Intrecci di Carta
Novels · Mysteries · Gamebooks
Thrillers, dystopias and fantasy, four small-town investigations and branching adventures where you decide. These are the books of Pierpalmiro Stroppa.
The books are written in Italian.
Browse the booksFiction
Spy thriller
Her mother discovered something. That is why she died.
“Trust me,” her mother had asked her, without any explanation. Tamar had walked out, slamming the door. The next morning Yael went down into the water and never came back up.
Six months later the sea gives her back. What remains is the question no one wants to hear: what had Yael Rosen discovered that was worth more than her life?
Complete manuscript · about 68,000 words
Dystopia
Capital letters are for those who count.
In the Patria, children are ordered from a price list. Anyone still born the old way, from a woman, the regime calls deformed.
G7-T0M45 hunts them by entering the memories of the dead. He has caught Jesus, the leader of the hidden ones, and watched him die. Then, on the walls, the red paint comes back: JESUS VIVE.
Complete manuscript · about 42,000 words
Thriller
Three missing. No bodies. No trace.
On 3 July 1944 two thousand men climbed up to Cevo by four roads and burned the village house by house. Eighty years later Chiara Belotti, whom her family calls Dina, walks back up that road in the procession, as she does every year, for a great-grandfather who died in that fire.
She is thirty-five, an inspector in Como, and a diagnosis has just sent her home: without her gun, without her driving licence, without the case she was working on her own. Men from a certain crowd who vanish leaving nothing behind, and who, as far as everyone is concerned, simply went off of their own accord.
Dina wants to get back on the case, and to get back on it she has to turn up clean for her medical in February. So she investigates in secret, with a colleague signing in her place, while around the lake they start finding bodies with too many stab wounds for a brawl. The papers come up with a name: the Angel of Death. The prosecutor's office wants a single culprit, and soon a face.
For Dina, it doesn't add up. And she can't tell anyone.
Complete manuscript · about 66,000 words
Epic fantasy
Fire does not forget.
An empire founded on the blood of dragons. A power handed down like a sentence.
When the last vermilion scale burns again, the debts of the past come back to collect.
Complete manuscript · about 83,000 words
The mystery series
Four mysteries among villages, vineyards and provincial silences. Maresciallo Pietro Iaccarino has a dog, Diego, a method as slow as a restoration, and the bad habit of listening.
Vol. 1
Croceverde, Umbria, October
Some restorations tell a different story when you look at them from the back.
Maresciallo Pietro Iaccarino is on holiday, visiting an old friend, with his dog Diego and no wish for trouble. Then, in the village's restoration workshop, an ancient tapestry comes back to light after a century, and with it a death no one can explain.
Iaccarino has no jurisdiction, no colleagues, no hurry: all he has is his method, slow as a restoration, thread by thread. But in a village where everyone has always known everyone, what could be more dangerous than someone who listens?
about 62,000 words
Coming soon
Vol. 2
Pieve Castelvecchio, Garfagnana, late November
Nothing ever happened in Pieve Castelvecchio. The only true stories the village had were the accidents in the mountains.
The stone village on the ridge is getting ready for the Sant'Andrea fair: even a famous first violin is coming for the concert. Then, in the days of the festival, a death everyone is in a hurry to call an accident.
This time Iaccarino is not on holiday: he is at home, in the valley he has commanded for years, among people who greet him by name. He has the authority, but not the distance. And in a village he knows by heart, where does a lie hide?
about 40,000 words
Coming soon
Vol. 3
Roccafonda, Alto Lazio, August
As we say around here: some truths don't fall. They're pushed.
At Villa Sàvelli the wedding of the year is being celebrated: the monumental staircase, the oleander in bloom, the whole village in its Sunday best. Iaccarino is there among the guests, in plain clothes, with no jurisdiction and no wish for trouble. Then, in front of everyone, a man falls down the forty steps, and the party ends right there.
An accident, they say: a misstep, the heat, his age. But Iaccarino has seen a detail that doesn't fit. And in a village where weddings are prepared for months, even the secrets dress well.
about 45,000 words
Coming soon
Vol. 4
Montecroce in Chianti, September, grape harvest
Wine always tells you where it comes from. The trouble is the people who don't want to hear it.
At Podere Fontemòrta a crate of prized grapes vanishes in the night: in its place, rotten bunches. The next morning the caretaker is dead in the cellar, and Bacco, the black rooster on the label, is blind drunk in the farmyard. An accident, everyone says.
Iaccarino is there convalescing, the guest of an old friend, with no uniform and no authority: sparkling water, his dog Diego and the bad habit of watching. And three questions: who brought the rot in where everything was sound? Where is the good crate? And the rooster, why was he drunk?
about 50,000 words
Coming soonBranching adventures
Stories where you make the choices, and every mistake has a price. From the Underworld of the Odyssey to the Ragnarök of the Nine Worlds.
Greek mythology · ages 14+
Don't forget your name
A storm snaps the ship's mast. Anfialo, grandson of Odysseus, wakes on a grey beach under a sky he does not know, with a young tawny dog as his only guide.
In the realm of shadows everyone wants to know his name. It is up to you to choose whom to trust, when to fight and when to flee, to settle the debt his family opened with the sea.
Norse mythology · ages 14+
A gamebook of the Nine Worlds
Ketil is sixteen, with the strength of a giant and a past nobody will tell him about. He is an apprentice in a village forge, until a one-eyed old man asks him his mother's name.
Then a boy swears to avenge a dead god on him. To defend yourself you will travel among gods, giants and the dead in search of witnesses: it is the hardest trial in the Nine Worlds.
The novels are unpublished. If you are a publisher or a literary agent, write to us: we will send you the synopsis and the manuscript.
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The author
He writes novels, mysteries and gamebooks, and creates board games and video games. He lives in Switzerland.
Intrecci di Carta is his imprint: stories to read and stories to play.
The video games of Intrecci di Carta →Contact
For a question, an idea or a publishing proposal.
info@intreccidicarta.com