Literary Fiction Italy

After soldiers vacate the Sicilian hillside town of Melilli in the summer of 1943, the locals celebrate, giving thanks to their patron saint, Sebastian. Amid the revelry, all it takes is one fateful moment for the destiny of nine-year-old Salvatore Vassallo to change forever. When his twin brothers are killed playing with an unexploded mortar shell, Salvatore’s faith is destroyed. As the family unravels, and fear ignites among their neighbors that the Vassallo name is cursed, one tragedy begets another.

After what seems like several lifetimes as a policeman, Commissario Trotti can't wait to retire to the villa he jointly owns with his cousin, where his biggest concern will be keeping track of his chickens. But things keep getting in the way of his plans. Like Fabrizio Bassi, for instance.

Under-appreciated until now, The Lost Girl is perhaps D.H. Lawrence's most beautiful, thoroughly contemporary, love story. This captivating novel charts the journey of a woman caught between two worlds and two lives, one mired in dreary, industrial England and a life of convention, the other set in the vibrant Italian landscape holding the promise of sensual liberation.

Spanning five generations, the Scorta family saga begins in 1870 with Rocco Scorta Mascalzone, the bastard product of a rape and a notorious scoundrel. Burdened by a legacy of infamous crimes and forsaken loves, its lineage doomed to struggle, the Scortas nevertheless are blessed: with pride and a relentless faith in their own power. Their wealth lies in their memories and their collective belief in the pursuit of happiness.

In old Bari, everyone knows Maria De Santis as “Malacarne,” the bad seed. Nicknamed for her dark features, volcanic temperament, and resistance to rules, the headstrong girl can only imagine the possibilities that lie outside her poverty-stricken neighborhood. Growing up with her mother, two brothers, and a tyrannical father, Maria must abide. She does - amid the squalid life to which she was born, the cruelties of her small-minded neighbors, and violence in a constant threat of eruption.

"Its very real seductiveness lies in its ironic description of issues that are secondary to the investigation." - Le Monde. On vacation with her husband in an idyllic Italian valley, Police Inspector Simona Tavianello stops at the local beekeeper's shop to buy some honey, where she finds a body lying in the entrance. Simona tries to avoid involvement - she is, after all, off-duty. But when she realizes that the murder weapon is her own gun, what can she do but take charge?

Beth is a creative, contemplative soul and a loving mom. She is at a crossroads in her marriage and without a clear sense of her gifts and inherent worth. When her spirited Aunt Ro falls while turning to toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Beth embarks on a journey that leads to her ancestral village in Italy, the discovery of a family secret, and a new understanding of herself.

Set in a sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s, Steven Price’s Lampedusa explores the final years of Giuseppe Tomasi, last prince of Lampedusa, as he struggles to complete his only novel, The Leopard. In 1955, Giuseppe Tomasi was diagnosed with advanced emphysema; shortly after, he began work on a novel that would fail to be published before his death four years later. When The Leopard at last appeared, it won Italy’s Strega Prize and became the greatest Italian novel of the century.

It was strange because it wasn't so long ago that he was convinced the only way out of the depression that had crippled him since he was a child was death. But now, he is on a high-speed train, travelling from Rome to Modena, a failed novelist on the tail of a famous physicist whose memoir he is ghostwriting. The more of another man's life he writes, the more his debt to his publisher is paid off. But nothing would be possible had he not experienced the life-altering, life-saving treatment for the darkness which had been hovering since the chemical spill in West Virginia.

Connie Granger has escaped the devastation of her bombed out city home. She has found work in the Women's Timber Corps, and for her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose. Seppe, an Italian prisoner of war, is haunted by his memories. But in the forest camp, he finds a strange kind of freedom. In each other they find the means to imagine their own lives anew, and to face that which each fears the most. But outside their haven, the world is ravaged by war and old certainties are crumbling.

The year is 1943. Nazis have invaded Italy; American troops have landed. At Aldo's restaurant on the Adriatic coast, Lucia Fantini, wife of the late Aldo, entertained customers for years with her marvelous opera singing, but normal operations have ceased.