When mountains are your salvation, what keep your mental weather calm and free of storms, how do you cope if they’re out of reach?After spending a decade restlessly globetrotting in search of a way of life that worked for him, journalist Kieran Cunningham alighted on Sondrio, a small town in Lombardy, Italy. A stone’s throw from the Alps, there he found the perfect combination of fresh mountain air, a strong network of local friends and lot...

When mountains are your salvation, what keep your mental weather calm and free of storms, how do you cope if they’re out of reach?After spending a decade restlessly globetrotting in search of a way of life that worked for him, journalist Kieran Cunningham alighted on Sondrio, a small town in Lombardy, Italy. A stone’s throw from the Alps, there he found the perfect combination of fresh mountain air, a strong network of local friends and lot...

The World Fantasy Award-winning thriller about a girl no one can remember, from the acclaimed author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and 84K.My name is Hope Arden, and you won't know who I am. But we've met before -- a thousand times.It started when I was sixteen years old. A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A friend who looks at me and sees a stranger.No matter wha...

Let bestselling author T.A. Williams transport you to Siena in this addictive murder mysteryPerfect for fans of Lee Strauss and Beth Byers.A lazy weekend in the country…Dan Armstrong and the new love of his life, Anna, are heading to a hotel deep in the gorgeous Tuscan countryside for a long weekend, looking forward to some time away from the stresses of their day jobs. With the beautiful and historic city of Siena just around the...

We plan, as the old proverb says, and God laughs. But most of us don't find it all that funny when things go wrong. Most of us want love, a nice home, good work, and happy children. Many of us grew up with parents who made these things look relatively easy and assumed we would get them, too. So what do you do if you don't? What do you do when you feel you've messed it all up and your friends seem to be doing just fine? For Christina Patterson, it was her job as a journalist that kept her g...

Blundering about Sorrento and its environs in search of culture, the author unwittingly resists his wifes never ending attempts to civilise him.From the heights of Vesuvius, to the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, along the beautiful Amalfi coast and, of course, not forgetting Sorrento itself, the authors propensity to get himself into cringe-making embarrassing situations reaches new heights and plunges even deeper depths as he embarks on the second week of his holiday to Italy, and take...

The loss of a pet can hit us as hard as the loss of any close friend. Yet pet bereavement is so little talked about that, along with their grief and pain, animal lovers may find themselves having to deal with feelings of confusion and even embarrassment at the strength of their reaction.For anyone grieving the loss of a pet, or facing up to having a pet put down, Losing a Pet aims to fill the gap. Warm, direct and compassionate, this short books offers practical guidance, emotional...

'Gill and I had dreamt of living in Italy for as long as we'd been together.'This is the story of an Aussie couple who sought a Mediterranean sea change only to find themselves in the sprawling Sicilian city of Catania - the 'anti-Tuscany' of Italy. There, any romantic visions they'd had of restoring a villa or stamping their entwined feet in vats of Chianti grapes disappeared faster than the chief witness in a Cosa Nostra trial.Shamus and Gill's tiny apartment in Catania w...

Eileen Battersby is the chief literature critic of The Irish Times and is, in the words of John Banville, 'the finest fiction critic we have'.But her first full-length book is not about international literature or the state of the novel. It is about dogs. Two dogs in particular, with the unlikely names of Bilbo and Frodo. She adopted the first from a horrible dog pound, and the second decided he liked her and moved in to join the family. She was in her very early twenties, an inten...

Rome, too, wants the sound of roaring as evening falls …The Rome Zoo: a place born of fantasy and driven by a nation’s aspirations. It has witnessed – and reflected in its tarnished mirror – the great follies of the twentieth century. Now, in an ongoing battle that has seen it survive world wars and epidemics, the zoo must once again reinvent itself, and assert its relevance in the Eternal City.Caught up in these machinations is a cast of characters worthy...

"A very funny sendup of Italian-cooking-holiday-romance novels" ( Publishers Weekly).Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany where he whiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions––including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur known as Fernet Branca. But Gerald's idyll is about to be shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run...

One man's battle to overcome social anxietyYour face turns crimson. Your throat tightens. Your mind races. And suddenly a simple conversation — ordering a coffee, joining a meeting, speaking up in class, or talking to someone you like — feels like standing on a stage. If you live with chronic blushing, facial flushing, or the relentless fear of being seen, Red Face by Russell Norris is the book you've been searching for.Red Face: How I Learnt t...