Stromboli's Inferno

Arturo Mancini is a middle-aged fireworks manufacturer in São Paulo whose wife refuses him, whose business is failing, and whose only religion is a 1950s pin-up model named Bettie Page. When a mysterious facilitator named Johnny Meyer delivers stolen industrial formulas that could make Arturo the fireworks king of Brazil, he discovers his wife Angelina has been paying a theatrical group to stage elaborate fake assaults - complete with terrorists, kidnappers, and a Galician waiter. Caught between Chinese torturers in Macau, alien revelations about desire, and a secretary who just murdered his inflatable companion, Arturo must choose: return the stolen formulas and lose everything, or keep them and discover that in the economy of intimacy, everyone performs, everyone pays, and the serpent always collects his fee.

"A darkly comic novel about industrial espionage, marital entropy, and the formulas we invent to survive disappointment".

For readers of Philip Roth, Sam Lipsyte, and anyone who suspects that UFOs and marriage counseling serve the same purpose."