Titles in our catalogue

    Francesca Giannone

    La portalettere

    The Letter Carrier

    English Sample Available

    Anna Allavena, Letter Carrier: the extraordinary story of an ordinary woman who moves from Northern Italy to the South and becomes the first postwoman in a village in the Salento region.

    A riveting story about female courage and emancipation, as well as about two inseparable brothers destined to love the same woman.


    Salento, June 1934. A coach stops in the main square of Lizzanello, a village with only a few souls. A couple get off: the man, Carlo, a child of the South, is happy to be back home; the woman, Anna – his wife – is from the North. She is as beautiful as a Greek statue, but sad and worried: what kind of life awaits her in this unfamiliar land?

    In the eyes of the villagers, Anna never ceases to be “the foreigner” who doesn’t attend church, doesn’t wander around the village and doesn’t gossip. Proud and prickly, Anna never yields to the customs of Southern women: not only does she take the postal services public exam, but actually passes it and becomes the first postwoman in the village, or rather the first “letter carrier”, as she wants to be called.

    For over twenty years, Anna is the invisible thread that brings the village residents and their stories together. First on foot, then by bicycle, proud in her navy blue cap and uniform, Anna delivers letters from the young men at the front, postcards from emigrants and missives from secret lovers. Without meaning to – and above all without the villagers wanting it – the letter carrier changes many things in Lizzanello.

    Stefania Auci

    L'inverno dei Leoni

    The Lions' Winter

    TV series cooming soon on Disney+!

    THE BESTSELLING ITALIAN BOOK OF 2021

    Full English translation available

    The second and concluding part of the saga, which reveals in full the myth of the Florios, making us relive an era, a world and a destiny that has no equal.


    The Florios, the Lions of Sicily, have won. Gone are the days of the modest putìa in central Palermo, the sacks of spices, of Paolo and Ignazio, who went there to escape poverty, with determination as their only wealth. Now, they own buildings and factories, ships and tonnaras, silks and jewels. Now, the entire city looks up to them, honours them and fears them. And young Ignazio fears no one. The destiny of Casa Florio has been his destiny since birth, it runs through his veins and drives him beyond Sicily, to Rome and political intrigues, to Europe and its courts, to the naval dominion of the Mediterranean, to buying the entire Aegadian Islands archipelago. Ignazio has a dazzling empire but a heart of ice, because, for the glory of Casa Florio, he had to give up the love that would have capsized his destiny. A love whose shadow never leaves him, even to the very end…

    His son, Ignazziddu, on the other hand, is afraid when, at just over the age of twenty, he inherits all his father has built. He’s afraid because he doesn’t want to be enslaved to a name, to sacrifice himself on the family altar. He does his best, however, facing a world that’s changing too fast, shaken by new, violent and uncontrollable powers. He does his best but realises that having Florio blood isn’t enough to stand out. He needs something more, something his grandfather and his father had but which he lacks. But where, how has he gone wrong?

    The Florios win everything, then lose everything. And yet this is only a part of their extraordinary story. Because this father and son, so different, so remote, have at their sides two women who are also very different and yet both exceptional: Giovanna, Ignazio’s wife, hard and fragile like crystal, filled with passion but starved of love, and Franca, Ignazziddu’s wife, the most beautiful woman in Europe, whose gilded life is shattered by the blows of a cruel fate.

    It is these two women who trace the true trajectory – exciting and dreadful, glorious and tragic – of a family who, for a long instant, lit up the world. It is they who will make us understand why, after so many years, the Florios live on, unique and unforgettable, as the heartbeat of an island and of a city.

    Chiara Bianchi

    Il canto della fortuna

    The Song of Fortune. The Rizzoli Saga

    Here comes the first of the two-volume saga about the Rizzolis: a family parable of social reversal that spans the 20th century.

    Angelo Rizzoli is an entrepreneur, printer, publisher, film producer and the “inventor” of tourism on the island of Ischia – a visionary who starts from nothing and, in just a few decades, builds an empire, vanquishing prejudice and deceit, thanks to his flair for business and people.


    Milan, late 1800s. Angelo Rizzoli lives in grinding poverty with his mother and two sisters. He is a docile but very ambitious young boy who wants to escape misery. However, he cannot bear rich people and doesn’t like to have masters, so when, by chance, he meets a printing machine salesman, he starts his first printing shop, “A. Rizzoli & Co.”. In the 1920s between Socialism and Fascism, he becomes a publisher and prints the first periodicals. These are followed by books and, finally, cinema. Angelo frequents actors, directors and producers, and starts his own production company, Cineriz. In the 1960s, Angelo’s empire sweeps the Americas with the production of Fellini’s 8 1/2 and the opening of the Rizzoli bookshop in New York. His flair for people leads him to his most ambitious project: a new information daily with nationwide circulation, readable by all. However, he dies before achieving this dream, and with the certainty that the decisions of his family members will squander his empire amid intrigues and lies.

    Laura Lanza

    Donna Francesca Savasta, intesa Ciccina

    Donna Francesca Savasta, a.k.a. Ciccina

    In this novel, set in 19th century Sicily, Ciccina is the original, irreverent and very modern protagonist of a story about adultery, brigands, and more or less licit love affairs that have been silenced.


    Donna Francesca Savasta, nicknamed Ciccina, is a young working-class woman who is simple, possibly uneducated but definitely revolutionary in her boundless wisdom and pragmatism. She is a midwife in a remote mountain village and devotes herself to helping as best as she can the lives of poor, inexperienced young mothers and abandoned children. She does this according to a strict moral law – her own – among brigands who aren’t so very bad, parish priests who aren’t all that faithful to their vow of chastity, local vendettas, murders and disappearances.

    Sonia Milan

    La primogenita

    The First-Born

    A family saga about the love, rebellion, and resilience of mothers and daughters whose lives intersect with those of real-life women who altered the history of Italy.

    Women united by flower names, a pendant passed on through generations, and the dream of emancipation and self-fulfillment.


    Rome, 1821. At the first light of dawn, young Gelsomina, cast out by her family because she is unmarried, dies giving birth to a girl. Her final wishes are that her daughter should have a charm that belonged to her father and the name of a flower. The medallion is passed on from mother to daughter, as is the tradition of the flower name. From Gelsomina’s daughter Ortensia, the Red Cross nurse in the entourage of Cristina Trivulzio di Belgioso, to Erica, one of history’s first women doctors to specialise in paediatrics. To Iris, who discovers the family history and the origin of the famous charm Gelsomina was given by a painter who was in love with her, and how his love token became an admonishment to all her descendants: to bloom against all adversity. To fight for your dreams and not wait for a man to make them come true.

    Serena McLeen

    Il peso della vergogna

    The Weight of Shame

    A family saga that weaves together the lives of two women, a grandmother and her granddaughter, through unspeakable secrets and secret loves.


    Turin. Annabella Bramante is left on her own after her parents die in an accident a few months ago and, as though that were not enough, fate has just snatched away her beloved grandmother. As she struggles to piece things back together, she discovers a mysterious bequest: a derelict villa in the Veneto, of which she never even suspected the existence, and a diary belonging to her grandmother. Annabella realises that the dark secret of the Bramantes is buried in this villa, and it will force her to question all she thought she knew about her family. With the help of a young man with alluring hazel eyes, Annabella sheds light on her grandmother’s eventful youth, when the violent acts of a despotic, Fascist father mingle with the caresses of an impossible love, until the disclosure that will bind the two women’s fates for ever…

    Helena Janeczek

    Il tempo degli imprevisti

    The Time of Unforeseen Events

    Helena Janeczek, winner of the 2018 Strega Prize, revisits the 20th century from the beginning, reliving – from within every character – the yet unfinished past in an attempt to grasp their unresolved heritage.

    A polyphonic tale of normal, yet extraordinary characters, of true, peripheral or semi-known stories that prove how the time of unforseen events is also a time of possibilities worth investigating


    The Zanetta sisters arrive in a Milan buzzing with the 1906 world fair and subscribe to Socialist dreams, although the youngest is arrested for defeatism in the years immediately after Caporetto. In 1920 Trentino-Alto Adige the air is good for those with health conditions and Doctor K. thinks he is at the heart of a spying intrigue arising from the correspondence with his translator Milena Jesenská. In Venice, the daughter of the great American poet Ezra Pound wanders across the city unaware that she is being spied on by a boy with whom she shared her childhood. Finally, the young Albert O. Hirschman joins his sister and brother-in-law in Trieste, a city fuelled by the hedonistic, commercial spirit of its proudly Italian middle classes, those same middle classes that will shortly see their world struck by racial laws, like the most unthinkable and dreadful of unforeseen events.

    Emanuele Trevi

    La casa del mago

    The Magician's House

    A new novel by the winner of the Premio Strega 2021.

    A true story that becomes a novel and focuses on the most demanding of family bonds: the one between a father and a son. Like in the best game of mirrors with the author as the protagonist, the search for his father becomes a search for himself and all the lives he left behind.


    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.

    Matteo Porru

    Il dolore crea l’inverno

    Grief Creates the Winter

    English sample available

    Elia Legasov has inherited the family business: he is a snow sweeper in a town immersed in whiteness.

    But, one day, the snow betrays him by yielding from its depths something that should have remained buried and forgotten. Elia consequently has to remember and start to question everything.


    Elia Legasov was born in a town surrounded by whiteness and has never left.

    His job is to shovel snow and clear streets along which nobody walks until the snow reveals something from its depths. Something connected to Elia’s family and all that was supposed to remain buried. From that moment on, Elia’s mind becomes crowded with memories he had suppressed: memories of a father who died many years ago and a mother who left for ever.

    This makes Elia believe what people say about his family: that the snow does not protect them but, on the contrary, puts them to the test to see if they are capable of forgetting, because everybody forgets. But the Legasovs remember, always.

    It is now Elia’s turn to remember, whatever the cost. Because grief creates the winter, only every winter is different from the one before and the one before that.

    Ludovica Della Bosca

    Basta un pezzo di mare

    It Only Takes a Sliver of Sea

    Twenty-six-year-olds Agata and Sara, inseparable friends while at university, bump into each other by chance after completely losing touch, and embark on a strange journey to set a lobster free into the sea and rekindle a friendship that has never been forgotten.

    A coming-of-age novel that involves delicate, visceral relationships between mothers and daughters, detachment, acceptance, friendship and unconditional love.


    Agata and Sara are two young women with two incomplete personalities. Agata lost her mother few years ago; she seemed to have overcome her trauma and was a star pupil at school but hit the buffers at university and ended up working as a sales assistant. Sara, her fellow student at university and inseparable friend, revealed her homosexuality to her family, who did not accept her, so she decided to cut all bonds and spend her life travelling abroad. They happen to meet during Sara’s brief return home, as Agata has just decided to set free into the sea a lobster bought in a supermarket. A paradoxical situation, which gives both women a chance to turn their lives around and rekindle a friendship that ended ubruptly.

    Fausto Gimondi

    Fortuna criminale

    Criminal Fortune

    English sample and synopsis available

    An unquenchable thirst for redemption in an untold true story of the most spectacular scam perpetrated against the Italian state. Through accurate documentation and, above all, thanks to the first-hand testimony of one of the protagonists of the affair, Fausto Gimondi reconstructs and recounts the surprising and exciting story of the great lotto scam of the late 1990s.

    A crime story without brutality, without victims, without bloodshed. A crime, certainly, but also the great revenge against the system enacted by those who are often victims of the system.


    In the sprawling northern outskirts of Milan, dreams carry the intoxicating aroma of wealth. The Lotto draw, the Italian regional lottery, it’s a Saturday night ritual, a date with destiny. With modest expectations for the future, Mario’s life has trundled along, seemingly unremarkable. But all of this is about to change dramatically when fate conspires to entwine his path with a motley crew of misfits. This eccentric gang has unearthed the Holy Grail—a way to manipulate the Milan Lotto wheel draws. For three incredible years, their scam  rains down thousands of winnings, quietly funneled through a network of betting shops. Hundreds of millions of dollars were thought to have been siphoned off by the organisers of the scam, who bribed the blindfolded children to do their bidding in selecting balls which had been tampered with, rather than picking out balls at random. Mario ascends to the ranks of billionaires and amasses a colossal fortune. But as the dream unfolds in all its glorious splendor, the threads of their intricate web begin to unravel because everyone wants its slice of the pie. In this riveting true story, the siren song of redemption beckons with every twist and turn, but at what harrowing cost?

    Alessia D'Ambrosio

    You vs Me = Us

    You vs Me = US

    An engaging sports romance and enemies-to-lovers story with the dual POV of Kassy, who is determined to become an ice-skating champion and avoid any distraction from Jacob, the promising English rugby player who broke her heart and who will stop at nothing to have his soulmate back.


    Kassandra Wilson is through with love and especially with Jacob. Her life is now practically perfect: she has a boyfriend who loves and respects her, good grades and she is training to make her dream of becoming a skating champion come true…

    But Kassy doesn’t know that Jacob is about to join the Saracens, the rugby team whose trainer is her father, Scott Wilson. For Jacob, this is a dream come true because he will finally have the opportunity to make up for the mistake he made five years earlier: to break up with Kassy. But, for Kassy, Jacob’s return is a nightmare.

    Still, despite misunderstandings and quarrels, Kassy and Jacob are a match thanks to a formula that always yields the same result: You vs Me = US.

    Erin Doom

    Fabbricante di lacrime

    The Tearsmith aka Maker of Tears

    THE 2022 BESTSELLING TITLE !!

    From this book, a Netflix movie coming on April, 4th!

    Full English Translation Available

    Wishing for a family. An impossible love.

    Just one certainty: you cannot lie to the ‘maker of tears’.


    Within the walls of Grave, the orphanage in which Nica has grown up, stories and legends have always been told by candlelight. The most famous one is about the tear maker, a mysterious craftsman with eyes as clear as glass, guilty of having manufactured all the fears and anxieties that dwell in people’s hearts.

    But, at the age of seventeen, the moment has come for Nica to leave all these dark childhood stories behind. Her greatest dream is about to come true. Mr and Mrs Milligan have begun the adoption procedures and are ready to give her the family she’s always wanted. However, Nica is not alone in the new house. Rigel, a restless, mysterious orphan, is also taken out of Grave, and he’s the last person Nica would wish for an adoptive brother. Rigel is intelligent, astute, plays the piano like a bewitching demon and is mesmerisingly handsome, but his angelic appearance conceals a dark temperament. Even though Nica and Rigel share a past filled with grief and deprivation, living together seems impossible; especially when the legend comes back to haunt their lives and the maker of tears suddenly grows increasingly real and draws nearer. Even so, gentle and brave, Nica is ready to do anything in order to protect her dream, because only by facing the nightmares that torment her will she finally be able to soar freely like the butterfly after which she was named.

    Erin Doom

    Stigma

    English synopsis available

    170,000 copies sold!

    Alone and penniless, Mireya moves to cold Philadelphia, no longer believing in miracles. However, she changes her mind when she steps into the quirky, lavish Milagro Club, where she becomes bound to the detestable, charming Andras, head of security, by a golden thread stronger than fate itself.


    Quirky and lavish, the Milagro Club is a place that can bewitch anyone who walks into it, including Mireya. Obstinate like someone with nothing to lose, the young woman gets herself hired as a bartender. The Milagro, however, is more than an exclusive nightclub. Behind its closed doors, beyond the sequins and stage lights, destinies and secrets are intertwined. The darkest ones are all gathered in the rugged, charming face of Andras, the head of security. Between Mireya and Andras, it’s hatred at first sight. Both carry on their skins the same marks, the brand of those who have had to learn to fight in order to survive. And yet they keep bumping into each other, as though attracted by a mysterious force they neither know nor are able to oppose, bound by a golden thread that is stronger than destiny.

    Carrie Leighton

    Better. Collisione

    Better. Collision

    English synopsis available

    “I pictured a love as delicate as the sound of a symphony, as light as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings. I was wrong. From the first moment he touched me, love has been the off-key tune of an electric guitar. The curse of a soul on a collision course.”

     

    A new voice in the dark romance genre, that draws on the tradition of this genre in order to present strong themes that hinge on unavowable secrets and passions, and two complex, tormented characters.


    Vanessa is a second-year college student who has an innate love of books and the rain, and has an enduring bond with her best friends. After her parents get divorced, she meets Travis, a young man she hopes will help her recover her long-lost peace of mind. For two years it seems that nothing can dent their tempestuous love affair – at least not until Vanessa comes across the conceited arrogance of Thomas: a self-confident, hostile young man who is both a victim and an aggressor with a tormented past and a dreadful secret that has doomed him to unhappiness. Thomas and Vanessa’s lives, so different and yet so alike, interlock, leading to a both passionate and painful relationship made up of yearning, rows, secrets and obstacles. And when everything seems to take a turn for the better, an unexpected presence upsets everything.

    Carrie Leighton

    Better. Dannazione

    Better. Damnation

    English synopsis available

    Loving each other has never been easy for Thomas and Vanessa. While the young man is trapped in a spiral of self-destruction, Vanessa starts seeing Logan again: he has never  accepted the end of their relationship. Can there be a happy ending for two hearts on a collision course?


    Loving each other has never been easy for Thomas and Vanessa. Their relationship is fuelled by passionate nights and fierce jealousy, romantic sparks and seemingly insuperable misunderstandings. After nearly losing each other, however, things appear to be going in the right direction. For the first time, Thomas confides in Vanessa the traumas in his past that have turned him into a broken soul incapable of bonding with anyone. Still, not even this rekindled closeness seems sufficient, since his gripping distress is too deep. While Thomas is trapped in a spiral of self-destruction, Vanessa and Logan start seeing each other again. The young man has never accepted the end of their relationship and is ready to provide the support she deserves. Can there be a happy ending for two hearts on a collision course?

    Carrie Leighton

    Better. Ossessione

    Better. Obsession

    The final chapter of the spicy romance trilogy.

    The flawed love story between Vanessa and Thomas has reached the final stop: rows and reconciliations, betrayal and lies have now divided them. But can something that is broken be mended?


    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.

    A.J. Foster

    Naively Mine. Ingenuamente mio

    Naively Mine

    The third instalment in the four-volume saga about the Harrison family and America’s handsomest and most accursed siblings who have one weakness: love.

    As she tries to ensure the best possible care for her father and a future for herself, the young and shy Grace Walker agrees to pretend she is a maid and to spy on the Harrison brothers on behalf of the Williams family. Only she has taken into account neither Aron Harrison’s smile and kindness, nor destiny.


    With her mother dead and her father gravely ill, Grace Walker is forced to give up her greatest passion: dance. Resigned, she takes a job as a maid at the Harrisons’ chalet in Vermont. Only she is not just an ordinary servant: the Williams family have hired her to spy on the Harrisons and find something to help clear Jonathan Williams and his son Alex in the imminent trial for the abduction of Aria, Aidan Harrison’s girlfriend. However, playing both sides does not come easy to a gentle soul like hers and what makes it even worse is her attraction to Aron Harrison, who, like her, has had to discard his dreams. In a vain attempt to protect him, she pushes him away in every way she can, but hard as it is to resist a Harrison, lying to one is impossible.

    Rokia

    Sindrome

    Syndrome

    English synopsis and sample available

    Four young people familiar with suffering.

    An experiment to heal them.

    A dark romance that addresses gently – and with an awareness of mental illness – self-harm, anorexia and PTSD, all important issues for Generation Z.


    Sia Carillo is an intrusive, anticonformist young woman, and the bitter enemy of Derek Hill, a frosty prince with a dark secret that makes him wary and distant. The hatred between them has no limits, but conceals infinite attraction. Olivia Leed has lost her voice because of a ghost that prevents her from breathing, but Edgar Chen reminds her of the beauty in small things. Untidy, self-deprecating and far too clumsy, Edgar lives between panic attacks and bursts of anger that express remorse and feelings of guilt.

    What these four young people have in common is a traumatic past that has left deep marks on their psyche. Brought together by an unorthodox woman doctor, they must cooperate in order to build a future in the world of journalism, working for a prestigious media company. Through a series of increasingly demanding challenges, their friendship is instrumental in the processing of their pain.

    Francesca Ventura

    Fragili scintille

    Brittle Sparks

    She is a timid, irritating young woman; he, the Japanese young man who gives her private lessons. Beatrice and Kento, separated by their secrets, will have the strength to face the consequences of their errors, forgive themselves and move forward.


    Beatrice Cesari studies Japanese at university. Other people see her as haughty, unreachable and surly. And yet someone has glimpsed her frailty and apparently manages to penetrate the wall around her and see inside her. It is Kento, a young man with a sunny smile and deep, dark eyes: the assistant of the Japanese language lecturer. Beatrice knows that she should keep away from him, but when Kento becomes her Japanese tutor, her private lessons with him force her to be near him. Kento seems to want not just to teach her Japanese but also fill her wounds with gold to heal them and make them glow. For the first time in ages, Beatrice feels something akin to hope, although she knows that there is still a risk she may get lost for ever, because the secrets of her past are crossroads on a way that could lead her to happiness.

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