If you are a fan of psychological horror, you are probably intimately familiar with the classic tropes: the creaky floorboards of a Victorian mansion, the isolated, snowed-in hotels of New England, or the misty moors of Britain. But what happens when terror strikes under the bright, ancient sun of the Italian landscape?

Most modern horror relies on cheap jump scares or overused settings, forgetting that true terror is deeply rooted in isolation and history. It’s an error that flattens the genre. The real remedy lies in shifting the geographical paradigm: exploring the dark corners of the human psyche through the lens of the Italian Gothic. Welcome to a world where the monsters aren’t just hiding under the bed; they are woven into the very architecture of the mind.

Trading the Overlook Hotel for the Italian Villa

When we think of absolute psychological isolation, our minds naturally drift to Jack Torrance in Stephen King’s The Shining or the deeply traumatized Crain family in Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House. These masterpieces use the “house” not just as a setting, but as a living, breathing antagonist.

In my Italian Mysteries series, I wanted to take that suffocating dread and place it in a context that feels entirely different but equally terrifying. Instead of a maze in the snow, the labyrinth is built from ancient Italian stone, deeply buried secrets, and the terrifying weight of history.

A Journey into the Darkest Corners of the Mind

The series is now available worldwide in English, bringing this unique flavor of Mediterranean psychological horror to a global audience.

The nightmare begins with The Isle of the Dead, a novel that lays the groundwork for the blurring lines between reality, trauma, and the supernatural. It’s an exploration of grief and survival that sets a suffocating, atmospheric tone.

But the psychological descent deepens significantly in the newly translated second installment, The Nightmare Behind the Door. Here, we follow Enrico Malera, a night security guard who accepts a seemingly simple house-sitting job for a wealthy friend. It’s the classic setup of a “haunted house” story, but the execution breaks the academic mold. When the nearby town of Verulengo mysteriously empties, Enrico realizes that crossing certain thresholds leads to places from which there is no return. As the cryptic warning in the book states: “Don’t look, for any reason in the world.” 

The Architecture of Fear

As an author and philosopher who has spent 40 years dissecting the mechanics of storytelling, I didn’t write these books simply to scare you. I designed them to explore the philosophical cracks in our perception of reality. The haunted spaces in The Nightmare Behind the Door are mirrors reflecting our deepest, most unacknowledged traumas.

Ready to cross the threshold?

• Get your copy of The Isle of the Dead here.
• Continue the descent into madness with The Nightmare Behind the Door here.