Italy Biography

FROM BRITAIN TO SPAIN AND BACK AGAIN is Sam Haigh’s account of his family’s four challenging years in their new country, as he and his wife Emma do their best to build a life for themselves and their young son Luke. Wishing to do more than just get by, Emma and Sam try their hardest to progress in their respective professions – teaching and building – and live a similarly prosperous life to the one they left behind in Todmorden, Yorkshire. Arriving in the town of Ontinyent, Valencia in the summer of 2007, little do they know that a cataclysmic economic crash lies just around the ...

HEADING SOUTH is a light-hearted account of an English brother and sister’s reconnection with the Spanish side of their family. When the author was just four years old their father, Francisco, left the family home in Preston, Lancashire and disappeared from their lives. One day Adam, now twenty-eight, receives a letter from his errant dad and decides to take a break from supply teaching and accept an invitation to visit him in rural Malaga. Later joined by his sister Kate, a series of events begins to unfold which promises to change both their lives forever. Please ‘look inside’ ...

*All three books in the series are now available in an omnibus edition under the title THREE MEN IN SPAIN* THREE MEN IN A VAN is a humorous and informative account which explores both Spain and the ups and downs of our middle-aged trio’s singular road trip. When the fifty-something friends from Lancashire decide to take some time out together, little do they know that they will end up traversing Spain from north to south in an old and somewhat unsightly mini-campervan. Garrulous Geoff, hefty Harry and the relatively rational Jeremy, unused to spending longer than an evening in each ...

The book provides a detailed chronological history of early Western Europe through the lives of the nobility, their marriages, wars, rebellions, and betrayals. The book has original source documentation embedded. This book was compiled from 20-plus years of research combined with an interest in the history of western civilization. By putting all the events in chronological order, I was able to show the impact of relationships between the various factions, and how these relations helped shape Western Europe.

È l'alba del XVI secolo. L'Italia è divisa in una miriade di regni litigiosi e incapaci di opporsi alle mire delle grandi potenze. Tra quelle corti soggette ai capricci della guerra si aggira un personaggio bizzarro e affascinante, che sembra uscito dalla penna di uno scrittore. È un pittore e scultore che come nessun altro riesce a catturare l'anima di ciò che raffigura. È un inventore in grado di concepire monumenti di prodigiosa bellezza, architetture così ardite da superare ogni immaginazione, macchine belliche che sembrano provenire da un futuro lontano.

Eroe, mercenario, sognatore, corsaro, liberatore, scrittore, marinaio, playboy, generale, contadino, rivoluzionario...

Beginning with the often violent circumstances of Dante's life, the book examines his successive works as testimony to the course of his passionate humanity: his lyric poetry through to the Vita nova as the great work of his first period; the Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia and the poems of his early years in exile; and the Monarchia and the Commedia as the product of his maturity.

In 1946, Italy became a democratic Republic, thereby entering the family of modern Western nations. But deep within Italy there lurked a forgotten curse: three major criminal brotherhoods, whose methods had been honed over a century of experience. As Italy grew, so did the mafias. Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the camorra from Naples, and the mysterious 'ndrangheta from Calabria stood ready to enter the wealthiest and bloodiest period of their long history. Italy made itself rich by making scooters, cars and handbags.

From one of our most interesting literary figures, former editor of Granta, former fiction editor at The New Yorker, acclaimed author of Among the Thugs, a sharp, funny, exuberant, close-up account of his headlong plunge into the life of a professional cook.

'The Complete Diaries' includes: Part One - Integration Part Two - Invasion Part Three - Consolidation Part Four - Conclusion Please see individual diary descriptions and reviews for more information.

On November 11, 1943, the Nazis invaded Cansano, forcing its two thousand inhabitants to make a tough decision—fight and be killed or sent to a POW camp, stay behind as servants to the Nazis, or move into the unforgiving mountains of Abruzzo while the Nazis used their village as a home base. Giovanni Ruscitti's family chose the latter and spent the next few months living in horrendous winter conditions in the rugged mountains. When the war ended, they returned to a village so ravaged by the Nazis that, today, the town has less than 200 citizens and remains in a dilapidated state.

Cosa Nostra is the compelling story of the Sicilian mafia, the world's most famous, most secretive and most misunderstood criminal fraternity. The mafia has been given many names since it was founded 140 years ago: the Sect, the Brotherhood, the Honoured Society and now Cosa Nostra. Yet as times have changed, the mafia's subtle and bloody methods have remained the same. Now, for the first time, Cosa Nostra reconstructs the complete history of the Sicilian mafia from its origins to the present day.

A CURIOUS AFFAIR is the funny, heart-warming account of an unlikely liaison between a restless Englishwoman and an enigmatic Andalusian man. Thoroughly fed up of commuting to her high-flying job in London, 44-year-old Claire Hadland decides to ditch both her unfaithful husband and her marketing career and spend some time abroad. On her arrival in Guardo, a small northern town, she sets about brushing up her Spanish and making friends, but during a visit to a tiny mountain hamlet she meets Daniel, a rather peculiar man from the south who has as little reason to be in rural Palencia as ...

ESCAPE TO EXTREMADURA is the candid, entertaining account of a middle-aged Lancastrian’s move to a small town in one of the least populated areas of Spain. After fate brings Brian and Mónica together in a café in Clitheroe, love blossoms and they begin to make plans for the future. His hasty retirement from a long career at a Lancaster furniture company precedes their flight to Llerena, Mónica’s home town, where her pious mother and unruly father await them expectantly. Don Andrés, the ailing patriarch of their ever-expanding family, welcomes the Englishman with open arms, while ...

(THE TONKS IN SPAIN containing SETTLING IN SPAIN and PROSPERING IN SPAIN is now also on sale at a reduced price.) Doreen B. Tonks, thoroughly steeped in the rich tradition of books on the subject of living in Spain, decided to add her own contribution to this ever-growing body of first-rate literature, and here it is. Determined to emulate her peers by telling nothing but the truth, her able pen guides us adeptly through the trials, tribulations and occasional joys of a roving expatriate in her new land. Doreen, aided and thwarted in equal measure by her obdurate husband Ken, steps out of ...

In A CASTILIAN ADVENTURE former teacher Jane Holden relates the story of her move to northern Spain. At fifty-seven she feels that life may be passing her by, so she decides to put her Spanish studies into practice and sets off on an open-ended trip in order to immerse herself in another culture. Starting in Madrid and intending to tour Castile and León, she soon decides to go with the flow and allow new friendships to influence her eventual destination. This amusing and informative account is a must-read for all those interested in the possibilities Spain offers away from the crowded coast.

FINDING MY FEET is the second instalment of THE RELUCTANT EXPAT, Alan Laycock’s light-hearted account of his life in Spain. Part Three of Alan’s story is now also available.

An Italian memoir. Laine gave up her job as a nurse, sold her home and gave away most of her belongings. She has three desires bubbling at the heart of her choice: to write a book, paint a picture and climb a mountain before she died. A man with a van took most of her remaining belongings, along with her basset hound Basil, down to the heel of Italy over 1,500 miles away, where she would spend the next four years. If it all seemed like a folly, then she was willing to take the risk. She moved to a house that she had only spent a week in the year before. She knew no one and yet she had ...

Este audiolibro contiene dos partes. Por un lado, contiene 22 capítulos que relatan diferentes episodios de la historia de la Mafia siciliana. En esta primera parte el oyente encontrará personajes siniestros, matones ceñudos que atemorizaban a sus vecinos en el siglo XIX y otros aún más siniestros, sí, hay muchos políticos, incluyendo a Berlusconi. Por otro lado, el audiolibro contiene una filmografía, con más de 250 películas comentadas, que trata de explicar cómo ha evolucionado la figura del gánster y del mafioso en el cine.

THREE MEN IN SPAIN is an omnibus edition of: THREE MEN IN A VAN by Jeremy Hastings ONE MAN IN A VAN by Geoff Corless IT’S NOT ABOUT THE VAN by Harry Storrar Please see individual book descriptions and reviews for more information.