Italian Family Fiction

A writer who's blocked - I'm a total cliche. Lucky for me, my agent has a cure that's an even bigger stereotype - a month at her villa in Tuscany, with nothing to do but find my muse. When he walks right in the front door, adorable son in tow, it feels like fate has finally done for me what it does for every other cliched girl I've seen in the movies. Except that he's completely off-limits. In this case, business and pleasure can never mix. Because Claudio is my agent's ex.

Everything I've done, everything I will do, there will be no regret. The world is a vicious place for a woman. It's even crueler to the daughter of the Ceann na Conairte - discarded, married off, left powerless. But I am no ordinary daughter of the mafia. Unlike every other mafia family, my mother was Melody Callahan, Bloody Mel, the Don of the Italian Mafia, and the Don didn't raise some precious mafia princess. Bone by bone she broke me first, so no one else could - and bone by bone, I pieced myself back together.

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, is looking more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Will she turn out like her despised Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father have spent their whole lives avoiding and deriding? There must be a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.

Workaholic, career-obsessed Francesca is fiercely independent and successful in all areas of life except one: family. She struggles to make time for her relationship with her teenage daughter, Allegra, and the two have become practically strangers to each other. When Allegra hangs out with a new crowd and is arrested for drug possession, Francesca gives in to her mother's wish that they take one epic summer vacation to trace their family roots in Italy. What she never expected was to be faced with the choice of a lifetime....

Rome, 1955. The artists gather for a picture at a party in an ancient villa. Bear Bavinsky, creator of vast canvases, larger than life, is at the center of the picture. His wife, Natalie, edges out of the shot. From the side of the room watches little Pinch - their son. At five years old he loves Bear almost as much as he fears him. After Bear abandons their family, Pinch will still worship him, striving to live up to the Bavinsky name.

After a harrowing voyage from Italy, during which his mother died, seven-year-old Vittorio arrives in Canada with his newborn half sister and is reunited with his estranged father, a dark, isolated, and angry figure he hardly knows. The story that follows spans two decades of Vittorio’s life within an immigrant Italian farming community in Southwestern Ontario, through his university years, and then into Africa where he goes to teach. At the center of Vittorio’s existence is his strained relationship with his father and with his half sister, Rita.

When Luna loses her beloved mother, she’s bereft: her mother was her only family, and without her Luna feels rootless. Then the chance discovery of a collection of letters in her mother’s belongings sends her on an unexpected journey.

As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father’s circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to return home and unexpectedly falls in love. But in her family, nothing has changed. When her grandnephew Michael bursts into her life in what appears to be a drug-fueled frenzy, and her Lexus gets jacked, it’s hard to keep minding her own business. As old cruelties begin to resurface, Honey is no longer sure what she really wants—to forgive or to avenge.

Lively widow Varina Paladino has lived in the same house in Wyldale, New Jersey, her entire life. The town might be slightly stuck in the 1960s, when small businesses thrived and most residents were Italian, but its population is getting younger and the Paladinos are embracing the change. What Varina’s not embracing, much to her ninety-two-year-old mother’s dismay, is dating. Running Paladino’s Italian Specialties grocery, caring for her mother, and keeping her large, loud Jersey Italian family from killing one another takes up all of Varina’s energy anyway.

When Elizabeth drops her beloved only daughter off at college, she holds back the tears…fighting her worries about an empty nest with the thought of all the adventures that she and her husband Joel can now enjoy together. But as soon as they sit down to eat dinner that evening, Joel drops a bombshell. He wants a break. Searching for an escape, Elizabeth discovers an apartment in Rome that is only available for three months rental to ‘an English woman of a certain age’.

Mirta è una giovane donna moldava trapiantata a Roma in cerca di lavoro. Alle spalle si è lasciata un mondo di miseria e sofferenza, e soprattutto Ilie, il suo bambino, tutto quello che ha di bello e le dà sostegno in questa vita di nuovi sacrifici e umiliazioni. Per primo Nunzio, poi la signora Mazzanti, "che si era spenta una notte di dicembre, sotto Natale, ma la famiglia non aveva rinunciato all'albero, ai regali e al panettone", poi Olivia e adesso Eleonora.

All'inizio degli anni Settanta, in un clima di spaesamento generale, una madre ancora giovane scrive al figlio, sbandato e distante, scappato all'estero per motivi politici. Romanzo epistolare da cui emerge un interno famigliare lacerato e sordo, un intreccio di vite solitarie, come scrive Cesare Garboli, "fatte di passi sbagliati", di gelose intimità e di corrosive lontananze.

Hundreds of writers have tried to capture life inside the mob, but no one has ever had the inside access to write a book like this one. Drawing on the firsthand experience of former undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone, aka Donny Brasco, as well as former Mafia prince Bill Bonanno, The Good Guys straddles both sides of the law, races relentlessly through the New York City underworld, and crackles with characters and moments so vivid they will never let you go.

I Malavoglia è il romanzo più famoso di Giovanni Verga, ambientato ad Aci Trezza, alla fine del 1800. Il romanzo non ha un solo protagonista, né una sola famiglia, i Malavoglia, come protagonista, ma è il coro di tutto il paese e di un tipo di vita che segue , senza ribellarsi, i proverbi e le tradizioni, le convinzioni e i pregiudizi dell’ambiente.

Seventy-five-year-old Ronnie has made it her mission to help women of a certain age rediscover themselves. The owner of a palazzo in Rome, she has left her troubled past behind and reinvented herself in the most beautiful city in the world. And now she helps other women to do the same. Renting out her spare apartment for three months at a time, Ronnie invites her guests to take on a series of challenges that will help them to embrace beauty and joy, to rediscover themselves and to live their lives to the fullest. But Ronnie’s confident exterior hides heartbreak and closely held secrets.

It's 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. But nothing's that easy in Penny's family. For starters, she can't go swimming because her mother's afraid she'll catch polio at the pool. To make matters worse, her favorite uncle is living in a car. Her Nonny cries every time her father's name is mentioned. And the two sides of her family aren?t speaking to each other!

"C'era qualcosa in me che chiamava gli abbandoni". Adriana è come un vento, irrompe sempre nella vita di sua sorella con la forza di una rivelazione. Sono state bambine riottose e complici, figlie di nessuna madre. Ora sono donne cariche di slanci e di sbagli, di delusioni e possibilità, con un'eredità di parole non dette e attenzioni intermittenti. Vivono due grandi amori, sacri e un po' storti, irreparabili come sono a volte gli amori incontrati da giovani. Ma per chi non conosce la lingua dell'affetto è molto difficile aprire il cuore.

In the late 1800s, the residents of a small village in coastal Italy migrated to the promised land of America. They eventually settled in Roseto, Pennsylvania, where they re-created every detail of their former lives, including the centerpiece of Roseto’s colorful old-world tradition: the annual pageant for Our Lady of Mount Caramel—or “the Big Time,” as it’s called by the young women competing to be its Queen.

When the Mayor of a picturesque Italian town launches a new scheme to rejuvenate the community, his advertisement is read with interest and excitement by many. Zara is in her thirties and desperate to get on the property ladder. Tim and Lynda are retiring and need a project. Some are looking for a peaceful bolthole. Others hope to make a profit, start a business, escape a dull life or an unhappy relationship. And there is someone who just might be hiding their true motivation...