Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

Every week on a Thursday evening, a group of four Italian rural women gather in a stone house in the hills above Italy's Orvieto. There--along with their friend, Marlena--they cook together, sit down to a beautiful supper, drink their beloved local wines, and talk. Surrounded by candlelight, good food and friendship, Miranda, Ninucia, Paolina, and Gilda tell their life stories of loves lost and found, of ageing and abandonment, of mafia grudges and family feuds, and of cherished ingredients and recipes whose secrets have been passed down through generations. For fans of all things Italian, and the thousands of readers who loved The Kabul Beauty School; Eat, Pray, Love; and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; this book is a culmination of de Blasi's 20 years spent living, traveling, cooking, eating, and drinking in Italy, and of course it includes recipes for the most mouthwatering Umbrian dishes.

The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club

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#paolocognetti #hardcover ##adventure #eightmountains #friendship #Italy 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

New Hampshire

A Novel

“A fine book, a rich, achingly painful story that is made for all of us who have ever felt a hunger for the mountains. Few books have so accurately described the way stony heights can define one's sense of joy and rightness. And it is an exquisite unfolding of the deep way humans may love one another.” —Annie Proulx For fans of Elena Ferrante and Paulo Coelho comes the international sensation about the friendship between two young Italian boys from different backgrounds and how their connection evolves and challenges them throughout their lives. Pietro is a lonely boy living in Milan. With his parents becoming more distant each day, the only thing the family shares is their love for the mountains that surround Italy. While on vacation at the foot of the Aosta Valley, Pietro meets Bruno, an adventurous, spirited local boy. Together they spend many summers exploring the mountains’ meadows and peaks and discover the similarities and differences in their lives, their backgrounds, and their futures. The two boys come to find the true meaning of friendship and camaraderie, even as their divergent paths in life—Bruno’s in the mountains, Pietro’s across the world—test the strength and meaning of their connection. A modern Italian masterpiece, The Eight Mountains is a lyrical coming-of-age story about the power of male friendships and the enduring bond between fathers and sons. “There are no more universal themes than those of the landscape, friendship, and becoming adults, and Cognetti’s writing becomes classical (and elegant) to best tell this story…a true novel by a great writer" (Rolling Stone Italia).

The Eight Mountains

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#firstedition #hardcover #nonfiction #food #cooking #memoir #autobiography #italy #biography 

New Jersey

The Remarkable Life Story of the Woman Who Started Out Teaching Science in a Small Town in Italy, but Ended up Teaching America How to Cook Italian

'She opened a world to millions of Americans and helped change the way we shop, cook, and eat.' - MARK BITTMAN, The New York Times, January 8, 1997

Widely credited with introducing proper Italian food to the English-speaking world, Marcella Hazan is known as America's godmother of Italian cooking. Raised in Cesentatico, a quiet fishing town on the northern Adriatic Sea, she'd eventually have her own cooking schools in New York, Bologna, and Venice, where she would teach students from around the world to appreciate-and produce-the homemade pasta, rustic soups, deeply satisfying roasts and stews, pure seafood dishes, and the fresh vegetables dressed with olive oil that Italians eat. She'd write bestselling and award-winning cookbooks, and collect invitations to cook at top restaurants around the world. She would have thousands of loyal students, and readers so devoted they'd name their daughters Marcella. Her fans will be as surprised and delighted b how all this came to be as Marcella herself has been.

Marcella's story begins not in Italy but in Alexandria, Egypt, where she spent her early childhood and where she fell on the beach and broke her arm-an accident that would hardly register for a child today, but which altered the course of her life. After nearly losing her arm to poor medical treatment, she was taken back to her father's native Italy for surgery. There the family would remain. Her teenage year coincided with World War II and the family relocated temporarily to Lake Garada, which they, not they, not anticipating that it would become one of war's greatest targets when both Mussolini and German High Command established their headquarters there, thought would be a safe haven. After years of privation and nightly bombings, Marcella was finally Fulfilling her ambition to become a doctor and professor of science when she Victor, the love of life. After their marriage, they moved to America, where Marcella knew not a word of English or-what's more surprising-a single recipe. She began to recall and attempt to re-create the flavours of her homeland. After women with whom she took a Chinese cooking class in the early sixties asked her to teach them Italian cooking, she began to give them lessons in her tiny New York kitchen. Soon after, Craig Claiborne invited himself to lunch, and the rest is history. Amacordmeans 'I remember' in Marcella's native Romangolo dialect. In these pages, Marcella, now eighty-four, looks back on the adventures of a life lived for pleasure and a love of teaching. Throughout, she entertains the reader with stories of the humorous, sometimes bizarre, twists and turns that brought her love, fame, and a change to forever change the way we eat.

Amarcord: Marcella Remembers

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New York

20th-Anniversary Edition

Applies a poet's sensibility, a traveler's eye, and a cook's palate to the pleasures of the Tuscan countryside, where the author began restoring an abandoned villa

Under the Tuscan Sun

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#hardcover #nonfiction #travel #italy #essays #firstedition
First Edition, 2004

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

North Carolina

A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

A year in the life of a remote Southern Italian hill town rich with local characters, strange pagan-laced customs, and very different from the more gentrified northern Italy of Tuscany and Umbria.

Award-winning travel writer/illustrator, David Yeadon and his wife Anne embarked on an exploration of the wild mountainous "lost word" of Basilicata in the arch of Italy's boot. What was intended as a brief sojourn turned into a far longer and far more intriguing residency across the seasons. The Yeadons made a home here in the ancient and alluring hill village of Aliano where Carlo Levi, author of the world-renowned book Christ Stopped at Eboli, was imprisoned by Mussolini during part of World War II for anti-fascist activities.

They became immersed in today's rich tapestry of people, lifeways, traditions, festivals, the rituals and rhythms of the grape and olive harvests, unique culinary delights, and other enticing peculiarities of place. At the same time, they discovered that much of the pagan strangeness Carlo Levi and other notable authors revealed here, still lurks beneath the beguiling surface of Basilicata. Evocative illustrations and richly colorful, often humorous tales of life in their hill village form the framework for Seasons in Basilicata.

Described by one reviewer as "one of our best travel writers," David Yeadon has shifted focus in this book to a far more intimate portrait of a single uniquely intriguing place. Tim Cahill found Yeadon "a very congenial travelling companion," Jan Morris praised his books as "full of strange, moving and entertaining experiences," and Kirkus celebrated them as "big, vigorous and hugely entertaining."

Seasons in Basilicata [First Edition]

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#hardcover #romance #botm #fiction #family #tuscany #italy

Connecticut

The Star-Crosses Sisters of Tuscany

A unique tale of pictures and story about an immigrant grandfather teaching his grandchild about his childhood through small keepsakes he kept along his life. 
 #paperback #matchboxdiary #storytelling #immigrant #italy #historicalfiction #childrensbook 

The Matchbox Diary

#hardcover #botm #thegoodleftundone #historicalfiction #fiction #italy #adriannatrigiani

Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew. . . .
 
In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved home becomes unsafe when Italy teeters on the brink of World War II. Her journey takes her from the rocky shores of Marseille to the mystical beauty of Scotland to the dangers of wartime Liverpool—where Italian Scots are imprisoned without cause—as Domenica experiences love, loss, and grief while she longs for home. A hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her granddaughter, Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy, while Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for. But Matelda is running out of time, and the two timelines intersect and weave together in unexpected and heartbreaking ways that lead the family to shocking revelations and, ultimately, redemption.

California

From Adriana Trigiani, “a master of visual and palpable detail” (The Washington Post), comes a lush, immersive novel about three generations of Tuscan artisans with one remarkable secret. Epic in scope and resplendent with the glorious themes of identity and belonging, The Good Left Undone unfolds in breathtaking turns. Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew. . . . In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved home becomes unsafe when Italy teeters on the brink of World War II. Her journey takes her from the rocky shores of Marseille to the mystical beauty of Scotland to the dangers of wartime Liverpool—where Italian Scots are imprisoned without cause—as Domenica experiences love, loss, and grief while she longs for home. A hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her granddaughter, Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy, while Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for. But Matelda is running out of time, and the two timelines intersect and weave together in unexpected and heartbreaking ways that lead the family to shocking revelations and, ultimately, redemption.

The Good Left Undone

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#paperback #fiction #womeninsunlight #francesmayes #womensfiction #italy

"A coversation with Frances Mayes first appeared on Read it foreward in 2018"--Title page verso.

Women in Sunlight

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Tennessee

Wines Italy

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Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what youreally need to know when traveling in Italy.

From the beaches to the Alps, from fine art to fine pasta, Italy has it all. With this book, you'll trace Italian culture from Rome's Colosseum to Michelangelo'sDavid to the bustling elegance of Milan. Experience the art-drenched cities of Venice and Florence, explore the ancient ruins of the Roman Forum, and learn how to avoid the lines at the most popular museums. Discover the villages of Tuscany and Umbria and the lazy rhythms of the Cinque Terre. Shop at local market stalls, sip a cappuccino at an outdoor café, and pick up a picnic lunch at anallimentari. Relax and enjoy the life ofBella Italia!

Rick's candid, humorous advice will guide you to good-value hotels and restaurants. He'll help you plan where to go and what to see, depending on the length of your trip. You'll get up-to-date recommendations about what is worth your time and money. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves guidebook is a tour guide in your pocket.


Rick Steves Italy 2016

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#vintage #italy #travel #tourism #hardcover #nonfiction #tuscany #florence

The American Express Guide to Florence and Tuscany

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#paperback #funny #italian #language #internationalbestseller #italy #travel #love #romance #bestseller

Florida

A Field Guide to the Italian Mind

Join the bestselling author of Ciao, America! on a lively tour of modern Italy that takes you behind the seductive face it puts on for visitors--la bella figura--and highlights its maddening, paradoxical true self
 
You won't need luggage for this hypothetical and hilarious trip into the hearts and minds of Beppe Severgnini's fellow Italians. In fact, Beppe would prefer if you left behind the baggage his crafty and elegant countrymen have smuggled into your subconscious. To get to his Italia, you'll need to forget about your idealized notions of Italy. Although La Bella Figura will take you to legendary cities and scenic regions, your real destinations are the places where Italians are at their best, worst, and most authentic:

The highway: in America, a red light has only one possible interpretation--Stop! An Italian red light doesn't warn or order you as much as provide an invitation for reflection.

The airport: where Italians prove that one of their virtues (an appreciation for beauty) is really a vice. Who cares if the beautiful girls hawking cell phones in airport kiosks stick you with an outdated model? That's the price of gazing upon perfection.

The small town: which demonstrates the Italian genius for pleasant living: "a congenial barber . . . a well-stocked newsstand . . . professionally made coffee and a proper pizza; bell towers we can recognize in the distance, and people with a kind word and a smile for everyone."

The chaos of the roads, the anarchy of the office, the theatrical spirit of the hypermarkets, and garrulous train journeys; the sensory reassurance of a church and the importance of the beach; the solitude of the soccer stadium and the crowded Italian bedroom; the vertical fixations of the apartment building and the horizontal democracy of the eat-in kitchen. As you venture to these and many other locations rooted in the Italian psyche, you realize that Beppe has become your Dante and shown you a country that "has too much style to be hell" but is "too disorderly to be heaven."
Ten days, thirty places. From north to south. From food to politics. From saintliness to sexuality. This ironic, methodical, and sentimental examination will help you understand why Italy--as Beppe says--"can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters or ten minutes."

La Bella Figura 

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#italy #travel #lookingforadventure #food #home #bestseller

Maryland

#paperback #fiction #italy #love #romance #contemporaryromance 

Iowa

For the reasonable price of $1, Natalie Malone just bought herself an abandoned villa on the Amalfi Coast. With a detailed spreadsheet and an ancient key, she's arrived in Italy ready to renovate--and only six months to do it. Which seemed reasonable until architect Pietro Indelicato began critically watching her every move...

From the sweeping ocean views to the scent of the lemon trees, there's nothing Pietro loves more than his hometown. And after seeing too many botched jobs and garish design choices, he's done watching from the sidelines. As far as he's concerned, Natalie should quit before the project drains her entire bank account and her ridiculously sunny optimism.

With Natalie determined to move forward, the gorgeous architect reluctantly agrees to pitch in, giving her a real chance to succeed. But when the fine print on Natalie's contract is brought to light, she might have no choice but to leave her dream, and Pietro, behind.

It Takes a Villa

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“New York, Paris, London—every grand metropolis—has its own irresistible attraction but Rome so swirls with stories of saints and sinners...lovers and fighters, that she compels you towards her, like gravity.... No one leaves her unaltered. Part of you always loves her. This is the place where passions are aroused, senses inflamed, and lovers fall into each other’s arms. It all appears to unfold like magic but I will tell you what really happens...Come with me, if you will, and observe my labors.” Mark Lamprell's One Summer Day in Rome is an enchanting novel about three couples drawn irresistibly to Rome, narrated by the city itself. Alice, an art student in New York City, has come to Rome in search of adventure and inspiration before settling down with her steady, safe fiancé. Meg and Alec, busy parents and successful business people from LA, are on a mission to find the holy grail, a certain blue tile that will make their home renovation complete—but soon it becomes clear that their marriage needs a makeover as well. Connie and Lizzie are women of a certain age—“Sometimes I look at my laughter lines and wonder what on earth could have been that funny”—who come from London to scatter the ashes of their beloved husband and brother. Both women are seemingly done with romance, but Rome has other ideas. Brimming with wit and charm (and gelato), One Summer Day in Rome is the most delicious novel you will read this summer.

One Summer Day in Rome

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A secret romance sends three estranged sisters to the Amalfi Coast to follow clues about their mother's past, and challenges them to a whole new future, in this emotional novel from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst. Priscilla, Devon, and Bailey haven't been close in years, but when the sisters are forced to come together to settle their mother's estate, they discover a secret. In an old trunk, they happen upon ownership papers for a house on the Amalfi Coast, along with a love letter to their mother from an anonymous man, promising to meet her in Italy during the summer of her sixty-fifth birthday. Now they're questioning everything they knew about her history. In order to get answers about the woman they thought they knew, they'll have to go back to where it all started. The sisters embark on a trip to the stunning cliffside village of Positano, Italy, to track down the mysterious ex-lover, and figure out who their mother really was. As Priscilla, Devon, and Bailey unearth the truth, they also experience the magic of Italy, the power of sisterly love, a little unexpected romance, and newfound hope for the future.

The Secret Love Letters of Olivia Moretti

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#paperback #travel #rome #italy #travelrome #travelwithkids 

An Insider's Guide

Award winning Rome with Kids is a complete travel guide, with or without kids Scrambling around ruins; exploring underground excavations; searching for gladiators, secret passageways, ancient lie detectors, and creepy skeletons; feasting on pizza and gelato-Rome with kids is a dream. p] Revel in the glory of Roman Civilization without hearing I'm bored as an insider guides you through Rome with field-tested tours that tell you what to see and how to see it with children. Each sight will come to life with bite-sized stories, fun activities, and compelling treasure hunts.

Rome with Kids

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#hardcover #ww2 #history #italy #nonfiction #wwii 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A close-up study of the groundbreaking events of the Italian campaign during the final months of World War II, as well as the lives and fates of people on both sides of the conflict, documents a period of intense brutality, violence, and destruction marked by by hundreds of civilian massacres carried out by the Germans and the deaths of thousands of Allied troops. 17,500 first printing.

Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944--1945

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South Carolina

Maine

When a long-lost Raphael resurfaces, it triggers a chain of events from vandalism...to murder! As English art scholar Jonathan Argyll investigates, he ends up on a run for the truth...and his very own life.

The Raphael Affair

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#paperback #fiction #Italy #Hollywood #bestseller #bookclub #oldhollywood #newyorktimesbestseller #tradepaperback 

From the moment it opens—on a rocky patch of Italian coastline, circa 1962, when a daydreaming young innkeeper looks out over the water and spies a mysterious woman approaching him on a boat—Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Beautiful Ruins

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#hardcover #romance #relationship #family #novel #love

When Valentine Roncalli discovers a long lost shoe design, a family secret unravels that helps her take control of the company from a conniving relative, but first she seeks the counsel, and more, of her ex-fiancee, Bret Fitzpatrick, to help re-boot the business while she pursues a hot romance with a handsome Italian from her past. By the best-selling author of Very Valentine. 200,000 first printing.

Brava, Valentine

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#paperback #historicalfiction #fiction #relationships #womensfiction #italy #tuscany #sisters 

"The enduring bonds of sisterhood flourish in this heartwarming and dazzling Italian adventure, where a love that spans generations reveals the path to one woman's destiny, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Life List. When the fiercely independent and mysterious Paulina "Poppy" Fontana invites her great-nieces and fellow second-born daughters, Emilia and Lucy, to visit her birthplace of Italy, she makes a wild declaration. On her eightieth birthday, Poppy claims she'll meet the love of her life on the steps of the Ravello Cathedral and put an end to the Fontana Family Second-Daughter Curse once and for all. The Fontana Second-Daughter Curse is probably nothing but a coincidence, a self-fulfilling prophecy, an old-world myth. Even so, nobody can deny that for centuries, not a single second-born daughter in the Fontana family has married. But twenty-nine year-old Emilia actually appreciates the curse--some may even say she hides behind it. What might happen if the supposed curse is actually broken, and she's expected to find love? Reluctantly, the trio of second-born daughters embark on a journey to fulfill Poppy's last wish. Against a backdrop of lush Italian countryside and rich landmarks, Poppy shares family secrets and tales of forbidden love that threaten to upend every belief her young nieces have held to be true"--

Marlena de Blasi

The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club

Paolo Cognetti

The Eight Mountains

Marcella Hazan; Victor Hazan

Amarcord: Marcella Remembers

Frances Mayes

Under the Tuscan Sun

David Yeadon

Seasons in Basilicata [First Edition]

Lori Nelson Spielman

The Star-Crosses Sisters of Tuscany

Paul Fleischman

The Matchbox Diary

Adriana Trigiani

The Good Left Undone

Frances Mayes

Women in Sunlight

Vincent Gasnier

Wines Italy

Rick Steves

Rick Steves Italy 2016

Sheila Hale

The American Express Guide to Florence and Tuscany

Beppe Severgnini

La Bella Figura

Frances Mayes

Under the Tuscan Sun

Kilby Blades

It Takes a Villa

Mark Lamprell

One Summer Day in Rome

Jennifer Probst

The Secret Love Letters of Olivia Moretti

J. M. Pasquesi

Rome with Kids

James Holland

Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944--1945

Frances Mayes

Under the Tuscan Sun

Iain Pears

The Raphael Affair

Jess Walter

Beautiful Ruins

Adriana Trigiani

Brava, Valentine

Lori Nelson Spielman

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany