Warm sun and rolling hills, olive oil with thick slices of country bread, stone walls three feet thick, porcini picked that day, and bottles of earth-flavored wines are but some of the ingredients in Mate's memoirs of Tuscany. This is the story of how Mate and his wife found their dream house and began their love affair with the place and its people.

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.

The head of Italy’s "first family" of winemaking reflects on the Antinoris’ six-hundred-year legacy and a life of good food and drink in the hills of Tuscany. If you know wine, you know the name Antinori. Since 1385, this noble Florentine family has produced some of Italy’s finest wines. The Hills of Chianti tells the story of the Antinoris and the Tuscany they call home, through seven iconic bottles that define their legacy. From the Tignanello that ushered in the era of Super Tuscans to limited-edition vintages, these wines embody a way of life and will excite oenophile readers and lovers of Italy alike. In this family memoir Piero Antinori reveals the passion, tradition, and love of craft that have driven twenty-seven generations of vintners: from the first ancestor who signed up to the winemakers guild in the fourteenth century to Antinori’s own three daughters, poised to carry this most celebrated family of artisans into the future. But The Hills of Chianti is about much more than wine. At its heart the Antinori story is about "Tuscan-ness": a connection to the land, an appreciation for good food and drink, and the quintessentially Italian love of hospitality that make this one of the world’s most inspiring and memorable destinations.

In this intimate and uproarious story, two daring New Yorkers convert an ancient, abandoned farm into a world-renowned winery.

Ren Sawyer and Lizzy Harper live completely different lives. He’s a rock star with a secret he can no longer live with. She’s a regular person whose husband stood her up for a long planned anniversary trip. On a flight across the Atlantic headed for Italy, a drunken pity party and untimely turbulence literally drop Lizzy into Ren’s lap. It is the last thing she can imagine ever happening to someone like her. But despite their surface differences, they discover an undeniable pull between them. A pull that leads them both to remember who they had once been before letting themselves be changed by a life they had each chosen. Exploring the streets of Florence and the hills of Tuscany together - two people with seemingly nothing in common - changes them both forever. And what they find in each other is something that might just heal them both.

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed her to return to Cortona—and her beloved house, Bramasole—just as the first green appeared on the rocky hillsides. Bella Tuscany, a companion volume to Under the Tuscan Sun, is her passionate and lyrical account of her continuing love affair with Italy. Now truly at home there, Mayes writes of her deepening connection to the land, her flourishing friendships with local people, the joys of art, food, and wine, and the rewards and occasional heartbreaks of her villa's ongoing restoration. It is also a memoir of a season of change, and of renewed possibility. As spring becomes summer she revives Bramasole's lush gardens, meets the challenges of learning a new language, tours regions from Sicily to the Veneto, and faces transitions in her family life. Filled with recipes from her Tuscan kitchen and written in the sensuous and evocative prose that has become her hallmark, Bella Tuscany is a celebration of the sweet life in Italy. Now with an excerpt from Frances Mayes's latest southern memoir, Under Magnolia.

By the author of the international bestseller The Hills of Tuscany and the New York Times Notable Book A Vineyard in Tuscany: making the Tuscan life-style your own. This sun-drenched land has become synonymous with the ideal life. But it didn’t happen by chance. Since the Etruscans, the independence-loving Tuscans have treated their breathtaking countryside with sagacious respect and built hamlets and hill towns in which they perfected a culture of simplicity, beauty, neighborliness, good food, and love of daily life. Ferenc Máté has lived in Tuscany for twenty years. Through personal experience and anecdotal history he explores the sources of this idyllic existence, which provides continuous economic stability, physical and emotional security, and a fortifying sense of belonging. From their organic gardens to their mouthwatering cuisine, from high-quality, craftsmen-made products and family-run businesses, to the joys centered in human contact and community, Tuscans live a healthy, all-senses-satisfying, emotionally rich life. Máté—engaging, funny, and insightful—nudges us all to live like Tuscans. With our frantic world so storm-tossed and rudderless, this might just be the book for our times.