When Isobel Dusi visited Italy with her Australian husband Lou, little did they imagine that life would change forever. But, utterly besotted with the fragrant warmth and good-natured conviviality of Southern Tuscany, they decided to sell up their lives in the big city and move thousands of miles to follow the dream of a life more in keeping with ancient rhythms and time-honoured traditions of the Mediterranean. After months of searching they settled upon Montalcino, an intriguing hilltop medieval village with a reputation for some of the finest wine in Italy. VANILLA BEANS AND BRODO is an account of Isobel's hard-won acceptance into this tempestuous, warm-hearted and proudly independent community, whose voluble passions for home grown wine and Tuscan cuisine, for football and ancient traditions and festivals, puts paid to the myth that life in rural Tuscany is tranquil. Isobel and Lou are gradually transformed into Isabella and Luigi in this charming account of Tuscan village life that really gets to the beating heart of an Italian community - its joys, pleasures, anxieties, but above all, its absorbing eccentricities.

They had met and married on perilously short acquaintance, she an American chef and food writer, he a Venetian banker. Now they were taking another audacious leap, unstitching their ties with exquisite Venice to live in a roughly renovated stable in Tuscany. Once again, it was love at first sight. Love for the timeless countryside and the ancient village of San Casciano dei Bagni, for the local vintage and the magnificent cooking, for the Tuscan sky and the friendly church bells. Love especially for old Barlozzo, the village mago, who escorts the newcomers to Tuscany’s seasonal festivals; gives them roasted country bread drizzled with just-pressed olive oil; invites them to gather chestnuts, harvest grapes, hunt truffles; and teaches them to caress the simple pleasures of each precious day. It’s Barlozzo who guides them across the minefields of village history and into the warm and fiercely beating heart of love itself. A Thousand Days in Tuscany is set in one of the most beautiful places on earth–and tucked into its fragrant corners are luscious recipes (including one for the only true bruschetta) directly from the author’s private collection.

Bring the joy of Italian cooking to your kitchen with 100 classic and incredibly delicious Italian family favorites, from the star of Laura in the Kitchen. When Laura Vitale moved to the United States from her native Italy as a teenager, she was homesick—not just for her family, but for her beloved nonna’s cooking. The slow-cooked Sunday sauces loaded with pork ribs and tender braised beef (and plenty of red wine), the quick pan-fried breaded chicken cutlets destined to be Parmesan’d, the frittata de maccheroni that she’d tuck in a knapsack for beachside picnics . . . and so began a quest to re-create Nonna’s delicious legacy in Laura’s New Jersey kitchen. Ever since, Laura has spent countless hours on the phone with Nonna to learn her secrets for the crispiest fried Cacio e Pepe Aranini, Zia Mimma’s Focaccia Barese (mashed potatoes are the key to its fluffy texture), decadent four-cheese baked ziti, a Sunday supper go-to of Roasted Chicken and Potatoes with Herby Lemon Salsa, and a semolina cake to end all yellow cakes, topped with heaps of limoncello-soaked strawberries. Decades of Sunday suppers, holiday meals, and get-it-done-fast weeknight dinners have perfected the flavors and techniques that represent the essence of Laura’s Italy.

While only one book-length memoir recounting the sojourn of an Australian in France was published in the 1990s, well over 40 have been published since 2000, overwhelmingly written by women. Although we might expect a focus on travel, intercultural adjustment and communication in these texts, this is the case only in a minority of accounts. More frequently, France serves as a backdrop to a project of self-renovation in which transplantation to another country is incidental, hence the question ‘What’s France got to do with it?’ The book delves into what France represents in the various narratives, its role in the self-transformation, and the reasons for the seemingly insatiable demand among readers and publishers for these stories. It asks why these memoirs have gained such traction among Australian women at the dawn of the twenty-first century and what is at stake in the fascination with France.

An important locus for English-speaking writers, the region of Tuscany is also well represented in the Italian literary canon. In Tuscan Spaces, Silvia Ross focuses on constructions of Tuscany in twentieth-century Italian literature and juxtaposes them with English prose works by such authors as E.M. Forster and Frances Mayes to expose the complexity of literary representation centred on a single milieu. Ross uses the works of writers such as Federigo Tozzi, Aldo Palazzeschi, Vasco Pratolini, and Elena Gianini Belotti, to seek out alternative visions of Tuscan space and emphasizes that each author fashions the region in a manner which reflects their personal poetics, background, and experiences. Theories of cultural geography, space, travel, and narrative contribute to Ross's consideration of the dualisms commonly employed in writings about Tuscany, such as country/city, nature/culture, female/male, and self/other, all of which are in turn affected by her interrogation of the local/foreign opposition that underlies the study as a whole.

MRS P'S JOURNEY is the enchanting story of Phyllis Pearsall. Born Phyllis Isobella Gross, her lifelong nickname was PIG. The artist daughter of a flamboyant Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and an Irish Italian mother, her bizarre and often traumatic childhood did not restrain her from becoming one of Britain's most intriguing entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires. After an unsatisfactory marriage, Phyllis, a thirty-year-old divorcee, had to support herself and so became a portrait painter. It is doing this job and trying to find her patron's houses that Phyllis became increasingly frustrated at the lack of proper maps of London. Instead of just cursing the fact as many fellow Londoners probably did, Phyllis decided to do something about it. Without hesitation she covered London's 23,000 streets on foot during the course of one year, often leaving her Horseferry Road bedsit at dawn to do so. To publish the map, and in light of its enormous success, she sets up her own company, The Geographer's Trust, which still publishes the London A-Z and that of every major British city. MRS P'S JOURNEY is the account of a strong, independent woman who has left behind an enduring legacy.

Speed is the essence of the modern era, but our faster, more frenetic lives often trouble us and leave us wondering how we are meant to live in today's world. Slow Living explores the philosophy and politics of 'slowness' as it investigates the growth of Slow Food into a worldwide, 'eco-gastronomic' movement. Originating in Italy, Slow Food is not only committed to the preservation of traditional cuisines and sustainable agriculture but also the pleasures of the table and a slower approach to life in general. Craig and Parkins argue that slow living is a complex response to processes of globalization. It connects ethics and pleasure, the global and the local, as part of a new emphasis on everyday life in contemporary culture and politics. The 'global everyday' is not a simple tale of speed and geographical dislocation. Instead, we all negotiate different times and spaces that make our quality of life and an 'ethics of living' more pressing concerns. This innovative book shows how slow living is about the challenges of living a more mindful and pleasurable life.