Foreign Rights

Crime Novels by Antonio Pagliaro

Antonio Pagliaro is a Sicilian crime novelist and astrophysicist, author of more than fifteen novels and true-crime investigations. Two of his books — The Lost Child and Martina Who Sang on New Year's Eve — are already available in English. This page lists titles currently open for translation rights.

His work has been praised by Italian authors including Carlo Lucarelli and Roberto Alajmo, and two of his noir novels (Il sangue degli altri and I cani di via Lincoln) were selected for the prestigious "Noir Italia" collection by Il Sole 24 Ore. His earlier novels were published by Ugo Guanda editore, one of Italy's most respected literary imprints.

For rights inquiries, sample translations, or full synopses in English, please contact the author directly at antonio.pagliaro@gmail.com.

English Home Biography Books in English Contact

TV series project

Dove sono le bambine? (The Girls of Marsala) — pitch materials for a 6-episode limited TV series are available in Italian and English.

TV project page →

Crime Novels

Michael Cannavale's Last Summer

Original title: L'ultima estate di Michael Cannavale (2026, Independent)

In the coffin of her father, journalist Sophia Cannavale finds two bodies instead of one. The discovery forces her to return to Millbrook, Connecticut, and reopen an old wound: the 1999 summer when a teenage boy fell into a coma at a senator's villa, protected by a decades-long wall of silence. The most devastating truth, however, is not about the town. It is about Sophia herself.

World rights available

Do You Remember the Girl in the Woods?

Original title: Ti ricordi la bambina nel bosco? (2025, Independent)

A secluded villa in the fog-shrouded woods. A six-year-old girl who vanishes from a made bed. A husband whose composure feels unnatural. As Aurora searches for her daughter Emma, her own memories begin to betray her — and the only person she can trust is the first one she suspects.

World rights available

Sisters on the Run

Original title: Sorelle in fuga (2024, Independent)

Alba Arcangelo was five years old when she disappeared in 1990, running hand-in-hand with her older sister away from a violent father. Twenty-five years later, her DNA surfaces at a crime scene in a Palermo choked by summer heat. Chief Inspector Ludmilla Buonafede must untangle a web of luxury escorts, safety deposit boxes, and institutional corruption to find out who Alba has become.

World rights available

The Girl Who Vanished in Spring

Original title: La ragazza che scomparve in primavera (2024, Independent)

In the heart of a Palermo night, Irene Siviglia gets into a taxi and disappears. Her case reawakens a forbidden past in Commissioner Giulio Nicosia — and the only person who can help him may be a Mafia boss. A police procedural where the line between justice and personal reckoning dissolves.

World rights available

The Lost Child

Original title: Il bambino segreto (2024, Independent)

One May morning in Palermo, Francesco drops his son Matteo at school — or thinks he does. When he returns hours later, the gates are locked and the registers show Matteo was absent all day. A crumbling marriage, a Moldovan lover, and a school that seems to be hiding something converge into an ominous, dreamlike thriller. English edition self-published on Amazon KDP.

World rights available

Martina Who Sang on New Year's Eve

Original title: Martina che cantava a Capodanno (2024, Independent (originally Laurana, 2014))

A long short story. On the last night of 2004, Martina shoots herself one minute before midnight with her father's pistol. Nobody finds the body until January 9. What follows is the slow, devastating unearthing of the reason she decided not to live another year. English edition self-published on Amazon KDP.

World rights available

The Belarusian's Kiss

Original title: Il bacio della bielorussa (2015, Ugo Guanda editore)

Franz La Fata is a Palermo hitman created — and now targeted — by the Mafia. In the Netherlands, Inspector van den Bovenkamp pulls two faceless bodies from a canal. Their stories converge in an international thriller that reaches the highest levels of Sicilian politics and organized crime. Originally published by Guanda in their literary noir imprint; Italian rights have since reverted to the author.

World rights available

The Night of the Black Cat

Original title: La notte del gatto nero (2012, Ugo Guanda editore)

A phone call at 3:32 a.m. A son who never came home. A father who does not recognise the boy the police are describing. Praised by Roberto Alajmo in La Repubblica as "a book that grips you with a tension that stays with you until the very end." Originally published by Guanda; Italian rights have since reverted to the author.

World rights available

The Dogs of Lincoln Street

Original title: I cani di via Lincoln (2010, Laurana editore / Il Sole 24 Ore (Noir Italia series))

Eight people are massacred in a Palermo Chinese restaurant by Kalashnikov fire. Lieutenant Cascioferro and Prosecutor Rubicone — a mother with a small child — stumble into a case where Mafia bosses, aging Freemasons and corrupt politicians are bound together. A novel about impossible investigations in a city where nobody is innocent. Originally published by Laurana and later selected for the prestigious "Noir Italia" collection by Il Sole 24 Ore; Italian rights have since reverted to the author.

World rights available

Other People's Blood

Original title: Il sangue degli altri (2007, Sironi / Il Sole 24 Ore / Laurana)

From the corrupted shadows of Sicilian casino developments to the Chechen wars, journalist Lo Coco follows a trail that threatens everyone around him. With the help of a Carabinieri officer and a former Russian policewoman, he uncovers a conspiracy that spans continents. The author's debut novel — republished three times across fifteen years.

World rights (excluding Italy) available

True Crime

The Outsider: The Veronica Panarello Case

Original title: La Forestiera (2024, Independent)

On November 29, 2014, Veronica Panarello reports her eight-year-old son Lorys missing. Her broken voice shakes an entire Sicilian community — but CCTV contradicts her story. A 576-page true-crime reconstruction of a case where the judicial truth and the real truth may not coincide.

World rights available

The Phantom of Heilbronn

Original title: Il fantasma di Heilbronn (2023, Zolfo editore)

For sixteen years, a mysterious female killer left her DNA on over forty crime scenes across Germany, France and Austria, always with different accomplices. Until the most shocking conclusion of all. A short-form true-crime narrative.

World rights (excluding Italy) available

Skin: The Katarzyna Zowada Case

Original title: Pelle (2023, Zolfo editore)

Kraków, 1998. A 23-year-old religion student vanishes. Two months later, her skin — sewn into a female bodysuit — is caught in a boat propeller on the Vistula river. One of the strangest and most unsettling investigations in Polish criminal history, peopled by hoarders, poets, psychic profilers, and a schizophrenic young man obsessed with venomous snakes.

World rights (excluding Italy) available

They Died in the Night: The White House Farm Mystery

Original title: Morirono nella notte (2023, Laurana Editore)

Essex, August 7, 1985. Nevill and June Bamber, their adopted daughter Sheila and her six-year-old twins are found shot dead. Doors locked from the inside, Sheila holding the rifle, a Bible at her side. What looks like a murder-suicide unravels into one of Britain's most contested true-crime cases — and Jeremy Bamber is still in prison today.

World rights (excluding Italy) available

The Terrible Story of the Girls of Marsala

Original title: Storia terribile delle bambine di Marsala (2020, Zolfo editore)

Marsala, Sicily, autumn 1971. Three little girls — aged nine, seven and five — vanish on the short walk home from school. Three thousand men search the province; an uncle is convicted as "the monster of Marsala." But nobody in town believes he acted alone. Praised by Carlo Lucarelli as a book read "with passion, from the first page to the last."

World rights (excluding Italy) available

The Japanese Cannibal

Original title: Il giapponese cannibale (2010, Senzapatria / Zolfo editore)

Paris, 1981. Issei Sagawa, a shy Japanese student, invites his friend Renée to his apartment to read German poetry. He is in love with her — but his love is an obsession that conceals a darker desire. He kills her and eats her. A decade later, in 1990s Tokyo, Sagawa is a celebrity: television appearances, cookbooks, pornographic films, a screenplay about a restaurant where women walk in and walk out as steaks. How did he escape justice? Why did Japanese society embrace him as a macabre star? A short-form true-crime investigation into one of the most disturbing cases of the twentieth century.

World rights (excluding Italy) available

Where Are the Girls?

Original title: Dove sono le bambine? (2024, Independent)

A new investigation into the 1971 Marsala disappearance. Through the years, key figures in the Italian fight against the Mafia — Dalla Chiesa, Ciaccio Montalto, Terranova, Mancuso, Borsellino — all found themselves tied to this tragedy, and all became martyrs. The book proposes an unprecedented explanation of events.

World rights (excluding Italy) available

Contact for Foreign Rights

Antonio Pagliaro handles foreign rights directly. English sample chapters, full synopses and press reviews are available on request.

Email: antonio.pagliaro@gmail.com