These early short stories brim with the beauty of the Italian countryside and seaside, telling tales both sumptuous and unnerving.Calvino's war-torn Italy is vivid, intense, almost hyper-real. A trio of greedy burglars rob a pastry shop, a boy offers a girl presents of toads and insects from the garden, a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In every story he reveals the hidden meaning beneath the surface of everyday life, and the lu...

Diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in her twenties, author Peggy Wright made a deep dive into exploring the impact of childhood sexual abuse. She embarked on a path to heal and become who she was designed to be.In Opening to Grace, she shares her story, the story of a sensitive introvert discovering faith, identity, and healing from the stress load of trauma. She traces the redemptive movements of truth and grace to recover a life of beauty and passion. Deeply personal, it explo...

An acclaimed collection of enchanting, comic and clever tales from the Italian masterThis collection of playful, deadly febles is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. The grimly comic story The Argentine Ant moved Gore Vidal to declare 'if this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better'.

A small stone house deep among the olive groves of Liguria, going for the price of a dodgy second-hand car. Annie Hawes and her sister, on the spot by chance, have no plans whatsoever to move to the Italian Riviera but find naturally that it's an offer they can't refuse. The laugh is on the Foreign Females who discover that here amongst the hardcore olive farming folk their incompetence is positively alarming. Not to worry: the thrifty villagers of Diano San Pietro are on the case, and soo...

A charming portrait of one man's dreams and schemes, by "the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century" ( The Guardian).In this enchanting book of linked stories, Italo Calvino charts the disastrous schemes of an Italian peasant, an unskilled worker in a drab northern industrial city in the 1950s and '60s, struggling to reconcile his old country habits with his current urban life.Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and...

The international bestseller and winner of the Campiello Prize for Literature—"Moving and lyrical writing . . . Belongs in the canon of great war fiction" ( Paste Magazine).Andrea Molesini's exquisite debut novel portrays the depths of heroism and horror within a Northern Italian village toward the end of World War I. While a family's villa is requisitioned by enemy troops, they are forced to intimately confront war's injustice as their involvement with it...

**From author of Waiting for the Barbarians and Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee.J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.**In a South Africa turned by war, Michael K. sets out to take his ailing mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear...

San Ginese is a village where God lingers in people’s minds and many dream of California, Argentina or Australia. Some leave only to return feeling disheartened, wishing they had never come back, some never leave and forever wish they had.The Fireflies of Autumn takes us to the olive groves and piazzas of this little-known Tuscan village. There we meet Bucchione, who was haunted by the Angel of Sadness; Lo Zena, his neighbour, with whom he feuded for forty years; Tommaso t...

Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje PrizeJulia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village and they began to tell her their stories. Of how their village had been trapped in an archaic feudal system and owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all ...

Viscount Medardo is bisected by a Turkish cannonball, Baron Cosimo retires to the trees for the rest of his days, and Agiluf the Knight is an empty suit of armour.Our Ancestors brings together three surreal novellas set in distinct historical worlds across medieval and early modern Europe. In The Cloven Viscount, a nobleman returns from war as two separate beings, one cruel and one impossibly virtuous, leaving his community to suffer the consequences....

A gripping and moving first novel by one of the world's best-loved writers for children.From much-loved author Shirley Hughes comes a thrilling World War II novel for children aged 10 and up. It is 1944 and Florence, Italy, is occupied by Nazi German forces. The Italian resistance movement has not given up hope, though – and neither have Paolo and his sister, Constanza. Both are desperate to fight the occupation, but what can two siblings do against a whole army wi...

A spectacular display of this key European writer's early workThis dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino's unique perspective and narrative gifts. As well as the thirteen tales from his Difficult Loves collection this volume also includes 'Smog', 'A Plunge into Real Estate' and 'The Argentine Ant'.**'The quirkiness and grace of the writing, the originality...