In all areas of public life – community, education, employment – your connections are everything. From the bestselling author of Italian Neighbours, An Italian Education and Italian Ways, Italian Life is a particular reckoning with a beloved adopted country. It takes place in a university in the north. Valeria, a talented young woman from hot, dusty Basilicata, enrols together with thousands of others for a degree course that could take anything between three and ten years to complete, given the vagaries of the system. She has sacrificed a great deal to get here. However, as both Valeria and her rich supporting cast of students and professors will soon discover, there are dark and capricious forces at the institution’s heart.Unfolding into a story of power and corruption, influence and exclusion, Tim Parks’ compelling new book shows that an education is about understanding the workings of a society – in this case one where family, culture and innovation are shadowed by nepotism, bureaucracy and intrigue. Thought-provoking, surprising and always entertaining, Italian Life is a behind-the-scenes look at a paradoxical country: a gripping account of how Italy actually happens.

    Shortly before her disappearance, Elisa had met Danilo Restivo, a strange local boy with a fetish for cutting women's hair on the back of buses. Elisa's family are convinced that Resitvo is responsible for their daughter's disappearance, but he is protected by local big-wigs: by his Sicilian father, by a doctor with links to organised crime, by a priest who had vices of his own. Years went by and Elisa's family could find only false leads. 2002, and Restivo is now living in Bournemouth. In November that year, his neighbour is found murdered, with strands of her own hair in her hands. Once again the police are at a loss to pin anything on him. It's not until 2010, when Elisa's decomposed body is found in the church where she went missing, that the two cases are linked and Restivo is finally dealt with. Blood on the Altar combines a gripping true crime case with an analysis of Italian culture and the impunity it offers to the powerful.

    

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    You never know when you're gonna have to cook for 20 guys some day." Pete Clemenza says to Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. it's one of the most famed movie scenes in history and of great importance to Italian-Americans. Clemenza is making "Gravy" aka Sunday Sauce, the Supreme Dish of Italian-America, and the dish that brings Italian Families together each and every Sunday. Learn How to Make Clemenza's Sunday Sauce, Meatballs, Pasta Fazool, Moma DiMaggio's Gravy, Goodfellas Sauce alla Prigione, and all of the great favorites of The Italian-American Table. Cook Sinatra's Spaghetti & Meatballs, Italian Wedding Soup and more, and delight in the many stories and factual information written by Italian Food & Wine Writer Daniel Bellino Zwicke. This book is filled with Joy & Love, and you will get many years of both, reading, cooking and eating the dishes of SUNDAY SAUCE "When Italian-Americans Cook"

    What is intended as a brief sojourn turns into an intriguing residency in the ancient hill village of Aliano, where Carlo Levi, author of the world-renowned memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, was imprisoned by Mussolini for anti-Fascist activities. As the Yeadons become immersed in Aliano's rich tapestry of people, traditions, and festivals, reveling in the rituals and rhythms of the grape and olive harvests, the culinary delights, and other peculiarities of place, they discover that much of the pagan strangeness that Carlo Levi and other notable authors revealed still lurks beneath the beguiling surface of Basilicata.

    Guided by an ancient parchment written in mysterious code and accompanied by their faithful guide Lao Xu, the three explorers encounter subterranean phenomenon, prehistoric animals, and vast underground seas. "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" is one of Jules Verne's best-known works and one of the most classic tales of adventure ever written. Mandarin Companion is a series of easy-to-read novels in Chinese that are fun to read and proven to accelerate language learning. Every book in the Mandarin Companion series is carefully written to use characters, words, and grammar that a learner is likely to know. Level 2 is intended for Chinese learners at a low intermediate level, equivalent to roughly two to three years of formal study. Most learners who have been able to fluidly read Mandarin Companion Level 1 should be able to read this book. This series is designed to combine simplicity of characters with an easy-to-understand storyline that helps learners grow their vocabulary and language comprehension abilities. The more they read, the better they will become at reading and grasping the Chinese language.

    Cesare is a privileged Italian boy, raised in a prosperous town where his family has lived for five hundred years; Beth, an ambitious American dreamer born to hippies and raised on a commune. The events of September 11 serve as a catalyst for the unfolding of their story, in which passion struggles against the inexorable force of patria.The novel of the American in Europe has a long and lustrous pedigree. L’America adds to this lineage, an evocative portrait of the intersection between Europe and America, the old and the new, and the dizzying, life-changing power of first love.

    But recently his rich and vibrant world has lost its piquancy. His best friend has died; his lovestruck teenaged daughter has become a sullen stranger; and even his passionate marriage is showing signs of cooling. To make matters worse, his beloved town is about to change dramatically. Prompted by a dream, Renato resolves to rediscover the flavor of life through a trip to Rome. But his fellow townspeople want in on the journey, and before long, Renato finds himself at the Vatican on behalf of all of them. There, as luck would have it, he finds a way to save his marriage, his family, and even his village.

    We witness the centuries-old festivals that regularly crowd the city’s jumbled streets, and eavesdrop on conversations that continue deep into the night. We browse the countless curio shops where treasures mingle with kitsch, and meet the locals he befriends. In and out of these encounters slips Benedetta, the object of the author’s affections, at once inviting and unfathomable. Weaving the tale of an elusive love together with a vivid portrayal of a legendary metropolis, this is a startling evocation of a magical place.

    It is therefore one of the earliest works of St. Alphonsus. The Saint entitled it: "A method of conversing continually and lovingly with God;" and to the title he added a note to say that it had been translated from the French, but that he had " augmented it with holy thoughts, affections and practices." It was surely the Saint's humility that made him thus minimise his part in the composition of the book, for as a matter of fact he entirely recast the little French treatise and made it all his own. His biographer, Father Berthe, could write of it: "In this golden little book are to be found the most familiar thoughts of the holy author." (Life Vol. I. P. 575).

    In fact no one knows of her existence. Her only interest is the horses she looks after and loves. But then one day she meets American millionaire Clint Wilbur on the Duke's private race-course.

    Acknowledged since the 1930s as a major figure in Modernist poetry, first by Pound and Zukofsky and later by younger writers, the Northumbrian master poet had to wait over 30 years before his genius was finally recognised in Britain - in 1966, with the publication of "BRIGGFLATTS", which Cyril Connolly called 'the finest long poem to have been published in England since T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets". Bunting called "BRIGGFLATTS" his 'autobiography'. It is a complex work, drawing on many elements of his life, experience and knowledge, and features the saint Cuthbert and the warrior king Eric Bloodaxe as two opposing aspects of the Northumbrian - and his - character. Its structural models include the sonata form (and Scarlatti's music in particular) and the latticework of the Lindisfarne Gospels, while thematically it recalls Wordsworth's "Prelude". Bunting wrote that 'Poetry, like music, is to be heard.' His own readings of his own work are essential listening for a full appreciation of his highly musical poetry. This new edition includes a CD with an audio recording Bunting made of "BRIGGFLATTS" in 1967 and a DVD of Peter Bell's 1982 film portrait of Bunting. As well as his own notes to the poem, the book includes his seminal essay on sound and meaning in poetry, "The Poet's Point of View" (1966). All his poetry is available in "Complet Poems" (Bloodaxe Books, 2000).

    Charismatic, irascible and defiantly Italian, Cesare presides over his large family much like his Roman namesake. But when a journalist begins asking questions about his allegiances during the war, Sophie realises how little she really knows her adored grandfather. She embarks with him on a journey of discovery through turn of the century Naples, 1920s Clerkenwell and the war years, in the course which she learns something else: whom it is that she really loves.

    Written for aspiring authors, previously published authors, and independent publishers, it explains the ever-shifting publishing landscape and helps indie authors understand that they're up against the status quo, and how to work within the system but also how to subvert the system in order to succeed. Publishing expert and independent publisher Brooke Warner is fearless in her critique of an industry that's lost its mandate, and in so doing has opened the door wide for indie publishers to thrive. While she does not shy away from calling out the bias against indie authors, she also asserts that it's never been a more exciting time to be in book publishing--and her passion and enthusiasm are contagious. "If you're going to green-light your work, you have to wow," Warner writes. But to surpass expectations, you also need to be a student of publishing and to be able to hold your own with book buyers, event coordinators, librarians, wholesalers, distributors, and reviewers. Green-Light Your Book seeks to equip authors and publishers with the language, knowledge, and skill sets they need to play big.