NYCamper

One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, Nico Doyle has fully settled into life there, seeing friends in the course of daily errands and helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant. But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs. Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, Maresciallo Perillo needs help....

Joan Blakely had an unconventional childhood: the daughter of a globe-trotting supermodel and a world-famous artist. Her artist father died on 9/11, and Joan—an art historian by training—has spent more than a decade maintaining his legacy. Life in the art world is beginning to wear on her—and then one fateful afternoon her husband drops a bombshell: he’s fathered twins with another woman.

Eve Babitz captured the voluptuous quality of LA in the 1960s in a wildly original, totally unique voice. These stories are time capsule gems, as poignant and startling today as they were when published in the early 1970s. Eve Babitz is not well known today, but she should be. Her firsthand experiences in the LA cultural scene, translated into haunting fiction, are an unforgettable glimpse at a lost world and a magical time.

Inspector Maigret is followed home one evening by a man who reveals his intention to kill his wife and her lover. Maigret intervenes and speaks to the man daily, but when the calls suddenly stop Maigret finds a murder on his hands.

We last saw Easy in 2007’s Blonde Faith, fighting for his life after his car plunges over a cliff. True to form, the tough WWII veteran survives, and soon his murderous sidekick Mouse has him back cruising the mean streets of L.A., in all their psychedelic 1967 glory, to look for a young black man, Evander "Little Green" Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator’s Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection, but peace and love soon give way to murder and mayhem.

Confined to a hospital bed, Scotland Yard's Inspector Alan Grant is bored. To divert his attention from his pain, a friend brings him pictures of faces. He becomes engrossed with the portrait of Richard III. How is it possible that such a sensitive-appearing soul could have been portrayed as the odious villain, the Wicked Uncle of history, responsible for the murder of his young nephews, heirs to the British throne, in order to secure the line of succession for himself?

Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.

In this poignant and original coming-of-age story, indie rock musician Mark Oliver Everett tells the story of his unsteady upbringing and how it fed into his creativity. The insecure son of a genius physicist, Everett was left to run wild with his sister while his father was off in some parallel universe of his own invention. A string of tragedies would claim his family members one by one, yet somehow Everett managed to not only survive, but to make a life.

These heartwarming stories, from a forgotten 19th-century master, depict the lives of women in the Louisiana of a hundred years ago. The title story, "Charlie," introduces us to a spirited tomboy on the verge of becoming a young lady. "Tante Cat'rinette" is the story of an old black Creole. "A Matter of Prejudice" shows us the changes in a French grandmother. "Beyond the Bayou" tells of a black Creole woman who saves the life of a young boy. "A Pair of Silk Stockings" relates a young mother's temporary escape from poverty, while "Regret" tells the story of a spinster who must deal with 4 young children. Kate Chopin (1850-1904) is one of America's finest writers of short stories. These unabridged selections demonstrate her fine insight. Jacqueline Kinlow's performance is well-suited to the spirit of the works.