Alluring, high-spirited American heiress Isabel - "I always want to know the things one shouldn't do ... so as to choose"--Is in Europe to seek her own destiny. But after refusing marriage proposals from both Lord Warburton, a "prince" of the aristocracy, and Caspar Goodwood, a "prince" of American industry, Isabel becomes utterly captivated by the languid charms of Gilbert Osmond, whom she sees as the "prince" she has been looking for. To him, she...

The fragility-and the durability-of human life and art dominate this story of American expatriates in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. Befriended by Donatello, a young Italian with the classical grace of the "Marble Faun," Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon find their pursuit of art taking a sinister turn as Miriam's unhappy past precipitates the present into tragedy. Hawthorne's 'International Novel' dramatizes the confrontation of the Old World and the...

An American family disintegrates after a daughter is killed in an Italian terrorist bomb in 1980s Bologna. The mother enters a convent, the father has an affair with the daughter of his mistress, the remaining children leave. The climax comes when the father meets the woman who placed the bomb and discovers what prompts people to become killers.

Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family during which the zealous religious reformer Savonarola rose to control the city. At its heart is Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar, married to the clever but ultimately treacherous Tito whose duplicity in both love and politics threatens to destroy everything she values, and she must break away to find her own path in...

Ginny Splinter, acclaimed radio host and advice expert, prides herself on knowing what's best for others. So she's sure her husband, Adrian, will love the special trip to Italy she's planned for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. But when Ginny presents the gift to Adrian, he surprises her with his own very different plan--a divorce. Beside herself with heartache, Ginny impulsively invites four heartbroken listeners to join her in Italy instead...

Justin's Haythe's remarkably assured debut, The Honeymoon, has been compared to the work of Ford Madox Ford and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in London and Venice at the end of the twentieth century, The Honeymoon follows a young man as he looks back on a series of events that have caused his life to unravel. Traveling through the capitals of Europe with his eccentric mother Maureen, American born Gordon Garraty has led a life of barren privilege. Only...

After ending a bad relationship, Casey Costello, an executive chef at a morning television show, swears off men. Who has the time anyway? She's busy overseeing a rambunctious food-prep crew in a kitchen the size of a closet; trying to please high-maintenance celebrity guest chefs; and dealing with her large extended Italian American family, who believe that the solutions to life's problems involve food. And in the midst of her high-energy, stress-inducing...

Presents a continuation of the story of Isabel Archer, the heroine of Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady," that finds her receiving an unexpected inheritance and married to a cruel man before returning to her home in Italy at the side of an unexpected companion.

"When Anna, now living in California, is contacted by the Italian lover she knew decades before, she recalls their affair and the child she gave up for adoption. As the episode returns to haunt her--threatening the life she's built, including her marriage--the story moves back in time to her youth in Europe. Rome, 1979. Anna, twenty-two and living abroad, is involved with a man already engaged to be married. When she meets and befriends his fiancée,...

Signor Farfalla leads an inconspicuous life in a southern Italian town painting rare butterflies and socializing with his friends, but when two women unexpectedly turn up, he is forced to face a dark secret from his past.