The Di Marcos lived in the village of Casino, at the foot of Monte Casino. Above on the mountain, was the world famous Abby of St. Benedict. Eventually, the head of the family, Papa Pasquale De Marco made the decision to seek a better fortune in America. He took his three daughters and two of his sons with him across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the Charles street section of Providence, Rhode Island. Pasquale's eldest son, big Frank as he was called, remained back in Italy to take care of the family land and to pursue a promising career in professional boxing. After two years Frank's wife Anna, was wary of his fighting and wanted a child. Together they came to the conclusion to join the rest of the family in America. They settled on Luna Street, with the rest of the family, in the Charles Street section. Frank and Anna now had six children. Their eldest son was named Patty Di Marco and was the spitting image of his father. Someday he would retain the title his grandfather held as the adviser of the Di Marco family. At twelve years old he was already six feet tall, muscular and very handsome. Patty started fighting in the neighborhood at twelve years old. By the age of fourteen he became the undisputed leader of Charles Street. While attending Esek Hopkins junior high school, Patty asked one of his teachers, who spent twenty years in China, if she would teach him Chinese on her own time because they did not teach Chinese at his junior high school. Many years later his knowledge of the Chinese language, which Patty spoke perfectly, would prove to save his life in the Korean war. In his young adult life he was referred to as the king of Providence.

Franz Kafka met Felice Bauer in August 1912, at the home of his friend Max Brod. Energetic, down-to-earth, and life-affirming, the twenty-five-year-old secretary was everything Kafka was not, and he was instantly smitten. Because he was living in Prague and she in Berlin, his courtship was largely an epistolary one—passionate, self-deprecating, and anxious letters sent almost daily, sometimes even two or three times a day. But soon after their engagement was announced in 1914, Kafka began to worry that marriage would interfere with his writing and his need for solitude. The more than five hundred letters Kafka wrote to Felice—through their breakup, a second engagement in 1917, and their final parting in the fall of that year, when Kafka began to feel the effects of the tuberculosis that would eventually claim his life—reveal the full measure of his inner turmoil as he tried, in vain, to balance his desire for human connection with what he felt were the solitary demands of his craft.

“Dear Ava, I loved your book.” —Award-winning actress Emma Watson For fans of Kathleen Glasgow and Amber Smith, Ava Dellaira writes about grief, love, and family with a haunting and often heartbreaking beauty in this emotionally stirring, critically acclaimed debut novel, Love Letters to the Dead. It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more—though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was—lovely and amazing and deeply flawed—can she begin to discover her own path.

Remember the wonderfully romantic book of love letters that Carrie reads aloud to Big in the recent blockbuster film, Sex and the City? Fans raced to buy copies of their own, only to find out that the beautiful book didn't actually exist. However, since all of the letters referenced in the film did exist, we decided to publish this gorgeous keepsake ourselves. Love Letters of Great Men follows hot on the heels of the film and collects together some of history's most romantic letters from the private papers of Beethoven, Mark Twain, Mozart, and Lord Byron. For some of these great men, love is "a delicious poison" (William Congreve); for others, "a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music" (Charles Darwin). Love can scorch like the heat of the sun (Henry VIII), or penetrate the depths of one's heart like a cooling rain (Flaubert). Every shade of love is here, from the exquisite eloquence of Oscar Wilde and the simple devotion of Robert Browning, to the wonderfully modern misery of the Roman Pliny the Younger, losing himself in work to forget how much he misses his beloved wife, Calpurnia. Taken together, these letters show that perhaps men haven't changed all that much over the last 2,000 years--passion, jealousy, hope and longing still rule their hearts and minds. In an age of e-mail and texted "i luv u"s, this timeless and unique collection reminds us that nothing can compare to the simple joy of sitting down to read a letter from the one you love.

Stretched across city walls and along rooftops, Stephen Powers's colorful large-scale murals sneak up on you. "Open your eyes / I see the sunrise," "If you were here I'd be home," "Forever begins when you say yes." What at first looks like nothing as much as an advertisement suddenly becomes something grander and more mysterious—a hand-painted love letter at billboard size. Combining community activism and public art, Powers and his team of sign mechanics collaborate with a neighborhood's residents to create visual jingles— sincere and often poignant affirmations and confessions that reflect the collective hopes and dreams of the host community. A Love Letter to the City gathers the artist's powerful public art project for the first time, including murals on the walls and rooftops of Brooklyn and Syracuse, New York; Philadelphia; Dublin and Belfast, Ireland; São Paolo, Brazil, and Johannesburg, South Africa.

A disarmingly honest memoir about giving advice when you're not sure what you're doing yourself, by the woman behind The Boston Globe's Love Letters column. Every day, Boston Globe advice columnist Meredith Goldstein takes on the relationship problems of thousands of dedicated readers. They look to her for wisdom on all matters of the heart- how to cope with dating fatigue and infidelity, work romances, tired marriages, true love, and true loss. In her column, she has it all figured out, but in her real life she is a lot less certain. Whether it's her own reservations about the traditional path of marriage and family, her difficulty finding someone she truly connects with, or the evolution of her friendships as her friends start to have their own families, Meredith finds herself looking for insight, just like her readers. As she searches for responses to their concerns, she's surprised to discover answers to her own. But it's after her mother is diagnosed with cancer that she truly realizes how special her Love Letters community is, how this column has enriched her life as much, if not more than, it has for its readers. Can't Help Myself is the extraordinary (and often hilarious) story of a single woman navigating her mercurial love life, and a moving and poignant portrait of an amazing community of big-hearted, love-seeking allies.

"Practical methods to heal a broken heart and to break old patterns, while offering a path for transformation and possibility. These teachings go beyond healing toward the ultimate possibility of making everything - including love - work better"--

Whether or not you're currently dating someone, if you're a young person thinking about romance, you probably have a lot of questions. Who should you date? How do you turn down an unwanted date, navigate a first date, or break up with someone? Is kissing OK? Is marriage really for you? The Bible is sufficient to help you to think through the concerns of singleness and dating, and it has crucial things to say about the thoughts, attitudes, actions, and situations that commonly arise in this exciting stage of life. In friendly, practical letters, Sean and Spencer (and sometimes their wives, Jenny and Taylor) explore God's Word for answers on singleness, the start of a relationship, and tough dating situations, from breakups to broken boundaries. Their biblical insights will help you to make informed decisions on the road ahead.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Soon to be a Hulu Original series • The internationally acclaimed author of Wild collects the best of The Rumpus's Dear Sugar advice columns plus never-before-published pieces. Rich with humor and insight—and absolute honesty—this "wise and compassionate" (New York Times Book Review) book is a balm for everything life throws our way. Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills—and it can be great: you’ve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar—the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild—is the person thousands turn to for advice.