August, a month traditionally less rich in editorial outputs in the bookstore, this year is not so stingy with new novels, with books that wink at lovers of history and mystery, and others who promise to tease the imagination of fans of yellow and thriller. Amazement is the cornerstone around which it rotates The prodigydebut novel for Mondadori by Fabrizio Sinisi, a playwright known in Italy and abroad. His work first investigates the relationship of man with the occult, the narrative expedient is the appearance in the sky, one morning, of a face designed as a child would draw it. A smile without apparent explanations, perhaps a meteorological phenomenon, a chemical reaction of the atmosphere, an artistic happening.

Always Mondadori, after publishing I gave you eyes and you looked at the darkness (2024) by Irene Solà, brings to Italy the debut novel of the Catalan narrator, The embankment; In the work before one of the most interesting voices of the new international literary panorama, Ada is at the center of the narrative, which returns to his village after a three -year stay in London, to try to recover the link with his own community of origin.

In The season that was not there (Guanda) by Elvira Mujčić, the 1990 Yugoslavia becomes a metaphor for what happens to a country when the cult of the past and memory is exasperating leaving room for the emergence of violence. The author, who during the Yugoslave wars was a child like Eliza, the protagonist, tells the destinies of two boys through which the fate of a whole country moves, animated by the same dreams and by the youthful resourcefulness of its protagonists, who inevitably clash with the end of their utopias.

Neri Pozza, in August, instead proposes two interesting thrillers, published in the ‘I Neri’ collection. The publisher continues in the publication of the series of Commissioner Dupin, a fantasy character born from the pen of Jean-Luc Bretnac (pseudonym of Jörg Bong). The new chapter, Breton legacytranslated by Roberta Scarabelli, takes hold of a man’s sudden death in front of Dupin’s favorite restaurant. The treatment of fire by Johanna Mo, with Italian translation by Gabriella Diverio, is instead the third chapter of the yellow series set on the island of Öland, Sweden, starring the detective Hanna Duncker. Also the previous chapters of the saga, Death comes at night (2021) e The shadow of the lily (2023), are part of the catalog of Neri Pozza.

Remaining on the subject of thriller, public Longanesi The silence of the swallowsthe latest effort by Marco De Franchi: the former manager of the SCO (the Central Operational Service of the State Police) tells of a series of mysterious murders on which the commissioner Valentina Medici and the policeman Reietto Fabio Costa investigate. Ereal murders, committed by very young people, who allow the author to try their hand at the story of the fears and fragility of teenagers nowadays.

The latest book is not properly a novel. Temple Grandin is one of the most famous personalities with autistic spectrum diagnosis; Activist and US Ethologist is also well known for his activity as a designer of livestock equipment. Think without wordswritten in two hands with Betsy Lerner, is the Augustan proposal by Adelphi, in the translation of Silvio Ferraresi. A journey into human intelligence and in a language that is not always universal: by intertwining historical anecdotes, the author highlights the “hidden gifts of those who think of images, patterns and abstractions”.

Breton legacy (Neri Pozza)

(by Jean-Luc Beltalec; release date: August 5). In the famous Ville Close, in Concarneau, the Bretons celebrate the beginning of summer with music and dances, in a cheerful and relaxed atmosphere. If it were not that the sudden death of a man, right in front of the favorite restaurant of the Inspector Dupin, the Amiral, throws the town into the messy. In this new investigation Dupin plays at home, running into an intricate network of omissions and untouchable secrets.

The embankment (Mondadori)

(Of Irene Solà; Exit date: August 26). Ada returns to his village after a three -year stay in London. During the long summer months that follow his return, he will meet with his family, friends and an old love. And also with the village itself, the place where it grew. With the intention of recovering that small universe from which it had started, Ada begins to invent stories on all of them. It is therefore the story of Ada and the story of Ada’s stories: a novel composed of the sum of small narratives that make up the mosaic of an intimate and shared universe.

The season that was not there (Guanda)

(Of Elvira Mujčić; Exit date: August 26). In 1990 two young people return to their small town near Sarajevo. Nene is an artist obsessed with the possibility that his country can suddenly not exist, that no one remembers what it means to be Yugoslav, and dreams of creating a work that witnesses the time that his generation has experienced.

Merima, eager to engage firsthand to counter the stormy winds that threaten Yugoslavia, seeks a cure for a deep wound of love. The same wound that gave birth to his daughter Eliza, an eight -year -old girl who has never known her father because of the frightening ghosts of the new nationalisms that hover over her birth, and who cannot even be appointed in the family.

The prodigy (Mondadori)

(Of Fabrizio Sinisi; Exit date: August 26). One morning, in the sky of a large European city that looks very like in Milan, a face appears: a face designed as a child, a smile would draw it. Is it a meteorological phenomenon? Of a chemical reaction of the atmosphere? Or maybe an artistic or political happy daring? Will it be the signal of a chemical war? Everyone looks high and remain cumped, but nobody can explain the origin and meaning of this bizarre sign in the sky.

The story is told firsthand by Luca, a young worldly priest, who writes bestseller books, is a fixed guest in a TV broadcast and teaches at the university. It is a “bad priest”, full of contradictions, a fragile and cynical but also sentimental man. Luca is in love – not reciprocated – Di Marta, a problematic girl with whom she has an emotional dependence relationship. The first days the face is seen with sympathy and curiosity, his photos fill the feed of social media, then someone begins to exploit him for marketing purposes, someone else to blame him with crimes and violence that take place in the city. But the hypothesis that makes the most is that it represents a mystery phenomenon, perhaps divine.

The silence of the swallows (Longanesi)

(Of Marco De Franchi; Exit date: August 26). The young commissioner Valentina Medici and the policeman Reietto Fabio Costa return to investigate together on a series of serial murders. Apparently inexplicable murders that begin to happen first in Italy. The common factor: the killers are very young. And the first victims are the parents. What pushed them to kill? What strength has made them capable of performing such heinous acts? The most simplistic hypothesis makes its way in the police: kids diverted by video games, challenges on Tiktok or social media.

Only Valentina Medici senses that underneath there is something more complicated and more frightening. The only thing that remains to be done is to investigate tirelessly, starting again every time from the end. Perhaps the key is in that strange dream, or hallucination, that all young killers tell. Seagulls who lash out on a flock of small swallows who do not fly away, but suffer the torment in silence. A silence soon filled from the screams of the new victims that someone is preparing to kill at the hands of innocent young people.

Thinking without words (Adelphi)

(Of Temple Grandin; Exit date: August 26). If Temple Grandin has not been able to access the veterinary faculty, it is due to serious mathematics deficiencies: his way of thinking about images – related to the autism spectrum disorder – makes them difficult to handle abstract concepts such as numbers. Her particular form Mentis, recognized and developed thanks to the practical courses once offered by schools, has however allowed her to become an esteemed designer of zootechnical machinery, as well as an authoritative expert of animal behavior.

The friction between the functioning of his brain and the surrounding world, warned from the most tender age, has convinced him that “we humans have different ways of thinking”: in fact, in fact, in a continuum of intermediate gradations, a visual thought that proceeds in images and patterns, and that the educational system and the world of work increasingly difficult to enhance to enhance, is opposed to verbal thinking. By intertwining illuminants historical anecdotes, personal experiences and evidence taken from the most recent neuroscientific studies, Grandin launches a severe warning to society, so that they learn to see in different minds “not a disability but a resource”.

The treatment of fire (Neri Pozza)

(by Johanna Mo; release date: August 29). A few days before Christmas the detective Hanna Duncker wakes up at night and discovers that her house is on fire. He manages to escape, but the feeling that it was not an accident does not stop persecuting it. Returning to work, Hanna is involved in an old unresolved case. In June 1999, a group of students celebrated in an abandoned house in the Midland forest. The next morning, one of them disappeared without leaving a trace. Now, twenty years later, his skeleton is found and there is no doubt: he was killed.