When, after a time apart, Vanessa returns to Corvallis, she harbours a deep resentment towards the man who broke her heart. Meanwhile, Thomas has straightened himself out, but the anger they both feel triggers another war made up of clashes and provocations. The attraction that binds them still smoulders like fire under the ashes and needs only a spark to flare up again. However, Logan, a by now permanent presence at Vanessa’s side, stands between them. He is a good man, ready to take care of her and is everything Thomas cannot be. Or is he? Perhaps Thomas is right in always warning her against him. They try to piece their relationship back together bit by bit, facing many challenges until Vanessa and Thomas are certain that their love is going to last and that, despite their difficulties and flaws, they cannot live without each other.

Emanuele’s father is a Jungian psychologist, a magician capable of healing wounded souls. As a child, Emanuele soon learns that in order to survive in his father’s orbit it’s best for him to be a peripheral figure. After all, his mother keeps saying “You know what he’s like” whenever she talks about his father. But Emanuele doesn’t really know and, after his father dies, very little is left of him except an apartment no one wants, where the invisible mists of the lives and sorrows he had healed, oiled and straightened still linger.

So Emanuele decides to buy this flat and to live permanently in that atmosphere still hovering after his father’s life was cut short, because – first as a son, then as a writer – he wants to reconstruct the identity of a man who never left anything of himself in writing.

Turin, 2022. Valentina no longer has a job. She has been on indefinite leave since her triplet girls were born. She lives with her husband Marco, although they are separated.

When her daughters stage an escape from their kindergarten, involving their friend Agnese, Valentina discovers that Chiara, Agnese’s mother, is the sister of Elisa Barberis, who vanished on 15 February 2012: she was about to graduate in Literature when she vanished into thin air after leaving the faculty.

Valentina becomes fascinated by this case and starts to investigate, involving her husband, with whom she reconciles. She manages to track down Elisa, who says that she killed herself metaphorically, unable to be herself in the roles the people around her expected her to play. The Elisa of once apon a time is only “someone I used to know” and it is what Valentina also thinks of her old self. She finally realises what she wants from life: to work on cold cases.

World-famous scientist Maria Rescigno explains clearly how the intestine-brain connection is regulated by microbiota: she guides us through the latest discoveries and possible future developments and teaches us to “modulate” microbiota – with the help of specific probiotics and postbiotics, bacterial metabolites, fermented foods and microbiota transplants – in order to protect and rebuild a healthy intestinal barrier, and thereby prevent and treat disorders linked to its imbalances.