TEN YEARS SINCE THE FIRST NOVEL OF L’ALLIEVA THE BELOVED ALICE ALLEVI RETURNS
Alice Allevi returns in all her splendid and perfect imperfection. Back comes Claudio Conforti, to everyone now just “CC”: brilliant mind, often caustic gab, heart only seemingly rough around the edges. Back is the cast of sidekicks who for exactly ten years have thrilled readers, making readers fall in love, smile, despair, and sometimes even anger.
Alice is back after an intense period living in Washington with Claudio Conforti, and there is a definite reason behind the decision of the most scintillating couple in forensics. For Claudio, in fact, this is the opportunity of a lifetime: Wally is about to retire, and the race for succession as director of the institute seems open and immediately closed: CC appears to be the ideal person to rise to the role of the institute’s new “Supreme.” But while Claudio’s career spurt, against all odds, proves anything but easy, Alice-now a practicing medical examiner in her own right-finds herself involved in not one but two cases that soon prove to test her well-known investigative flair. On the one hand, the traffic accident involving a young student at a prestigious college may hide something more terrible than mere fatality, not least because the culprit has escaped and it seems impossible to flush him out. And on the other is a lost child who does not speak and whose age is not even known. Driven by her natural empathy, and a good dose of eagerness to pry, Alice will find herself drawn in by the two events, much more intimately than she (and CC himself) could ever have imagined.

An old English mansion where anything can happen.
My name is Angelica and this is the list of things I had imagined for myself: a faithful boyfriend, a nice little terrace, parents without high expectations. Too bad none of them came true. Instead, here is the list of things that happened: leaving everything, leaving for England and finding myself with an unexpected job. So I arrived at Chaverton House, an old mansion in Dorset. This trip was supposed to be just a quick visit to investigate an old family history, but it turned out to be so much more. Now shushing the little voice that ties the choice to stay to Alexander, the elusive estate manager, is not easy. But I have to try. He has other things on his mind and so do I. For example, preparing to be a guide for tourists. Although I have found that books are not enough, but I have to memorize the details of a TV series set in Chaverton. People just want to recognize every corner of every cult scene. Instead, I prefer tea services, floral-patterned walls, and especially the library, which holds first editions of Jane Austen and Emily Brontë. It’s like immersing myself in the novels I love. And that is priceless. Or maybe one does and not too low either: meeting Alexander is now the norm. And I am increasingly under the spell of his offended air of nobility. Perhaps the decision to stay is not so right, for I know well that what one should not do is what one wants most. What I don’t know is whether to follow my head or my heart. But maybe they do not go in opposite directions, in fact they are the only two parallel lines that can meet.
Alessia Gazzola is an idol for her readers, for the press and for booksellers. After the bestselling L’allieva series, which is also a major television hit, the Constance series and the novel Lena and the Storm, she is back with a new book that makes you dream amid homemade cakes, the magic of a setting that harkens back to the charm of the past and a little family mystery to solve. Step inside Chaverton House and enjoy the journey.

Sixteen women writers for sixteen great women.
In this astonishing collection, many of Italy’s most beloved and appreciated female writers recount as many “muses”: shameless and beautiful women or, on the contrary, meek and reserved ones who, for the space of a night or for their entire existence, have forged complex (and dangerous) relationships with successful men. Muses not always “thrown” but mostly misunderstood — thus giving substance to the odious saying that “behind every great man there is a great woman” — who thus return, at last, to the center of the literary stage. The pioneers of psychoanalysis and Kate Moss of a hundred covers, Kiki Queen of Montparnasse for a night and Maria Callas the Divine forever, Nadia Krupskaya working to bring socialism to fruition, Rosalind Franklin discovering the structure of DNA, the inspirers of painters, musicians, writers, philosophers: spanning different eras and places, happy and unhappy destinies, Muse and Throw arrives at the presence of living legends, even landed on Instagram, such as Amanda Lear. Sixteen first-rate authors reveal here as many wonderful women, offering readers a fresh look at the relationship between the sexes, female identity, and the struggle for emancipation.
The writers: Ritanna Armeni, Angela Bubba, Maria Grazia Calandrone, Elisa Casseri, Claudia Durastanti, Ilaria Gaspari, Lisa Ginzburg, Chiara Lalli, Cristina Marconi, Lorenza Pieri, Laura Pugno, Veronica Raimo, Tea Ranno, Igiaba Scego, Anna Siccardi, Chiara Tagliaferri.
The muses: Lou Andreas-Salomé, Luisa Baccara, Maria Callas, Pamela Des Barres, Zelda Fitzgerald, Rosalind Franklin, Jeanne Hébuterne, Kiki de Montparnasse, Nadia Krupskaja, Amanda Lear, Alene Lee, Dora Maar, Kate Moss, Regine Olsen, Sabina Spielr.

Anything she would have thought, but not to be a paleopathologist after graduating from medical school. Not of living in Verona, so far from Messina, her home. Not of having a small child, the funny Flora. Not to track down the child’s father after several years, to find him as charming as when she first met him and to find him perfect with Flora. Not of still having feelings for said father. Not to be able to boast a fair collection of embarrassing situations and experiences. Constance Macallé’s life can be said, in short, to be quite troubled. Yet the 30-year-old with unruly red hair and a coat too light for the northern winter can count on a few but very good aces up her sleeve that help her face life’s sfide day after day: her colleagues at the Institute of Paleopathology, her sister Antoinette, an innate ability to get back up at every fall, the knowledge that she can count on her own strength and the dogged determination of someone who knows how to get by even with little. Because the important thing is to always have good intentions.
The new life Constance has just begun to build, however, may be about to change once again. Her job as a doctor is still at the top of her wish list, and Marco, Flora’s father, is still in the process of getting married. Constance will then have to deal with important decisions to make, hearts unwilling to listen to their brains, and a Milanese archaeological site that brings to light an incredible mystery from the city’s medieval past. And above all, with the possibility that, after all, those good intentions are just illusions.

Verona is not my city. And paleopathology is not my profession.
Yet, here I am. How could this happen, to me of all people?
My name is Costanza Macallè and on the plane that is taking me from Sicily to the city in Veneto where my sister, Antonietta, already lives, I am not traveling alone.
With me is the being I care for most in the world, sixteen kilos of delight and torment that answer to the name of Flora. My daughter is my whole world, partly because it’s just me and her-I know, I know, but it’s a complicated story.
However, I can do it: after all, I only have to endure one year. That’s the length of the contract with the Institute of Paleopathology in Verona, and I – who specialized in Pathological Anatomy and wanted to do everything but dig up old bones, spider ancient braids and analyze centenarian remains – have to adapt, waiting to find my dream job in England.
But, as always, life has other plans for me. So, as I try to settle into this foggy, freezing Verona winter, I must also resign myself to the fact that there are choices I have been putting off for too long. And the time has come to make them.
After all, what does it take? It is a matter of courage, it is a matter of resourcefulness — and, I always tell myself, it is a matter of Constancy.

It is said that each of us, in the course of our lives, accumulates an average of thirteen secrets. Of these, five are truly unmentionable.
Lena has only one, but it is felt inside as if it were worth a thousand. No matter how hard she tries to forget it, it is inevitable for her to think about it again as she glimpses the island of Levura, the destination of her journey, from the ferry. Levura, where she spent the unforgettable summers of her youth. Where she has not set foot again since she was fifteen. Now her father has given her the family home, and she has decided to rent it to turn her existence around. Because she feels adrift, like a boat lost in the waves. Because the job as an illustrator, which she loves, is at a dead end.
Lena would never want to return to those walls. But it is the only chance she has. As she opens the windows and the sea-smelling wind moves the curtains, the moments of her last vacation there resurface: the chats, the splashes of water on her face, the walks on the beach. And together the memory of that day, burned into her mind. Her plan is to stay in Levura as little time as possible and then start over elsewhere. Yet nothing goes as she had imagined. Lena does not know that the season that tans her pale, delicate face will be so much more for her. She does not know that the island will be a place of unexpected encounters, such as the one with Tommaso, a young doctor who hides shadows behind an apparent security. Day after day, Lena discovers that the truth has a thousand shades. That nothing is really unmentionable. For often guilt hides only a deep fragility.
From the author of The Pupil series, an extraordinary success in bookstores and on TV, a novel about the magic of new beginnings and the will to live by going beyond one’s own barriers. A novel with a protagonist who must come to terms with herself, her past and a heavy secret. A novel that has the scent of the sea, the delicacy of sand between her fingers, the strength of stormy waves.

Alice Allevi, a young forensic medicine resident, has now learned to resist everything. Or almost anything.
As a good student, she resists pressure from her superiors, who put her in charge of supervising a resident…
herself, who struggles to supervise herself! This is also evidenced by her tortuous love life. Alice, in fact, still suffers from the hanging heart syndrome that keeps her poised between two men who are as fascinating as they are at opposite ends of the spectrum: Arthur, who has become the Unnamable after too much suffering, and Claudio, the institution’s most upstart coroner, handsome and incorrigible, a genuine tempting devil.
And finally, Alice resists, or tries to, the instinct to launch into fanciful investigative theories whenever, in secret, she cooperates in the investigations of Commissioner Calligaris. Who, on the other hand, proves to have more confidence in her than Alice herself does. But it is difficult to cope with all this together when, in the hottest summer since she has lived in Rome, Alice stumbles upon a case that threatens to involve her far too much.
The discovery of the skeleton of a young theatrical actor, believed to have disappeared years earlier and who was instead murdered, is only the first act in an intricate and complex investigation. Alice will thus have to come to terms with a gallery of characters who, on the surface limpid and sincere, hide unmentionable secrets behind the scenes.
Alice knows: no secret is forever. And those who do not learn to keep their secrets at bay end up being dominated by them–until the most tragic and cruel of endings.

Welcome to the great Shrine of Humiliation. That is, the institute of forensic medicine where Alice Allevi does everything in her power to ruin her career as an intern. If it is true that unrequited loves are the most heartbreaking, Alice’s love for forensic medicine trumps them all. It almost seemed as if her troubled existence at the Institute had granted her a reprieve, just enough to try to put her increasingly messy love life in order, but of course that was not the case.
Ambra Negri della Valle, the beautiful, brilliant, insufferable, perfect Queen Bee, disappeared. It’s hard to imagine a more carrion-ridden colleague than her, always ready to make Alice look bad to her superiors, as if she didn’t get into trouble herself, with all the messes she manages to make. Not to mention Ambra’s affair with Claudio Conforti, an established medical examiner who is as gorgeous as he is wicked, the forbidden dream of every resident–and perhaps Alice’s too.
But as much as she detests Ambra, Alice would never go so far as to wish her dead. So when the prosecutor’s office calls her and Claudio and asks them to go identify a dead body just found in a field, Alice fears the worst. As soon as she arrives at the scene of the discovery, however, a thousand questions crowd into her mind: who do those poor bones belong to? And what is a little princess crown doing next to the body?

Alice Allevi, finally a specialist in forensic medicine, faced difficult choices both professionally and romantically. After a long and stormy courtship, it seemed that something had been born between her and Claudio Conforti, the charming and unpredictable forensic scientist with whom she has shared every misadventure since her residency days. For a moment, Alice believed she had finally reached a period of serenity, at least outside the Institute of Forensic Medicine. But in a moment of sentimental bewilderment, she asked for a transfer. And she gets it: to Domodossola. Fortunately for her, or in spite of herself, Alice will not have much time to dwell on her fate, because immediately a new case overwhelms her. During what she thought was a routine autopsy, Alice finds a diamond in the corpse’s stomach. A stone of considerable carat and value, but also important material evidence for the case. Therefore, Alice takes care to summon a bailiff to whom she will hand it over for safekeeping. The officer who comes to her is a distinguished and elegant man with polite and impeccable manners, and Alice does not hesitate to entrust him with the diamond. And it is at that point that the phantom officer disappears into thin air, and trouble for Alice begins to grow enormous….

Everything has changed for Alice Allevi: it is a new world that awaits her outside the Institute of Forensic Medicine where she spent complicated but, in their own way, happy years. For Alice is no longer a resident, but a full-fledged Specialist in Forensic Medicine. And the bright (perhaps) and bumpy (almost certainly) adventure of freelancing awaits her. But the much-desired freedom has a bitter sweet taste: single again after a long love affair, Alice fears losing her points of reference. All except one: the charming and intractable Claudio Conforti, aka CC, a forensic scientist of proven professionalism and renowned ruthlessness. When she gets her first consulting assignment for a magistrate, Alice rolls up her sleeves and puts her best foot forward. At the center of the case is a 45-year-old woman, once a La Scala étoile and now the owner of a dance studio. On the surface, she died of natural causes. Yet, Alice has her suspicions, and as much as she would like things, for once at least, to be simple, reality is always ready to disabuse her. For, thanks to her sensitivity and intuition, Alice begins to uncover disturbing secrets in the woman’s past related to the universe – as fascinating as it is ruthless and competitive – of classical ballet.

Alice allevi is a young forensic medicine resident. She still has a lot to learn and knows she is a bit absent-minded, often careless. But of one thing she is sure: she loves her job. Even if the institution where she does it is a veritable sanctuary of humiliation. And even if her superiors do not think she is cut out for the job. Alice endures it all, encouraged by the affection of her friends, the vital charge of her Japanese roommate, Yukino, and the often unreciprocated relationship of esteem that binds her to Claudio, her colleague and superior (and perhaps something more). Until the murder. For a forensic scientist, a crime scene inspection is routine; a murder is part of the daily work. But not this time. This time, when Alice enters that luxurious Roman apartment and sees the girl’s corpse lying at her feet, her head surrounded by a halo of blood, she realizes that this will not be a case like any other. For this time she knows the victim.