Author: Marlena De BlasiPublisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616202815
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
De Blasi, a chef and food writer from St. Louis, begins a whirlwind romance with a man in Venice.
A Thousand Days in Tuscany
Author: Marlena de BlasiPublisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345481097
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
They had met and married on perilously short acquaintance, she an American chef and food writer, he a Venetian banker. Now they were taking another audacious leap, unstitching their ties with exquisite Venice to live in a roughly renovated stable in Tuscany. Once again, it was love at first sight. Love for the timeless countryside and the ancient village of San Casciano dei Bagni, for the local vintage and the magnificent cooking, for the Tuscan sky and the friendly church bells. Love especially for old Barlozzo, the village mago, who escorts the newcomers to Tuscany’s seasonal festivals; gives them roasted country bread drizzled with just-pressed olive oil; invites them to gather chestnuts, harvest grapes, hunt truffles; and teaches them to caress the simple pleasures of each precious day. It’s Barlozzo who guides them across the minefields of village history and into the warm and fiercely beating heart of love itself. A Thousand Days in Tuscany is set in one of the most beautiful places on earth–and tucked into its fragrant corners are luscious recipes (including one for the only true bruschetta) directly from the author’s private collection.
The Lady in the Palazzo
Author: Marlena De BlasiPublisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565126106
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
A transplanted American chef and food writer continues the story of her life in Italy, describing her and her husband's move to Orvieto as they search for and find the perfect home, which turns out to be the former ballroom of a fifteenth-century palazzo.
That Summer in Sicily
Author: Marlena de BlasiPublisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345513339
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “At villa Donnafugata, long ago is never very far away,” writes bestselling author Marlena de Blasi of the magnificent if somewhat ruined castle in the mountains of Sicily that she finds, accidentally, one summer while traveling with her husband, Fernando. There de Blasi is befriended by Tosca, the patroness of the villa, an elegant and beautiful woman-of-a-certain-age who recounts her lifelong love story with the last prince of Sicily descended from the French nobles of Anjou. Sicily is a land of contrasts: grandeur and poverty, beauty and sufferance, illusion and candor. In a luminous and tantalizing voice, That Summer in Sicily re-creates Tosca’s life, from her impoverished childhood to her fairy-tale adoption and initiation into the glittering life of the prince’s palace, to the dawning and recognition of mutual love. But when Prince Leo attempts to better the lives of his peasants, his defiance of the local Mafia’s grim will to maintain the historical imbalance between the haves and the have-nots costs him dearly. The present-day narrative finds Tosca sharing her considerable inherited wealth with a harmonious society composed of many of the women–now widowed–who once worked the prince’s land alongside their husbands. How the Sicilian widows go about their tasks, care for one another, and celebrate the rituals of a humble, well-lived life is the heart of this book. Showcasing the same writerly gifts that made bestsellers of A Thousand Days in Venice and A Thousand Days in Tuscany, That Summer in Sicily, and de Blasi’ s marvelous storytelling, remind us that in order to live a rich life, one must embrace both life’s sorrow and its beauty. Here is an epic drama that takes readers from Sicily’s remote mountains to chaotic post-war Palermo, from the intricacies of forbidden love to the havoc wreaked by Sicily’s eternally bewildering culture.
A Thousand Days in Venice
Author: Marlena de BlasiPublisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565125894
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Fernando first sees Marlena across the Piazza San Marco and falls in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; she, a divorced American chef traveling through Italy, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thought she was done with romantic love, incapable of intimacy. Yet within months of their first meeting, she has quit her job, sold her house in St. Louis, kissed her two grown sons good-bye, and moved to Venice to marry “the stranger,” as she calls Fernando. This deliciously satisfying memoir is filled with the foods and flavors of Italy and peppered with culinary observations and recipes. But the main course here is an enchanting true story about a woman who falls in love with both a man and a city, and finally finds the home she didn’t even know she was missing.
Antonia and Her Daughters
Author: Marlena de BlasiPublisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1742695256
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
The next volume of memoir from the author of the international bestseller A Thousand Days in Venice introduces the extraordinary Antonia, imperious matriach of four generations of strong-willed Tuscan women The renovations to 34 via del Duomo now complete, Marlena de Blasi, the bestselling international author and "the woman with the fairy-tale life" needs to find time and space to finish a book. Lured by the offer of a simple stone cottage in the remote, mountainous region of western Tuscany, distant from the distractions of her everyday life with Fernando in Orvieto, she sets off for some much-needed solitude. But her plans to live simply, in peace and quiet, are overturned when she meets the imperious, tempestuous Antonia, the still-stunning, elderly matriarch of a large, complicated family of four generations of beautiful blue-eyed Italian women, all with stories and ideas of their own. Antonia dislikes tourists and outsiders, and so Marlena at first spars and clashes with her before they reach an understanding. Over feasts and family dinners, walking in the dark before sunrise to harvest wild lettuces, preparing meals and exchanging recipes, the two women joust, joke, exchange confidences, and grow closer and closer until finally Antonia reveals the terrible secrets behind the vivid beauty of Il Castelleto. Evocative, powerful, and haunting, this is a compelling insight into Italy's recent past and a revealing glimpse into one extraordinary woman's story and her kitchen.
The Mirror Thief
Author: Martin SeayPublisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612195156
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 594
Book Description
A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR An NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A Publishers Weekly BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written … the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it." Set in three different eras, and in three different locations—all, coincidentally, named Venice—this “startling, beautiful gem of a book” (NPR) calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado. The core story is set in sixteenth-century Venice, where, on the island of Murano, the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination—was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?—the Venetian mirrors were state-of-the-art technology, subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. Thus, for the skilled craftsmen that made them, any attempt to leave the island—to steal the technology—was a crime punishable by death. One man, however—a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose—has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . . Meanwhile, in two other Venices—Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today—two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . . All three stories weave together into a spell-binding tour de force that is impossible to put down—an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.
Regional Foods of Northern Italy
Author: Marlena De BlasiPublisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN: 9780761512318
Category : Cooking, Italian
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This is a cookbook like no other. It evokes the essence of Northern Italy's traditional foods in a beautifully wrought amalgam of recipe and narrative. It beckons you across the wet stone of Venice's Rialto bridge into a candlelit fifteenth-century cantina. It invites you down a forest road in Umbria, where grappa-fortified fishermen toss trout onto a wood fire and stage a sunset feast. It proffers nearly two hundred recipes from the heart and soul of Italy's North, including: - Risotto allo Zafferano Milanese - Arista! Arista! - - Pasta delle Sfogliatrici - Pesce in Saor - - La Salsiccia alla Moda di Lucrezia Borgia - Fegato alla Veneziana - - Carbonada d'Enfer Arvier - Pesto di Mandorle e Noci Ferraresi - - Pollo alla Marengo - Cialzons della Famiglia de Galateo - - Pagnotta di Patate - Pasta e Fagioli - - Sogliole in Gratella - Caffe alla Valdostana - Tiramisu - This remarkable world within a book reflects the honest, authentic tastes of a people for whom food is a cardinal passion. With it in hand, you will perfume your home with the ancient and divine scents of glorious food, calling forth the ineffable essence of this land and its bounty. Let the adventure begin. About the Author Marlena de Blasi is an American living in Venice with her husband, Fernando. She has traveled extensively in her adopted country, stopping to savor each region's abundance. A food and wine journalist and culinary historian, her articles on food and travel have appeared in "The International Herald Tribune, The St. Louis Riverfront Times, and "Sacramento magazine. She is presently writing this volume's sequel, "Regional Foods of Southern Italy. "From the Hardcoveredition.
Venice Noir
Author: Maxim JakubowskiPublisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617750735
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"Drifter" by Emily Mandel was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2013, edited by Otto Penzler and Lisa Scottoline Original stories by: Peter James, Emily St. John Mandel, Barbara Baraldi, Mike Hodges, Mary Hoffman, Maria Tronca, Matteo Righetto, Tony Cartano, Francesco Ferracin, Isabella Santacroce, Michelle Lovric, Francesca Mazzucato, Maxim Jakubowski, and Michael Gregorio. "Forget the magnificence of Venice's art, architecture, and music, and delve into this tour of the City of Water's murky depths...visions of a Venice not seen in tourist brochures." --Publishers Weekly "Editor Jakubowski does an excellent job of selecting a variety of stories that represent all strata of Venetian life, from tourists visiting for Carnevale to criminals running illegal operations in the bay...A must-read for lovers of Venice...the presence of a new and intriguing voices, many of them Italian, will pique the interest of international-mystery readers." --Booklist "Sex, food and real estate inspire 14 hot-blooded new takes on crime in the magical city of Venice...Rather than crimes of passion, this collection focuses on the passion of crime, painting its noir in robust tones rather than gritty gray." --Kirkus Reviews "Venice Noir, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, aims to shred through our preconceptions of this remarkable city. The 14 writers featured in this anthology of short stories take our travel brochure images of Venice and scatter them like confetti." --NY Journal of Books Maxim Jakubowski is a British editor and writer. Following a long career in book publishing, during which he was responsible for several major crime imprints, he opened London's mystery bookshop Murder One. He reviews crime fiction for the Guardian, runs London's Crime Scene Festival, and is an advisor to Italy's annual Courmayeur Noir in Festival. His latest crime novel is Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer, and he edits the annual Best British Mysteries series.
City of Fortune
Author: Roger CrowleyPublisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536
Book Description
“The rise and fall of Venice’s empire is an irresistible story and [Roger] Crowley, with his rousing descriptive gifts and scholarly attention to detail, is its perfect chronicler.”—The Financial Times The New York Times bestselling author of Empires of the Sea charts Venice’s astounding five-hundred-year voyage to the pinnacle of power in an epic story that stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty. City of Fortune traces the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga, from the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminates in the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which sees the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In between are three centuries of Venetian maritime dominance, during which a tiny city of “lagoon dwellers” grow into the richest place on earth. Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion. From the opening of the spice routes to the clash between Christianity and Islam, Venice played a leading role in the defining conflicts of its time—the reverberations of which are still being felt today. “[Crowley] writes with a racy briskness that lifts sea battles and sieges off the page.”—The New York Times “Crowley chronicles the peak of Venice’s past glory with Wordsworthian sympathy, supplemented by impressive learning and infectious enthusiasm.”—The Wall Street Journal
