Tuscany & Umbria - September 20-26, 2009

The story depicts a young Englishwoman's adventure trying to come to grips with the conflict between her desires and society's expectations. Lucy Honeychurch is a well-bred young middle class girl on holiday in radiant Florence. She comes from a family over concerned with respectability and is therefore overprotected by a desiccated spinster named Charlotte Bartlett.

In 1967 Eric and Wanda Newby fulfilled a long-cherished dream when they bought a run-down farmhouse in northern Tuscany, in the foothills of the Italian Alps. They were the first foreigners to live in the region. With his characteristic wry humor and sharp eye for the quirks of human nature, Eric Newby paints an unforgettable picture of rural Italy and its people. The rhythms and rituals of country life - harvesting grapes, making wine, and hunting for wild mushrooms - are lovingly evoked, along with the storybook landscapes and changing seasons. At the center of his memoir is the farmhouse itself, which from unpromising beginnings - tile less roof, long-abandoned septic tank and mice the size of small cats was gradually restored.

When literary art meets the warmth, beauty, and culture of Italy, the results are stupefying wonderful. Susan Cahill has gathered jewels of writing, penned by 31 women of letters, inspired by Italy. There's Muriel Spark on Venice, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary McCarthy on Florence, Florence Nightingale and George Eliot on Rome, Edith Wharton on Milan, and Mary Taylor Simeti on Sicily. All together Cahill's arranged a beautiful antipasti plate of the impact--on the mind, the spirit, and above all the senses--of Italy.

This impressive book proves to be less the story of Galileo's elder daughter, the oldest of his three illegitimate children, and more the story of Galileo himself and his trial before the Inquisition for arguing that Earth moves around the Sun. That familiar tale is given a new slant by Isobel’s translation for the first time into English of the 124 surviving letters to Galileo by his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, a Clarisse nun who died at age 33; his letters to her are lost, presumably destroyed by Maria Celeste's convent after her death. Her letters may not in themselves justify a book; they are devout, full of pious love for the father she addresses as "Sire," only rarely offering information or insight. But Sobel uses them as the accompaniment to, rather than the core of, her story, sounding the element of faith and piety so often missing in other retellings of Galileo's story. For Sobel shows that, in renouncing his discoveries, Galileo acted not just to save his skin but also out of a genuine need to align himself with his church. With impressive skill and economy, she portrays the social and psychological forces at work in Galileo's trial, particularly the political pressures of the Thirty Years' War, and the passage of the plague through Italy, which cut off travel between Florence, where Galileo lived, and Rome, the seat of the Pope and the Inquisition, delaying Galileo's appearance there and giving his enemies time to conspire.

LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF A TUSCAN GARDENER The author, Alessandro Tombelli, born and raised in Florence, tells his story of his early days as a gardener in Tuscany. After being trained in Italy and in England, he starts to make his Garden Connection. It began a period of new friendships, travels and new experiences, both in Italy and abroad. From some famous historical Italian gardens to new exciting projects in the US, he was amazed as to how all this came together. Another new career started from one of this travels where he was asked to take some people to visit the gardens where he grew up, sharing his passion for Tuscany with the others. A few friends and companions will follow him in his adventures including his dog, Bobo.

Alessandro leads walks for The Wayfarers in Tuscany and the Italian Lakes District.

"War in Val D'Orcia" is a rather terse diary of events throughout Italy in 1943-1944 written by the English-born wife of a wealthy landowner in Tuscany. Iris Origo is an Anglo American woman married to an Italian called Alberto Origo. She settles in the rural Italian countryside of Tuscany. Her husband is a prominent landowner in a small valley. When Italy gets involved in World War II, Iris keeps a small diary. In the book 1943 and 1944 are revealed as hardship years for the Italian people. Food is scarce, and airplanes are indiscriminate in attacks on civilians and soldiers. What is worse are the Fascists who have become vicious in the face of a sullen people. Origo describes how her and her family managed during these most difficult times.

Like an American heiress in a tale by Henry James, Iris Origo (1902–1988) was born into a world of "unfair advantages of education, money, environment, and opportunity." She used her birthright wisely, traveling the world, studying art with Berenson, and, with her Italian husband, improving the land and the lot of the peasants in the Val d'Orcia of Tuscany. She tells her life story in Images & Shadows.

Frances Mayes continues her love letter to Italy in this sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany. The restoration of her home, Bramasole, is complete, but Tuscany keeps unfolding. While the earlier books chronicled her and her husband's first years in Italy, this one is less full of stories than meditations on the elements of Tuscan pleasures, accompanied by photographs that give color to the place Mayes has described so lovingly and well. Like a guidebook written by a good friend who reveals to you all the secret places they've found, Mayes leads us from out-of-the-way towns to great frescoes to tiny restaurants with exquisite delicacies (and even gives you their addresses). Turn down any one of Mayes's streets and there is something to contemplate. Once again, Mayes presents Tuscany as an irresistible place where the pleasures are unexpected, sumptuous, and downright enviable.

In this masterpiece of psychological suspense, Italian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen is dispatched to investigate the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti, a powerful Perugian industrialist. But nobody much wants Zen to succeed: not the local authorities, who view him as an interloper, and certainly not Miletti's children, who seem content to let the head of the family languish in the hands of his abductors -- if he's still alive. As Zen tries to unravel this rat's nest of family intrigue and official complicity, Michael Dibdin gives us one of his most accomplished thrillers, a chilling masterpiece of police procedure and psychological suspense.

Two chance encounters led Alan parker to a lifestyle many of us can only dream about: he was offered a 300 year old villa in Tuscany and then he fell passionately in love. This is the story of these two loves. The day-to-day happenings of a small Italian town are captured with warmth and humor - from feast days to grape harvests. And will Nancy return his love?

The advertisement that Molly Pargenter answered made the Tuscany villa to let sound like the ideal place suspiciously too ideal for her family to spend its summer vacation. Arriving in Italy with her husband, three daughters, and father, she finds an unusual assortment of locals and English expatriates for neighbors, as well as detailed notes on the proper use of the house left by her absentee landlord, one S. Kettering. Molly's obsession with learning as much as possible about the Kettering household leads her to some ominous conclusions. Mortimer has blended elements of social satire and mystery into an entertaining story whose atmosphere of mounting tension culminates in a disturbing climax.

The novel takes place in ancient Rome and Greece. It is simply the story of one man's ups and downs in life. This is a great adventure story just stuffed with wonderful historical facts.

The title hints at scandal, but this is a rather sedate account of the life and times of Felice della Rovere, daughter of Pope Julius II. There was no great shame attached to her as the illegitimate daughter of a man of the church. Instead, Julius saw her as an asset in his plans for family advancement, and his influence, combined with her arranged marriage to the head of the powerful Orsini clan, helped lay the foundations for substantial independent power and wealth, rare for a woman of her time. Widowed early, she spent the rest of her life--she died in 1536--capably managing the family properties and building a legacy for her children.

This sumptuous volume transports readers to an illustrious region renowned for its art and architecture, and equally blessed with tremendous natural beauty. An isolated area of hills and forests, deep valleys and rolling plains, Umbria has experienced a succession of authority—Romans, Byzantines, Longobards, local seigneurs and, finally, the sovereignty of the Papacy—that has left indelible marks on the very stones of its towns. From the elegant towns of Perugia, Spoleto, and Norcia to the splendor of of Narni, Nocera, and Gubbio, the photographs in this book convey the unmistakable character of the region. Meticulous close-up details of the frescoes at Assisi—certainly the most celebrated religious shrine in Italy—and sweeping wide-angle views of the roaring Falls at Marmore and beautiful Lake Piediluco convey the unsurpassed spiritual, historical, architectural, artistic, and cultural heritage of the area as well as its diverse landscapes. Combined with an insightful, affectionate text by a long-time Tuscan resident and expert, the photographs create a moving portrait of a region with an unmistakable character in which the beauty of nature harmonizes with the eternal works of human genius and inspiration. Armchair travelers and lovers of Italian culture will cherish this pictorial tribute to one of Italy's most fascinating regions.

Australian-born artist Virginia Ryan and her family came to regret the impulsive decision to purchase an abandoned olive mill in the hill-town of Trevi, Umbria, as they lived through the massive reconstruction of the building. In this intriguing personal memoir, she shares with great candor their experiences adapting to the customs and local traditions, making friendships with the townsfolk, and exploring the region - and herself. When huge earthquakes strike northern Italy, not only the roof of the basilica of St Francis in Assisi is fractured and collapses, but so do the lives and homes of the people Virginia has come to care for.