A New York Times Notable Book of the Year: A deliciously entertaining account of expatriate life in a small village just outside Verona, Italy.Tim Parks is anything but a gentleman in Verona. So after ten years of living with his Italian wife, Rita, in a typical provincial Italian neighborhood, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account, Parks introduces readers to his home town, wi...

A "marvelous" Mediterranean memoir of an expatriate father raising his children in Italy—from the author of Italian Neighbors ( The Washington Post).Tim Parks offers another lively firsthand account of Italian society and culture—this time focusing on all the little things that turn an ordinary newborn infant into a true Italian.When British-born Tim Parks heard a mother at the beach in Pescara shout to her son, "Alberto, don't sweat! No y...

A geologist turns sleuth in this "engrossing and beautifully written suspense novel" set in Greece by the author of the Booker Prize shortlisted Europa ( The New York Times).A New York Times Notable BookIn the hallucinatory light and heat of a Mediterranean island, London geologist Peter Nicholson arrives to inspect a granite quarry where a worker has died under suspicious circumstances. Hired to write as damning a report ...

The best-selling author of Italian Neighbors returns with a wry and revealing portrait of Italian life—by riding its trains.Tim Parks’s books on Italy have been hailed as "so vivid, so packed with delectable details, [they] serve as a more than decent substitute for the real thing" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, R...

Already a highly successful lawyer, Daniel Savage has just been promoted to the position of Crown Court judge—though jealous colleagues whisper that his promotion might be due to the fact that he is black. He decides that it’s finally time to settle down, forswear philandering, and rededicate himself to his family. His teenage children require a father’s attention, and his career demands responsible behavior.But this supposed pillar of society has been leading a double life for far...

This new, expanded collection of Antonio Tabucchi's stories collects the best short fiction from the Italian author recognized as one of the masters of the form.Message From the Shadows is a new collection featuring Antonio Tabucchi's finest short stories, spanning the breadth of his career. These playful tales explore Tabucchi's signature themes, from his inventive, lyrical meditations on language, art, and philosophy, to his fascination with the passage ...

**'A gripping work, and a gripping translation' Nicholas Lezard, GuardianNiccolò Machiavelli's brutally uncompromising manual of statecraft, The Prince is translated and edited with an introduction by Tim Parks in Penguin Classics**As a diplomat in turbulent fifteenth-century Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli knew how quickly political fortunes could rise and fall. The Prince, his tough-minded, pragmatic handbook on how power really works, made his name notori...

Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard’s no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desp...

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and ...

The prize-winning author of Europa and Tongue of Flame "explores the nature of goodness and moral faith in this poignant, witty, and disturbing novel" ( Library Journal).George Crawley knows a thing or two about being good. After watching his missionary father die in Africa and his selfless mother get taken advantage of back in England, he knows that being good is for chumps. Looking out for himself, George has established a great career a...

In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams.Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book?Reading is not an innate human ability. Many people can't read. Many people would rather read a newspaper, a magazine, a blog, a cereal packet, than a novel.But peop...

Winner of the Bagutta Prize, The Manzoni Family set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, captures the story of Alessandro Manzoni—celebrated Milanese nobleman, man of letters, and author of the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed)—and the women of his life.The dynastic tale begins with the matriarchal figure of Giulia, the mother whom the young Alessandro Manzonifound in Paris aft...