Under a Sardinian Sky

Under a Sardinian Sky PDF Author: Sara Alexander
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1496706374
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A beautifully told story about one woman’s determination to exorcise the sorrows of her family’s past. It brought tears to my eyes more than once—always a good sign. I look forward to reading more novels by Sara Alexander.” —Holly Chamberlin, author of Home for the Summer Set against the beautiful backdrop of post-World War II Sardinia, Sara Alexander’s evocative novel is a sweeping story of star-crossed romance between an American lieutenant and a local girl. Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets. For Mina, a London-based travel writer, the enigmatic silence surrounding her aunt Carmela has become a personal obsession. Carmela disappeared from her Italian hometown long ago and is mentioned only in fragments and whispers. Mina has resisted prying, respectful of her family’s Sardinian reserve. But now, with her mother battling cancer, it’s time to learn the truth. In 1952, Simius is a busy Sardinian town surrounded by fertile farms and orchards. Carmela Chirigoni, a farmer’s daughter and talented seamstress, is engaged to Franco, son of the area’s wealthiest family. Everyone agrees it’s a good match. But Carmela’s growing doubts about Franco’s possessiveness are magnified when she meets Captain Joe Kavanagh. Joe, an American officer stationed at a local army base, is charismatic, intelligent, and married. Hired as his interpreter, Carmela resolves to ignore her feelings, knowing that any future together must bring upheaval and heartache to both families. As Mina follows the threads of Carmela’s life to uncover her fate, she will discover a past still deeply alive in the present, revealing a story of hope, sacrifice, and extraordinary love. “Like Sardinia’s Emerald Coast, Sara Alexander’s Under A Sardinian Sky will dazzle you with its glittering descriptions of the Mediterranean island, its exquisite culinary treasures, and authentic, beautiful people. But it is the heroine Carmela’s courage and heartbreaking choices that will leave you the most enchanted and racing through the novel to learn her extraordinary fate.” —Rosanna Chiofalo, author of Rosalia’s Bittersweet Pastry Shop

Under a Sardinian Sky

Under a Sardinian Sky PDF Author: Sara Alexander
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1496706374
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A beautifully told story about one woman’s determination to exorcise the sorrows of her family’s past. It brought tears to my eyes more than once—always a good sign. I look forward to reading more novels by Sara Alexander.” —Holly Chamberlin, author of Home for the Summer Set against the beautiful backdrop of post-World War II Sardinia, Sara Alexander’s evocative novel is a sweeping story of star-crossed romance between an American lieutenant and a local girl. Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets. For Mina, a London-based travel writer, the enigmatic silence surrounding her aunt Carmela has become a personal obsession. Carmela disappeared from her Italian hometown long ago and is mentioned only in fragments and whispers. Mina has resisted prying, respectful of her family’s Sardinian reserve. But now, with her mother battling cancer, it’s time to learn the truth. In 1952, Simius is a busy Sardinian town surrounded by fertile farms and orchards. Carmela Chirigoni, a farmer’s daughter and talented seamstress, is engaged to Franco, son of the area’s wealthiest family. Everyone agrees it’s a good match. But Carmela’s growing doubts about Franco’s possessiveness are magnified when she meets Captain Joe Kavanagh. Joe, an American officer stationed at a local army base, is charismatic, intelligent, and married. Hired as his interpreter, Carmela resolves to ignore her feelings, knowing that any future together must bring upheaval and heartache to both families. As Mina follows the threads of Carmela’s life to uncover her fate, she will discover a past still deeply alive in the present, revealing a story of hope, sacrifice, and extraordinary love. “Like Sardinia’s Emerald Coast, Sara Alexander’s Under A Sardinian Sky will dazzle you with its glittering descriptions of the Mediterranean island, its exquisite culinary treasures, and authentic, beautiful people. But it is the heroine Carmela’s courage and heartbreaking choices that will leave you the most enchanted and racing through the novel to learn her extraordinary fate.” —Rosanna Chiofalo, author of Rosalia’s Bittersweet Pastry Shop

Four Hundred and Forty Steps to the Sea

Four Hundred and Forty Steps to the Sea PDF Author: Sara Alexander
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1496715497
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Family secrets and a transportive Italian setting keep the reader thoroughly immersed, making for a satisfying story of one woman’s coming-of-age.” —Publishers Weekly Nestled into the cliffs in southern Italy’s Amalfi coast, Positano is an artist’s vision, with rows of brightly hued houses perched above the sea and picturesque staircases meandering up and down the hillside. Santina, still a striking woman despite old age and the illness that saps her last strength, is spending her final days at her home, Villa San Vito. The magnificent eighteenth-century palazzo is very different from the tiny house in which she grew up. And as she decides its fate, she must confront the choices that led her here so long ago . . . In 1949, Positano is as yet undiscovered by tourists, a beautiful, secluded village shaking off the dust of war. Hoping to escape poverty, young Santina takes domestic work in London, ultimately becoming a housekeeper to a distinguished British major and his creative, impulsive wife, Adeline. When they move to Positano, Santina returns with them, raising their daughter as Adeline’s mental health declines. With each passing year, Santina becomes more deeply enmeshed within the family, trying to navigate her complicated feelings for a man who is much more than an employer—while hiding secrets that could shatter the only home she knows . . . “Pick up this book to be swept away like a frothy Mediterranean wave, with its melodic writing style that’s richly filled with beautiful imagery in a setting so sunny and beautiful you will be transported!” —Beachcombing Magazine

What Makes This Book So Great

What Makes This Book So Great PDF Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466844094
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book Here

Book Description
As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Sardinian Chronicles

Sardinian Chronicles PDF Author: Bernard Lortat-Jacob
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226493404
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Sardinian Chronicles Bernard Lortat-Jacob poetically evokes Sardinian music through a series of encounters with individual musicians and their families. Refusing to separate the music from the world in which it arises, Lortat-Jacob offers twelve vignettes focused on individuals such as Cocco, a chicken farmer who deciphers the shapes of his fowl and the layout of his henhouses in the constellations of a summer sky, and Pietro, a sleep-walking postman who divides his time between mail deliveries and impromptu serenades. These vignettes bring to life an art still very much alive: the music of villages with an oral tradition, sung or played in the company of others. Through his sensitive portraits of music makers and their families, Lortat-Jacob overcomes some of the epistemological and methodological dilemmas facing his field today, while also giving the general reader a sense of the multiple and idiosyncratic ways that music is involved in everyday life. With a foreword by Michel Leiris and a compact disc containing samples of the music being discussed, this book constitutes a breakthrough in ethnomusicology that will also interest many in Mediterranean studies and European anthropology.

Or What You Will

Or What You Will PDF Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1250309018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Or What You Will is an utterly original novel about how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton. He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years. But Sylvia won't live forever, any more than any human does. And he's trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he. Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he's got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Prize in the Game

The Prize in the Game PDF Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429956194
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
Set in the world of Jo Walton's previous novels, The King's Peace and The King's Name, The Prize in the Game takes us to a shining era of dark powers, legendary heroes and passionate loves-all of them ruled by the hand of Fate. When a friendly competition leads to the death of a beloved horse and incurs the wrath of the Horse Goddess, the kingdoms of the island of Tir Isarnagiri are doomed to suffer. As the goddess' curse chases them down the years, four friends destined for kingship-Conal, Emer, Darag, and Ferdia-are forced into conflict as their countries build towards war. Matters are complicated when Emer and Conal fall in love, and dream of escaping together from the machinations of their respective families. But Conal and Ferdia are rivals for the High Kingship of the island, and Conal cannot simply leave. The contest between them will lead to a visionary quest on a mountain sacred to the gods-and terrifying to men. Yet Emer faces an even greater struggle. For when war finally comes, Emer has two choices: perform her duty to the homeland to which she owes everything, or protect the one she loves and be branded a traitor forever. The path she takes will become the stuff of legend, and forever alter the destiny of Tir Isarnagiri. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Tooth and Claw

Tooth and Claw PDF Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780765349095
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fantasy-roman.

A Roman Rhapsody

A Roman Rhapsody PDF Author: Sara Alexander
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1496715519
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Four Hundred and Forty Steps to the Sea and Under a Sardinian Sky comes a lyrical new novel set against a stunning Italian backdrop. Famed for its natural beauty and rich history, Sardinia in 1968 is notorious, too, for the bandits who kidnap wealthy landowners for ransom. Eleven-year-old Alba Fresu’s brother, and her father, Bruno, are abducted by criminals who mistake Bruno for a rich man. After a grueling journey through the countryside, the two are eventually released—but the experience leaves Alba shaken and unable to readjust to normal life, or to give voice to her inner turmoil. Accompanying her mother to cleaning jobs, Alba visits the villa of an eccentric signora and touches the keys of a piano for the first time. The instrument’s spell is immediate. During secret lessons, forbidden by her mother, Alba is at last able to express emotions too powerful for words alone. Ignoring her parents’ insistence that she work in the family’s car dealership and marry a local boy, Alba accepts a scholarship to the Rome Accademia. There she immerses herself in a vibrant world of art—and a passionate affair. But her path will lead her to a crossroads, where Alba will have to reconcile the past she fled with her longing for love and family to fully convey the music of her heart . . . Praise for Sara Alexander’s Under a Sardinian Sky “Alexander paints a loving and breathtaking picture of the Mediterranean island, especially glorious descriptions of food. For readers who enjoy women’s fiction set against a background of momentous events and clashing cultures.” —Library Journal “Will leave readers riveted until the explosive conclusion.” —Publishers Weekly

Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey

Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey PDF Author: Efisio Farris
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
ISBN: 9780847829927
Category : Cookery
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chef Farris promotes Mediterranean cooking at its purest with this collection of more than 100 recipes that make liberal use of olive oil, fish, and fresh vegetables, as well as indigenous ingredients that are becoming hot trends in America such as percorino, flatbread, fava beans, fregula, and bottarga. More than 150 breathtaking images provide a sense of Sardinias magical beauty and culture.

Farthing

Farthing PDF Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429944404
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
One summer weekend in 1949—but not our 1949—the well-connected "Farthing set", a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before. Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married—happily—to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic. It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates. But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts...and looking beyond the obvious. As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out—a way fraught with peril in a darkening world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.