My ambition when I started this book was to allow the readers a chance to use their own imaginations and to come to their own conclusions. Nicholas is a fable. It is about a man who somehow manages to live his own life to the fullest. There are also fifteen other unconventional short stories included in this book. To sum up, I just wanted to write a thought provoking book that would be fun to read.

Nicolo Orsini has better things to do than visit some ancient Tuscan vineyard! Yet, when family and business mix, he has little choice. Then he meets Alessia Antoninni—a spoiled little princess, with a smart mouth and pert figure—and the trip instantly becomes more interesting! Alessia's been told that the Orsini name spells danger. But she wasn't expecting Nick's potent masculinity. With her heart and her business at risk, soon she is giving in to all his demands….

Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories is a brilliant collection of short stories, personally chosen by Andrea Camilleri. It follows Inspector Montalbano from his very first case in Vigàta, in which he stumbles upon a young girl lurking outside a courthouse with a pistol in her handbag. When she is taken in for questioning and won't utter a single word, Montalbano must find another way to learn who she is trying to kill, and why . . . Other cases include a missing woman who has run away from the love of her life; an old married couple who appear to be rehearsing their suicides; and a crime so dark there's only one person the inspector can call for help. With twists and turns aplenty, these short stories have all the wit, mystery and culinary gusto that Camilleri's fans have come to love him for.

“Comes over one an absolute necessity to move.” This opening sentence of Sea and Sardinia (1921) is strikingly telling about D. H. Lawrence’s life, which can be considered both literally and metaphorically as a journey to the sun. In this respect, as the title of our symposium – “Lake Garda: Gateway to D. H. Lawrence’s Voyage to the Sun” – suggests, he began his life-long quest in Gargnano, in 1912. This eponymous book draws together the papers presented at the Gargnano Symposium in 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the writer’s stay in that “paradise” (3 September 1912 – 11 April 1913). The focus of our event was on Lawrence’s “sun search” and “travelling”; two thought-provoking, multifaceted topics for a sparkling critical debate, expanding outside “canonic” criticism into music and painting. This collection, in fact, comes with a CD featuring 12 songs; poems by Lawrence put to music for soprano and piano by the American composer William Neil. It also includes the reproduction of seven paintings from “Via D. H. Lawrence”, out of a sequence of 25, in which the German painter Sabine Frank follows the writer’s footsteps in the Garda area. The result is a unique and stimulating book, combining literature, music and painting. Thus, it provides an invaluable enrichment for all of us, meant to inspire intellectual confrontation and circulation of ideas in the domain of Laurentian studies. This is the sort of book that any Laurentian, reading either for academic purposes or pleasure, cannot possibly miss.