An eBook, a comic book and an audiobook for January

In this January when winter never seems to arrive, it is however (perhaps) time to read something thoughtful to start the new year with. Not just reading, but also watching and, why not, listening. Here then is an eBook, a comic book and an audiobook for the month of January.

La Pentagonia semicircula. Can a herb solve love problems?

In this short story by Ricardo Tronconi you will find some of the author’s favourite themes, combined with a hint of psychoanalysis. Pentagonia semicircula is nothing more than a ‘miraculous’ plant, capable of making the person who takes it feel no (sentimental) pain… but with a price to pay. The subject becomes incapable of deciding and thus of choosing his or her own destiny.

So how to fix a couple’s love problems with a third party in the background? It will be up to Dr Sara Nash to sort it all out, with a curative stay at Villa Paradiso, built to cure love dilemmas. Will it work? Obviously we can’t tell you, but if at the end of the story you find yourself with unresolved doubts, the author has thought of some unprecedented help. In fact, the last few pages are dedicated to an actual forum-style ‘conversation’ between hypothetical readers of the story.

Want to throw yourself into reading? Here are all the links for purchase!

Lo sceriffo di Godhill on Avon. Forbidden loves and entanglements in an enchanted forest

A beautiful full-colour comic book to start 2024. In the plates drawn by Marco Visentin, the events of the imaginary sheriff of Godhill on Avon unfold. A sort of fairy tale (strictly for adults) will take you on a discovery of the protagonists, among whom, of course, a prince with his betrothed. The latter will be the trigger for the whole affair, which will involve a luthier, the county sheriff and his wife, a charming sheriff and an outlaw, as well as a character who is decidedly out of line…

Between passionate ways of obtaining information and an indiscriminate use of sex as a method of turning events upside down, the story will come to a happy ending, but perhaps not for everyone! Note for the faint-hearted: as with all the comics in our series, sex is present in an explicit form, albeit metaphorised or reiterated in the drawing. But you’re not here because you’re looking for light thrills, are you?

To continue, all you have to do is follow this link.

Conversando intorno all’arte del male. A mysterious murder in a semi-serious Italian thriller

Based (very imaginatively) on a true story that happened in Italy, this audiobook is for semi-serious lovers of detective stories. A heinous double murder is certainly no laughing matter, but the context and the characters that revolve around it verge on the ridiculous. Amidst the more or less deliberate inefficiencies of the authorities and the classic neighbours who see everything and say nothing, it will be up to the two protagonists of the story, Don Frithurick and Dolores Consuelo Maria, to discover the truth of the matter.

The title suggests something else, however. Because a mystery is beautiful when it remains a mystery, but also when it is solved. So why not embroider on it some more? Here then, the story becomes a good excuse to talk about the concept of evil and how it can obscure people for the most trivial reasons. Listening to it, you might find that, in the end, the serious part is the latter…

Click here to jump right into listening.

That’s it for this month’s January tips, see you next month!