An alluring, evocative summer voyage on the Mediterranean and into the enchanting seaside towns of France and Italy by a young American chef aboard an Italian billionaire couple’s spectacular sailing yacht.Having begun his cooking career in some of New York’s and San Francisco’s best restaurants, David Shalleck undertakes a European culinary adventure, a quest to discover what it really means to be a chef through a series of demanding internships in Provence and th...

This is the story of a dream come true. In 1976, in the Lot-et-Garonne region of south-west France, Ruth Silvestre and her famiy found Bel-Air de Grezelongue, a house that had been left deserted and uninhabited for ten years. They fell in love with it.A House in the Sunflowers tells of their affair with the house, from the search and initial frustrations, their euphoria when they finally bought it and the challenges of renovation and graduation assimilation into the local ...

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...

"As beguiling and delectable as France itself."*Mimi Sheraton"Ann Barry tells her tale directly and clearly, without cloying artifice or guile, so that it has the warmth, honesty, and force of a long letter from an old friend. She makes her reader a welcome house guest in her much-loved little cottage in the heart of France."*Susan Allen TothAnn Barry was a single woman, working and living in New York, when she fell in love with a charming house in Carennac ...

One year and one arduous home-renovation into their marriage, Ken and Bing head to the French countryside to celebrate their long-delayed honeymoon, swearing they're getting out of the home-fixing business for good. When they fall in love with the village of La Montagne Noire, they find themselves buying a fixer-upper and starting all over again-but this time, in French!McAdams recounts their mishaps and misadventures with humor, capturing the essence of French village life, the awk...

Tom Stone went to Greece one summer to write a novel -- and stayed twenty-two years. On Patmos, the tiny island where St. John received the apocalyptic visions recorded in the Book of Revelations, he fell in love with Danielle, a beautiful French painter. His novel completed and sold, he decided to stay a little longer.Seven idyllic years later, after the birth of their second child, they left Patmos for Crete, where Stone taught English to civil servants and Danielle painted icons...

When Yvone Lenard returned to her native France and purchased a house in a hilltop village of Provence, an enchanted world of food, wines, and unusual adventures–including chicken rustling, flirtatious advances from neighbors, and a séance–opened up before her. This is her account of the spell cast on her by Provence, from her first morning’s visit by a charming prince bearing a jug of the village’s vin rose to the growth of her friendship with a duchess in the local chateau. Lenard shares...

The renovations to 34 via del Duomo now complete, Marlena de Blasi, the bestselling international author and woman with the 'fairytale life', longs to find time and space to finish a book. Lured by a friend's offer of a simple stone cottage in a remote province of western Tuscany and distant from the distractions of everyday life in Orvieto, she sets off for a period of solitude. Enter Antonia. Imperious, tempestuous, Antonia is the still-stunning elderly matriarch of a complicated family ...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had seen all those TV programmes. The dream of living in France was only a ferry ride away.But months later, my life was a nightmare. I didn't fit in with either the expats or the French, my husband had taken refuge in Star Trek and I had adopted a crazy dog that ate anything he could find, including my slippers.Faced with loneliness and very homesick for my family in the UK, I began to write a journal of my life.This is a war...

Humorous travel book about moving to France from Wales by IPPY, Royal Dragonfly and Global Ebook Award Winner Jean Gill'Laugh out loud ... such a vivid picture of the fields of lavender, sunflowers and olive trees that you could almost be there with her.' - Living France MagazineThe true scents of Provence? Lavender, thyme and septic tank.There are hundreds of interesting things you can do in a bath but washi...

“Titanic in potential appeal . . . the Mátés do something rare; they go native.”—Washington PostThis hilarious, international bestseller is a true-life adventure of a New York City couple moving to Tuscany.Ferenc Máté’s enthusiastic prose is infectious. He brings to life the real Tuscany: the contadini neighbors, country life—the harvest, grape, and olive picking, wine making, mushroom hunting, woodcutting—the holidays, and of course the never-ending, mout...

In 1965,Londoners Chris and Ken Davies went looking for fresh air and a different lifestyle.They bought two windswept acres on the tiny Feudal Island of Sark in the British Channel Islands, just off the French coast.Chris and Ken quickly mastered new rules of survival; they learned to milk goats, establish bee hives, grow vegetables and ran a 200 hen chicken farm to supply eggs to the residents.This is an entertaining true story about characters on the Island; nursing ...