"Two women botanists, connected across time, confront desire, ambition, and the seeming inevitability of violence"-- "A Mississippi woman pushes through the ruin of the Roman Colosseum, searching for plants. She has escaped her life, signed up to catalog all the species growing in this place. Crawling along the stones, she wonders how she has landed here, a reluctant botanist amid a snarl of tourists in comfortable sandals. She hunts for a scientific...

Florence, October 1966. The rain is never-ending. When a young boy vanishes on his way home from school the police fear the worst, and Inspector Bordelli begins an increasingly desperate investigation. Then the flood hits. During the night of 4th November the swollen River Arno, already lapping the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, breaks its banks and overwhelms the city. Streets become rushing torrents, the force of the water sweeping away cars and trees,...

CRIME & MYSTERY. After his adventures in Cosi Fan Tutti, Aurelio Zen finds himself back in Rome, sneezing in a damp wine cellar and being given another unorthodox assignment - to release the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family.

In a tiny, ancient Italian hill town, where the land gives little and money and food are scarce, Don Francesco Falcone is a man to be reckoned with: rich, powerful, restless, intransigent. When he meets another force of nature, Concetta, a penniless but fiercely indestructible farmworker, the stage is set for the creation of an exceptional family: generations of strong, complicated boys and, especially, girls. The battles between them are many as...

Palermo in the 1980s. Fourteen hours from any place in what one might call the civilized world, a city of great beauty but torn by the second great Mafia gang wars. A perfect place for a young crime reporter to get his start. As our crime reporter looks back on his own youth, he lyrically retells four tragic stories that marked him: a Mafioso who refused to become a professional killer; a model whom he loved and couldn't save; a father who succumbed...

Set in the 1860's, tells the story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution.

A former American football star joins the Parma Panthers to play football in a small town in Italy.

A sweeping historical novel. A tale of consequences that spans nine decades and takes us on a journey from Dublin, to London and on to the Italian Riviera.

Four American women become unexpected friends during a magical year in Tuscany marked by a writer's complicated relationship with the subject of her biography, long-postponed dreams, and shifting senses of adventure and bravery. Kit Raine, an American writer living in Tuscany, is working on a biography of a friend. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of Julia, Camille, and Susan, all of whom have launched a recent and spontaneous friendship. Susan,...