A marvellous biography of this clever, brilliant, opportunistic, amoral, inquisitive man - Damrosch's erudition serves his notorious subject very well.
Howard (1907-1987) served as an intelligence officer in WW2 throughout the Italian campaign. He married Lelia Caetani of Ninfa, where Bassani wrote a large part of The Garden of the Finzi Co... read more
MH constructs an enthralling narrative of Vatican intrigue by drawing on Cardinal Ippolito d'Este's records of the papal conclave of 1559. She shows how both the papacy and the political fat... read more
Patrick Leigh Fermor held that baroque architecture in Italy could never have existed without pasta in all its multitudinous and beguiling forms... Drawing on a decade and a half of living i... read more
A villa with a Roman aqueduct in the garden that famously belonged to Princess Zenaida Wolkonsky, whose salon included Gogol, Donizetti, Thorvaldsen, Stendhal and Sir Walter Scott. The autho... read more
It was the biggest seaborne landing in history; a difficult campaign, not least because of the heat. Its success was hard-won, and crucial to the course of the war.
A superb narrative of the 'underside' of the Italian Renaissance: the Genoese and Neapolitans; the women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, engineers, prostitutes, farmers and citizens ... read more
A young Sicilian woman delves into her family's history, their relationships, intrigues, betrayals, struggles. This is a new translation and the first unabridged version of what is widely co... read more
A new edition of this splendid book, in a smaller format and illustrated with a few drawings rather than photographs. Roddy writes wonderfully about Testaccio (where she has lived for over a... read more
Drawing on the author's own experiences of WW2, the novel's protagonist rebels against the pressures of family and politics in Fascist Italy. First published in 1949. By the author of Forbid... read more
CT, a foreign correspondent, had a house in the Appenines in the area of the 2016 earthquakes. Starting with letters found in her attic, she delves into the life of her house's last permanen... read more
CM has become the supreme chronicler of Italy under Mussolini. Indefatigable and brilliant, she turns her attention now to Mussolini's favourite and influential daughter, who married Count C... read more
In 1849 Garibaldi gave up the defence of Rome to the besieging French troops and made his way northwards with a few thousand volunteers; this is an earlier phase of the attempt at Italian li... read more
The 30th outing for the tireless Brunetti: joy-riders in the Venetian lagoon are linked to more sinister doings... as usual, the glittering surface masks murky depths
The marvellous Attlee takes us on the journey, through space and time, of one violin, whose voice "was powerful enough to unbuckle joints". Cremona, Russia, Venice, Alpine forests... (Her la... read more
This new novel from the author of The Neapolitan Quartet is also set in Naples, and was superbly reviewed in Italy.
NB Publication of this book has been delayed until 1st September. Pub... read more
An exploration of the art, personalities and politics of Baroque Rome seen through the lens of Bernini's elephant carrying an obelisk. Lively, anecdotal and well illustrated.
A rollocking historical novel set in Renaissance Venice: an artist sets his heart on a miraculous new pigment, only to find himself caught up in conspiracies, a love affair, violence, obsess... read more
An atmospheric, creepy thriller set in a remote valley in northern Italy, where a writer, investigating an apparent drowning many years before, is hampered by superstition.
The Beppina of the title was the author of a bundle of hand-written recipes found in an old Italian cookery: "a microcosm of the culinary taste of the Aretine upper middle-class during the B... read more
A new collection of short stories by the acclaimed writer who moved to Rome in 2012 and now only writes in Italian. Her many awards include a Pulitzer prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Na... read more
An English art historian is found dead in a Venetian bookshop after a bad flood. It's in the via dei Assassini, and her death and its consequences are anything but peaceful. Jolly dark stuff... read more