For the Armchair Traveler in Need of a Last Minute Vacation

Susan Orlean embodies the the travel journalist with her book of essays entitled My Kind of Place: Travel Stories From a Woman Who's Been Everywhere. She travels to Paris, features the African music scene, attends World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois. In each place she finds people worth knowing about and a world you did not realize that it was out there.






Marlena de Blasi is a chef who goes to Venice to explore and experience the cuisine that region has to offer. She ends up in a life changing romance in A Thousand Days in Venice. A lush tale for a beautiful city.

The Lost Girls: Three Friends, Four Continents, One Unconventional Detour Around the World by 

Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, and Amanda Pressner is next on our list. This is the tale of three friends at a crossroads in their twenties quit their high pressure New York media jobs, leave their friends and everything familiar behind, and embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world. 

Alice Steinbach is a journalist from the Baltimore Sun who goes on sabbatical. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the nature of independence, chronicling her own adventures as a woman in search of freedom from the things that define her as she journeys to Paris, Oxford, Milan, and beyond. Her book is Without Reservations: the Travels of an Independent Woman.

Frances Mayes is well known for her book Under the Tuscan Sun. However in her other title,  A Year in the World, she travels a month at a time - each to a different location. Once month it is Spain, the next it could be England. Each time they travel, she and her companion try to live in the community that they are exploring. Her descriptions of food and the beauty of her surroundings will have you planning your next journey.

Novels Set in Italy

Enjoy a selection of novels set in Italy, in honor of St. Joseph's Day.



Juliet: A Novel
by Anne Fortier

Julie Jacobs inherits a key to a safety deposit box in Siena, Italy, and is told it will lead her to an old family treasure. Launched into a quest to discover the history of her ancestor Giulietta, Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families involved in Shakespeare's unforgettable blood feud.



The Borgia Bride
by Jeanne Kalogridis

Coming to Rome to marry the heir to the Borgia dynasty, Sancha of Aragon soon finds herself caught up in the complex conspiracies, intrigues, and cruelty of the Italian Renaissance as she she enters into a cautious friendship with her sensual and infamous sister-in-law, Lucrezia, and falls victim to the ruthless seductions of Cesare




Mirror, Mirror
by Gregory Maguire

The story of Snow White is set in the tumultous era of Italy's quattrocento, at the height of the Renaissance. Bianca de Nevada lives with her father, Vincente, high in the Tuscan hills. In 1702, when Bianca is seven, Lucrezia Borgia and her brother Cesare come to visit. Dangerous, powerful, and corrupt, the Borgia's soon send Vincente on an impossible quest.



Under the Tuscan Sun
by Frances Mayes

The poet and travel writer describes her experiences in Tuscany during the restoration of her countryside villa.




Beautiful Ruins
by Jess Walter

The award-winning author of The Financial Lives of the Poets presents his most romantic and enjoyable novel yet that follows a young Italian innkeeper and his almost-love affair with a beautiful American starlet, which draws him into a glittering world filled with unforgettable characters.

Blood and Beauty

Can we say it in one word? Borgia. Yep, that infamous family. Sarah Dunant's book Blood and Beauty starts up the tale just as Alexander VI takes up his papal throne in 1492 and proceeds to wine, dine and bribe the great houses of the Italian states. And on the chess board is his teenage daughter Lucrezia.  Which family will be the most advantageous to marry into? And what about his son Cesare? Some how becoming a powerful cardinal is not going to be enough for the ambitious and lethal young man.

The author takes the reader for a journey with glimpse of the chaos and glamour that was the Italian Renaissance. It really was a time of great contrasts. Wondrous paintings by artists on the Vatican's walls vs. political assignations on the dark side streets of Rome. Great piety shown by their holy men vs. backroom power deals. Powerful Italian city states vs. a  backwater Rome that needs to be rebuilt.  Hmm, how modern it all seems...

Dunant makes us take another look at the 'evil' Borgias - were they the worst people as the rumors suggest? Or were they merely surviving the best they could in such an environment? This book lets you decide for yourself as Dunant leads the reader through the family's tale. There are characters to love and hate, and whether you find yourself feeling for Lucrezia who seems to bring death where ever she goes, or are you seeing her as a product of her position and time - that is for the reader to decide. Alexander VI is the proud papa who loves his children and wants them to have the best. Cesare is a genius at seeing political patterns and does not let being in holy orders stop him.  But I would not want him next to me at any dinner party.

Dunant lets the tale flow and brings us this fictionalized version of a true story that is stranger than fiction. You can't make some of the things they did up. Because they did them! A great saga of a controversial family during tumultuous times. Highly recommended for lovers of  long books of  historical fiction.

For more on the Borgia family try the fictional TV series: The Borgias  or a history of the family by Ivan Cloulas.

The Love Goddess' Cooking School

When Holly's Grandmother Camilla dies, she inherits her business - a cooking school, and her house, but does she inherit her 'second sight'? In The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate, that is the question her small Maine town neighbors want to know. But Holly has had problems in her own life, and can't make a marinara sauce. She's not too sure that continuing the cooking school is such a good idea after all. But when she has four students sign up for classes, she decides to give it a try.

Senate does a great job at creating a small town community where everyone knows about everyone else's business. And Holly discovers that her grandmother's life was not all joy and roses. Filled with great characters and greater descriptions of food (you will be craving Italian after this one - trust me), the reader will enjoy reading about Holly's struggles in the kitchen, glimpses of Camilla's strength, and their cooking students growth, both in the kitchen and in their personal lives.

Makes one want to take an Italian cooking class if they are going to be that cool! A fun summer read.

MF

Artists in Fiction: Fictional accounts of prominent artists

John James Audubon
Audubon’s Watch
Brown, John Gregory
Fiction Brown, J.

Carvaggio
The Garden of Evil
Hewson, David

Mystery Hewson, D.

Mary Cassatt

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
Chessman, Harriet Scott
Fiction Chessman, H.

Paul Cezanne

Chasing Cezanne

Mayle, Peter
Fiction Mayle, P.

The Cezanne Chase
Swan, Thomas
Fiction Swan, T.

Leonardo da Vinci

The Da Vinci Code
Brown, Dan
Fiction Brown, D.

Leonardo’s Swans
Essex, Karen
Fiction, Essex, K.

Frida Kahlo
Frida
Mujica, Barbara Louise
Fiction, Mujica B.

Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia
Lapierre, Alexandra

Fiction Lapierre, A.

The Passion of Artemisia

Vreeland, Susan
Fiction Vreeland, S.

Henri Matisse
The Matisse Stories
Byatt, A.S.
Fiction Byatt, A.

Michelangelo
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Stone, Irving

Fiction Irving, S.

Johannes Vermeer

The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Chevalier, Tracy

Fiction Chevalier, T.

The Girl in Hyacinth Blue

Vreeland, Susan

Fiction Vreeland, S.

Murder With A Foreign Accent

Many of us have read mysteries which take place in familiar settings in the U.S. But don’t lose out on a whole slew of who-dunnits set in other countries and written in languages other than English. These works contribute their own unique perspective to the genre.

The first foreign writer to become popular in America was France’s Georges Simenon, whose detective Jules Maigret became a well-known and well-loved character who immerses himself in the crime, the people, the place and the feelings of the crime. He was one of the first authors to explore the psychology behind crime.

In contrast to Simenon, most non-English speaking authors write more traditional police mysteries. Japanese mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto used the realistic police procedural to show how he police in Japan slowly unravel a crime, but he also comments on the problems in Japanese society. He uses a very Japanese motive for murder – the need to “save face”.

 Many non-English speaking mystery authors feature police investigators who are moody, insightful loners who solve the crimes on their own.

Here are a few titles you might read which will give you a view of other countries and other societies from an insider’s point of view, and will give you a unique perspective on crime and punishment in different countries.

The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri.
Follows Sicilian detective Inspector Montalbano as he investigates the suspicious death of an engineer who had made a name for himself in a small town.

The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza.

Brazilian Inspector Espinosa investigates the murder of a corporate executive found dead in his car, piecing together clues surrounding the victim's missing secretary, a life insurance policy, the victim's widow, and two additional murder victims.

Murder in Jerusalem by Batya Gur.

When a woman's body is discovered in the wardrobe warehouses of Israel Television, brooding police superintendent Ohayon embarks on a tangled and bloody trail of detection through the corridors and studios of Israel's official television station and, especially, through the relations, fears, loves, and courage of the people who make the station what it is.

The Mao Case by Xiaolong Qiu.

Inspector Chen investigates a young woman, the granddaughter of an actress who was once close to Mao, who may be in possession of an object that would bring dishonor to the Chairman's memory.

Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten.

While investigating the apparent suicide of a wealthy financier who is connected to one of the most powerful families in Sweden, Detective Inspector Irene Huss soon finds herself immersed in a murder mystery involving motorcycle gang members, skinheads, immigrants, and neo-Nazis.