never mentioned): the “Road”. Within its complex social and anthropological make-up, the “Road” actually contains all the specific factors of the “stagnation” of contemporary society: social immobility, the impoverishment of the middle classes, the arrogance of politics and the nouveaux-riches, the search for status even in poverty, the war among the poor, the collapse of community values, the end of the Left and of political commitment. A decadent, feverish place where the ongoing economic crisis of the “terrible 2010s” seems to have undermined the foundations of the late-20th-century social truce and rekindles new egotism, new barriers and a new danger of totalitarianism. A novel in which practically nothing happens – the way nothing happens in our cities anymore – and yet the great story of a century of utopias and disillusionment that did happen.

The illusion of love, of poetry and of modernity are the protagonists of a novel that is cultured and moving.

English sample available

Rome, 1983. The 20th century is still in full bloom. Emanuele Trevi, a university student – not even twenty yet – works every evening in a film club in the city centre. One night, at the end of a film by Tarkovsky, he comes into the auditorium and finds a man alone and in tears. He is Arturo Patten, an American who has relocated to Rome, and is one of the greatest portrait photographers ever. For the brief rest of the century, Emanuele will listen to the lessons of his friend – a cross between Candlewick and Talking Cricket – who leads a life of enviable intensity, and, thanks to him, will meet intellectuals and artists who will lead him to research 18th-century highly-acclaimed librettist and court poet Metastasio, author of the sonnet Sogni, e favole io fingo (Dreams and Fables which I often feign). And so these tales “fancy” the entirety of great modern literature conjured up here, from Pushkin to Pessoa and even the prominent 20th-century Italian poet Amelia Rosselli, who lives on the same street as Arturo and who, like him, will end her life by choice.

Together with Arturo, she and her heritage are the other protagonist of the “strange book” of Trevi’s: at the same time an autobiographical novel and a digressing essay. Arturo, Amelia and Metastasio lead him and us into the heart of a rainy, archaic Rome, into the symbolic circle of depression and senselessness, towards the essential port of illusion: if, as Metastasio writes, imaginary stories arouse in us the same emotion as true events, then perhaps real life is made up of dreams and fables.

30 illustrated tips for rediscovering the child hiding inside all of us.

As Peter Pan says, as soon as we grow up we generally become certain that we are no longer able to enjoy the magic of the moment. Certain that imagination is not important. Certain that we cannot go back to being children. And yet that’s not always the case. Sometimes, all it takes is to roll around in the grass, cycle downhill at breakneck speed with your arms open wide, or take a ride on a merry-go-round. All it takes is to have a spin on your office chair on a hard day, sing in front of the mirror as soon as you wake up, or have a pillow fight on a dreary Sunday. Brief moments that take you back to fits of giggles, feeling freedom running through your veins, and a joy that doesn’t depend on what you own or have achieved.

This book is also a social project that encouraged readers to share their own “moments to be a child again”. The 10 best comments have been illustrated and are included in this book.

Written with – Sara Di Francescantonio (1988): a compulsive artist since childhood, she is a freelance graphic designer and illustrator who works for publishing houses, literary agencies and newspapers.

We are introduced into the world of street theatre and wandering players, of storytellers, set designers and fairy-tale illustrators who have studded the world of two brilliant artists, Dario Fo and Franca Rame. We travel through the memory of someone who experienced this world at first hand: their son.

A collection of episodes and memories to try and find the answer to a question Jacopo Fo has been asked more than any other throughout his life: what is it like to be the son of Franca Rame and Dario Fo? And also… What is it like to grow up with parents like that? What did they bequeath to you? What did you learn? All queries he has tried to answer, questions he knows he will be asked as soon as an interview begins and thinks he is prepared for, but which inevitably always bring new memories back to the surface.

In a violent, marginalised Rome, at the end of the 1970s, a relationship of redemption and friendship develops at first between two children, then two young girls, and finally two women.

Late Seventies: a recently created district on the border with hell. The dream of a council block of flats that immediately turns into a nightmare. Scilla is four years old when she sees in her father’s face the resentful resignation to the life that awaits his family. And yet in this degraded, violent space there is also Renata, a couple of years older than her, who becomes her best friend. Consequently, Scilla and Renata grow up amid the crumbling high rises and develop a complex, increasingly intense friendship that is also made up of attraction and desire, a kind of refuge where they can hide from a reality where syringes bloom in flower pots, and redemption always carries guilt. Because in a place where dreaming is forbidden, life erodes all bonds, separates fates and pushes people apart. It always leaves, however, a hope of salvation.

The debut novel of a hugely talented writer; a story about true, great and absolute love, and a universal protagonist who is easy to relate to.

English sample available – Bestseller List

Vittoria has the perfect life. She is twenty-one, has a large house and many friends. She doesn’t care about the fact that her mother ignores her and her father died when she was very young. Never mind that she doesn’t remember anything of her childhood and feels constantly alone although surrounded by people. Every day, she wears a mask, that of the dutiful daughter, good friend and model student. That’s fine by her. At least until she finds the shards of a broken ceramic music box: she doesn’t know who it belongs to but it suddenly makes her feel as though she, too, is somewhat broken and interrupted. As soon as she starts trying to put it back together, childhood recollections surface, she hears her father’s voice and relives moments she has buried in her memory. She has no idea where all this is coming from. And yet she knows that these fragments will allow her to discover that it is our frailty that makes us into what we are, that broken things can be mended and become even more precious.

An author who has sold 800,000 copies.

What is good? What does doing good actually mean and why should we do it?

 An ethical guide to the therapeutic power of good and justice.

Nowadays, we enjoy security, good health and a large amount of freedom in the Western world like never before throughout history. And yet at the same time we are living in a society that seems to believe only in the power of strength, and where celebrity, success and wealth are increasingly myths to be reached at all cost. Anyone who prioritises virtue and justice is even mocked and called a do-gooder. By re-discovering our roots, that reach deep into Classical culture and Christian tradition, Vito Mancuso sets out to prove that Good is actually the most precious direction freedom can take; he gives us a new perspective on the meaning of our lives, at the mercy of the turbulent winds of existence. Because it is only those who no longer try to win and prevail but instead devote themselves to truth are able to let their lives truly blossom and therefore vibrate in harmony with the world.

Winner of the Elsa Morante Prize, Super Winner of Ragazzi 2019 and of the thirty-eighth edition of the Andersen Prize One of the most important voices on the Italian cultural scene revolutionises the way we tell children stories.

Designed by THE WORLD OF DOT, with a comic strip by PAOLO BACILIERI

Bestseller – English sample available

Unity makes for strength – or does the person who works alone have enough power for three? There can be no doubt: human beings have always recorded their most important achievements together. But literature persists in presenting us as a colourless mass from which only individual heroes can emerge Is there any way for us to recapture the urge to be special together? Perhaps there is. And it may come from the same source as everything else – from stories that teach us how to dream. It is a sad world that needs heroes, as Bertold Brecht once wrote, but it is difficult to accept that he must be right if stories about heroes are not only the first stories we hear as children, but also the only stories we read when we reach school age, and still the only stories that inspire us once we are grown up. The figure of the solitary champion may be an exciting one, but it has no place in our everyday lives and remains the exception. On the other hand, daily life is made up of admirable achievements by entirely ordinary people who have understood how to work together and trust one another.

That is how Wikipedia was born, how the secret wartime code of the Nazis developed, and how the struggle against racism entered every home in which people watched the Olympic Games in 1968. Michela Murgia has picked sixteen collective adventures, some very famous and others entirely unknown, and has retold them as it were chorally, because individual heroism is a path open to few while creative collaboration, on the other hand, is accessible to all. After all, a storm is nothing more than millions of drops of water, unless it is guided by the right wind.

A family story of coming of age and redemption. The emotional reeducation of a man.

English sample available

Ten-year-old Marco is head over heels in love. Daniela is the most beautiful little girl in the courtyard and every day he watches her from his balcony. He is wasting away from unrequited love but there is someone even angrier at home. The First Commandment of his father, Sergio, is, indeed, never to fall in love, because women are a waste of time.
Twenty years later, Marco is an actor, drives a British convertible, and hasn’t been in love for a long time. Then, one morning, he receives a phone call that changes everything: his father has had a stroke.
When he comes out of the coma, the old Sergio, the tough guy who was incapable of an affectionate gesture towards his children, or of telling his wife he loved her, has vanished. An alien has taken his place – unpredictable, crazy and as delightful as a newborn baby who has to learn everything about the human world from scratch. The new Sergio cannot read or write, but can dance, laugh and show his love. Is Marco still in time to learn a new lesson?

The unknown, human side of one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived. The allure of physics turned into wonderful novels.

Albert Einstein’s life and the genesis of the theory of relativity as seen through the eyes of his wife, Mileva Marić, an extraordinary woman.
A love story that revolutionised physics.

Two symbolic cities, the identity clash of an entire generation, the grey area of those who no longer belong to a country but are still out of place in the new one, a highly topical issue, elegantly written: these are the ingredients for a promising debut novel.

English Sample Available

Alina is 27 years old and doesn’t like decisions. She moves to London, an immense city where she thinks possibilities are endless and doors always open. It’s 2007, the economic crisis has not yet begun, and she is offered an unstarry job which is nevertheless more promising than the one she left in Italy. Between boring dinners and chance encounters, she starts finding her way in a society in which she dreams she will one day become fully integrated. Identity for her is a liquid concept, one she can bend at her will. She finds out that this is not the case when she meets Iain, a young English doctor from a good family, and his circle of friends. His British reserve and her stubborn confidence in the future drive them apart, even if they are united by everything else. Like Alina, Iain previously lived somewhere else. In the late 1990s, he and young Vicky left their beautiful London houses to spend some time in Reggio Emilia, volunteering on a project that had nothing to do with the charity work they were used to do back home. The experience will change them forever and will also affect the unwitting Alina.

Set in London, a city that has become a magnet for all souls, young Europeans like Alina are ready to do anything to win freedom and autonomy.
Her tale is one of ambition, of discovery and of the danger of remaining stuck between two worlds.

Because of malicious imprudence, a bull, rented for quite different reasons, sows injuries and panic throughout the town. It is up to Marshal Ernesto Maccadò to intervene.

Already having to tackle the strange fainting spells of his wife Maristella, who is struggling to get used to the new town by Lake Como, Marshal Maccadò must also juggle the case of the bull farm: this year, too, Mr and Mrs Piattola have rented a bull to make money on the neighbours’ cow farm and its priorities, because everybody knows that the top of the queue gets the best seed. What they haven’t taken into account is the risk of this bull, an animal larger and better endowed than ever seen before –if not tended to properly – escaping and terrorising the entire town…

An autobiographical novel that conveys, with fierce and ruthless frankness, the many doubts and few certainties of an entire generation.

Antonio Capace is a well-heeled young man with intellectual airs who lives in central Rome thanks to the income of his writer father. One day, he writes a letter to his financial consultant saying he wishes to dispose of all his belongings: bank accounts, bonds and shares. Is this the last wish of a man about to commit suicide?
Or a way of finding himself? Halfway between a confession and an indictment, Antonio’s story becomes that of a man who has collected nothing but failures in life, both at his expense and that of anybody who has crossed paths with him, and who, having come to a standstill, reviews his life to try and understand what has driven him to the edge of the abyss. His hope is to come to terms with the sense of inadequacy that appears not to allow his life and an entire wrong era a way out.

A life story in constant tension towards the achievement of one of the great myths of the 20th century, relived through the romantic journey of a modern forty-year-old Italian man.

Winner of “The Bridge” Prize: English Translation costs are entirely covered

Full English translation and French synopsis available

Born and bread in Milan, the narrator as an adolescent has already developed the awareness of belonging to another place, an elected homeland where he can achieve his literary ambitions; this place is Paris. And the Ville Lumière, with its penniless artists and young bohemians in search of their place in the world, is exactly as he had imagined it: if anything it is in fact better, because it becomes the nest of all his love stories, from the ones as a young man, squeezed within tiny crowded studios in the most remote arrondissement, to the more mature ones, until he finally meets Hélène with whom he decides to share his future and who will give him a daughter. These episodes from his life in Paris and the women he meets there are the starting point for a reflection on the complexity of relationships and other wider existential themes. The narrator’s tone is always slightly disillusioned and the events are described with an ironic and irreverent style.

A new take on and reworking of compelling, eternal Greek myths through its best-known characters, by one of the most important voices in Italian fiction.

Marta Morazzoni enters the hall of divinities and heroes of the Ancient Greek world, and freely interprets mythological stories, although keeping them firmly rooted in Greek soil. She starts with the cities she herself has visited, where rumour has its memorable feats took place: Mycenae, with its fortress inhabited by the king of all kings, Agamemnon, and his cold wife Clytemnestra; Knossos, home of the marvellous palace and dreaded labyrinth; Gytheio, the new abode of hapless lovers Helen and Paris, snatched away from blazing Troy; Thebes, with its seven doors, the birthplace of Alcmene, Oedipus and Jocasta. The author brings back to the surface the charm of these cities – often forgotten or spoilt by tourism – closely linked to what, they say, happened there. And it’s this very “they say” that triggered her desire to invent history, in her own way.

After And Yet We Fall Happy, the n.1 Italian debut novel of 2017, Enrico Galiano returns to give us an intense fresh outlook on the world of adolescents.
A world that he knows well, having to deal with them every day.
Three teenagers in search of happiness amidst fears and hopes. What if all we needed was a backpack full of reasons to live?

Bestseller List – English sample available

Filippo is running away from school having finally found the courage to stand up to his teacher who has been humiliating him for years. Outside, his best friend Giorgio is sitting in the car waiting for him; Giorgio has just been to his brother’s funeral and is wondering if it is normal that he hasn’t shed a tear. Then Clo runs up to them, having just stolen a mobile phone in the hope, perhaps, of calming the pain she feels inside. The three exchange a glance and immediately understand, recognise and choose each other. For all three of them, this is the moment they decide to change, to gather their courage and follow their dreams.
Clo knows exactly how to achieve this. Her backpack is full of notes on which she writes the reasons she has to be grateful for life. Now Filippo and Giorgio must also find the special reason to start truly living. Because you can only achieve happiness if you are not afraid to reach for it.

The Guanda publishing house presents a great editorial project: the complete, regular publishing of the entire theatrical works of Nobel prize winner Dario Fo; an oeuvre that is characterised by immense inventive richness and deeply original form.

The most widely performed and best known of his plays, which has continually been met with praise from the public during its 50,000 productions in Italy and abroad. A perfect mechanism for the stage that is distinctive in its irony, sarcasm and parody. A political satire that tells the silent, age-old story of the lower classes crushed by power but capable of mocking it.
A new complete edition with a never-before-published prologue by the author.

During the course of 2018 the following works have been published:
Sant’Ambrogio e l’invenzione di Milano (Saint Ambrose and the Invention of Milan) Morte accidentale di un anarchico (Accidental Death of an Anarchist)
Ruzzante (Romping)
Arlecchino (Harlequin)

The following works will be published during the following years:
Non si paga! Non si paga! (We Wont’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!)
Il Papa e la Strega (The Pope and The Witch)
Johan Padan a la descoverta de le americhe (Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas) Sotto paga? Non si Paga! (Can’t Pay? Wont’t Pay!)
Il paese di Mezerat (The Country of Mezerat)
Clacson, trombette e pernacchi (Trumpets and Raspberries)
La resurrezione di Lazzaro (The Resurrection of Lazarus)

The upheavals, the dramas, the political and cultural intrigues of Europe between the 19th and 20th century through the eyes of 15 relevant Russian women, who all lived at different times but were united by History’s invisible thread.

English sample available

Margherita Belgiojoso competently creates a brilliant fresco of portraits of famous Russian women. She somehow succeeds in leaving their stories open and limitless, each one leading on to the next.
Vera Figner, nicknamed the “Venus of the Revolution” because of her great beauty, who assassinated Alexander II, the reformer tsar, and after 20 years in prison fled to Switzerland where she listened to a conference by Lenin who deeply disappointed her. Then onto Aleksandra Kollontai, a Leninist revolutionary, a feminist at the heart of the Soviet movement. Then it is the turn of Matil’da Kschessinskaya, the tsar’s beloved ballerina who leads us into the grand Russian theatres where we meet a few of the characters already present in the portraits of the previous women; and then naturally the theatre impresario Diaghilev and her rival, the symbolist poet Zinaida Gippius. From writer Nina Nikolaevna Berberova, to Lili Brik, Mayakovsky’s muse, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, we finally come up to the present day with Yelena Bonner, the dissident who with her husband, the 1975 Nobel Prize winner, was ultimately rehabilitated by Gorbachev and called back to Moscow. And who was met by a huge crowd at the station on their arrival.

Psychotherapy meets literature: book therapy can heal illness in our psyche and increase our happiness.

English sample available

Rachele Bindu is a psychotherapist who uses examples drawn from literature to reflect on the principal needs of our psyche. She teaches people to read in a book therapy way, in other words to find themselves in books. Do we want to slow down our hectic lives? Let’s read Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Dino Buzzati. Would we like to feel more comfortable being on our own? Then we can’t not read Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Harper Lee and Kazuo Ishiguro. Who better than Donna Tartt, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Khalil Gibran and Oscar Wilde to learn to appreciate beauty? Then there are books for learning to take care of others, accept our own bodies and the precariousness of life, and believe in ourselves. After all, each one of us is made up of stories: we need fictional material created by others so that we can have a springboard, new words, new possibilities to tell our own story and face events that haven’t happened yet and may never happen in real life; but giving them serious thought enriches our psyche and helps us – why not? – to find happiness.

Mascaras, shampoos and sun creams: what are we really spreading on ourselves?
An expert has tested various beauty and health products first-hand to help us protect ourselves from the risks and the scams of the cosmetic industry.

English sample available

Is cellulite really an illness we should battle against with thousands of creams, massages and shock treatments? Is there a difference between the hundreds of shampoos offered – each one promising a different type of miracle for our locks – on the shelves in our supermarkets and pharmacies? These are just two of the questions to which this investigative book provides answers. The world of cosmetics is one in which advertising rules; pharmaceutical companies make massive investments in order to sell their products, misleading possible customers with false information. On top of this comes old traditions and hearsay. Beatrice Mautino tries to illuminate us about what we daily put into our trolleys, or worse, onto our bodies, by putting to the test anti-ageing creams with outrageous ingredients, demonised parabens, anti-cancer sunscreen, hair removal products and hair growth lotions, organic or pseudo- organic cosmetics.

Mythology and Eros: questioning the Ancients in order to (also) meet the emergencies of the present.

English sample available

Eros’s Abyss is a journey, a study that investigates the fertile possibilities that the winged Greek god opens to those who are his prey, both as individuals and as members of a community made up of connections and relationships.
After all, Homer, Hesiod, the lyric poets, the tragedians and Plato were clear about this: Eros is a very powerful god, one of the divinities with whom everything began; nothing changes as dramatically as when he pierces and penetrates our chest, making our knees tremble and preparing us for a new life. Because when we are seduced, everything we’re accustomed to collapses like a paper castle and we feel our old lives die as a future unfolds before us which we see with new eyes, new energy and that sweet yet tormenting vitality that’s the blindingly adamantine sign of falling in love. The power and beauty of this god does not, however, stop when we fall in love. Once it has penetrated our soul, erotic tension, when channeled correctly, prompts us to constantly try and build new forms of relationship, new passions, and pursue new goals. So much so that we discover how the infinite abyss of our soul can incite us to achieve unthinkable goals and even the greatest prize granted by love: the fulfilment of our individuality.

From one of the most successful teachers of the concept of resilience – with 100,000 copies sold and 26 total editions – a book that is both new and engaging in its approach: Pietro Trabucchi derives lessons, advice and suggestions from the story of his thrilling climb up the Denali in Alaska, which are adaptable to the objectives that we all set ourselves in life.

English synopsis available

Opus is an ideal of perfection, a goal that requires total dedication, absolute commitment and an unconditional determination in all sectors and fields. These types of achievements require such passion that they cannot be generated by external factors. What we need is what psychologists call intrinsic motivation, which is better known as self-motivation. So how do we activate it? How do we promote it in others? At a time when self-motivation is difficult, in which individualistic society forces us to count solely on ourselves, Pietro Trabucchi answers these questions to show us not just how strong self-motivation can be, but also how we can activate and train it independently.

Giving the best of yourself at every moment and in every situation.
A book for anybody who wants to increase the efficiency of their mind and body.

Performance is a highly topical word and attitude that permeates every sector of society. This makes it interesting to analyse, understand how it works and develop this kind of attitude in practice. Dr Nardone uses tools and practical enhancement and relaxation techniques to teach us to go beyond our limitations, in order to overcome stress and uncertainty, and reach new targets. He first worked on many of these aspects by helping managers, athletes, actors, speakers, artists, students, musicians, surgeons and many others manage their performance, find a way of giving the best of themselves and overcome doubts, fears, blockages and anxieties.

Twin sisters divided by a choice. Two lives to rebuild. One single love able to bring them back together.

Twin sisters Ariele and Rebecca couldn’t be more different: one is shy and withdrawn, the other a rebel who fiercely defends her freedom. Except that Ariele possesses a gift her sister lacks: she has premonitory dreams. A unique gift but also a sentence that will not allow her to escape from the spread of Nazi hatred. Hatred that forces their mother Giuditta, a Jew, to take a terrible decision: leave Ariele in the care of a female friend and take Rebecca to Auschwitz with her, certain that her strength of character will save her. In the years that follow, having survived the horror of the concentration camps, Rebecca shuts her heart to the world. On the other hand, Ariele tries not to waste the opportunity she has been given by never pulling back. Not even when her sister, with whom she has been unable to rebuild a relationship, knocks at her door and asks her to look after her daughter, whom she is not even able to take into her arms. For both sisters, the pain of the past is still too deep, but perhaps the little girl can provide an opportunity for Ariele and Rebecca to reestablish a bond and repair the mechanism of their hearts, which have stopped at a time that no longer exists.

An unlikely friendship that will – against all odds – reignite the destinies of two women who are very different yet strangely complementary. An intense and moving first novel about discovering one’s feelings and joie de vivre.

English sample available

Margherita is 34, she is beautiful, rich and has a job that she loves, but she is absolutely incapable of overcoming the death of her beloved father and being suddenly abandoned by her fiancé. Anna is 76, she was born without a penny, was sold as a maid at the age of 9 and has spent her entire life with a petty man and a mean daughter. Yet Anna conveys extraordinary energy and joie de vivre. The secret for her light-heartedness is a sweetheart with whom she has been exchanging passionate letters for the past fifty years.
The two very distant worlds of Margherita and Anna converge in a hospital room that they have to share in the orthopedic ward. After a few stormy clashes and an impromptu trip through the cheerfulness and sweet scents of sunny and open- hearted Naples, a friendship is born that will unexpectedly pave the way to save both of them.

Shortly after the Second World War, a small-town longing for redemption, and its little local secrets in a bubbly Christmas atmosphere.

Attilio Fumagalli is a man of fifty, rotund, married with no children. A former accountant, he is now the mayor of Bellano – the Super-Mayor, in fact, is what everybody calls him. He is strangely obsessed with council meetings, which he holds every two months. Lately, though, he has been summoning them every week. Today, 22 December 1949, he really has gone too far: he has called a meeting for Christmas Eve. What do they have to discuss? Nothing. It’s to say Happy Christmas. There’s clearly something lurking behind all this eagerness. But what?

A prison guard by vocation, persecuted by guilt and desperately in search of redemption. Against the backdrop of a dry, wild, extraordinarily beautiful Sardinia, a new tormented and unforgettable character comes to life, similar to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher.

English sample and synopsis available

Sante is 30, he has a military build and hair that is even shorter than required, as if he asked the prison barber to punish him instead of making him presentable. For the past 5 years he has been a prison guard, a senseless job that he has chosen voluntarily. After all, he is not like the prisoners he guards; he is free to leave whenever he wants. Yet he is aware that there is no freedom for the mind that can go where it wants but has no place to go. Sante has chosen to live in solitary reclusion because he is afraid of revealing anything about himself, afraid that his secret – his sin – might emerge. Perhaps he has been given a chance to redeem himself now, to kill the monster, the inmate who abused and killed a young girl; this might be his chance to make things right. Sante is hopeful, but his hopes turn out to be useless when he finds that the monster has already been killed, and now everyone suspects him. The only way to unveil the truth and possibly find redemption, is for him to escape and find the culprit…
A novel that combines quality writing and strong narrative tension.

An original and young archaeologist specialising in ancient art is the principal character in a series of fresh, lively novels that take place in radiant Sicily and flow seamlessly between past and present, mystery and ancient history.

Isabella De Clio is earnest, meticulous, honest, very knowledgeable, beautiful and strong-willed. She has however one defect: Isabella is a kleptomaniac who constantly feels the urge to steel objects that represent memories for her.
An authority on cameos, she ends up working with a charming police inspector on an investigation into the murder of an elderly lady with an apparent connection to a precious gem of the Augustan Age. It turns out to have been a wedding present to the Emperor Octavian from his child bride, which ended up in the hands of the murdered woman in order to keep her from revealing an uncomfortable truth.

While doing some research, Isabella unearths a manuscript dating back to the 1st century BC. It gives a new version of the battle of Lipari, during which three ships sank in the Tyrrhenian Sea while trying to defend a precious cargo. Isabella is curious and discovers that two Roman relics have in fact been found and that during the recovery operations, Carla Sollini, an expert diver, died in mysterious circumstances. As for the phantom cargo, there is no trace of it: could it be that the unpublished manuscript is unreliable? Or that the sea has since destroyed everything?

Work is the only thing that distracts Isabella from it is a recent, oppressive feeling of loneliness. Fortunately, there is a new mystery about to take her mind off her love life. The recent discovery of papyri attributed to Archimedes prompts her to consult the important Medieval codex rescriptus, long considered to be no more than a prayer book, but which actually conceals many surprises. Isabella will therefore find herself untangling a web which, on one hand, involves the famous Ancient Syracuse scientist and, on the other hand, an inestimable treasure, as well as mysterious deaths and schemes that are way beyond her. It is thanks to this risky investigation, however, that Isabella will discover that she is not as alone as she thinks…

A love triangle, an unexpected inheritance, the finding of a lost suitcase and some long- forgotten music.
A fascinating, overwhelming debut, intelligent, powerful and original.

English Sample Available

Cardiff, May 2015: Brynmor Davis, head of Music Programming at BBC Wales, is a middle-aged man with only one deep remorse in life: twenty years earlier he sent a young colleague of his, Iwan Price, to interview a famous English pianist on the occasion of her 90th birthday. An outwardly simple assignment but one that will prove fatal, in which the young man lost his life on his way back in a strange car accident.
What could the police possibly want from him now? Simply to hand him a bag that’s property of the BBC. Brynmor recognises it immediately: it is Iwan’s bag. But the bag can’t, shouldn’t exist any longer since it was burnt in the fire that engulfed his car. How was it spared? And why are they returning it to Brynmor only now, after twenty years? And, above all, what does it contain?
Brynmore wants to get to the bottom of this and starts investigating the last years of Iwan’s life. A complex and mysterious plot emerges from the young man’s past: a false diplomat, a huge bequest, three characters who lived in pre- revolutionary Russia. Nikolai Medtner, the 20th century pianist and composer, practically forgotten from the annals of music history, his older brother Emilii Medtner and Anna Medtner, née Bratenshi, who was married to both of them.

What does this murky triangle straddling two wars have to do with Iwan’s death? And with Brynmor’s life?

A new investigation by Inspector Ferraro, the lazy, “crumpled” cop with nothing to recommend him, who comes from the outskirts of Milan.

After six years in jail, Sasà, a man with a record of drug dealing, brutal murders, violence and blackmail, walks out through the gate, finally able to head home a free man. His plan now is to retrieve the money he concealed prior to his arrest, take his wife and daughter and disappear into thin air as soon as possible. Given his criminal record, Sasà was destined for a sentence of thirty years at least, so how come he’s out already? It is something Inspector Ferraro has to investigate, unwillingly as usual, in a race against time, as desperate as it is unwanted. Before Sasà is once again drawn to the taste of blood. Something he has never been able to resist.

A new case for private investigator Elia Contini, who works between northern Italy and Switzerland. A detective novel in which suspense and turns of events are cleverly intertwined with an ironic reflection on human passions and vulnerability.

Contini is called to take on the case of a disappearance that goes back twenty years; in 1998 Eugenio Torres, a famous doctor who loved trekking and promoted hospitals in Niger disappeared during a trek in the Swiss mountains. Now his children want to find out what really happened. One day, a young migrant arrives in Switzerland from the Nigerian Sahara, claiming that he has proof Torres is still alive and in need of help.
An odd pair of investigators is formed: the Swiss detective and the man from the desert. As they investigate the past, they are lead to Torres’s best friend who confesses to having killed him out of jealousy in 1998 and to having thrown him in a gorge in a rocky area. How can it be then, that today Eugenio Torres is signalling his presence, as if he were still alive?

Previous titles of the Contini’s series:
L’uomo senza casa/The Homeless Man (2008); La sparizione/The Disappearance (2010); Il giudice e la rondine/The Judge and the Swallow (2014); L’arte del fallimento/The Art of Failure (2016).

A great new adventure that travels across the centuries, the intrigues and setting of a mysterious civilisation with a unique, undying allure: the Ancient Egyptians.

Egypt, 1798. Archeologist Claude de Duras is dispatched to Egypt following Napoleon’s army, and there devotes himself to studying the mysteries and culture of the land of the Pharaohs. Because the military expedition is afflicted by bad luck, Napoleon Bonaparte is forced to give up the gold discovered by de Duras during his excavations, in exchange for loans that could improve the chances of the expedition. However, nobody can possibly imagine the extent and value of the French archeologist’s discoveries. A trail of death follows anybody who, from then on, comes to know of his extraordinary findings…
Present-day Canada. On her deathbed, the adoptive mother of Oswald Breil, former head of Mossad and former prime minister of Israel – a recurring character in Buticchi’s novels – reveals that his family’s death, too, might be linked to these discoveries

Louis has spent all 84 years of his life listening to the mountains. His intense life, always lived at high altitude, is a collection of incredible experiences and enchanting stories.

For Louis Oreiller, mountains are neither a challenge nor a feat. They are his home of earth and sky, a horizon to which he belongs. Louis was born to poverty and grew up in the war. Originally from the Aosta Valley, he has spent his 84 years in Rhêmes-Notre-Dame – just twenty chimney tops at 1,7000 metres’ altitude, deep in the beautiful wilderness of a narrow valley.
As a boy with no other weapon but hunger, he is hunter, smuggler, labourer. His outlook changes when he becomes a gamekeeper. During his long, solitary days staking out poachers from behind the lenses of his monocular, he becomes the lord of the ledges, observes eagles flying and experiences something very similar to love. Season after season, he transforms trees into sculptures, “digs out” badgers and marmots, and speaks to dogs, cows and hens – to humans, too, sometimes.
Oreiller’s world is one that is now lost, trampled by a modernity without patience, by a stream of people who come back but never stay. And yet his eyes, his gnarled, powerful hands and his words, entrusted to those who, like anthropologist Irene Borgna, are able to hear them, can lead you far away, off the trail, to hidden passes – marking time, like the rings of a tree, like the rings on the antlers of an old ibex.

The fascinating adventure of the Night Witches, an all-female soviet regiment at the command of fragile and precarious military planes that stopped the advance of the German army in 1942.

Journalist Ritanna Armeni met one of the last survivors of the Night Witches, an all-female flock of volunteers ranging from the captain to the last mechanic, which succeeded in playing a dominant role in the battle against the Third Reich in Crimea, Belorussia and Poland. 96-year-old Irina Rakobolskaja tells the forgotten story of her and her companions on board the Polikarpov U-2, an obsolete biplane made of wood and fabric with no on-board instruments, who undertook a series of relentless and precise nocturnal bombings that gave them the name of Night Witches, Nachthexen.
These were courageous and audacious women who accepted the tragedy and violence of war and death in order to gain emancipation and equality.

A precise and passionate introduction to the doctrine of German philosopher Edmund Husserl which gives us the opportunity to reflect upon the principles, the values and the deep meaning of teaching.

English Translation costs are entirely covered

Edmund Husserl is universally known to be the founder of phenomenology, a research method of which the starting point is doubt: doubting the reliability of our experience and its capacity to be the foundation of any knowledge. This is the way Husserl lives the cultural situation of late modern times, that are still our times in many ways. This is the starting point for Roberta De Monticelli’s deeply sensitive work in which she demonstrates the incredible ethical and logical relevance of the German philosopher.

A young philosopher re-evaluates the feeling of tenderness that is often cast aside, and rediscovers its strength on both a personal and political level.

When it is authentic, tenderness does not comply with easy definitions: it insinuates itself with delicate tenacity among the great civic virtues and the rhetoric of power; it is what we’re missing in order to finally live and feel in a communal world. For this reason, talking about it is a hard but beautiful feat. It is all the more important today, since our harsh reality has become undecipherable, narcissistic, violent yet sentimental at the same time.
From DeLillo to Pope Francis, Plato to Wislawa Szymborska, Max Weber to David Foster Wallace, Lucretius to Zizek, Enea to the migrant crisis, talking about tenderness means talking about love, the passing of time, and philosophy. It means talking about humanity, an interest in others, and the profound lightness that allows us to catch the deepest and most creative meanings behind our finiteness and our fragility.

A vivid, faithful portrayal of Kurt Gödel, one of history’s most fascinating mathematicians.

English sample available

The end-of-century edition of Time magazine named him “Mathematician of the Century”. Even logicians, past and present, state that only Aristotle is his contender for supremacy in the field. Albert Einstein said in his later years that he would go to the office purely for the privilege of strolling back home with him. But Kurt Gödel was a lot more than that. Tormented by problems of mental instability all his life, he was a fierce misanthropist. Alongside recognition and fame came persecution mania. He was not only obsessive in his eating but paranoid, terrified that somebody might poison him. So much so that in 1978, at the age of seventy-two, he let himself die of malnutrition when his wife was hospitalised for a few months so could not cook for him. In any case, Gödel was first and foremost a genius: we owe him some of the research that has had a major influence on our lives and society. Just think that his theories on incompleteness influenced the work of Alan Turing, the protagonist of the multi award-winning film The Imitation Game, and led to the invention of the computer.

2,500 patients cured, 30 years’ experience, 30 published books translated worldwide. The greatest representative of Strategic Therapy: 350,000 copies sold.

Made famous by Molière and his Imaginary Invalid, the fear of illness doesn’t seem to be losing its grip on people, and presents an apparently paradoxical challenge to medicine and its continued progress. The terror that undermines daily life, the constant demand for medical help and treatment, and the complaints about pain, are deeply real to patients and have a negative impact on their lives as well as those close to them. This book shows how, by means of many fun and paradoxical techniques one can, within a short space of time, emerge from the vicious circle of hypochondria. A comprehensive, exhaustive volume which doesn’t just demonstrate the effectiveness of therapy in treating this condition with an account of clinical cases, but also provides useful advice for preventing it.

The new series of detective novels starring Marshal Maccadò, newly appointed to the Bellano police station on Lake Como, as he struggles to settle in, and not just because of the bad weather

English sample available

Milan, 1930. The Carabinieri stop two people for night-time disturbances. One is a university student aged 35, with a long list of connections that go all the way to Benito Mussolini. The other is a good-looking girl, a dancer and singer, whose stage name is Doris Brilli; she denies the accusation of having been out soliciting. However, she has no connections, and more importantly no identification papers on her. The following morning, she is therefore escorted to her home town on Lake Como and handed over to Ernesto Maccadò, a young marshal, newly arrived from southern Italy a couple of months earlier. Maccadò wastes no time in doing his job, unaware of the complications and implications that the Doris Brilli case could potentially unleash…

On every December 7th Milan celebrates its patron Saint, archbishop Ambrose, with the musical premiere at the Scala theatre, street markets and even a prize for people worthy of praise. But who was Ambrose before he was made a Saint? Fo tells us his story, celebrating him as a figure who represented the redemption of the people against the emperor and the triviality of the rich.

A trail of blood and brutal murders, a priceless diamond, an evil empire that must be defeated.

A story that goes back and forth between past and present, and that cleverly mixes historical facts and fictional narrative.

Oswald Breil, former head of the Mossad and ex-prime minister of Israel, and his wife Sara Terracini, an Italian restorer, are forced to seek refuge in the south of Tijuana, Mexico because of a motor failure during a cruise on their yacht. Not far from where they’ve docked, a judge who had been part of the Mexican anti-narcos pool is killed by the local organised crime before he could manage to communicate with them.

The drug cartel is now searching for Oswald, an inconvenient obstacle in their path. The cartel is linked to an enormous 33-carat yellow diamond called the Maximilian. The stone dates back to the XIX century, when Maximilian of Habsburg was Emperor of Mexico, and it is part of an undiscovered treasure on which Maximilian had founded his empire, one that was seemingly legitimate but actually drenched in innocent blood.

The stone is said to be cursed and to emit sinister flashes of light capable of blinding even the “light of the empire”.

Cynical, surly and disenchanted: chief inspector Bordelli investigates during the worrisome and revolutionary atmosphere of the sixties, a time so far away yet so similar to our own.

It is April 1968, and Florence like the rest of Italy is shaken by student demonstrations.

In contrast with the fermenting world around him, Inspector Bordelli is going through a sort of internal spring revolution and he finally feels at peace. The weight of his past seems to have finally lifted, and he is willing to take life more lightly. Even his relationship with Eleonora seems to have become more stable.

This moment of calm however is suddenly interrupted by a horrendous murder, seemingly straightforward to solve. It will however bring Bordelli face to face with the families of the Florentine “Haute Bourgeoisie”, in which the children directly oppose their fathers and make no compromises, and where it is difficult to understand on what side evil lies.

Welcome to the Hotel Copenhagen, the home of Niels Bohr, one of the greatest physicists who ever lived. This is Physics turned into a beautiful novel.

The home of Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe has always been open to friends, among whom were illustrious guests and the famous scientists of the time, such as Albert Einstein. Through the eyes of Margrethe, we discover the private life of the physicist and enter the genius minds of those he met.

Jumping from one memory to the next, all of them fascinating and rich in detail, we reach 1941 when Werner Heisenberg entered the Hotel Copenhagen dressed in a Nazi uniform.

This encounter between Bohr and Heisenberg will change the history of physics forever.

From Ada Lovelace to Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin to Rita Levi Montalcini, and Maria Mitchell to Grace Murray Hopper, the lives of the most important female scientists told for the first time by one of their own.

At a time when the world is experiencing a renewed wave of feminism spanning all generations, the physicist and journalist Gabriella Greison has decided to tell the stories of the lives of twenty extraordinary women who contributed to scientific breakthroughs and human progress with passion and perseverance. As children, they too had secret dreams and ambitions, which is why we should all look to them for inspiration.

Their experiences and their legacy reflect the most precious part of our inner selves; the part of us that we should cherish most.

Twenty international and established male illustrators and artists have paid tribute to these scientists by interpreting their spirit in a series of contemporary, yet timeless portraits that illustrate each story.

The fascinating premonitions of visionaries from all over the world: from the First World War to the Soviet Revolution, from the landing of man on the moon to the Twin Towers terrorist attack.

Faustina Kowalska, Therese Neumann, Katharina Emmerick, Mirjana Dragicevic, Elena Aiello are just some of the visionaries that Jesus himself often described as “lightning rods of humanity”; these are women mostly of humble origins, who offered themselves to God to take on the sufferings that would otherwise have been inflicted on humanity. Saverio Gaeta writes about their stories and their prophecies, as well as the sacrifices that extraordinary female figures like them have made and continue to make in order to salvage the world.

2500 cured patients, 30 years of experience, 30 published books translated worldwide. The greatest representative of Strategic Therapy: 500,000 copies sold!

According to data from the World Health Organisation, 1 out of 5 people across the world have had at least one panic attack in their lives. Giorgio Nardone has successfully treated more than 15,000 patients, and therefore has an extraordinary experience that he can put to his readers’ disposal. This is useful both for doctors and therapists: the more patients you treat, the more stories, experiences, diagnoses and knowledge you accumulate. The stories told in this book – 12 cases of patients suffering from panic attacks – are exemplary cases that summarise the art and the technique, the competence and the professionalism of Giorgio Nardone. Lengthy psychotherapy isn’t necessary, so much as a paradoxical strategy to help us face our fears, enhancing them to the point in which they are annulled and transforming them into our greatest resource. A clever and extremely useful book, up to date and very relevant, which carries a serene and reassuring message: it is possible to get better, and to come out from the darkest shadows in which panic imprisons us.

A small apartment on the lake, a beautiful girl with no inhibitions and a charming doctor who is about to land himself in a whole lot of trouble.

The sixties. Adalberto Casteggi, a charming forty-year-old optician from Milan has fallen in love with the lake during his commutes to replace a colleague at the hospital in Bellano. He has set up his buen retiro on these shores, and is revelling in the sweet company of a local patient. Her name is Rosa Pescegalli, a very attractive thirty-six-year-old. Rosa runs a perfume shop and has a history of being a local heartthrob. She has distanced herself from men however, after having her heart broken by a football player. Now she winds them around her little finger when she wants and how she wants, but refuses to make any commitments. The doctor falls head over heels for her, but blinded by her incredible beauty, he forgets that there may be a price to pay… because behind the splendour of the lake, of the mountains and especially in Rosa’s magnetic eyes (and cleavage), lurk old resentments and venomous hopes of revenge.

A literary novel reminiscent of Greek classics such as Homer and Plato, but also of the likes of Faulkner, Hemingway and Emily Bronte, presenting us with a modern myth.

A simple, true story, about how the beauty of internal rebirth can only come from the inevitable suffering of our mortal lives.

English Sample Available

On a barge on the river Tiber, on the far eastern side of Rome, there is a family run “la trattoria”. The family who runs it, however, is far from traditional: it is made up of the last remaining eel fishermen, a few foreign girls who work there and others who used to live in the surrounding area, Italians as well as newly arrived immigrants. Disinherited people, who survive by alternating in the fields, or as tour guides for roman tourists who are fascinated by their archaic trades; these people have formed a community that transcends time and the conventions of this world.

Shortlisted for the Strega Prize.

An extraordinary human and artistic parable told through memories, anecdotes, and unpublished events witnessed first-hand, from the writer who knew him best, and the most intimately.

From the first extraordinary stories by the narrators of the lake who were his first teachers, to his passion for painting and theatre, both of which he cultivated throughout his life. To Franca Rame, with whom he shared his parable of life and art; she was by his side in his very first farces, in the numerous comedies of political satire, in his television adventures and his clashes with censorship…
Fo is brought back to life in these pages with a provocative energy, as a man who was always ready to turn the meaning of things upside down, who liked to show that the king and his courtiers wore no clothes, and to laugh at the absurdity of life. Until his last day.

A wonderful unpublished story: the fiercely, jeeringly told tale of the war between the Italian cities and Federico Barbarossa, one of Fo’s favourite themes of resistance against invaders and the powerful.

A convincing reinvention of History through his own over- dramatisation, sprinkled with brief bouts of controversy and satire of our current political and social situation.
The result is an engaging, vivid story of the past that illuminates and challenges our current times, taking us back to the middle ages, in the era of the communes, which is shown as intense and vivid as ever. By choosing to tell the story from “the bottom”, focusing on the lives of the men and women dealing with the hardships of daily life, Fo surprises us as always by offering a version of history that he defined as “crazy, but definitely less obvious and more believable than the official version”.

A woman, her rebellion and her passions. A historical novel that depicts the 16th century through the life of an obstinate and proud Renaissance poet.

Lucca, mid 16th century: Chiara Matraini comes from a family of weavers, who are neither nobles nor courtiers, the only conditions that allow women in those times to have a public life. Her future will no doubt be that of a bourgeois woman locked up behind the walls of a palazzo, a marriage to a suitable husband and children. Chiara, however, has been given her parents’ consent to study, and thus decides to become a woman of letters, and more than that, a poet. This is a very unconventional choice that she will pay a heavy price for. But Chiara is a proud, tenacious woman, not one to be dominated like her native town of Lucca. She will never stop fighting in the name of her love for her son and for a man who she loves desperately, of her passion for poetry, and especially of herself and her dignity as a woman.

Action, enigmas, adventures, and a frenzied rhythm… The adventurous and mysterious side of philosophy.

English Sample Available

What is the link between the secrets of the Manhattan project for the construction of the atomic bomb at the end of the Second World War, a Nazi expedition in Tibet initiated by Himmler and a mysterious document guarded in the vaults under Area 51? The spectres of terror seemingly buried in the past remerge, and a series of worrying coincidences hint at the arrival of an actual apocalypse. The National Security Agency can only trust one person: a young rebellious professor of philosophy, Michael Price, who has spent his whole life searching for long lost ancient texts. Until today that is… Because Heidegger’s first Black Notebook remerges from the secret archives of the Vatican and in its pages is hidden the key to interpret a mysterious symbol, a secret hidden in the darkness of the planet’s vastest forest. To unveil this mystery is a dangerous and difficult mission, and to stop a threat of planetary proportions is an almost impossible one. Michael is not alone in this adventure however: a woman of extreme beauty and intelligence is working alongside him, and they soon develop a strong yet dangerous bond…

A prophetic book.  A brave writer determined to track it down.

An adventure suspended between reality and legend.

English sample available

Jerusalem. In the Year of Our Lord, the prophetess Anna gives the world a book destined to change its destiny. Many centuries later, the story of this book is stumbled upon by Margherita Mori, a successful writer suffering from hypermnesia, a memory condition that makes her remember every single detail of her life, even the most painful ones. Margherita has recently written an adventure novel in which she tells the story of an apocalyptic book protected by seven iron seals and which, if found, could alter the destiny of the world. From the outset, Margherita’s book draws a bizarre kind of attention, including from Father Costarelli, a Jesuit who issues an urgent invitation to the seminary where he lives. Two days later, the man dies in suspicious circumstances, making Margherita wonder if the documents she had consulted in order to write her novel may not be so far-fetched after all.

Mattia is eight years old in Spring 2020, when the world shuts itself at home because of a virus. In the distant future when he is telling this story, his perspective becomes once again that of a child as he recalls the salient moments of that epoch-making lockdown, remembering what it meant for his family.

An intense, empathic story set during the latest months.

Andrei, Mattia’s dad, comes to Milan because the following day, 10 March, he and Mattia’s mum are getting divorced. It’s a shame that the evening news on television informs him and his family that not only the courts but the entire country are going to be closed. Instead of running away to his new girlfriend in Rome, Andrei decides to stay in Milan so he can be closer to his son. However, Mattia wants none of this father who abandoned him when he was three years old; as a matter of fact, he hates him. In spite of himself, the boy starts living in the microcosm of his everyday life turned upside down, with school downsized to a computer, neighbours singing from their balconies and a father he hates locked in with him. Among mysteries to be solved and surprises around the corner, the lockdown becomes for Mattia partly an opportunity to take a close look at things and realise that perhaps growing up also means trusting other people, even your worst enemies.

Alice Allevi: funnier, clumsier, more intuitive and ironic than ever. A successful mix of crime story, romance and comedy.

A very successful TV series based on these novels has been produced by Endemol and broadcasted by RAI 1.

The comeback of the pathologist who has charmed thousands of readers, and become a literary phenomenon.

A particularly unusual crime weapon and a victim who is well known in academic circles are the ingredients of a new and impervious investigation by the aspiring pathologist Alice Allevi. Luckily for once her work difficulties will not affect her sentimental life because, yes, Alice has finally made a choice…But has she made the right one?

An extremely ambitious and fully-realized debut novel: La vita in tempo di pace displays an original intelligence and an unprecedented depth of feeling.

Full English Translation Available

Ivo Brandani has always lived in a time of peace. His story starts on the 29th May 2015 when Ivo, a sixty-nine-year-old engineer, is disenchanted, angry and morbidly attached to life. While coming back from Egypt, in a state of dreamlike limbo, Ivo revisits the different stages of his middle-class existence, from the present to the past: the sharp decline of the 2000s, the hypocrisy of the 1990s and, going further back in time, the student protests in the 1960s, the discovery of love and sex and the barbaric world that emerged from World War II, a time when Brandani was only a child experiencing his first nightmares and challenges. Razor-sharp and relentless, digressive and compelling, this book tells the story of a country and exposes the contradictions of the Italian as well as the European middle-class from the point of view of a lucid anti-hero: an exploration of the weaknesses and aspirations, the enthusiasm and nastiness of a people, of what we wanted to be and what, despite our best intentions, we have eventually become.

The three main political discourses of Pope Francis on social and economic injustice. A fundamental document of our times.

“This meeting of ours is to answer a very real yearning, something that any father and any mother want for their children: a yearning that should be available to everyone but that sadly, has become increasingly out of reach for most people: land, home, and work. It is strange, but if I mention this, for some then the Pope is a communist. What they fail to see is that love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel. Land, Home and Work, for which you all fight, are sacred rights”.

Pronounced in Rome and South America between 2014 and 2016 in front of an audience of representatives of worldwide social movements, these words are the most important declarations on these issues, and are the foundation of the ambitious project elaborated by the Vatican to connect the most varied international projects for the program called the three T’s (“tierra, techo, trabajo”, “land, home, work”).

This book contains the simple yet radical words pronounced by the Pope.

An interview with Juan Grabois, one of the organisers of these meetings for popular movements completes the book as well as a detailed reconstruction of the meetings and the evolution of Bergoglio’s political vision by Alessandro Santagata, an expert in history of Catholicism.

The intestine and our digestive system are at the center of a Revolutionary Method. The first scientifically proven diet to apply Giulia Enders’ theories of Gut.

English Sample Available – bestseller

Everything we eat leaves residue on the walls of our digestive tubes, which in turn become irritated, or in the worst case scenario, clogged. The body feels heavy, less responsive and is more exposed to disorders such as backache, migraine, insomnia and poor blood circulation. For the last 30 years the naturopath and osteopath Frank Laporte-Adamski has been promoting a nutrition method with the aim of duly respecting the “second brain” we have in our stomachs, which commands our digestion but also 70% of the functions of our immune system. The secret resides in a balanced diet that does not demonise any foods, privileges seasonal foods, and most importantly, separates foods such as acids like fruits, tomatoes, aubergines and peppers (that transit rapidly through our digestive tube) from non acids such as carbohydrates, proteins and other vegetables (that transit very slowly). The foods from these two categories should never be eaten during the same meal: by mixing them in fact, digestion time increases, the digestive system is unable to completely eliminate any residue and the accumulated toxins damage other organs. An efficient solution confirmed by doctors, nutrition experts and especially by satisfied patients!

1927 Brussels: Einstein, Bohr, Marie and Cure and others are sitting around a table. This is the largest meeting of great minds in history. The only document relating to the evening is a photograph in which they are all present.
The photograph is the starting point used by Gabriella Greison to combine history and anecdotes, fantasy and reality, physics and gossip in a fabulously readable novel.

English Sample Available

Brussels, 29 October 1927. The V Solvay Congress of Physics has just ended, reuniting the 29 most important physicists of those times, the same ones who are about to attend a Gala dinner hosted by the Belgian royals. Albert Einstein is there, his usual playful self; Marie Curie, wise and composed as always; Niels Bohr, who is hiding his tension under a mask of joviality; and also Planck, Compton, Bragg… Exceptional, brilliant minds, but also women and men with their weaknesses and their little manias.
During the various courses of this astonishing dinner – seven courses as per the chapters of this book – the reader gets a closer look at these characters who made history, but also, as if by magic, gets to understand complicated concepts, by hearing them directly from the mouth of those who invented them. And at the end of the dinner, the reader leaves the table amused and more knowledgeable than when he first sat down.

The story of the “impossible Queen”, Cristina of Sweden, educated and rebellious, admired and opposed, unpredictable and courageous. An unusual woman.

The Thirty Year’ War is underway when Gustav II Adolf of Sweden dies, leaving the throne to his only daughter, Cristina, aged just 6 at the time. Educated, intelligent, attracted to philosophy, art and theatre, during her reign the young Queen will transform Stockholm into a “Northern Athens”, inviting the most famous personalities of the time such as Pascal and Descartes to her court. Her father has given her a boy’s education, teaching her as a child to ride and shoot. As she grows older, she will continue to prefer male clothes, behaving like a man, and loving the company of women especially – these romances are told by Fo with vitality and discretion -. Following her umpteenth free and controversial decision, that of converting to Catholicism, Cristina is forced to abdicate in favor of her cousin. Fearing reactions and vendettas from the protestants, she immediately leaves Sweden, and will spend the rest of her life in exile.

Three generations of women untangle a complex family story to bring to light a secret that could change the present completely…

French version available

Catherine, a quiet middle class woman, leaves Milano after finding out her husband has cheated on her yet again and moves to Paris with her daughter Luna to stay with her anti conformist eighty-six year old mother Christiane.

In Paris, Luna, who is writing a thesis on the teaching methods of Rudolph Steiner, discovers by chance that her great grandfather was a follower of Steiner’s. She therefore asks her grandmother to tell her more about their family. Christiane tells her a story that will bring to light complex and fascinating events, contradictory and painful memories, which will give a new significance to their past. The three women’s present life will be enlightened by these facts and will change because once the masks are off, the good people will become more worrying than the bad.

The most fundamental and conclusive work on Primo Levi. A goldmine of unedited stories, reflexions and material.

English Extract Available
Spanish Translation costs are entirely covered

This book is the fruit of twenty years of research by the curator of the Works of Primo Levi. It is both a book and a universe, and the universe is that of Primo Levi: his tormented life, his story as a writer and an intellectual, but especially it is the story of his work which is multi faceted, complex and extremely rich in themes, suggestions and references.
This book is a mosaic, in which each work by Primo Levi gives a name to a chapter: but in addition to the story of the composition, the imagination, the publication and the literary influences of each book, the author delves deeply into the contents, the imaginary and the themes, with brief sub-paragraphs which can either be read individually like digressions, or as a whole.
This is an unconventional essay, enriched by ten photographs of great visual impact and by unedited epistolary material; it is a piece of work which pays tribute to an author’s life, his works and his death which marked the 20th Century.

From one of the most prominent Italian exponents of the new rural culture, a total immersion in mountain culture told with explosive sentences of great efficiency, mixed with anecdotes, reflexions, stories and characters that are destined to leave a mark.

A magical encounter between two friends who evoke the beauty and profoundness of an ancient world that has disappeared. A world “that used to live off not much, almost nothing at all, that was satisfied with the little it had and almost considered it to be too much”, with no nostalgia, allowing their memories of a magnificent era of women and men to flow freely. This gallery of stories and characters is the starting point for an ethic of good, simple living, without ever becoming moralistic, and with ideas that are always well anchored in a culture of doing and of being down-to-earth that has now been forgotten.

Tre Fontane Apparition of Our Lady of the Revelation. An unedited investigation after sixty years.

Full English Translation

The forty year old Bruno Cornacchiola was violent, confused about the sense of his life, and had a record of being involved with communism and Protestantism. Up until 1947, when he had a vision of the Virgin Mary in a natural cave near Tre Fontane (Three Fountains) in the outskirts of Rome, and he converted.
In 2013, Saverio Gaeta chanced upon the archives of the Sacri, an association founded by the same prophet, and has been fascinated ever since.
An investigation undertaken through thousands of pages and annotations written by Cornacchiola during the course of his life. A skillful reconstruction, the first mosaic tile of many visions of Mary, from which supernatural messages, mystical visions and prophetic dreams emerge, in front of which no one can remain indifferent.

A climate fiction, the story of a group of “environmental migrants” who escape from climate catastrophes and search for salvation.

Synopsis and English sample available

In 2082, tens of thousands of people abandon an almost deserted Southern Europa and head to Scandinavia, which has become one of the very few territories with a mild climate that is favorable for the settlement of human beings. Among them is Livio Delmastro, an elderly professor of neuroscience who lost his wife and son sixteen years earlier because of the progressive climate changes and the dramatic social and political consequences that ensued from them. Alone now, Livio decides to leave, but he would really rather die than continue living. His story is intertwined with those of others who like him have paid guides and explorers in the hope of reaching the north. During their crossing of Switzerland and of the vast arid plateau of southern Germany, a few of his fellow travelers die of starvation, thirst or are killed by robbers. It is at this point that Livio realizes that he has a duty towards the world that is to save his few remaining companions.

Angelica was disfigured in an accident. Tommaso is destined to go blind.
Two fragile souls, two wounded people. A love story that goes against everyone and everything.

English sample available

Angelica, a roman student reading Law, is offered the chance to spend her summer holidays in her grandfather’s magnificent villa in the countryside, and she is thrilled. Thrilled because her goal is to hide from the rest of the world: aged 20, Angelica is scarred for life not only in her soul, but on the rest of her body too, after a car accident during which she lost her mother.
Tommaso is able to find her however; after a fortuitous meeting, which he can’t seem to forget, he decides to take her photographs with his Polaroid. This is the only tool that enables him to see the world clearly, since a degenerative illness affecting his eyes is plunging him into darkness.
In those photos, Angelica is beautiful, and bears no scars: Tommaso falls in love with her and thanks to his contagious cheerfulness he succeeds in overcoming her resistance and breaking down her barriers.
But just when it seems happiness is within their reach, a dark night envelops them, pushes them apart and triggers a series of painful events from which no one will come out unscathed. Only those who can find their way in the dark.

A weird series of coincidences and misunderstandings, unmentionable projects and obstacles of all sorts are solved thanks to the intervention of sensible and determined women.

“Doubt” is a small cigarette smuggler. “Doubt” is the nickname given to him because of his incapacity to make decisions, other than the one not to ever have anything to do with the authorities. While transporting his merchandise from Switzerland to Bellano, on Lake Como, Doubt’s motorboat suddenly bumps into the body of a woman. He drags it ashore, and having carefully hidden his loot, he runs to seek help from a doctor, a good client of his who is waiting for him. Unfortunately when he returns to the boat, the body has disappeared and a beautiful woman is standing there in its place…
A series of fabulous events take place on the sidelines of the main story, which include one hundred and twelve characters from Bellano that are among the most entertaining in Vitali’s novels; from the local carabinieri to the spinsters, to Ciurcill, who is famous for his serial announcements of his next plan to cross the lake swimming, to “Mistico” (Mystical), famous for eating nuts whole with their shells.

Inspired by an anecdote during a trip Franz Kafka took to Luzern, this is a story that emphasizes the importance of literature and books in our lives, sometimes much more than we realize.

Abramo Ferrascini is an ironmonger from Bellano, who has recently been introduced to the art of playing boules by the best player in town who lost his right arm in a work related incident three years earlier. Now Abramo has an excellent chance of winning the semifinals of the provincial championship that takes place on Sunday.
Unfortunately, his brother in law who lives in Switzerland is very ill and his wife is adamant on going to support her sister and say her last goodbyes to her brother in law. The Swiss doctors have given the man no more than 48 years to live, and everyone knows how precise the Swiss are! Abramo has no other choice than to head to Luzern where he hopes that his brother in law will die before Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest, so that he can be back in time for the tournament…

Andrea Vitali was born in Bellano in 1956 on the Eastern shore of Lake Como where he still lives and works as a doctor. He began his career as a novel writer in 1989 and has kept up his prolific career since then, collecting a great number of literary prizes.

A new episode in Vitali’s comedy of every-day life, set on the shores of Lake Como, in the town where Andrea Vitali was born and where he now lives and works as a practicing doctor. The area has recently started to attract visitors from all over the world, including Hollywood stars, such as George Clooney, who has bought a villa nearby.
In his amusing, intelligent, very enjoyable novels, Andrea Vitali has reinvented Italian comedy: he manages to restore the most accurate and profound image of Italy, amid a restless and entertaining whirlpool of colourful characters and surprises. His characters are typical provincial types, wallowing in their daily tedium. They’re gossipy, envious, and nosy, but at the same time naïve and terribly human.

A counter story in the manner of Dario Fo of the greatest scientist of all times Charles Darwin. The reconstruction of a scientific finding, the theory of the evolution of species, than concerns all of us and is still controversial to this day.

In a fantastic story that alternates between popular science and unpublished and comical autobiographical documents, Dario Fo retraces the convoluted journey of Charles Darwin’s studies, bringing to life the richness and charm of a unique character. Based on the letters that the scientist exchanged with his contemporaries and testimonials from his time, and the books that were subsequently published and that refuted his theories, Fo tackles a controversial theme, that of the evolution of spices, a real attack on all the finalist and determinist theories exposed in the Bible. An extremely contemporary issue that is at the centre of a debate that still rages today, dividing religion and science.

Those life lasting encounters, those moments one can never forget. Written by the master of contemporary narrative.

There are many encounters here that give shape to this story, and each one has a light, an atmosphere and unforgettable characters. Some have marked the childhood and adolescence of Camilleri, and others that occurred later on during his career as a theatre and television director. Some are unknown, and take us back to the years of Fascism and the War, moments marked by stories that because of their humanity and sincerity, acquire an epic dimension, and the magic of a fundamental memory as they are a unique stepping stone, a turning point in the journey of the writer.
The anarchic, invincible indifference of Antonio, insensitive to the military callings and the horrors of the war: the surprising beauty of an encounter with a free thinking and loving bishop; the unforgettable memory of that stormy night when Camilleri’s father saved a heroic commanding officer who had gone missing; the last goodbye to “Foffa”, prostitute by necessity, alone in life and in love.
And woven into the stories, the sudden encounter with Primo Levi and his silences, the extravagance of Gadda, the frank confrontation with Pasolini about the direction of one of his theatre productions just before his death, and also Elio Vittorini, Benedetto Croce, Antonio Tabucchi…
Among the many characters a book stands out, The Human Condition by Andre’ Malraux, the reading of which was fundamental in shattering Camilleri’s fascist beliefs.

An inquest into the sparkly and dangerous world of fashion: Inspector Ferraro reluctantly takes on a new investigation.

English Sample Available

After the summer holidays, the city of Milan goes back to work, more nervous than in the past. Inspector Ferraro has also gone back to work, his body and soul both broken by years of work. Forty years old, divorced, having to face an empty fridge every day, a degree that has been shelved away, and a typical sense of loneliness. He would happily desist if he could, but somehow he always ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, Ferraro should have taken his holiday during Fashion Week when the city seems to literally go mad. This time is worse however, after the sensational murder of a top model during one of the most awaited fashion shows and its consequent intense media coverage: the assassin must be found. There is another world however, surrounding the inspector and the bleak world which he works in, which is struggling to survive. There is Mimmo and his ambiguous relationship with the new underworld in the area; there is the clochard, Baffo, who dreams of going back to his native city, because he feels his life is coming to an end; there is Aisha, a young girl fleeing a war on the other side of the Mediterranean. And then there is Biondillo’s writing, which laughs, cries and is moved together with its characters.

This is a journey through time, about myths and current affairs: from the mythical treasure of Porsenna, searched for by many and never found, to a terrifying story of organ trafficking, and the incumbent ISIS threat.

English Extract Available
Bestseller list

It all starts when Oswald Breil receives a call for help. Breil has been an Israeli Prime Minister, a Mossad agent: Laura, the sister of his trustworthy associate Toni has disappeared. Laura is a researcher and biologist who works for a multinational company with a head office in Geneva and luxurious clinics all over the world. The multinational is directed by Monsignor Fausto Denague, the founder and manager of the Holy Resurrection Brotherhood, also known as “the mediator”; he is a man who may not be as transparent as he would appear to be. Toni fears the worst, because his sister Laura is the custodian of a powerful secret: she knows the location of the Porsenna treasure. When her body is found a few days later, it seems Toni’s worst fears are well founded. For Oswald Breil and his partner in life and work Sara Terracini, this is just the beginning of an incredible and extremely dangerous case.
This is an forceful novel, one which is historically accurate in its reconstruction, and which deals with sensitive issues that torment our daily lives.

The first adventure novel that deals with the issue of the Islamic State.

Alice Allevi: funnier, clumsier, more intuitive and ironic than ever. A successful mix of crime story, romance and comedy.

A very successful TV series based on these novels has been produced by Endemol and broadcasted by RAI 1.

The comeback of the pathologist who has charmed thousands of readers, and become a literary phenomenon.

Alice Allevi, is a young post-graduate student in forensic medicine who has learnt to resist everything. Or almost everything.
Because she is a good student, she resists the pressure from her superiors who have asked her to supervise a young post-graduate student…but what a pain to have to supervise her own self! Her tortuous sentimental life is proof of this. Alice is in fact still suffering from an “undecided heart” syndrome, which keeps her torn between two men that are charming as much as they are different from one another: Arthur, also known as “The Unnamed” after years of inflicting suffering upon her, and Claudio, the most successful medical examiner of the institute, good looking and an inveterate seducer who can tempt like the devil.
Alice also resists -or at least tries to resist – the urge to launch into fanciful investigative theories each time she collaborates secretly with superintendent Calligaris, who seems to have more faith in Alice than she does in herself.
But during what turns out to be the hottest summer Alice has ever experienced since she has lived in Rome, dealing with all these issues becomes quite a challenge when she is suddenly faced with a case that could involve her far too much.
The discovery of the mummified body of a young theatre actor, believed to have disappeared years earlier, but who seems to have been killed, is just the first act of an intricate and complex enquiry. From then on Alice will have to face a series of characters who initially come across as being transparent and sincere, but who are all hiding unmentionable secrets. However Alice knows: no secret is a secret forever. And those who can’t keep their secrets at bay end up being dominated by them…which leads to a tragic and cruel finale.

A family cloaked in secrets. A powerful and beguiling woman. A unique setting. Inspector Bordelli is back to solve one of the most difficult cases of his entire career.

Florence, winter 1967, a year after the flood devastated the city. Inspector Bordelli has to solve a really intricate mystery: the murder of a wealthy industrialist, Antonio Migliorini, found dead in his own villa in the hills of Florence and killed with a foil from the victim’s collection. He was widely loved and respected by everyone. Widowed for several years, Migliorini easily fell under the spell of women. Bordelli patiently starts to retrace the victim’s last days and to speak with relatives and friends, but it all leads to nothing. One day, he bumps into a shabby old man who looks familiar… His name is Bruno Arcieri, a retired colonel and former member of the Secret Service, whom Bordelli met before for professional reasons. It looks like the colonel is hiding himself, but who from? How has he ended up in this situation? Bordelli invites him to stay in his country house. Sitting by the fire, the two men start sharing their secrets like old friends. Arcieri tells Bordelli what lies behind his desperate situation and what he is determined to do even at the cost of his life… Moreover, just like a heaven-sent help, the colonel will be able to identify a mysterious woman Bordelli doesn’t even know where to look for, a woman who will disclose the detail he needs to track down the killer…

Dario Fo commits to settling things with God and men.

The Nobel prizewinner for literature has always been a militant atheist, but this has never stopped him from exploring the theme of the sacred in many of his works, often engaging the Catholic Church and the saints in privileged conversations or making them his targets.
Taking inspiration from the immense heritage of popular culture, he has written deeply personal readings of the Gospels and the Bible, the tone of which are often ironic and provocative, but never blasphemous nor disrespectful. He has now decided to draw his conclusions from this long historical, religious and personal journey.

The story of a tribe of Native Americans who never gave up: an incredible story of resistance told by one of the great rebels of our times.

Hollywood films generally tell the story of defeated Indians. None of them has ever told the story of the only tribe that never gave up: the Seminole. Yet the Seminole society was ahead of its time in many ways; it was matriarchal and pacifist, and an enemy of slavery. This is a story packed with adventures with unforgettable characters. Like John Horse whose astuteness was legendary, and who was capable for example of selling the same two tortoises to a Yankee General thirty times over. Or Mae Tiger, a mixed blood leader who organized the cultural, economic not to mention military resistance. O James Billie, a veteran Seminole from Vietnam who had to face his worst enemy, drugs, when he returned to his country and defended his tribe by dismantling the drug cartels.
Three great wars were fought against the Americans, and they took place at different times and on different fronts with very different strategies. These wars were all fought against overwhelming odds, and none of them was lost. An incredible story of human and community resistance, told by one of the great rebels of our times.

How can a German boxing champion of Sinti descent represent the great Reich at the 1928 Olympics?

In 1914, when Johann Trollmann, a young boy aged 8 from Northern Germany enters a club for the first time to watch a friend training, it is love at first sight.
Johann emerges immediately as a natural, transforming boxing into an art; after a series of victories, success finally arrives. Unfortunately in the political climate that is taking over Germany, Johann has two major defects: the first is his fighting technique based on a series of small bounces and a continuous movement across the ring, almost as if it were a dance; not very virile to say the least and therefore not very Germanic. But worse than that, Johann is a Sinti, a gypsy.
When he is forced to box like an Arian, Johann turns up on the ring with his hair tinted blond and his amber skin covered in talcum powder. It will mark the end of his career.
Hitler’s racial laws prevent him not only from boxing but will also lead him to be sterilized then deported to a concentration camp where, reduced to a ghostly figure, he is forced to fight. Until the day he finds the courage to defeat a kapo’ to reclaim his dignity, and is then killed in a vendetta.

The adventures of two extraordinary lives.
Much more than a manual, a guide or an instrument. The story of a life and of passion.

This book had been waiting to be written for years: the idea of this book had emerged when Franca was still alive, and it now finally sees the light.
What we have here is life and theatre intertwined, the post war years and the Seventies, times dominated by a strong idealistic tension which was the driving force behind all the comedies that Franca and Dario extremely successfully staged at the theatre.
The encounters and the collaboration with Beckett, Strehler, Sartre, the premiere of Mistero Buffo in Paris with a revisited French version of Grammelot, the provocations from actors hidden among the astonished, incredulous public, the tricks and suggestions when a line is forgotten, the brilliant scenic inventions with props made for shows which dealt with current affairs without ever falling into the trap of the obvious and of excessive stage direction. And finally, the trip to China and the discovery of its theatre and the contradictions of its society.
A multitude of stories, lives and theatre. All recounted in a fantastic journey during which each circumstance is filtered through the emotion of the moment, the memories leading to a renewed effort to continue turning life into a type of theatre that is a testimony of our destiny and of each of our personal stories.

Dario Fo e Franca Rame jointly wrote hundreds of comedies that were shown around the world, diffusing their idea of a political theatre. A unique, extraordinary success. In 1997 Dario Fo was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature

Lucrezia Borgia had a Pope for a father, three husbands, many lovers, eight legitimate children, one illegitimate, and an incredible life… all within 39 years.

When looking for an example of a cruel, corrupt and lascivious woman, the first name that springs to mind is always hers: Lucrezia Borgia. She has been written about by many people: writers, historians, philosophers, and now a Nobel Prize-winner has decided to tackle this extraordinary character, distancing himself from the psychological approach, the adulatory approach and the purely historical essay.
Instead, Dario Fo makes the characters speak, and by reconstructing the historical context and recovering the fascination of the Renaissance era, he makes them come alive. He gives Lucrezia Borgia the floor, along with the other figures who make up this story – Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli’s Prince, who confides in his sister, moved by the memories of their childhood together; the fearful Pope Alessandro VI, remembered as the most corrupt of the Pontiffs; and Lucrezia’s husbands: hunted, killed, and, like her, used as pawns in games of political machination; her lovers; the great Italian courts of d’Este and Gonzaga, and the most beautiful women of the age.
“The Pope’s Daughter” is not just a journey through the beauty of the Renaissance, but more importantly a image of our own era which, seen through the filter of the past, seems even more desolate and corrupt. As we read of the atrocities and betrayals committed in Lucrezia’s time in the name of expedience and political scheming, it seems that nothing has really changed since then, and that we have succeeded in retaining all the negative aspects of those days, while losing those which seemed to offer a hope of regeneration.

A love story, a story of power and intrigue that is fascinating and engaging that the Nobel prize winner recreates in the form of a novel after finding a series of secret diaries and inedited documents.
Just like his previous book La figlia del Papa (The Pope’s daughter), Dario Fo merges invention and historic research to make a long forgotten story relevant and appealing because of its beauty and charm.

A story of love and insanity. A revolutionary dream that became reality. This new historical novel by Dario Fo takes place in Denmark in the 18th century. The main characters are the mad young king Christian VII and his young wife Caroline Matilda of Great Britain, her lover, doctor Johann Friedrich Struensee and the king’s son Frederick.
At times the story changes direction due to unexpected events such as madness. In this case, it is the insanity of a king combined with the utopian vision of an illuminist revolutionary doctor who loves Voltaire and Rousseau, and the complicity of the young princess. Locked in a desperate love triangle, the three of them launch a series of revolutionary reforms, which were unimaginable at the time such as the abolition of torture, freedom of the press, the abolition of class privileges, the promotion of culture and education. A coup orchestrated by the queen mother and by the Court will lead the doctor to be hanged and the princess to be exiled and separated from her children. But although the dream of a revolution is crushed, it still remains alive: the young Frederick will continue to support the liberal principles when he takes over, triggering a strong reaction from the conservatories and in effect anticipating the ideals of the French Revolution.
Only someone who has been writing political theatre for a lifetime could have written such a story.

Bellano in the 30s. The hyperbolic ideals of the fascist regime cannot defeat the intrigues and squabbling of the country.

The end of the war in Ethiopia marks the beginning of the fascist Empire and Fulvio Semola, secretary of the party, has no intention of missing out on the opportunity to celebrate the event in a dignified way. The post war euphoria and the imperial pride however are quickly dampened by more urgent issues: a pair of underwear belonging to Verzetta Cece, wife of the powerful and feared production inspector of the local cotton mill Eudilio Malversati, have disappeared. To avoid any gossip, the police are not informed: which is why Semola is asked to take on the case with the utmost discretion. His clumsy attempts and the hilarious characters who live in the town however, will unveil the truth and lead him straight to the police station amid the a lot of tongue wagging. An unexpected finale that will implicate the wife of Malversati and his mother in law in a raucous circus.

During the stifling hot summer of 1970, the town of Bellano is in turmoil because of a small mystery: a new story with an intriguing and moving plot.

Santo Sisto is a taxi driver and he awaits his clients at the Bellano railway station. They are rare: some come from the nearby towns, others from Milan even to visit the hospital or the cemetery. Events are unchanging and foreseeable. Until a dramatic turn of events: on that Sunday, after lunch, a woman arrives and asks him to be taken to the cemetery. But once they arrive, Sisto realizes the woman is dead. Right there, on the backseat of his car, and staining it with urine too! This is a serious issue, one that will require the help of officer Pezzati. Furthermore the woman does not have a handbag so no one knows who she is, or who she was visiting at the Bellano cemetery. Whilst he tries to untangle the mystery, Sisto will meet a little crooked nun with arthritis, who is hiding a secret which has been kept for many years.

Summer of 1893. A famous criminologist, a medium, a slightly odd young peasant, a mysterious assassin…

For the first time, a noir intrigue surrounds the exhilarating and picturesque world of Bellano on the shores of Lake Como, turning the clocks back to the beginnings of psychiatry and modern criminology.

Serpe and Arcadio’s third daughter is called Birce, and she was born crooked. She has a mark on her left cheek and at times she says and does strange things. Who would want a girl like that? Who would even employ her as a house slave? It is the month of August 1893 and for the couple, who work at the rectorate of the Bellano sanctuary, the perfect opportunity has finally arisen. Giuditta Carvasana, a pious woman who has just moved to the region, has every intention of doing good deeds such as, for example, helping a young girl with no future. This would be no small victory for Birce, for whom life does not seem to hold a happy destiny. Just like the poor florist in Via Torino who was massacred in the middle of the road. Truth be said, she was not the first victim during that summer long ago. Their bodies are available to be viewed in the anatomic room of the famous alienist Cesare Lombroso, who analyses them carefully, convinced that medicine might provide some help to the enquiry. Furthermore, a piece of paper covered in undecipherable mathematical signs turns up in the pockets of the two poor victims. Do they point to a link between the deaths? And could it be that Lombroso himself has become a target, having previously received a similar piece of paper from an anonymous sender? Scientific rigorousness will not suffice to solve this mystery. There is a possibility, muses Lombroso, that spiritism might help. However, only people out of the ordinary know how to practice spiritism… A bit like Birce, with her mark, who sometimes says and does strange things…

This is a novel about love, a merciless love of the kind that can only exist between brothers and sisters. But it’s also a novel about the first and only kind of love that can compete with it: the love which erupts like darkness in a room full of light, between a boy and a girl, against everything and everyone.

English extract available

January 1991. Valentino observes the little clouds of breath which die on the clouded windows of the old car he inherited from his father, dead for several years. It’s not the only thing left of him: there’s also the idea that a different life might be possible.
But perhaps Valentine is too much like the place where he lives: the Fort, an occupied quarter ruled by dust, where the asphalt is cracked, and even your house can be taken away if you get distracted for a moment. There’s only one thing left to hang on to: family.
Valentino is the youngest of the four Smeraldi children, all children of different fathers.
There’s Anna, who at only thirty years of age no longer has anything to ask from life. There’s Vadim, handsome but somehow not right, with the mind of twelve-year old in the body of a twenty-year-old. There’s Alan, the oldest, the man of the house, possessed of a rage as ferocious as his love for his family, who must remain united at all costs.
But the cost could be too high for Valentino, because now there’s her: Delia. She’s older than him and stunningly beautiful – but you only realise at second or third glance – and she’s clean, because she’s not from the Fort.
And that’s just the problem, because Valentine is hiding a secret that he doesn’t dare confess and, worse, he feels that to choosing her would mean betraying his family – betraying Alan.
And Alan doesn’t forgive.

“But that’s exactly what your job is, guardian angel: help her to navigate the narrow path that descends from the head to the guts and rises again from the guts all the way to the heart.”

“There is only one way to overcome pain, Gio’. Accept it and move on. An act of faith in life is required. The reward will be a treasure island: the discovery of an unknown part of one’s inner self.”

Gioconda, known as Giò, is thirty-five years old with a complicated family background behind her, a soul troubled by vocation, or perhaps by necessity, and just one great love: Leonardo – who has abandoned her.
Lost and despairing, she finds herself living at her grandparents’ house. They died within a few days of each other, a symbol of a perfect love, able to make passion triumph over the passing of time: just what Giò’s marriage lacked. On the night of Valentine’s Day, a celebration she’s always ignored, Giò finds a note written by her grandmother to her guardian angel, thanking it. With the despondency, but also the courage of someone with nothing to lose, Giò tries it: she writes to her angel as well. Incredibly, the angel replies and makes her a promise: I’ll watch over you.
Not only does the angel have an extremely strong personality, it also has a name, Filémone, and a story. Above all, it has the ability to understand Giò as she’s never understood herself, and to listen to her as she’s never listened to herself. So is born an intense, amusing, amused and moving exchange which also involves the people around Giò: the meticulous ex-husband, the bizarre mother, the friend caught in an extra-marital affair, and the boy who wants to join a commune.
This exchange doesn’t only examine Giò’s missing motives, but our own, as well. It encourages us to silence our heads and our instincts, in order to listen to our hearts. Especially when they are called to face difficult tests, like the one Giò is confronted with by her faithful Filémone, in a surprising finale which seems to confuse everything, when in fact it will make everything clear.

The story of a child, and the man he has become, who cannot overcome the greatest pain of all: the loss of his mother.

English Translation Available

Sometimes the truth can be a difficult companion. Sometimes, rather than face the truth, we prefer to dwell in resentment and the uncertainties of a fragile life. It has taken the protagonist forty years to open that envelope, forty years to find the courage to start living again. That is the first step to grow up and to accept life without the most important support of all: his mother’s. A series of episodes, some dramatic, some ironic or funny, reveal the deepest meaning of the relentless struggle the protagonist undertakes against his sense of loneliness, of inadequacy and of neglect. Love and a full, authentic life, are the rewards awaiting him.
Fai bei sogni is a novel about truth and the fear of truth; it is a story that shows how we need to accept pain and to leave behind the fear and diffidence which limit our life. A moving story, capable of talking about universal feelings while touching an intimate chord in anyone’s heart.

She is young and smart. She doesn’t stand autopsies well. But she’s always facing death. CSI meets Sophie Kinsella!

Alice Allevi is a young apprentice in forensic medicine. Her life is spangled by daily disasters. She is not looked over favourably in the Institute where she works: it all started when she cut her finger accidentally while trying to dissect an eyeball….
Her woman director has been picking her on constantly. Alice must also try to understand if her colleague Claudio, a dandy and womanizer, is prepared to help her to overcome her little professional problems – leaving aside any sentimental questions in which she keeps getting entangled. And, to complete the picture, Alice has got a bizarre Japanese co-tenant who keeps her awake by reminding her that when you are young you must live by night.
In this routine a murder creeps in… a common event for a Forensic Institute, were it not that Alice met the victim the night before she died. This murder will become an obsession to Alice and, maybe, an opportunity to get a professional redemption.

Alice Allevi is back: funnier, clumsier, more intuitive and ironic than ever. The comeback of the pathologist who has seduced thousands of readers, becoming a literary phenomenon.

Alice longs for a romantic week in Paris with her beloved Arthur Malcomess: journalist, globetrotter and son of His Highness, the director of the Institute of Legal Medicine where Alice is specialising. Alice also hopes to get the longed-for job at the Institute thanks to an entrance exam, but she is told the hated Ambra, engaged to Claudio Conforti, in charge of the interns, got the job instead. Alice has many distractions in life: her eccentric Japanese housemate, the long skype calls with Arthur, and most of all her job as a practicing pathologist. She is asked to work on a case of non compos mentis. An old writer, who wrote a bestseller and was then forgotten by both critics and readers, wants to leave all his possessions to a mysterious woman. He hid her name in an acrostic appearing in his will. The writer’s family wants to have him declared non compos mentis. Things get complicated when the old writer is found dead, seemingly a suicide, in his room… Alice’s curiosity has been triggered and she is not going to let go. Her mission is always the same: she has to find out the truth.

Going back to Alice Allevi’s origins.
If you don’t know her yet, here is the novel to discover her.
If you already know her, here is another reason to love her.

Devoted readers know full well Alice Allevi’s controversial relationship with legal medicine. What they don’t know is how this young and funny apprentice has embraced a career that gives her great satisfaction but does not spare her a great deal of bitterness.
In The Syndrome of the Suspended Heart, we find a twenty-three-year-old Alice stuck in the middle of a personal crisis: she doesn’t feel ready to finish her medical studies, and even less ready to start the bright career everybody seems to expect from her. She feels the need to talk about her doubts with her family, but doesn’t know where to start… Her life and plans are totally disrupted when a brutal murder is committed in Grandma Amalia’s house. Amalia’s young Russian carer is murdered and a young, attractive and unapproachable forensic expert arrives at the crime scene. His name is Claudio Conforti.
The encounter with Claudio will change Alice’s life forever, as the reader knows well!

A weird burial ritual, a girl found dead and another one missing.

A mystery that even Alice Allevi, with her messy ways and brilliant mind, will struggle to solve.

When Ambra, Alice Allevi’s bitchy colleague, suddenly vanishes into thin air, the Institute of Forensic Medicine where Alice works is under a cloud of suspicion… The situation gets even worse when the corpse of another girl, who disappeared years before, is found: as it turns out, Viviana, the victim, and Ambra used to go to university together.

Whoever killed and buried her observed the traditional customs reserved for the burial of a princess that were practiced in ancient Jericho. When she disappeared, Viviana was actually on her way back to Palestine, where she was working on an important archaeological excavation.

Alice is quite upset by her colleague’s disappearance, and she even feels a little guilty for what happened: after all, Ambra is Claudio Conforti’s ex, her blessing and curse… There are too many bizarre coincidences connecting Ambra to the death of her friend to think this is just a crime of passion.

Why had Viviana called Ambra just before she died? And why was it Ambra who brought her friend’s diary to Israel? What is the mysterious connection between the two girls?

The book contains more than 300 black-and-white pictures of various sizes, from half a page to an eighth of a page. Some will be real images – places, events, historical characters – but most of them will be suggestively evocative, like those in 19th-century illustrated novels. This option respects the format of the novel and allows the reader who has already read the book to re-imagine the events. In addition to the illustrations there will be two maps: a large, colour one of Palermo and a full-page black-and-white one of the Via dei Materassai district.

Pier Paolo Pasolini is at once a myth, a ghost, an obsession and an unachievable role-model in this ambitious, intimate and profound book that encompasses fiction, autobiography and literary criticism.

The novel’s protagonist, his vicissitudes, his ambitions and his whole life revolves around one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, Pier Paolo Pasolini. This is a curious situation of “indirect knowledge”: the protagonist works at the Pasolini Foundation together with Laura Betti – a close friend of the great author and an actress in many of his films. His research focuses on Petrolio, the intriguing book Pasolini worked on from 1972 until his death. Surrounded by signs of the dead author, the protagonist perceives Pasolini as a ghostly presence. Petrolio is more than just a book: it becomes an extension of the protagonist’s body that helps him to experiment ways of life formerly inaccessible.

When looking at the great example set by Pasolini, the protagonist’s life looks like a comical and bloodless replica. He is about to turn thirty, his first novel is about to be published, and the two most important women in his life are pushing him to face up to the great author: his colleague Betti accuses him of being a spineless hypocrite while the woman he loves keeps asking him to hit her. Despite feeling guilty, the protagonist is unable to stand up to their requests.

The fascinating story of a magnificent and controversial country.

In 1843, a book called Russia in 1839 was published in Brussels, written by a French aristocrat, the Marquis de Custine. It was a portrayal of the political and social practices of the tsarist empire and had considerable success, and not only in Belgium and France, at a time when, following the Napoleonic wars, Russia had become a world power. According to Custine, this great country was also a government that contained vestiges of many traits of the feudal era: autocracy, serfdom, enormous wealth and grinding poverty, widespread illiteracy and arbitrary law. In the decades that followed, Russia became increasingly large and powerful, although the description made by Custine survived in European public opinion. The tenacity and heroism of the Red Army in the war against Nazi Germany benefited Russia’s image in the world, but not so much that it spared the Soviet power from being perceived as a possible threat during the Cold War. The Cold War ended a long time ago but anti-Russian feelings and fears live on. The country seen by the West as the most alien to its principles and rules is also one that, even though it views itself as heir to the Byzantine Empire, has tried to imitate Europe the most. Then why do we continue to consider Russia as an alien country, different from and in opposition to “us” Europeans? What is it that makes Europe see Russia as a separate, enemy civilisation? Sergio Romano explains this paradox with a fascinating story that travels across the entire, great and impetuous history of Russia.

Cynical, surly and disenchanted: chief inspector Bordelli investigates during the worrisome and revolutionary atmosphere of the sixties, a time so far away yet so similar to our own.

January 1970. In April, Chief Inspector Bordelli is retiring after almost a quarter of a century in the police, and he still doesn’t know what to expect, unable to picture how he is going to react to this complete change. Meanwhile, however, he’s on duty and there’s no time to think or ask himself too many questions: there’s been a brutal murder in a street in central Florence. Will this heinous crime be his last case? Above all, will he be able to solve it? Bordelli and young Piras, who, meanwhile, has become inspector, work closely, driven, as ever, by their sense of justice, and, on this occasion, also by the unbearable futility of the murder. The months go by, spring arrives and the date of retirement approaches. Bordelli’s relationship with the beautiful Eleonora seems to go from strength to strength. And, of course, there is the dinner at Franco Bordelli’s home, where, as usual, everyone tells a story. But one morning the chief inspector receives a phone call from police headquarters… another murder?

Nessuno scrive al Federale brings Marshal Ernesto Maccadò back on the scene. He is now feeling increasingly more at home in the town where he was sent with his Maristella – and where they had first felt like a couple of aliens –  especially since the birth of his first child. Seen from up close, however, Bellano is far from being a quiet place, and it’s hard to dismiss the suspicion that a certain degree of madness reigns there.

The shores of Lake Como are dotted with towns and villages at the foot of mountains where not much happens. Except for Bellano. Over the past year and a half or so, the Secretary of the Regional Fascist Party has already had to replace two local branch secretaries. The first one to be fired was Bortolo Piazzacampo, nicknamed Tartina, because of an event connected with the eccentricities of a bull called Benito, where Tartina stood out for his stupidity. The second was Aurelio Trovatore, who decided to get married in Castellanza, choosing love over the fatal destiny of the Fascist motherland. A certain Caio Scafandro has now been appointed, a hunk of a man who resorts to his shovel-sized hands to drive his point across. Will he have the strength of mind – since there’s no lack of physical strength – to uphold his office? After all, there’s more than one skeleton in Scafandro’s cupboard. And more than one person knows that. All it would take is a couple of words whispered in the Regional Secretary’s ear and Bellano’s third local Fascist secretary would end up like his predecessors. This is why Scafandro has taken countermeasures, heedless of the fact that these cross into the land of law breaking,  presided over by the police – the land occupied by Marshal Ernesto Maccadò. Having recently become the father of Rocco, his first child, on the morning of 20 November 1929, the marshal narrowly avoids an accident when a metal object is hurled at him in the street by a possible murderer. Who can this idiot possibly be?

From their homes, twenty-six of the most prominent writers in the Italian landscape have given a meaning to these days by choosing to tackle this emergency also with the weapons of literature.

R. Armeni, S. Auci, A. Basso, B. Bellomo, G. Biondillo, C. Bonvicini, F. Bosco, M. Buticchi, C. Caboni, D. Carrisi, A. Dalton, G. Festa, A. Frontani, E. Galiano, A. Gazzola, E. Gnone, M. Gramellini, J. Lahiri, F. Noiville, C. Sánchez, G. Sundas, S. Truzzi, I. Tuti, H. Tuzzi, M. Vichi, A. Vitali.

Nowadays, fear has a new name: Covid-19. The only way to defeat it is to stay at home.  Within the four walls that have always shielded us but which have now become impassable boundaries.

They have become almost an enemy.

And yet, day after day, those who always work with words have discovered that rooms, windows, and even the remotest corners of their homes are wings to carry them out into the world. Every one of them has therefore chosen a way to give life to this magic.

From their homes, twenty-six of the most prominent writers in the Italian landscape have given a meaning to these days by choosing to tackle this emergency also with the weapons of literature.

So as to take their daily lives to the readers who love them.

And they decided to do this together with the publishing house Garzanti by donating all the proceeds to the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo.

Some decided to write about their days, their established routines, about novelties that make you smile. About the tears they cannot stop but also about the force of nature that dissolves the lump in your throat. About forced cohabitation, as well the distancing from people who are dear to you, that feels unbearable. Others write about neighbours who were once strangers but are no longer so, and work that has changed its tools but not its substance. Some admit their error in thinking that it could not all be true or else lend a voice to animals who, on the contrary, are glad this is all true. Others entrust their thoughts about these strange days to beloved characters they have created. Everyone is certain that we will emerge from this more aware of what is truly important, and we will meet, hug, and soon take walks all together. They are certain that solidarity will be the currency we will carry with us and no longer be able to do without.

They are all convinced that words, books and stories bring us together. They create invisible links that break all barriers. When we read we are never alone. And we are strong. And everything appears as it will be. Because all shall be well.

A short novel about rebirth and hope situated, in terms of plot, between Fiori sopra l’inferno and Ninfa dormiente. With extraordinary sensitivity, Ilaria Tuti has given to Luce della notte the story of Chiara, a special child who, on her arduous journey, meets the much-loved Teresa Battaglia, who is ready to help her.

Chiara had a dream and got very scared. Sing and count, she told herself in the dream, only the darkness wouldn’t go away. So Chiara let herself be guided through the woods by the invisible light of the night. Only she was very upset by what she found while digging at the roots of the tree. Maybe because it wasn’t really a dream. Perhaps it was the frightening reality. It’s just a few days before Christmas, the day Chiara is going to turn nine. Or rather the night the little girl will turn nine, because it’s been a long time since she has seen daylight.

A big heart is needed to help her little heart to stop trembling. This is why, just a few days after closing a gruelling and dangerous case, as well as discovering something she will have to keep to herself, Teresa Battaglia has no hesitation in getting involved. Perhaps this is because, in spite of everything, there’s still the heart of a child beating inside her. Just as it’s throbbing, in spite of himself, in the young Inspector Marini, since, for all his doubts and incomprehension, he decides to join Inspector Battaglia in what seems like a mad, senseless enquiry. That’s right – how can one even consider investigating a dream? Teresa knows – feels – however, that this frail, frightened and very brave little girl has stumbled on something real, genuine… and dreadful.

The rights for Luce della notte will be transferred to the Oncological Referral Centre in Aviano, for research on Ewing sarcoma.

Full English translation available

A crime novel set in an unusual environment, in Japan, where a mixed-race detective investigates a singular murder with just one clue that incriminates the only person in the world he can neither question nor arrest: the Emperor.

A compelling debut novel that contains the beauty and elusiveness typical of an ancient culture, while not shying away from its deepest flaws.

When faced with a murder victim killed with an ordinary, transparent plastic umbrella, like the hundreds seen in the streets of Tokyo on rainy days, Chief Inspector Takeshi Nishida has little prospect of solving the case. Both the victim and the murder weapon are too anonymous. It is therefore with little hope that he has the object examined for any relevant fingerprints. The test results are, however, beyond the imaginable. There is a clear, well-defined fingerprint. It belongs to the Emperor of Japan.  And so what seemed like a run-of-the-mill murder suddenly turns into a very delicate, complex conundrum. One, by one, Chief Inspector Nishida must identify all the fleeting owners of this umbrella, hunting for an answer that is as hoped for as it is dreaded.

A story of tormented love between an adoptive mother and her daughter.

One of Italy’s best-loved women poets tells the story of her own childhood, when she was abandoned, and that of her even harder, tormented relationship with her adoptive mother – a crucial figure in this tale and enquiry into love.

A well-known news item that featured for weeks on the front pages of Italian newspapers in the 1960s marks the beginning of Maria Grazia Calandrone’s story. In 1965, an eight-month-old baby was found in the middle of the Villa Borghese park in Rome. In the days that followed, the sad circumstances surrounding her abandonment were discovered. Her mother, who’d been unfaithful to her husband, and the baby’s father had committed suicide by throwing themselves into the Tiber. After less than a month in an orphanage, the little girl was adopted by Giacomo Calandrone, the then leader of the Italian Communist Party, and his wife, who was a teacher.

The author opts for the first time for fiction to tell us the most difficult story of her life: not about being abandoned but about her rapport with her adoptive mother: a loving but also oppressive and cruel relationship.

One of the most important scientific discoveries in the field of nutrition. Valter Longo demonstrates how to prevent and cure illnesses that are typical in our century such as cardiovascular illnesses, diabetes, obesity and cancer.

“Eat, fast, live longer and healthier. The revolutionary diet by the longevity guru.” Time Magazine

Topping the charts since day one – 18 months in a row – more than 270,000 copies sold.

Full English PDF available.

Valter Longo, the scientist whose revolutionary studies on genetics, nutrition, stem cells and longevity have become a fundamental reference point, reveals all of these topics in his book. Basing his findings on a 5-pillar strategy, Longo has demonstrated that it’s possible to be cured through food. The Longevity Diet is simple to follow on a daily basis for those who already enjoy a Mediterranean diet, and it works well with the extraordinarily effective Fasting-Mimicking Diet developed in his laboratory. Inspired by the ancient habits common to all cultures, the DMD helps reduce the risks and difficulties of eating less, making it compatible with the requirements of an active lifestyle. Like a Longevity Elixir, the Longo Diet cures us with food, and therefore revolutionizes our relationship with it.

From a writer and close friend of Luis Sepúlveda, the public and private portrait of Lucho, a rebellious writer and a dreamer.

Following the death of the great Chilean writer, a few months ago, Bruno Arpaia draws an accurate, earnest portrait, as only one painted by a friend of thirty years and a colleague can be. His life, books, themes, obsessions and places, as well as his many friends: Sepúlveda is described as faithfully to the truth as possible in order to bring him even closer to his many readers and restore the memory of a life filled with formidable passions.

Two travellers, a camper van, Europe at its darkest: a crossing from the Maritime Alps to the North Sea in search of what’s left of the night on the continent most affected by artificial light pollution.

Winner Mario Rigoni Stern Prize

We can all understand what the word “night” means, even if we might never have experienced it. The night, when nothing is lit and the stars have the power to pierce through the black quilt of the sky. Those who live in the Western world, particularly in large cities, have seldom been immersed in a true night. Electricity, a great invention that has opened the gates to thousands of new experiences, has inexorably absorbed all the darkness, preventing us from experiencing the other side of daytime, with all its gifts: stars, the Milky Way, the sleep/waking rhythm and the poetry of the darkness.

Irene Borgna went in search of places that are untouched by light pollution in order to reclaim the night, discover what polluting it means, then tell us about the economic, anthropological, social, poetic and symbolic aspects of light pollution.

Two little boys, a great friendship, a secret kept for over thirty years.

 A tale that combines a coming-of-age novel and a detective story. It tells with the kind of delicacy and charm only fairy-tales have of the relationship between parents and children, grief and loss, but also of the force and tenacity destined to survive over time. Until the final, unsettling and overwhelming coup de théâtre.

Just as he is about to retire from the force, Marshal De Benedettis makes a discovery destined to disturb his peace of mind. Two dusty diaries surface from the the cellar of the old house of Guelfo Tabacci – a cantankerous mountain dweller  and suspect in the case of his son’s disappearance, thirty years earlier. They were written by Filo e Rullo, two little boys who, during a summer, a long time ago, went searching for their beloved dog, Birillo, and so reached Guelfo’s mountain hut. And there, the children discovered a disconcerting, painful truth that has remained buried for too long.