The Anniversary

An intimate fictional monologue that examines a son’s ten-year estrangement from his parents.

The often-untenable bonds of family take center stage in The Anniversary, an eloquently rendered, heart-wrenching short novel written by prize-winning Italian author Andrea Bajani (translated by Geoffrey Brock). 

The unnamed, Northern Italian-based narrator tells the reader, “I’ve never written about my mother, nor ever given her much thought, it’s because in order to do so she would need to be separated from my father. Which involves a delicate operation, a surgical disposition, a steady hand. It requires patience and precision, a grammatical scalpel.” Introspection and the persistence of memory form an adult son’s search to understand his parents. Their patriarchally-dominated marriage--choices made for their lives, along with the narrator’s own choices--form an estranged family dynamic. 

Through beautifully curated, concise flashback scenes, the narrator probes the story of his parents’ lives before they were married and the smothering challenges experienced over the course of their unfulfilling union. The narrator exposes foibles: the father an abusive, insecure, iron-fisted ogre; the mother sadly submissive—a woman whose chance for a life of her own is wrenched due to the vows of commitment imposed by marriage. While the narrator tells his family's story through the prism of his "liberating" ten-year estrangement--one that was entirely unplanned--readers may question the sincerity of his deliverance: do we, can we, ever really escape the bonds of family? 

With articulate wisdom, Bajani’s speaker passionately probes--and grapples with--hard truths, showing how time can’t change the past, but how retreat is sometimes the only path to survival. 

The Anniversary by Andrea Bajani (translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock)

Other Press, $16.99 Paperback Original, 9781635426182, 144 pages

Publishing Date: August 25, 2026

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about Andrea Bajani HERE

Portrait of an Unknown Woman

A stunning fictionalized portrait--the story-behind-the-story--of an iconic painting crafted by famed Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt.

Parisian-born author Camille de Peretti takes readers on a labyrinthine fictional journey that explores the alluring, unnamed woman behind a mysterious portrait painted by Austrian visual artist Gustav Klimt.

 

Portrait of an Unknown Woman commences with actual facts about the painting and its origins. The author explains how it was always believed that Klimt painted two images of the same woman: “Damsel” (1910) and “Portrait of a Lady” (1917). In 1996, however, it was discovered by an art student that the two paintings were actually “one and the same.”  For some reason, Klimt altered (painted over) the original painting. Soon after this discovery, the two-in-one painting was stolen on February 22, 1997 and wasn’t found again until 2019, when a gardener at the famed Ricci Oddi Art Gallery in Piacenza, Italy found it perfectly preserved--wrapped in a garbage bag and stashed behind some overgrown ivy.

 

Who was the woman behind the mystery of this sought-after portrait? Why did Klimt paint her twice? And why might the painting have gone missing? These questions drive de Peretti’s passionate imagination as she unfurls a riveting novel about the mysterious woman, Klimt’s model and muse, whose turbulent life mirrors that of the iconic long-lost painting. Readers--those with a penchant for history and art dramas--will be beguiled by a truth-melded-with-fiction-epic that crosses continents from 1900s Vienna to New York City during the Great Depression, all the way to modern-day Italy. de Peretti’s well-conceived, beautifully rendered narrative is anchored in well-researched and documented facts as she creates a stunning, lyrical portrait about family loyalty, secrets and betrayals, and star-crossed love.

 

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Camille de Peretti (Translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle)

Europa Editions, paperback $19.00, 9798889661788, 256 pages

Publication Date: April 14, 2026

To order this novel on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about Camille de Peretti HERE

Meet Me in Italy

A heartfelt romcom about a novelist facing a broken marriage and writer’s block who puts the pieces of her life back together via a trip to Italy.

With the release of Meet Me in Italy, prolific author Brenda Novak treats readers to another deeply engaging, multi-layered romance that starts in California and ultimately unspools amidst the rugged Amalfi Coast of Italy.

The story launches at the nadir of Charlotte Williams-Jackson’s life. The life of this 20-something, California-based novelist is upended when her NBA-player husband abruptly walks away from their marriage of four years--he just doesn’t “want to be married anymore.” Unmoored and disoriented by the split, Charlotte moves back in with her parents.

With her life in an emotional tailspin, Charlotte succumbs to a severe depression that solidifies into writer’s block. As she struggles to meet a deadline to finish her second novel, Charlotte reconnects with local, old friends, Sloane and her twin brother, Julian—both of whom are also facing personal life crises.

When Charlotte receives a letter informing her that she was adopted and has an orphaned, 12-year-old half-sister who lives in Italy, the torpor of her life suddenly shifts. She, along with Sloane and Julian set off on an Italian adventure that enlightens Charlotte to the truth of who she really is and what she really wants out of life.

A strong premise, a well-drawn cast of characters, and a passionate, colorful Italian backdrop make for an exciting literary journey. Novak (The Summer That Changed Everything) nicely entwines many meaningful story threads that weave together to form a powerfully heartfelt, happily-ever-after.

 

Meet Me in Italy by Brenda Novak

MIRA (HarperCollins), $18.99 Paperback, 9780778305811, 400 pages

Publication Date: April 7, 2026

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about author Brenda Novak HERE

Favorite Reads 2025 : My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition by Elena Ferrante

My Favorite Gift Book of the Year: My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition by Elena Ferrante

This is a beautifully presented collection of four unforgettable novels, each exploring a universal story of love, friendship, family, and belonging.

In My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition, Elena Ferrante’s quartet of novels are culled into one distinctive volume. If you’re not already familiar with the four books she previously released as standalone Neapolitan-themed novels (My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay; The Story of the Lost Child), this is a chance to read all the books between two covers. This beautifully presented, deluxe cloth hardcover edition features sprayed edges and colored endpapers illustrating the Bay of Naples. 

When Elena Ferrante set out to write the story of Elena and Lila, she conceived it as one single work of fiction, one expansive novel that would capture the reality and ambivalence of female friendship, motherhood, marriage, class, and adolescence. This year, 2025, marks 10 years since the quartet of novels was completed and this one book, filled with all four of the novels, has been issued to celebrate that anniversary and honor the author’s original conception.

If you are a reader or writer--or maybe you love to collect books--this is a MUST to add to your cherished collection.  Or better yet, give this one as a gift!

NOTE: My Brilliant Friend was named the #1 Best Book of the Century by the New York Times.

My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition (The Four Volumes) by Elena Ferrante

Europa Editions, $65.00 hardcover, 9798889661443, 1248 pages

Publication Date: October 7, 2025

To order this book via Bookshop.org, link HERE

To learn more about author Elena Ferrante, link HERE

The Little Italian Hotel

 

A tender, hopeful story about a woman who, after her marriage comes undone, sets off on an inspiring Italian holiday with four strangers.

Five strangers are brought together on an Italian holiday in The Little Italian Hotel, a sweetly immersive novel brimming with the hope of new beginnings by Phaedra Patrick.

 

To celebrate 25-years of marriage, Ginny Splinter--a 49-year-old,  problem-solving, British radio talk show host--surprises her husband, Adrian, by planning an upscale trip to Italy for just the two of them. But when she presents the gift, Adrian announces that he doesn’t want to go on a vacation. He wants a divorce. Shaken and jarred, heartsick Ginny decides, on a lark, to invite four loyal listeners, at random, to accompany her on the trip instead. This is accomplished by her swapping out the pricy luxury accommodations she’d planned for her and Adrian in Vigornuovo, a small Italian village in Bologna, (10, 48) in exchange for more modest lodgings for she and her guests. The five strangers--ranging in age from 27 to 80--meet for the first time, where they all set off, touring Venice and Florence. The sights of Italy may be wonders to behold, but the life stories of the strangers--each on the cusp of change in his and her own life--prove equally enriching amidst the journey.

 

Patrick (The Messy Lives of Book People) is a beautiful writer of optimistic stories that probe the true meaning of life and the human quest to find happiness and fulfillment. In The Little Italian Hotel, she once again mines the bittersweet landscape of the human heart with great tenderness, insight, and wisdom.

 

 

The Little Italian Hotel by Phaedra Patrick

Park Row (Harlequin/Harper Collins), $18.99 original paperback, 9780778387121, 320 pages, Publishing Date: June 6, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 6, 2023), link HERE

The Island Villa

An emotionally probing romance about a mother’s upcoming fourth marriage and how her daughters come to terms with familial dysfunction.

An estranged, dysfunctional family reunites for a summer wedding on Corfu, a rugged island paradise off the coast of Greece, in the engagingly insightful novel, The Island Villa, by prolific British author Sarah Morgan.

 

Family matriarch Catherine Swift is a wildly successful romance novelist. Her own life, however, isn’t so happily-ever-after. Married three times with two daughters conceived from different husbands, she is tying the knot for a fourth time. Might her nuptials this time around offer a chance for mother-daughter reconciliation—and for her two adult children, six years apart, to finally bond?

 

The girls couldn’t be more different. Thirty-year-old Adeline, the older daughter--emotionally buttoned up and self-reliant--is reticent to attend the wedding. She was only eight-years-old when her parents divorced, and she’s skeptical about her mother’s wedded bliss. However, after she breaks up with her beau, Adeline jet-sets to Corfu. There, she’s reunited with her starry-eyed sister and secretly aspiring writer, Cassie, whose father, Catherine’s second husband, died when Cassie was just three-years-old. Cassie is excited about the wedding—until secrets revealed disarm both women. They ultimately find common ground, commiserating about their mother’s choice for a husband. Will the family finally come together or will things, once again, fall apart?

 

Relationships between mothers, daughters and sisters are common to Morgan’s (The Summer Seekers) fiction, and she once again skillfully portrays complex emotional dynamics therein. Readers will be swept up by well-drawn characters, each with her own romantic predicament, and a deft fictional examination of fragile and frayed familial bonds. 

 

The Island Villa by Sarah Morgan

Canary Street Press (HarperCollins/Harlequin), $17.99 paperback, 9781335630957, 384 pages

Publishing Date: May 2, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (May 5, 2023), link HERE

Out of Her Depth

A gripping romantic thriller about an idyllic summer of young love and friendship in Italy that surprisingly turned deadly.

 

Florence, Italy and the hills of Tuscany serve as the backdrop for Out of Her Depth, a menacing psychological thriller from Lizzy Barber.

 

The novel is told via the intimate, first-person narrative voice of Rachel, a Brit. At 21-years-old, Rachel travels to Italy for the summer, working as a maid in a quaint Villa in Florence. Hoping to brush up on her Italian-language skills before setting off to Cambridge in the fall, working class Rachel falls in with—and falls under the spell of—a wealthy gal, Diana, who is shrewd and manipulative…especially when it comes to Sebastian, the rich and very handsome godson of the Villa's owner, and Valentina, a new recruit to the hotel staff.  A fun, exciting summer filled with budding friendships--lust and love--suddenly shifts into dark power-plays, resentments and jealousies.

 

The story then cuts to twenty years later: Rachel, now 41-years-old, is a teacher at an exclusive, private school in England who remains traumatized and haunted by secrets from that one life-changing Italian holiday. Readers learn that the foursome never again saw each other, and Sebastian has spent 20 years in prison for a murder that played out that fateful, tragic summer. What exactly happened? What went wrong?

 

Barber (A Girl Named Anna) suspensefully rolls out details of a surprising friends-to-enemies story that probes themes of guilt and shame, secrets and regrets. Barber’s skillful storytelling elevates a traditional beach read into a stunningly deep page-turner.

Out of Her Depth: A Novel by Lizzy Barber

Mira Books (Original Edition), $16.99 paperback, 9780778386445, 400 pages

Publication Date: July 12, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

The Patron Saint of Second Chances

A small, diminishing village in Italy--facing financial ruin; threatened with having the entire water supply cut-off--faces a hilarious revitalization by the prospect of an upcoming film shoot.

Community loyalty and the power of taking pride in one’s hometown--doing anything to save it--is the central theme of the very funny debut novel, The Patron Saint of Second Chances by Christine Simon.

Prometto, Italy (fictional) has 212 occupants, and one resident, Signor Giovannino Speranza, believes he has the power to change things—or at least he hopes so. Speranza is of the old school and traditional values. He is a 62-year-old husband, father and grandfather—a vacuum cleaner salesman-repairman disillusioned with young people always on their phones and social media and eagerly determined to leave town. He regularly turns to the saints to guide him and dispel his disappointments and arguments with God. Having always taken pride in Prometto, he’s become something of the local mayor.

Now that the town, in dire financial straits--the budget doesn’t have enough funds to restore the plumbing system and faces having the water turned off, forcing residents to relocate--desperate Speranza concocts a story about how Dante Rinaldi, a heartthrob movie star, is planning to film his next blockbuster near Prometto. The invented news takes off and injects a hopeful jolt of enthusiasm that rallies the town and beyond, including young people and even the local parish priest, while boosting tourism and local businesses in the process. But what will happen when Dante Rinaldi doesn’t descend on Prometto with a film crew and news gets out about the ruse Speranza has crafted?

Simon’s fun, clever story offers a hilarious literary escape. Readers will smile and laugh out loud at her well-drawn cast of quirky characters, those who long--and will do anything--to be a part of the film and its production. The plot snowballs, twisting in madcap ways with turns as sharp as the narrow roads that wind their way through the lovable charm of Prometto.  

The Patron Saint of Second Chances: A Novel by Christine Simon

Atria Book, $27.00 hardcover, 978-1982188771, 360 pages

Publication Date: April 12, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE 

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family

An incredibly moving memoir about three women who greatly influenced the life of notable suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra.

Suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra (Payback; Sleepers) shares an intimate, true story about three, strong-willed, determined women who "saved" his life. Carcaterra--"the son of an ex-con and a housewife who spoke only Italian [who] grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan"--was raised watching his mother trapped in an abusive, loveless, impoverished marriage to a man who had murdered his first wife. When he was 14, Carcaterra's mother sent him to Ischia, Italy, to spend the summer with his maternal grandmother, Nonna Maria, and other relatives. The trip proved to be a watershed.

Nonna Maria--wise, dignified and of great resilience--becomes a bedrock, championing her sensitive grandson, who has storytelling aspirations. Upon returning to the U.S., Carcaterra grows determined to forge a writing career, though his mother, Raffaela, belittles his goal. Steeped in misery, Raffaela--a widow whose second marriage is to Carcaterra's volatile father--often resents her son for being his bullying father's offspring. Dutiful, devoted Carcaterra, however, stands by his mother through some cruel, searing rejections. When Carcaterra meets Susan, an editor and coworker at the New York Daily News, he finds a soulmate whose love and support help turn the tide. Carcaterra finally launches his novel-writing career and the couple build a beautiful, sadly shortened, life together.

Many heart-wrenching incidents pervade the traumatic landscape of Carcaterra's life. But the richness of his forthright storytelling gives tender form to sadness and loss, shaping it into a deeply moving narrative about hard-fought familial love and forgiveness.

 

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Ballantine Books, $28.00 Hardcover, 9780593156711, 240 pages

Publication Date: April 26, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 30, 2021), link HERE

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany

A delightful romantic story centered on three single women of an Italian family who set off to Italy to break a 200-year-old curse. 

Long-simmering resentments and buried secrets permeate The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany, a romantic, beautifully rendered, sweepingly complex family saga.

 

Emilia Antonelli, 29, of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, is a second-generation Italian American. She lives a simple, manageable life, resigned to remaining single forever, working in the family delicatessen and bakery, while also secretly pursuing a "little writing hobby." Emilia lives under the shadow of a family curse that goes back 200 years: all second-born daughters are cursed to live a life without love. After their mother died, Emilia and her older sister, Daria, were raised by their mild-mannered father and the domineering Nonna Rosa, their mother's mother and the surly, infinitely controlling backbone of the family. Nonna Rosa favors Daria, the first-born granddaughter, and belittles Emilia.

 

Emilia's life takes a drastic turn when she receives a letter from Paolina Fontana, her long-lost great-aunt, who lives in Philadelphia. "Aunt Poppy" is flamboyant, artsy and colorful. She is Nonna Rosa's younger sister, shunned by the family decades earlier. But Poppy writes to Emilia and Luciana, another second-born cousin, offering to treat them both to an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy to celebrate Poppy's 80th birthday. At the cathedral in the town of Ravello, Poppy intends to reunite with her one true love, with the intention of also breaking the family curse.

What ensues is an exciting excursion through Italy--its culture and fineries; romance and history--for the three women. Aunt Poppy proves warm, charming and wise. Lori Nelson Spielman (Sweet Forgiveness) provides first-rate storytelling and nuanced, clearly defined characters that will captivate readers right up to the surprising finale.

The Star-Crossed Sistersof Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman

Berkley-Penguin, $16.00 Paperback, 9781984803160, 400 pages

Publication Date: November 27, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 27, 2020), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (October 23, 2020), link HERE