'This isn't a mid-life crisis OK? For a start I'm not old enough yet to have one of those. I'm calling it a happiness project. I've stolen an entire summer from my life and by the time it's over I plan to leave this place with a list in my hand. The ten things that make me happy, that's all I want to know. How difficult can it be? They may be small things - a perfect cup of coffee, a day without rain - or bigger ones. It's still the beginning so how can I know?' Addolorata Martinelli knows she should be happy. She has everything she thought she wanted - her own business, a husband, a child. So why does she feel as if something is missing? Then when her restaurant, Little Italy, is slated by a reviewer, she realises that she's lost the one thing she thought she could always count on, her love of food. So Addolorata heads to Venice for a summer alone, aiming to find the ten things that make her happy. Once she's found them, she'll construct a new life around her ten things, but will they include her life in London? Readers are loving Nicky Pellegrino! 'I could smell the fresh pasta, feel the sunshine, smell the sea breeze and feel my worries wash away. It was lovely to stumble down the cobbled paths and stroll along the beautiful scenery' 'Through Italy, through food, through heartbreak, through love, through family. Add in a pinch of karmic justice and you have the perfect read with a joyful ending!' 'Once again Nicky Pellegrino had me captivated with this amazing story. It made me laugh, made me cry. I read it in one afternoon' 'I will say that if you are a woman on the cusp of discovering who you are and what your heart desires...then you will devour this book as I did' 'Such a great escapism read, full of emotions and family drama with love'

'This isn't a mid-life crisis OK? For a start I'm not old enough yet to have one of those. I'm calling it a happiness project. I've stolen an entire summer from my life and by the time it's over I plan to leave this place with a list in my hand. The ten things that make me happy, that's all I want to know. How difficult can it be? They may be small things - a perfect cup of coffee, a day without rain - or bigger ones. It's still the beginning so how can I know?' Addolorata Martinelli knows she should be happy. She has everything she thought she wanted - her own business, a husband, a child. So why does she feel as if something is missing? Then when her restaurant, Little Italy, is slated by a reviewer, she realises that she's lost the one thing she thought she could always count on, her love of food. So Addolorata heads to Venice for a summer alone, aiming to find the ten things that make her happy. Once she's found them, she'll construct a new life around her ten things, but will they include her life in London? Readers are loving Nicky Pellegrino! 'I could smell the fresh pasta, feel the sunshine, smell the sea breeze and feel my worries wash away. It was lovely to stumble down the cobbled paths and stroll along the beautiful scenery' 'Through Italy, through food, through heartbreak, through love, through family. Add in a pinch of karmic justice and you have the perfect read with a joyful ending!' 'Once again Nicky Pellegrino had me captivated with this amazing story. It made me laugh, made me cry. I read it in one afternoon' 'I will say that if you are a woman on the cusp of discovering who you are and what your heart desires...then you will devour this book as I did' 'Such a great escapism read, full of emotions and family drama with love'

Kat Black has never lived a quiet life. She's an adventurer: a food writer travelling the world visiting far-flung places and eating unusual things. Now she's about to embark on her biggest adventure yet - a relationship. She has fallen in love with an Italian man and is moving to Venice for a year to help him run his guesthouse, Hotel Gondola, where she hopes to put down some roots for the first time in years. Kat will write all about her adventure: the food she eats, the recipes she collects, the people she meets, and the man she doesn't know all that well but is going to make a life with. But as Kat ought to know by now, the thing about adventures is that they never go the way you expect them to...

Robert "'Cali" Callahan is a teen runaway, living on the streets of Venice Beach, California. He's got a pretty sweet life: a treehouse to sleep in, a gang of surf bros, a regular basketball game...even a girl who's maybe-sorta interested in him. What he doesn't have is a plan. All that changes when a local cop refers Cali to a private investigator who is looking for a missing teenager. After all, Cali knows everyone in Venice. But the streets are filled with people who don't want to be found, and when he's hired to find the beautiful Reese Abernathy--who would do anything to stay hidden--Cali enters a new world filled with mysterious characters, dangerous choices, and his first chance at real love.

De Blasi, a chef and food writer from St. Louis, begins a whirlwind romance with a man in Venice.

Celebrating 50 years of Tove Jansson's classic, bestselling novel Featured in the BBC 2 Between the Covers Bookclub Special (Eurovision series 2023) 'Distils the essence of summer' Robert Macfarlane 'Magical, life-affirming' Elizabeth Gilbert The Worldwide Classic about a tiny island and larger love. An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges - one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself. Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. With a foreword by Esther Freud and an afterword by Sophia Jansson (on whom the child 'Sophia' is based) who returns to the island during the pandemic at the point of becoming a grandmother herself. Includes a 15pp epilogue by Tove's niece Sophia Jansson - the inspiration for 'Sophia' - on a personal and moving return to the island. 'Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.' Esther Freud 'Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.' Philip Pullman

The illuminating story of writer and muse—which also examines the cost to a young woman of her association with a larger-than-life literary celebrity—Autumn in Venice is an intimate look at Hemingway’s final years. In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called “absolutely god-damned wonderful.” A year shy of his fiftieth birthday, Hemingway hadn’t published a novel in nearly a decade when he met and fell in love with Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school. Here Andrea di Robilant re-creates with sparkling clarity this surprising, years-long relationship, during which Adriana inspired a man thirty years her senior to complete his great final work. Hemingway used Adriana as the model for Renata in Across the River and into the Trees, and continued to visit Venice to see her; when the Ivanciches traveled to Cuba, Adriana was there as he wrote The Old Man and the Sea.

Twelve-year-old Skyler is in for a summer of adventure in Venice, Italy, as she pursues a dream opportunity in this hilarious MIX novel that’s a companion to The BFF Bucket List. Skyler is about to go on the biggest adventure of her life. Her mother has been relocated to Venice, Italy, and there is the possibility it could be a permanent move. While there, Skyler will be blogging and writing about the city as part of an informal internship that could lead to bigger things for her if all goes well. One of her fellow interns, Logan is cool, cute, and Australian. But the other intern, Zara, isn’t quite as nice, and seems determined to sabotage all of Skyler’s suggestions. And with a big assignment coming up, Skyler is stumped as to what to write about. Skyler wishes she has someone to talk to, but the first person who comes to mind isn’t even on the same continent: her BFF, Ella. Skyler knows that Ella would probably have to solution to a lot of her problems, especially the writer’s block, but they didn’t leave on the best of terms after a bucket list went a little awry. Thanks to technology, Skyler and Ella slowly begin to talk like old times. But when one of Skyler’s blog posts gets replaced with one she never intended anyone to see, she isn’t sure if she can ever belong anywhere. With the help of some Italian magic and her oldest friend, can Skyler learn to love her new city?

Nothing is what it appears to be in this lush destination thriller that takes readers into lives of the rich Venetians who live behind the ornate doors of their palazzos. Secrets are about to spin out of control. Contessa Giselle Verona jets between Paris and Venice creating dangerous sculptures that have gotten her banned from galleries, but collectors reach for their checkbooks to buy her next work of art. She lives a perfect life until an innocent artist is thrown up against her at a murder scene, and a powerful man she's never met decides to wage war against her in-laws. This suspenseful game of cat and mouse ricochets around sumptuous locales as family secrets draw in the Vatican, the Mafia and threatens the foundations of floating city itself.

One of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, the novella “Death in Venice” embodies themes that preoccupied Thomas Mann (1875–1955) in much of his work; the duality of art and life, the presence of death and disintegration in the midst of existence, the connection between love and suffering, and the conflict between the artist and his inner self. Mann’s handling of these concerns in this story of a middle-aged German writer, torn by his passion for a Polish youth met on holiday in Venice, resulted in a work of great psychological intensity and tragic power.