The Beasts
Three deadbeat robbers with animal nicknames, Lynx, Buzzard and Toad, masked with rough cotton sacks slung over their heads, take shelter in the former Boeri sanitorium in Tresigallo. A coincidence leads them to cross paths with a class of Ferrara high school students on a trip to the old hospital and so they decide to take them hostage.
The Boeri, a jewel of rationalist architecture that looks as if it were suddenly abandoned overnight, reveals itself as a disturbing and menacing place. Right from the start, the kidnapping takes an unexpected turn: within the walls, supernatural forces, restless shadows and gruesome visions bound by time now awaken. Lynx, the furious leader of the bandits, seems the one most affected by it. And Giulia, a young student with extra sensory perception, is the only one to feel the sinister presences in the place.
Among escape attempts, violent conflicts between the characters and hallucinatory visions lurking in the dark, the survivors’ journey in the bowels of the Boeri turns into an increasingly dark nightmare where the final destination seems to be a past filled with cruel secrets.
By the same author or illustrator
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My Life After Juno Sparks
A girl with a blue walkman, a legendary monster, and the summer that changed everything. Sagramoso, summer 1994. Twelve-year-old Enea lives trapped inside his fears — and behind a closed door he cannot bring himself to open. Everything changes when Juno Sparks arrives: rebellious, magnetic, armed with a blue walkman and grunge music blasting in her ears. Together with a…
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Haven’s End
A sealed world. A forbidden line. A truth powerful enough to burn everything down. Sixteen-year-old Rebecca has never questioned the rules of Haven’s End — an isolated, self-sufficient settlement lost in the forests of North America. Until the day she crosses the Red Line and discovers the first crack in the only world she’s ever known. What begins as a…
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The House of Light
At the edge of the sea, a tower keeps stories that the world has forgotten. A long time ago, at the edge of the known world, brave men built a tower, and at its top they lit a fire to hold back the darkness. Since then, the House of Light has watched over the horizon, witnessing storms and shipwrecks, ghosts…
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The Cursed Idol
A sharp, haunting coming-of-age novel about identity, temptation, and the price of wanting too much. Daniel doesn’t fit in – not at home, not at school, not even in his own skin. Then, in an abandoned villa, he finds a stone idol with human hair and a stitched mouth. A note warns: it gives with one hand, but takes with…
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160 Films (and Series) to Watch Before You’re 16 (and Even After)
A cross-generational book for teens, families, teachers, and film lovers of all ages: not just a guide, but a map to the movies that shape who we are — before sixteen, and long after. Cinema can open worlds, spark emotions, and shape how we see ourselves. Award-winning author and screenwriter Manlio Castagna has created a guide to 160 essential films…
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Dedalo & Dharma
It’s a summer evening when, without even realizing it, Dharma comes out of the cinema screen to escape certain death and meet that very spectator, Dedalo, who comes to the Kazan Cinema every single day to see her. Dedalo is thirteen and has an unbridled passion for films and Dharma, who’s the same age, is a character who escaped a destiny which,…
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Barriera
In Barriera, everyone’s fate is written in their blood. And you can’t change that. Sixteen-year-old Yasin lives in Barriera, a tough neighbourhood on the outskirts of Turin. He’s caught between his first love and a brother who’s just been released from prison, between who he wants to be and who the world expects him to be. Malik, his brother, is trying…
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Goodwill
One stormy night, a boy returns from the forest. But he is not alone. In November 1851, a caravan of settlers reached the desolate shores of what would become Seattle. They were exhausted, wet and full of hope. Among them were Jeanette and Henry Goodwill, who a few days after their arrival welcomed the birth of their first child: Ambrosius. But…
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The Evil Twenty
What would the stories we love be without their villains? They give weight to the shadows of the human soul. They let us feel contrast, complexity, danger—and sometimes, even recognition. In The Evil Twenty, Manlio Castagna invites readers on a journey into the minds of twenty of the greatest villains of all time, in twenty powerful short stories that explore…
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Snot & Splash
What if one day all the holes disappeared from the world? Would doughnuts still be doughnuts? How would you open a door without a keyhole? The residents of Elsewhere have a serious problem: someone is stealing all the holes. Keyholes, doughnuts, birdboxes… nothing is safe. And to make things worse, the weather has gone completely mad—garbage is falling from the sky.…
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Darkmare
A surreal night. A haunted amusement park. One boy’s quest to save a dream. Twelve-year-old Guido Anselmo lives for cinema. But when he discovers the mysterious biography of Klaus Voynik — a cursed filmmaker who died under strange circumstances — and realises the final chapter is missing, he’s determined to uncover the truth. His search leads him to an abandoned film studio-turned-amusement…
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Draconis Chronicon
Five children on a journey. A legendary dragon. An epic adventure in a magical Middle Ages. Salerno, 1066. A preacher wanders the streets announcing the end of the world: “The Beast is stirring again! Fear the dragon, because the day of the eclipse is near!” The young Barliario doesn’t pay attention to those words of doom, but that same evening his…
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The Night of the Malombre
March 2, 1944. A freight train packed with desperate passengers departs Naples in the dead of night, heading for the Lucanian countryside, where food might still be found. On board are hundreds of civilians: smugglers, mothers, soldiers, children, and three teens who don’t know each other — yet. Brando, a boy forced to grow up too soon, climbs aboard to find…
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Try Not To Sleep
Young and bold, Baladine is the brilliant mind behind De Profundis, a podcast that each week captivates a wide audience of true crime and horror enthusiasts, recounting real and terrifying stories “straight from the heart of darkness”. But now she’s stuck in a creative block that threatens to drag her back into the abyss she fought so hard to escape.…
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The Geometric Man
A fictionalised version of the young Jules Verne grows up in a world too small for his restless imagination. Spending a summer in a quiet French village, he stumbles upon a mysterious inventor and a locked shed full of blueprints, tools and machines unlike anything he’s ever seen. As Jules becomes the inventor’s apprentice, he finds himself drawn into a secret…
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Alligator’s Sense
Larry Nowak tries to avoid looking in the mirror as much as possible — the reflection staring back at him is only a pale shadow of the man he once was. Six and a half years spent in a hospital bed, in a kind of limbo he barely remembers. And the only way he found to escape what awaited him…
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Detour
When a group of strangers ends up in the same forgotten town in the Dolomites after a violent storm, they quickly realize that they are trapped — and something is terribly wrong. Italy, 2025. A sudden storm forces a number of people — families, tourists, cyclists, and commuters—to take a detour off the SS48. One by one, they all end…
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The Folio Club
Eleven students. An exclusive club. Dark secrets and fatal obsessions. They are dressed like the cursed poets. They gather in a boathouse they’ve claimed as their secret hideout. They drink punch and honey, smoke opium and gamble. Their motto is in Latin: sine fine sumus. They have nicknames like Edgar Allan Poe’s characters. They are members of the Folio Club, led by a charismatic…
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Syberia
Janis, a young Polish dissident, was sentenced to a Siberian labor camp after a failed student protest — which led to his arrest and the death of his father. Now, after two years, a mysterious cosmic explosion shatters the sky: the real-life Tunguska Event of 1908. In the chaos, Janis escapes into the vast, frozen taiga. Battling hunger, cold, wild animals,…
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Anomalya
How many mistakes, how many wrong choices would we like to delete? How many words, how many silly things do we wish we hadn’t said? What if we could go back in time? What if we could change the past and finally take control of our future? There are many pasts and many futures, each shaped by a delicate domino effect: one…
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The Greys
1986, Cavazza, province of Belluno. Population: 102. No roller coasters. No cinemas. No holiday camps. Just trees, mountains and a cabin in the woods. Angelo would give anything not to follow his eccentric father Pietro on another wild goose chase. But he’s thirteen – he has no choice. And this time the mission is… to hunt aliens. Pietro is convinced that they have…
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The Phenomenal P.T. Heliodore
P.T. Heliodore is ten years old when he hears an animal speak for the first time. What begins as a surreal experience soon turns into something extraordinary: owls, beetles, a water snake, a blue cow on its way to New York, and a dog named Pinky all have something to say to him. P.T. has an imagination as big as the…
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Super Bomb & Captain Frizz vs the Little Poop Soldier
Two best friends. Secret identities. One mission: save the world. When a toy soldier falls into a clogged toilet and soaks up radioactive brown water, a new villain is born: the Poo Soldier—a giant, squishy, smelly monster with a mission to spread chaos and stink! As his army of brown zombies grows, only two kids with wild imaginations, super costumes, and…
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Super Bomb & Captain Frizz vs the Sausage-Man
Two best friends. Secret identities. One mission: save the world. Best friends Super Bomb and Captain Frizz dream of becoming superheroes — and when a radioactive jar of mustard falls into a butcher’s mincer, transforming a kindly butcher into the monstrous Sausage Man, their moment arrives! As Sausage Man unleashes chaos, the boys fight back with fizzy powder, clever tricks, and…
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No One Is Coming To Get You
During a school trip to the ruins of Herculaneum, Calista—Cali—finds a scrap of paper hidden in a crack in the wall. The message is written in clumsy handwriting: a desperate cry for help, a whisper of loneliness. She replies, slipping a note back into the wall. And just like that, the dialogue begins. The person — or thing — on the…
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Of Fire and Silk
In the summer of 2024, Lianna arrives in Solferino to visit her mother’s grave, where an encounter with Asé, the mysterious cemetery guardian, opens the door to a second beginning. In the summer of 1858, two siblings, Sante and Altea, and Visio, ‘reborn’ after a near-fatal encounter, experience love and friendship against the backdrop of one of Italy’s bloodiest battles.…
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The Stone
A circle of stones with dark powers, a wind-battered island and a boy looking for answers A haunting and emotionally charged mystery set on a remote Irish island. When a second death shakes the community, thirteen-year-old Liam begins to connect it to his mother’s recent, unexplained accident – and to a strange carved stone buried near both bodies. A bold,…
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The Mysteries of Mercurio 7 – Titian and the Wood of Shadows
An old man who lives in the top of a tower in the heart of Florence challenges three friends to a dangerous mission: to discover and solve the hidden mysteries of the art world! Mercurio is back! The room of the Venus of Urbino at the Uffizi is suddenly covered in moss and Nina, Jamal and Lorenzo find themselves in…
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The Mysteries of Mercurio 3 – Caravaggio: Love Wins All
An old man who lives in the top of a tower in the heart of Florence challenges three friends to a dangerous mission: to discover and solve the hidden mysteries of the art world! To Nina, Caravaggio is the greatest painter of all. And she can hardly believe her eyes when she, Lori and Jamal come across the great maestro…
