31 stories
Il custode
il Custode by Niccolò Ammaniti is a dark and mysterious novel set in Sicily. The story follows Nilo Vasciaveo, a thirteen-year-old boy who lives in Triscina with his mother Agata and his aunt Rosi. Nilo’s family hides a terrible secret: for generations, the Vasciaveos have been responsible for guarding a mysterious and powerful creature connected to the ancient Greek god Poseidon. Nilo’s life changes when Arianna and her young daughter Saskia arrive in town. Nilo quickly becomes fascinated by Saskia, and their friendship brings him into a world of secrets, danger and unexpected discoveries. At the same time, his family becomes involved in a violent criminal environment connected to the mafia. As Nilo learns more about his family’s past and the mysterious creature they protect, he is forced to confront fear, responsibility and the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood. The novel combines mystery, fantasy, violence and coming-of-age themes, creating a dark and unsettling story about family secrets and the burden of destiny.
Destroy
Misty is a twenty-five-year-old Italian who moved to London, where she makes a living by offering to perform all kinds of services at home. Her best friends are Tilly, a girl her age who stayed in Italy and dreams of becoming a porn star, with whom she maintains a pen-pal relationship, and Labelle, a middle-aged Frenchwoman she met in London, who also settled there after leaving her husband and children. One of Misty's best clients is an English woman named Mary. One evening, Mary sends her a cassette tape through a young man named Liam, who works for her, intending for Misty to learn a song that she must sing to her. Unexpectedly, Misty falls madly in love with Liam, who, however, is also Mary's lover and does not want to break off the relationship with her. Disappointed by Liam, Misty finds comfort in Bryan, a twenty-nine-year-old she met by chance, and in Arlette, an eighteen-year-old American from Buffalo. Bryan, Arlette, and Misty engage in a threesome; afterward, the two girls wander around London pretending to be prostitutes. Misty then resumes her "home services" activity, but deep inside, she starts to feel disgusted by this way of life.
Diary
As a "coma diary", the reader learns of Misty Marie Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. The story is not exactly told by Misty but through a second-person perspective. Once she was an art student, dreaming of creativity and freedom, but after marrying Peter while they were both still at school and then giving birth to their daughter shortly after, she is eventually brought back to Waytansea Island. It was once quaint, but it has become overrun with tourists. Misty has been reduced to the lowly condition of a mere waitress within a common resort hotel. Peter, before falling into his coma, was building hidden rooms within the houses he was remodeling and scrawling vile messages all over the walls; this is an old habit of builders but it was dramatically overdone in Peter's case. Angry homeowners are suing Misty, and her dreams of artistic greatness have been ruined. But then, as if she was possessed by the spirit of the fabled Waytansea artist Maura Kincaid, Misty begins painting again, excessively and compulsively.
Lullaby
Ever heard of a culling song? It’s a lullaby sung in Africa to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of a culling song kill, whether spoken or even just thought. You can find one on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World, an anthology that is sitting on the shelves of libraries across the country, waiting to be picked up by unsuspecting readers. Reporter Carl Streator discovers the song’s lethal nature while researching Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and before he knows it, he’s reciting the poem to anyone who bothers him. As the body count rises, Streator glimpses the potential catastrophe if someone truly malicious finds out about the song. The only answer is to find and destroy every copy of the book in the country. Accompanied by a shady real-estate agent, her Wiccan assistant, and the assistant’s truly annoying ecoterrorist boyfriend, Streator begins a desperate cross-country quest to put the culling song to rest.
Aidoru
Set in a future version of Tokyo, where a virtual pop star named Rei Toei, also known as the "idoru," has become a cultural phenomenon. The story follows a rock star named Rez and a teenage girl named Chia as they navigate the complex world of fame, technology, and personal relationships.
La vita interiore
Desideria, an obese and unhappy girl, lives with her widowed mother and rich Viola who, one day, reveals to her that she is not her real mother and that she bought her from a prostitute. The night before, Desideria also happens to witness a scene: the mother is sodomized by the administrator of the Tiberi family assets under the gaze of the housekeeper Chantal. These events lead to a change in the life of Desideria who, growing up, becomes a slender and beautiful teenager who unleashes in Viola a morbid attraction. Desideria, as an act of rebellion against his adoptive mother, decides to imitate street prostitutes, having as his first and only client Erostrato Occhipinti, a broke-up Sicilian, which makes Desideria believe that he is an active member of extreme left-wing groups that organize thefts and kidnappings to finance the imminent revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois order, even if in fact he has in the past also carried out activities as an informant for the police. The girl plans to use Erostrato to kidnap Viola, so as to extort a ransom through Tiberi. Erostrato does not take his idea seriously, but nevertheless tells her about Quinto, a fellow Milanese arriving in Rome who is able to authorize and organize the kidnapping.
Occhi sulla graticola
1995. Carolina attends the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. To make ends meet, she draws male and female genitalia on imported hentai for the magazine Kiss Manga, on which she is known under the pseudonym Maria Grazia Graticola. Alfredo stagnates «in a footnote bibliographical» of his thesis on the ugly figures in Dostoevsky when he meets her in a particular situation. The rotten canals of a plumbea Venice are the backdrop to the lives of two other university students, Fabrizio and Giampaolo and their hostess, the eccentric Mrs Cordellato who charges her rent in seminal fluid. Between references to the world of erotic manga paper and personal vicissitudes, Alfredo implements his plan to conquer Carolina, ruthlessly digging into the personalities of the characters.
Shameless
The series depicts the poor, dysfunctional family of Frank Gallagher, a neglectful single father of six: Fiona, Phillip, Ian, Debbie, Carl, and Liam. He spends his days drunk, high, or in search of misadventures, while his children learn to take care of themselves. The show's producers sought to distinguish this production from previous American working-class shows by highlighting how Frank's alcohol and drug addiction affect his family.
Fame d'aria
Among white stone hills, hairpin bends, and perched villages, Pietro Borzacchi is traveling with his son Jacopo. Suddenly the clutch of his old Golf leaves him, at the worst moment: on Friday afternoon, in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately father and son meet Oliviero, a mechanic driving his tow truck that agrees to escort them to the nearest village, Sant'Anna del Sannio. When Jacopo gets out of the car it is evident that something is wrong with him: his empty gaze, his swinging step, his left hand that continues to rub the leg of his pants, back and forth. Waiting for Oliviero to repair the car, father and son find hospitality from Agata, owner of a bar that once was also a pension, is right in one of the old rooms that are settled. Sant'Anna del Sannio, a few hundred souls, is a beautiful country where time seems to have stopped, with no apparent future, like many small towns in the Italian province.
Dove nascono le ombre
Mid-sixties. Elia is a lonely child, fond of ghosts and tales of terror. At the age of 12, his life was turned upside down by the sudden death of his baby sister. The family is destroyed and the father decides to take his wife to a clinic in the mountains and to entrust Elia to his sister Giovanna, who lives at Paradisiello, a popular condominium on the edge of the city. Elijah is sad and angry: his aunt for him is a stranger, who speaks little, snorts a lot and treats him with brisk manners. He cannot know that the most intense summer of his life, the summer of all-embracing friendships and first times, is about to open up before him. Last summer before I grew up. Slowly she wins the shyness and begins to approach the boys of the palace: the twins Simone and Silvia, Nello and little Moscow. He spends his days with them in the large garden that surrounds the Paradisiello and in the woods that lap him, summer days made of everything and nothing, of ball games, laughter, cherry thefts and escapes from adults. But soon he discovers that a sinister shadow looms over that wood.
Ti prendo e ti porto via
In Ischiano Scalo the sea is there but you can’t see it. In this peripheral Maremma of swamps and mosquitoes, bars and houses overlooking nothing of a provincial road take place two love stories. Pietro and Gloria are two boys. She is the daughter of a bank manager, she is awake, beautiful and confident. He is the son of a psychopathic pastor, introverted, dreamer, and the favorite victim of bullies in the country. Graziano Biglia is back in Ischiano, with his fame as a female guitar player and his heart broken by a cubist. Here he meets Professor Flora Palmieri, a lonely and mysterious woman who has given up her life to take care of her mother. And between the two, seemingly as far away as the planets of two galaxies, an attraction arises. A crowd of strange and grotesque creatures moves around the protagonists, as in the wake of an electric and swirling wind.
Fango
From the festive Apocalypse of The Last New Year of humanity to the vicissitudes of Albertino, the protagonist of Fango, the episodes of Niccolò Ammaniti stage the new heroes of a borderline and metropolitan humanity, capable of passing lightly from a modest aspiration to a heinous crime. They are stories that mix all genres, from horror to comedy to Italian, finally finding in a grotesque comic vein the real common element. Stories in which a meticulous observation of reality blends with a wild fantasy, so even death turns into a sparkling spectacle. Great skill and superb sense of rhythm do the rest, giving this book the appearance of an authentic, unrepeatable jewel.
Branchie
The protagonist of "Branchie" is Marco Donati, a boy who studies the behavior of fish, terminally ill, with obsessive mother and girlfriend. From dragging himself from one party to another in uptown Rome, Marco plunges into an adventure without limits, like a fearless knight, in an India that looks like the masterpiece of a mad forger. Road movies, quiz with the question in the most critical moments, crazy extreme sports and much more. All smoothie as in a "sandwich stuffed with cod, broccoli, mayonnaise and curry onions".
Primal
Set in an anachronistic and fantastical prehistoric world, the premise is a bond between a Neanderthal named Spear and a female Tyrannosaurus rex named Fang as they struggle to survive, encountering various dangerous fauna and people that live in their world while also encountering different creatures and Iron Age homo sapiens.
Zodd - Blood dawn
"Zodd. Blood Dawn" is a dark fantasy novel imbued with cosmic horror and ultraviolence. The protagonist, Zodd, is more than two meters tall, lives on violence and serves in the Corazzati, an auxiliary unit of the Imadian Empire. In a world of horrors, monsters and massacres, he will leave behind a trail of blood and limbs amputated in order not to surrender to his fate.
Spawn
In life, Spawn was Albert Francis Simmons, who was born in Detroit, Michigan, as the second eldest of three children born to Bernard Simmons, a traveling salesman, and Esther Simmons, a devil worshipper. Simmons was once a very intelligent, physically strong, and highly decorated officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel while serving with Force Recon. He later joined the Secret Service, where he became a high-ranking official who was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency. Once he joined the CIA, Simmons joined the U.S. Security Group, an umbrella agency encompassing the CIA, NSA, and NSC, commanded by Director Jason Wynn. He became a capable assassin. During a mission in Botswana, Wynn grew tired of Simmons' increasing sense of morality and secretly hired Simmons' friend and partner Bruce Stinson (codename Chapel), to kill him. Simmons was burned to death and sent to Hell. Making a deal with the devil Malebolgia, Simmons agreed to become a Hellspawn and served Malebolgia if he was allowed to see his wife Wanda one last time. Malebolgia agreed and returned Simmons to the living realm but without most of his memories, a severely burned body, and a demonic guardian named the Violator. After his death and rebirth, Simmons, now called Spawn, arrives on Earth in a daze, off-balance and disoriented. With only vague recollections of his past, all he knows is his name and that he died. He realizes five years have passed since his death.
V.
The novel alternates between episodes featuring Benny, Stencil and other members of the Whole Sick Crew (including Profane's sidekick Pig Bodine) in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks), and a generation-spanning plot that comprises Stencil's attempts to unravel the clues he believes will lead him to "V." (or to the various incarnations thereof). Each of these "Stencilised" chapters is set at a different moment of historical crisis; the framing narrative involving Stencil, "V.", and the journals of Stencil's British spy/diplomat father threads the sequences together. The novel's two storylines increasingly converge in the last chapters (the intersecting lines forming a V-shape, as it were), as Stencil hires Benny to travel with him to Malta.
Night watch - Nočnoj Dozor
Since the beginning of time, there have been "Others" – humans endowed with supernatural abilities – and for just as long, the Others have been divided between the forces of Light and Dark. In Medieval times, the armies of both sides met by chance, and a great battle began. Seeing that neither side had a clear advantage, the two faction leaders, Geser and Zavulon, called a truce and each side commissioned a quasi-police force to ensure it was kept; the Light side's force was called the Night Watch and the Dark side's force was called the Day Watch. In modern-day London, Anthony visits a witch named Daria and asks her to cast a spell to return his wife to him, agreeing that she should miscarry her illegitimate child as part of it. Just as the spell is about to be completed, two figures burst in and restrain Daria, preventing her from completing the spell. When they notice that Anton is able to see them, they realize that he is also an Other. Twelve years later, Anton has enlisted in the Night Watch. While policing Moscow, he encounters several portents that Geser says are linked to an ancient prophecy of an immensely powerful Other that will end the stalemate between Light and Dark, but will be more likely to join the Dark. Antony's investigations lead him to a nurse, Svetlana, whom disaster seems to follow everywhere, and a young boy named Yegor.
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Mona, a teen prostitute who has a more-than-passing resemblance to famed Simstim superstar Angie Mitchell. Mona is hired by shady individuals for a "gig" which later turns out to be part of a plot to abduct Angie. A young Japanese girl named Kumiko, daughter of a Yakuza boss sent to London to keep her safe while her father engages in a gang war with other top Yakuza leaders. In London, she is cared for by one of her father's retainers, who is also a powerful member of the London Mob. She meets Molly Millions who takes the girl under her wing. A reclusive artist named Slick Henry, who lives in a place named Factory in the Dog Solitude; a large, poisoned expanse of deserted factories and dumps, probably in southern New Jersey. Slick Henry is a convicted car thief whose punishment consisted of having his short-term memory erased every five minutes, leading to continuous confusion and dissociation.
Street football
Three orphans, Lucifero, Alì and Memorino, run away from Celestini orphanage, to play in the secret Streetball world cup. Don Biffero and Don Bracco will be on their trail, determined to find them, before the news of the escape becomes public. But the two journalists Fimicoli and Rosalino discover what happened and smell the scoop: be the first to film the world cup. Therefore they will also launch in pursuit. The plot will unfold with an ancient prophecy in the background.
