Search Results: Returned 14 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 14
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Ã2016., Livres DC Books Call No: QWF Fic Hen Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Everything seems broken in Suzanna Ricci's life. Only 42, her marriage to Len has disintegrated. Her relationship to their teenage boys, Robin and Logan, is in need of repair. Now her mother, 'that martial soul, ' wants her to restore the family home in Acqua Sacra, damaged by earthquake. And she doesn't care how many trips from Montreal to their vivid Italian patria of Abruzzo her daughter has to make. At least when Len, a dodgy accountant, encourages her to take a job with a Montreal law firm headed by a man named Robert Bliss, Suzanna feels hopeful of being freer of her ex. Until she realizes the crazy cost of disentangling herself, and not just from him or his 'associates.' Old World skepticism kicks at New World concerns in Acqua Sacra, Keith Henderson's brisk new novel about private deception and public corruption. His cast includes an honest architect, a gutsy office clerk, the modern-day witch of a drained lake, and at least one (reformed) dirt-digging lawyer. But what is Suzanna to do when the mob and their extralegal cross-border political shenanigans invade her life? While Montreal's underworld seems as full of venomous snakes and mean dogs as the Abruzzo mountains, Roman history, Italian mafiosi, dutiful Canadians, and migrant African workers collide, headlong and bizarrely comedic. At the centre of the crash, stunned and sheep-like, lies Suzanna. Henderson, the author ofThe Roof Walkers, again delivers an entertaining and perceptive story in Acqua Sacra about the nature of personal responsibility, this time in an age of multinational delinquency. If Suzanna survives the wreckage, it'll be by honouring the true meaning of 'family' in any global village."--
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2016., Baraka Books Call No: QWF Fic Mur Edition: ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Captain Jim McFarlane, a Canadian infantry officer, is coming apart at the seams. Itœs September 1944, in Italy, and the allied armies are closing in on the retreating Axis powers. Exhausted and lost, Jim tries to command his combat company under fire, while waiting desperately for letters from his wife Marianne. Joining the army not out of some admirable patriotic sentiments but rather because of his own failings and restlessness, he finds himself fighting in a war that is far from glorious. In this story of love and war, Murphy brilliantly captures our ambiguous relationship to war.
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2018., Inanna Publications and Education Inc. Call No: Fic Bat Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: Inanna poetry and fiction series.Summary Note: "La Brigantessa is based on true events in the aftermath of Italy's 1861 Unification, a turbulent period known as "The Decade of Fire" (1860-1870), when scores of brigands rebelled against the harsh policies imposed by the new government, which in turn ordered the destruction of these outlaws and anyone harbouring them. Gabriella Falcone is a peasant girl who works for Don Simone, the parish priest. She is forced to flee her hamlet of Camini in 1862 after stabbing Alfonso Fantin, a wealthy landowner who sexually assaulted her and then killed her father when he tried to intervene. Devastated to leave her fiancé Tonino, and knowing her fate will be life imprisonment at best if apprehended, she allows the priest to lead her through the harsh Aspromonte mountain range to seek refuge in an isolated monastery. They soon discover that Fantin has survived and is employing the forces of law to pursue Gabriella and bring her to justice. Gabriella and Don Simone continue their journey to seek yet another safe haven but soon fall into the hands of brigands. Gabriella is catapulted into a world she has only ever heard about in nervous whispers, a world where right and wrong, justice and vengeance take on new meanings, and where the boundaries between good and evil are blurred."--
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2013., PM Press Call No: QWF Fic Naw Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: A gripping novel that is at once political, historical, and romantic, Cazzarola! spans 130 years in the life of the Discordias, a fictionalized family of Italian anarchists. It details the family's heroic, multigenerational resistance to fascism in Italy and their ongoing involvement in the anarchist movement. From early 20th-century factory strikes and occupations, armed anarchist militias, and attempts on Mussolini's life, to postwar student and labor protest, and confronting the newest wave of contemporary neofascist violence sweeping Europe, the Discordias navigate the decades of political.
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c2011., Adult, HarperCollins Call No: Fic Bez Edition: 1st Canadian ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: In the summer of 1978, the Krasnansky family, three generations of Russian Jews, escaped to freedom through a crack in the Iron Curtain and landed in Italy, where they spent the next six months. They immersed themselves in the carnival of emigration, an Italy rife with love affairs and ruthless hustles, with dislocation and nostalgia, with the promise and peril of a better life.
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2013., Linda Leith Publishing Inc. Call No: QWF Fic Guz Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: The Girls of Piazza dœAmore traces the lives of three village girls and the forces that lead them to leave home for a new life across the ocean. Set in southern Italy in the 1950s, Connie Guzzo-McParlandœs short novel walks us through the piazza and the narrow alleys of her own childhood, imaginatively recreating an entire world as seen through the eyes of a young girl who accompanies her friends on their evening passeggiate to the spring water fountain and carries their love notes to the boys they love. The joys of Calabrian village life are palpable, and so are its frustrations and heartbreaks, but this is a world on the cusp of irrevocable change, as family after family is leaving. And thatœs what is most heartbreaking of all.
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By Rachman, Tomc2010., Adult, Dial Press Call No: Fic Rac Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman's wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it--and themselves--afloat. Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff's personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. Kathleen, the imperious editor in chief, is smarting from a betrayal in her open marriage; Arthur, the lazy obituary writer, is transformed by a personal tragedy; Abby, the embattled financial officer, discovers that her job cuts and her love life are intertwined in a most unexpected way. Out in the field, a veteran Paris freelancer goes to desperate lengths for his next byline, while the new Cairo stringer is mercilessly manipulated by an outrageous war correspondent with an outsize ego. And in the shadows is the isolated young publisher who pays more attention to his prized basset hound, Schopenhauer, than to the fate of his family's quirky newspaper. As the era of print news gives way to the Internet age and this imperfect crew stumbles toward an uncertain future, the paper's rich history is revealed, including the surprising truth about its founder's intentions."--Publisher description.
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By Walton, Jo2019., Adult, Tor Book Call No: QWF Fic Wal Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Young Girolamo's life is a series of miracles. It's a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It's a miracle that he's friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It's a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo "the Magnificent," the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It's a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It's a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It's a miracle that, despite the Pope's determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he's still on the loose ... and, now, running Florence in all but name. That's only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who--or what--he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives.
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2019., Adult, Buckrider Books Call No: Fic Ros Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "In this captivating and intricate novel Laisha Rosnau introduces us to three women, each of whom is storied enough to have their own novel and who, together, make for an unforgettable tale. Based on the true story of the Caetanis, Italian nobility driven out of their home by the rise in fascism who chose exile in Vernon, BC, Rosnau brings to life Ofelia Caetani, her daughter Sveva Caetani and their personal secretary, Miss Juul. Miss Juul is the voice of the novel, a diminutive Danish woman who enters into employment with the Caetani family in Italy before the birth of Sveva, stays with them through twenty-five years of seclusion at their home in Vernon, and past the death of Ofelia. Little Fortress is a story of a shifting world, with the death of its age-old nobility, and of the intricacies of the lives of women caught up in these grand changes. It is a story of friendship, class, betrayal and love."--
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c2011., Adult, Doubleday Canada Call No: Fic Ric Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Hannah Levi is known throughout 16th century Venice for her skill in midwifery. But when a Christian nobleman appears at her door in the Jewish ghetto, imploring her to help his wife who is dying in childbirth, Hannah's compassion is tested. Not only is it illegal for Jews to render medical treatment to Christians, it's punishable by torture and death. Yet Hannah finds she cannot refuse the chance to make more money than she's ever seen in her whole life. With such a handsome sum, she could save her husband, Isaac, who months earlier was captured at sea and forced into slavery in Malta by the Knights of St. John. Aided by her forbidden 'birthing spoons' - rudimentary forceps she invented to coax reluctant babies out of their mothers' wombs - Hannah agrees to assist the nobleman and attend to his ailing wife and child. Will she be able to save the mother and the baby? And if she does, will she be able to save herself? Woven through Hannah's travails in Venice is the story of Isaac and his life as a slave in Malta. Fearing that Hannah has perished in the plague, he pins whatever hopes he has of returning home to her on his talent for writing love letters that melt even the hardest of hearts.".
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2017., Adult, Doubleday Canada Call No: Fic Ric Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "In The Midwife of Venice, set in 1575, Hannah Levi was forced to flee Venice with the baby of a Venetian aristocratic family whom she rescued. Roberta Rich followed that action-packed adventure with The Harem Midwife, which exiled Hannah and her beloved husband Isaac to Constantinople--only for Hannah to become enmeshed in the shady politics of a sultan's harem. And now, with A Trial in Venice, set five years later, Hannah is forced back to Venice--both to opulent yet crumbling villas and the Jewish ghetto known as Veneto. Her beloved adopted son Matteo has been kidnapped and is in danger once more. And this time, so is Hannah. A rollicking and evocative read, peopled with beguiling, unforgettable characters (including the epic return of the troublesome and winsome Foscari and Cesca), this novel is a breathtaking follow up to The Midwife of Venice and The Harem Midwife, certain to shock and delight fans of the series and solidify Rich's reputation as one of Canada's most loved historical fiction authors."--From publisher.
