Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School creates a world: a world of power, sex, violence and the threat of masculinity, of the power wielded and misused by men.

‘To be born male is an incurable disease’

In 1975, three young well-off men, former students at Rome’s prestigious all-boys Catholic high school San Leone Magno, brutally torture, rape, and murder two young women. The event, which comes to be known as the Circeo massacre, shocks and captivates all of Italy, exposing the violence and dark underbelly of the upper middle class at a moment when the traditional structures of family and religion are under threat.

Edoardo Albinati sets his novel in the halls and corridors of San Leone Magno in the late 1960s and the 1970s, exploring the intersection between the world of teenage boys and the structures of power in modern Italy. Along with indelible portraits of teachers and pupils – the charming Arbus, the literature teacher Cosmos, and his only Fascist friend, Max – Albinati’s novel also reflects on the legacy of abuse, the Italian bourgeoisie, and the relationship between sex, violence, and masculinity.

This book provides a significant history of Italy's brutal occupation of Libya. Using the lens of the life of the iconic resistance fighter Mohamed Fekini, it tells the story of Libya under Ottoman and Italian rule from the point of view of the colonized. The story begins with the onset of Italian occupation in 1911-12, includes the crucial period of the anti-Italian jihad, from 1921 to 1930, and continues through the postwar creation of a united Libya under King Idris in 1947.

A heinous, double murder in a squalid apartment on the wrong side of town pits Inspector Lojacono, Di Nardo and the rest of the motley collection of cops known as the 'bastards' of the Pizzofalcone precinct against their superiors, the press, and the local political hierarchy. Only by bringing the killer to justice can they save their reputations and the department. De Giovanni is one of the most versatile, prolific, and successful European mystery in Europe.

A springtime fresh picture book about a good day out with friends-climbing mountains, swimming and singing-and the difference between storytelling and lies. Lisette and her friend Bobbi the lizard have never told a lie. But they are eager to try-it might be fun! They tell Popof they are going for a trip to the mountains. When Popof decides to come too, they realise they'll have to make the mountain. A liar needs to improvise. In this funny story about imaginative play with friends, Lisette's creativity and quick thinking make for a wonderful day out. Gently exploring the differences between storytelling and little white lies and the importance of good intentions, this picture book is ideal to read aloud with preschoolers. With illustrations that convey a range of mood and emotion, the animal friends are brimming with personality and childlike playfulness. Other books from Catharina Valckx: Lisette's Green Sock Zanzibar Bruno

'He is skilful. He is outspoken. He is Zlatan' New York Times 'He is an amazing talent, one of the best around' Pep Guardiola Football's most prolific and controversial goalscorer has nothing left to prove on the pitch. There is only one Zlatan. In the decade since his megaselling memoir I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he has played at Paris Saint-Germain (2012-2016), Manchester United (2016-2018), LA Galaxy (2018-2019) and Milan (2020-). This outrageous and hilarious follow-up is bursting with personal confessions and revealing anecdotes about the world's best players and managers. Packed with revelations, in Adrenaline we hear for the first time what Zlatan really thinks about his time in the Premier League and what it was like to score that glorious bicycle kick against England. We hear about the club he very nearly signed for, and see his hilarious run-ins with the French media - and the French in general, really. Plus so much more. Zlatan transports you into the world of top-flight football like no one else. Filled with revelations - including Zlatan's life lessons on happiness, friendship and love - you'll be talking about this book a long time after finishing it.

***A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR*** The Bastards face their hardest challenge yet Sometimes it takes facing a formidable adversary to truly know one's worth. The Bastards of Pizzofalcone may have found just that: when the brutal murder of a baker rattles the city, they are ready to investigate. There's nothing they wouldn't do to prove themselves to their community. But this time the police are divided: for the special anti-mob branch, the local mafia is doubtlessly responsible for the crime, but the Bastards are not so sure and think there may be another reason for the murder of the renowned artisan, whose traditionally baked bread attracted customers from far and wide. A rivalry between the policeman and the magistrate is formed, one that, in the end, will extend to more than just their work lives.

Jack and George are resting quietly when BOOM! A huge and strange ball lands beside them. “What’s that, Jack?� “I don’t know, George. Maybe it’s a rock?� No—too soft. But it rolls. Fast! Jack, George and the ball roll right off the cliff and now it’s a parachute. But watch out, they’re going to land in the river… Jack and George have a brilliant day full of adventure with this object that changes with the landscape. But what is it? It doesn’t matter, it was fun trying to figure it out. This bright and funny book is a game of twists and turns, with a joyful refrain and vivid artwork to capture every toddler’s imagination.

When Life in Peactime opens, on May 29, 2015, engineer Ivo Brandani is sixty-nine years old. He's disillusioned and angry but morbidly attached to life. As he makes a day-long trip home from his job in Sharm el Sheik reconstructing the coral reefs of the Red Sea using synthetics, he reflects on both the brief time he sees remaining ahead and on everything that has happened already in his life to which he can never quite resign himself. We see his slow bureaucratic trudge as a civil servant, long summer vacations on a Greek island, his twisted relationship with his first boss, the turmoil and panic attacks he faced during the student uprisings in 1968 that pushed him away from philosophy and into engineering, and his fearful childhood as a postwar evacuee. A close-up portrait of an ordinary existence, Life in Peacetime offers a new look at the postwar era in Italy and the fundamental contradictions of a secure, middle-class life.

Every night, at nine o’clock, wherever he is, Mr. Bianchi, an accountant who often has to travel for work, calls his daughter and tells her a bedtime story. But since it's still the 20th century world of pay phones, each story has to be told in the time that a single coin will buy. Reminiscent of Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights, Gianni Rodari’s Telephone Tales is composed of many stories––in fact, seventy short stories, with one for each phone call. Each story is set in a different place and a different time, with unconventional characters and a wonderful mix of reality and fantasy. One night, it’s a carousel so beloved by children that an old man finally sneaks on to understand why, and as he sails above the world, he does. Or, it’s a land filled with butter men, roads paved with chocolate, or a young shrimp who has the courage to do things in a different way from what he's supposed to do. Awarded the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 1970, Gianni Rodari is widely considered to be Italy’s most important children’s author of the 20th century. Newly re-illustrated by Italian artist Valerio Vidali (The Forest), Telephone Tales entertains, while questioning and imagining other worlds. Winner of the 2021 Batchelder Award and the 2020 Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s English Translation Prize

Roberto Saviano returns to the streets of Naples and the boy bosses who run them in Savage Kiss, the hotly anticipated follow-up to The Piranhas, the bestselling novel and major motion picture. Nicolas Fiorilla and his gang of children - his paranza - control the squares of Forcella after their rapid rise to power. But it isn't easy being at the top. Now that the Piranhas have power in the city, they must undermine the old families of the Camorra and remain united among themselves. Every paranzino has his own vendettas and dreams to pursue - dreams that might go beyond the laws of the gang. A new war may be about to break out in this city of cut-throat bargaining, ruthless betrayal, and brutal revenge. Saviano continues the story of the disillusioned boys of Forcella, the paranzini ready to give and receive kisses that leave a taste of blood. Saviano's Gomorrah was a worldwide sensation, and The Piranhas, called 'raw and shocking' by the New York Times Book Review, captured readers with its tale of raw criminal ambition, told with 'openhearted rashness' (Elena Ferrante). Savage Kiss, which again draws on the skills of translator Antony Shugaar, is a thrilling story from the brilliant Italian novelist.

This book provides a significant history of Italy's brutal occupation of Libya. Using the lens of the life of the iconic resistance fighter Mohamed Fekini, it tells the story of Libya under Ottoman and Italian rule from the point of view of the colonized.

Roberto Saviano returns to the streets of Naples and the boy bosses who run them in Savage Kiss, the hotly anticipated follow-up to The Piranhas, the bestselling novel and major motion picture

Nicolas Fiorilla and his gang of children – his paranza – control the squares of Forcella after their rapid rise to power. But it isn't easy being at the top.

Now that the Piranhas have power in the city, Nicolas must undermine the old families of the Camorra and remain united among themselves. Every paranzino has his own vendettas and dreams to pursue—dreams that might go beyond the laws of the gang. A new war may be about to break out in this city of cutthroat bargaining, ruthless betrayal, and brutal revenge. Saviano continues the story of the disillusioned boys of Forcella, the paranzini ready to give and receive kisses that leave a taste of blood.

Saviano’s Gomorrah was a worldwide sensation, and The Piranhas, called 'raw and shocking' by the New York Times Book Review, captured readers with its tale of raw criminal ambition, told with 'openhearted rashness' (Elena Ferrante). Savage Kiss, which again draws on the skills of translator Antony Shugaar, is the latest thrilling installment from the brilliant Italian novelist.

This new instalment in Maurizio de Giovanni’s bestselling “Bastards of Pizzofalcone” series unfolds during the crisp beginning of April in contemporary Naples.

A baby is left abandoned beside a dumpster. A young Ukrainian maid fights torrents of greed and frustration with the world around her. Small animals begin to disappear off the streets. The task of solving these mysteries is entrusted to a team of policemen in which few believe: the Bastards of Pizzofalcone.

De Giovanni is one of Europe’s most renowned and versatile mystery writers. His award-winning and bestselling novels, all of which take place in Naples, engage readers in gripping tales of Europe’s most fabled, atmospheric, dangerous, and lustful city.

Bjorn lives in a cave. The walls are soft, the ground is comfortable, and just in front there is new grass and a rough tree, perfect for back-scratching.

A Bear Named Bjorn takes us into the forest with Bjorn the bear and his friends. One day the animals have their eye exams and try on the humans' lost glasses. Another, they just sit, watching the leaves and playing cards on a tree stump. And on party night the animals borrow clothes hanging on the camping ground line--and return everything carefully in the morning, only a little bit used.

Bjorn's thoughtful bear logic and small eccentricities are the heart of these mischievous chapters that are by turns contemplative and comical, odes to both nature and "human" nature.

Factual as well as whimsical, and humorously illustrated, this is the first English-language publication of the answers given by one of Italy's greatest and most beloved children's authors to children's questions about animals, nature, technology, and culture. Gianni Rodari is widely regarded as the father of modern Italian children's literature. A firm believer in the great intelligence of children, he worked both as a teacher and a journalist. For a number of years, children across Italy sent their questions to his weekly newspaper column—questions Rodari answered, most inventively, with rhymes and little poems. Why didn't he reply with facts alone? Because he wanted to provoke children into thinking about questions, norms, and language itself. The Book of Whys collects a selection of these questions—from "Why does an elephant have a trunk?" to "Why does a car need fuel?" to "Why are we born?"—along with Rodari's answers, which beautifully serve to highlight the complexities, simplicities, and absurdities of our world. With a fresh translation from Antony Shugaar, who also translated Rodari's Telephone Tales (the 2021 Batchelder Award winner), and playful illustrations in colored pencils from artist JooHee Yoon (Beastly Verse; The Tiger Who Would Be King, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2015; Inside Out and Upside Down), The Book of Whys is a playful, surprising, and poetically informative book for all those who are curious about the world and ready to play with the ways things are.

Ranging from the imperial palaces of ancient China and the bakeries of fourteenth-century Genoa and Naples all the way to the restaurant kitchens of today, Pasta tells a story that will forever change the way you look at your next plate of vermicelli. Pasta has become a ubiquitous food, present in regional diets around the world and available in a host of shapes, sizes, textures, and tastes. Yet, although it has become a mass-produced commodity, it remains uniquely adaptable to innumerable recipes and individual creativity. "Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food" shows that this enormously popular food has resulted from of a lengthy process of cultural construction and widely diverse knowledge, skills, and techniques.

Many myths are intertwined with the history of pasta, particularly the idea that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China and introduced it to Europe. That story, concocted in the early twentieth century by the trade magazine "Macaroni Journal," is just one of many fictions umasked here. The true homelands of pasta have been China and Italy. Each gave rise to different but complementary culinary traditions that have spread throughout the world. From China has come pasta made with soft wheat flour, often served in broth with fresh vegetables, finely sliced meat, or chunks of fish or shellfish. "Pastasciutta," the Italian style of pasta, is generally made with durum wheat semolina and presented in thick, tomato-based sauces. The history of these traditions, told here in fascinating detail, is interwoven with the legacies of expanding and contracting empires, the growth of mercantilist guilds and mass industrialization, and the rise of food as an art form.

Whether you are interested in the origins of lasagna, the strange genesis of the Chinese pasta bing or the mystique of the most magnificent pasta of all, the "timballo," this is the book for you. So dig in