Priscilla Villanueva is tired of practicing piano when all her friends are outside playing. Discouraged and bored one autumn day, Priscilla opens her sheet music and begins playing a challenging sonatina. Unfortunately, it is not long before she smashes her fingers against the keys in frustration. But when her fingers suddenly stumble upon a sticky A key, everything changes. After a beautiful, twirling column of colors rises from the piano keyboard, Priscilla falls off her bench in surprise. As a translucent man dressed in a tuxedo appears before her, the ghostly spirit who calls himself Pythagoras tells a shocked Priscilla that she is a talented musician who has just lost an important element that he can help her find. Soon, he begins to teach Pricilla interesting information she never knew about musical history and theory.

The quest for truth is a passionate adventure, while philosophy is a total commitment. Such are the values that marked the exceptional destiny of Pythagoras, whose genius was equalled only by the mystery that still surrounds him. This is an atypical book that completely renews the approach to an enigma dating back twenty-five centuries. Thoroughly documented but resolutely freed from the conventions and stereotypes of a certain critical tradition coming from Aristotle, it aims to unveil new perspectives on the 'Pythagorean question', which should -at last- enable everyone to penetrate the intimacy of the Master of Samos' thought, with a chance to rediscover the path to a lost wisdom.

This is a comprehensive, authoritative and innovative account of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophies in the West. In twenty-one chapters covering a timespan from the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century AD, leading scholars construct a number of different images of Pythagoras and his community, assessing current scholarship and offering new answers to central problems. Chapters are devoted to the early Pythagoreans, and the full breadth of Pythagorean thought is explored including politics, religion, music theory, science, mathematics and magic. Separate chapters consider Pythagoreanism in Plato, Aristotle, the Peripatetics and the later Academic tradition, while others describe Pythagoreanism in the historical tradition, in Rome and in the pseudo-Pythagorean writings. The three great lives of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus are also discussed in detail, as is the significance of Pythagoras for the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The Vertical Plane: The Mystery of the Dodleston Messages: A unique supernatural detective story.