“Tuscan food tastes like itself. Ingredients are left to shine. . . . So, if on your visit, I hand you an apron, your work will be easy. We’ll start with primo ingredients, a little flurry of activity, perhaps a glass of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and soon we’ll be carrying platters out the door. We’ll have as much fun setting the table as we have in the kitchen. Four double doors along the front of the house open to the outside—so handy for serving at a long table under the st...

I always imagine each of the signoras who lived in this house—where she shelled peas, rocked the grandchild, placed a vase of the pink roses. Now I would like to take one of these women back to my house in California to show her how Bramasole traveled to America and took root, how the doors there are open to the breeze from San Pablo bay and to the distant view of Mount Tamalpais, how the table has expanded and the garden has burgeoned…The “bard of Tuscany” (N...

A lavishly illustrated ode to the joys of Tuscany’s people, food, landscapes, and art, from the bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun and See You in the Piazza“A love letter to Italy written in precise and passionate language of near-poetic density.”—NewsdayIn Tuscany celebrates the abundant pleasures of life in Italy as it is lived at home, at festivals, feasts, restaurants and markets, in the kitch...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND A TIMELESS CLASSIC FROM THE AUTHOR OF UNDER MAGNOLIAFrances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—opens the door to a wondrous new world when she buys and restores an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. In evocative language, she brings the reader along as she discovers the beauty and simplicity of life in Italy. Mayes also creates dozens of delicious seasonal recipes from ...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword“This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today**

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy.Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed...

In the tradition of Red Dust, Suddenly One Summer is yet another classic rural romance novel by leading author, Fleur McDonald.When Brianna Donahue was three years old, her mother mysteriously disappeared while farming in Merriwell Bay, Western Australia. Her body has never been found. Brianna works the same land with her father Russell, while almost single-handedly raising her two children as her husband Caleb works as a fly-in fly-out criminal lawyer in ...

A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF UNDER MAGNOLIAThe author who unforgettably captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany in bestselling travel memoirs expands her horizons to immerse herself—and her readers—in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places.A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes—a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlik...

In the bestselling tradition of Rescuing Sprite comes the story of a puppy brought back from the brink of death, and the family he adopted.In 2002, Larry Levin and his twin sons, Dan and Noah, took their terminally ill cat to the Ardmore Animal Hospital outside Philadelphia to have the beloved pet put to sleep. What would begin as a terrible day suddenly got brighter as the ugliest dog they had ever seen--one who was missing an ear and had half his face co...

After 64 years, Mezzabotte Coletta, a retired truck driver for a Toronto macaroni factory, is retuning to his native Italia. In his native village of Supino, is a rundown villa bought sight unseen by Mezzabotte Coletta 's daughter Maria - an olive branch after years of family struggle. While she and her husband breathe in the chatter of local tradesmen, the fragrant offerings of well-wishing neighbors, and the aroma of fine wine, her father awaits in Canada, anticipating the day he will ag...

Five women, four forty years old, and one matron of sixty-one take a holiday to France anxious to escape their robotic lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.Wendy, the travel agent, Penny, owner of a needlework shop, Sarah, accomplished artist, Vernie, executive director of the Portland Symphony, and Rose, who is a recent widow all wind their way through Provence with adventures conflicts, and a generous portion of food and wine.Each evening they gather around the large plane tree...

A candid and insightful look at an era and a life through the eyes of one of the most remarkable women in politics of the twentieth century, First Lady and humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt.The daughter of one of New York’s most influential families, niece of Theodore Roosevelt, and wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt witnessed some of the most remarkable decades in modern history, as America transitioned from the Gilded Age, the Progressive...