Rita was an average American Housewife. She’d raised a son and been content with her life. Now as she prepared for her 25th anniversary her husband sent her divorce papers. When she thought it couldn’t get worse she discovered he had been laundering money for the mob and not only was the Justice Department looking for him, so was the Head of the Family, Antonio Franco. Coming face to face with Mr. Franco was both a nightmare and a dream. He was the most sensual man she had ever seen except for the small fact he was pointing a gun at her. Kidnapped from a busy restaurant, Rita was prepared for the worst fate she could imagine. She wasn’t prepared to fall so totally and completely in love.

From the glamorous world of opera to the underbelly of New York's seediest tenements, a page–turning rollercoaster ride of kidnappings, betrayals, /td/tr/table friendships, spies, bribes, hidden identities, and twisted intrigues ... By 1908, Francesca Frascatti has the opera world at her feet. A volatile Neapolitan diva, Francesca secretly aches with regret for having given up her daughter, Maria Grazia, on the road to stardom. Hearing that Maria has started a new life in America, Francesca tries to find her. By night, she sings Tosca; by day, she and Dante Romano, a detective posing as her lover, assume any guise necessary to search New York. Francesca must brave a sordid maze of spies, corrupt police officers and greedy hooligans to reach Maria Grazia before her cunning grandfather can whisk her off to his Italian estate, and away from her forever. At the opera house, Mina DiGianni, a gentle Italian lace maker from the Lower East Side, becomes Francesca's costume dresser and confidante. Mina is also haunted by her past. Caught between the joyful hope of new life growing inside her and the painful reality of her husband's abuse, Mina discovers new strengths and possibilities working for Francesca . and is bewildered to find herself falling in love with the diva's enigmatic lover, Dante. Mina and Francesca's worlds become ever more intertwined, and then collide in a shocking turn of events. Both women will face the greatest challenges of their lives: to finally lay their pasts to rest, and to embrace the present.

Right before Sarah Stagg's teenage sons leave the nest, her husband, Andrew, the star of their local dramatic club, leaves her for his twentysomething leading lady, Hyacinth. Sarah, a freelance artist, quickly discovers that the path of a discarded wife is strewn with hazards and humiliations. Her neighbors and friends treat her like she has the plague. And her soon-to-be-ex wants to sell the house she's spent years turning into her dream home. Her best friend Miriam offers one concrete piece of advice: Sarah should keep busy -- and with Andrew and Hyacinth on a sabbatical from their acting group, what better distraction than the theater? To Sarah's horror, she is promptly given the starring role intended for Hyacinth. She wonders if she should write a survival guide for ex-wives. Her first chapter could be titled "How to Invite Utter Humiliation to Your Life in Front of an Entire Town and Watch Your Heartbreak Magically Melt Away." Then Sarah runs into the biggest crush of her youth. Now Sarah has more -- better -- advice to add to the list: Confront your past. Revel in the present. Be open to romance. But despite her new love interest, Sarah wonders if she's actually dealing or just having fun dreaming up sage words for women scorned. Will she ever truly understand what it means to live wisely and independently?

A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN? Determined to marry off her widowed father, concert pianist Cassandra Rowlands had finally met the perfect stepmother candidate—only to find herself falling for the woman’s son. Enigmatic, reclusive Antonio Pagliarulo was everything Cassandra had learned to avoid. Yet she found herself helplessly drawn to the passionate tenor, certain her feelings couldn’t possibly be mutual…. After years of self-imposed solitude, Antonio cared about Cassandra more than he had ever dreamed it was possible to love a woman. But he knew the minister’s beautiful daughter was no stranger to heartache. He couldn’t possibly expect her to understand his secret burden—or why he could never be free to marry….

Using the records of several Venetian courts that dealt with sex crimes, Ruggiero traces the evolution of both licit and illicit sexuality during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, providing insight into Venetian society and, ultimately, the Renaissance itself.

Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for thirty creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences in California. Set in the Golden State's big cities, oceanside towns, rugged mountains, and sparsely populated deserts, the stories in this entertaining and compelling collection will have readers looking over their shoulders again and again. California's folklore is kept alive in these expert retellings by master storyteller S. E. Schlosser and in artist Paul Hoffman's evocative illustrations. Readers will meet the Queen of Death Valley, cheer on the ghost who haunts his claim-jumping murderer, look out for a blood-hungry rolling head, learn about the sea monster of Monterey Bay Canyon, and hear otherworldly voices from the Pacific Ocean--or simply feel an icy wind on the back of their necks on a warm California evening. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to grandma's, this is a collection to treasure.

Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema offers, for the first time in Italian Cinema criticism, a contextual study of the representation of women in twentieth-century Italian films. Marga Cottino-Jones argues that the ways women are depicted on screen reflects a subconscious "sexual conservatism" typical of an Italian society rooted within a patriarchal ideology. The book then follows the slow but constant process of social awareness in the Italian society through women in film, especially after the 1950s. Comprehensive in scope, this book analyzes the films of internationally known male and female directors, such as Antonioni, Fellini, Rossellini, Visconti, Bertolucci, Benigni, Cavani, Wertmuller, Comencini, and Archibugi. Special consideration is given to the actresses and actors that have become the icons of Italian femininity and masculinity, such as Sofia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Silvana Mangano, Gian Carlo Giannini, Marcello Mastroianni, and Alberto Sordi.

Read this book and the world's most famous image will never look the same again. For the world's greatest cultural icon still has secrets to reveal - not the silly secrets that the 'Leonardo loonies' continue to advance, but previously unknown facts about the lives of Leonardo, his father, Lisa Gherardini, the subject of the portrait, and her husband Francesco del Giocondo. From this factual beginning we see how the painting metamorphosed into a 'universal picture' that became the prime vehicle for Leonardo's prodigious knowledge of the human and natural worlds. We learn about the new money of the ambitious merchant who married into the old gentry of Lisa's family. We discover Lisa's life as a wife and mother, her association with sexual scandals, and her later life in a convent. We meet, for the first time, previously undiscovered members of Leonardo's immediate family and discover new information about his early life. The tiny hill town of Vinci is placed before us, with its widespread poverty. We find out about the career and possessions of his father, a notable lawyer in Florence. The meaning of the portrait that resulted from these human circumstances is vividly illuminated though Renaissance love poetry and verses specifically dedicated to Leonardo. We come to understand how Leonardo's sciences of optics, psychology, anatomy and geology are embraced in his poetic science of art. Recent scientific examinations of the painting disclose how it evolved to assume its present appearance in Leonardo's experimental hands. Above all, we cut through the suppositions and the myths to show that the portrait is a product of real people in a real place at a real time. This is the book that brings back a sense of reality into the creation of the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. And the actual Mona Lisa, it turns out, is even more astonishing and transcendent than the Mona Lisa of legend.