Italian Writing

Lisbon, 1483. Giacomo is seventeen, an apprentice cartographer with nothing to lose, when he redoes a colleague's calculation for fun and finds it wrong: the distance to Asia everyone is betting on is less than a quarter of what it should be. The colleague's name is Cristoforo Colombo, and he already knows. For nine years Giacomo watches the project be rejected, mocked and finally funded almost by accident, ends up the one man aboard the Santa Maria trusted with the true, secret logbook of the voyage — and after the landfall of 12 October 1492, does a second calculation he never tells ...

Ravenna, around 1318. Sister Chiara is the fastest copyist in her convent's scriptorium. For four years, loose pages have arrived from an exiled Florentine poet — no title, no name — and copying every canto twice, without meaning to, she has learned the whole poem by heart. When the poet dies in 1321, the final thirteen cantos of his Paradiso are nowhere to be found. Chiara realizes she may be the only living person who can restore them from memory — and starts writing, by candlelight, what she can never admit to knowing. This is a graded reader for intermediate learners of Italian (...

Her father left her a house in Palermo. And a ledger someone would kill to find. After years away, Elena comes back to Palermo with her son Luca to close her father's inheritance. But in his study a binder has been moved, a book is missing, and officer Vitale — who knows more than he says — is playing a dangerous double game. In the heat of the Sicilian summer, Elena discovers that her family's silence has a price, and somebody has been paying it for years. A family-secrets mystery written for Italian learners at level B1-B2 (50% B1 / 50% B2 — the exact middle of the series ...

Learn Italian the way your brain loves: with a story you can't put down. Antoine says he is a French consultant on holiday in Salerno. His black notebook tells a different story. On the beach he meets Margherita, a girl trapped in a golden cage: a powerful father, an imposed engagement, a mother who died in circumstances never explained. As they grow closer, a black Mercedes watches from a distance... This is a real romantic thriller written especially for Italian learners at level B1-B2 (intermediate). No simplified "textbook stories": a true novel with short sentences, controlled grammar ...

A marriage of silences. A corrupt hand inside the Prosecutor's office. And the most dangerous question in Rome: who protects the protector? Marco is a journalist who stopped looking at his wife the day he stopped looking at himself. Chiara works at the Prosecutor's office, where files that should explode quietly disappear. After the loss that broke their family, they live like strangers — until a car follows Chiara along the Lungotevere, and their separate investigations turn out to be the same one. The final, most advanced novel of the series, written for Italian learners at level B1-B2 ...

He wakes up in a Milan hospital. He knows the city's name. Not his own. Broken ribs, scarred knuckles, a door locked from outside — and a man in a white coat who comes at night with a syringe. The patient with no name has only one certainty: somebody put him there, and somebody wants to finish the job. To survive, he must escape into the rain of Milan and follow the only trace he has: a woman from a past he cannot remember. An amnesia thriller written for Italian learners at level B1-B2 (50% B1 / 50% B2, with a gentle introduction of the Italian subjunctive). Inside the book: • 5 ...

Listen to everyday words and phrases in Italian, then repeat, practise and refine! A relaxing way to pick up the language. Follow the words using the free booklet, also available at: collinsdictionary.com/resources Covers the words you need for modern life in Italy with topics on home life, work...

At dawn, the Colosseum is the most beautiful place in the world. But this morning, in an area closed “for restoration,” a man lies on the ground: Davide Ricci, tour guide, thirty-two years old. A workplace accident, they say immediately. But Davide was not supposed to be there. And above all: why does a tour guide enter a construction site at night? Arthur Finch knew Davide: he was the best guide in Rome, and a month earlier he had told him a strange sentence: “Arthur, the walls of the Colosseum talk. The problem is what they say about money.” Meanwhile, someone has decided to stop ...

Pip and Shannon dreamed of living the good life. They wanted to slow down, grow their own food and spend more time with the people they love. But jobs and responsibilities got in the way - their chooks died, their fruit rotted and Pip ended up depressed and in therapy. So they did the only reasonable thing - they quit their jobs, pulled the children out of school and went searching for la dolce vita in Italy.

The best-selling author of Italian Neighbors returns with a wry and revealing portrait of Italian life - by riding its trains. In his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he deli0vers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, Rome to Palermo, and right down to the heel of Italy.

Ennio Basile had worked in the archive of the Rome Prosecutor's Office for forty years. He knew every file, every shelf, every secret of the Port of Fogs. One morning he is found dead among his shelves, and everyone says: his heart. But the evening before, Basile had left a message on Luisa Corna's desk: "Dottoressa, I must show you something. It concerns you." Luisa will not be allowed to investigate: an internal inquiry has been opened against her, carefully built by those who want to stop her forever. The system has decided to settle its accounts: with her, with the American, with ...

Day 1. I wrote "Move to Italy" on a Post-it note at 2am after watching a YouTube video. I don't know what I was thinking.When Bob Henderson, a recently retired actuary from Columbus, Ohio, buys a one-euro farmhouse in the mountains of Abruzzo, he expects a project. What he gets is a life.Told in ninety daily diary entries spanning October to March, I Bought a Farm in Italy is the record of a man learning — how to prune an olive tree, make a correct ragù, lose gracefully at Scopa, and understand the specific patience of a hill town that has been watching outsiders arrive and leave for six...

From Stanley Tucci, award-winning actor and New York Times bestselling author, a deliciously unique memoir chronicling a year’s worth of meals. “Sharing food is one of the purest human acts.” Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in...

Five stand-alone historical novels. Five centuries of Italian history. One collection to learn Italian by reading real stories, not textbook dialogues. From a gladiator school in Caesar's Rome to Leonardo's workshop in Florence, from the barricades of Garibaldi's Italy to the deck of Columbus's Santa Maria and a convent scriptorium copying the last cantos of Dante's Paradiso — each novel in Testimoni d'Italia puts an invented witness inside a real historical moment, at the exact point where one ordinary life brushes against a name everyone knows. BOOK 1 — Il Lupo di Cesare. Rome, 59 BC....

Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, the acclaimed author of Happy All the Time delivers a beloved cookbook manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. With a foreword by Ruth Reichl. “As much memoir as cookbook and as much about...

With intriguing plots that will spark your imagination and keep you listening, Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners, Volume 2 will take your grasp of Spanish to the next level with key features to support and consolidate your progress. As a result, you will be able to focus on enjoying reading, delighting in your improved range of vocabulary and grasp of the language all without ever feeling overwhelmed. 

Improve your Italian vocabulary and absorb real grammar naturally while solving a thrilling murder mystery set in Rome! When a cold case resurfaces in the historic streets of Trastevere, American journalist Arthur Finch starts asking the questions nobody wants to hear. To find the truth, he will need his instinct, his notebook — and the help of Rome's most feared prosecutor. Specially written for A2-B1 (Pre-Intermediate) language students, this graded reader combines the suspense of a classic detective story with a complete, structured learning framework. Designed for maximum ...

After two weeks at sea, the Oosterdam docked in Civitavecchia, Italy. Among the shipboard romantics is a not-so-young couple on their long-overdue honeymoon. Approaching their 46th wedding anniversary, they have their hearts set on an Italian adventure they would have loved to have taken earlier in their marriage - but matters of making a living and a life and raising children kept them from getting away together. The surprises begin even before departed the harbor.

Arthur Finch has stayed in Rome. After the Trastevere case, the American journalist is almost famous: his article "The Port of Fogs" made noise around half the world. But the calm does not last. Bruno Castelli, an elderly art restorer, is found dead in his workshop behind the Vatican walls. An accident, says the first report. But only one painting is missing from the workshop: a small "school" Madonna, a "minor" painting. Why does a thief enter a workshop full of treasures and take exactly that one? Prosecutor Luisa Corna has the file on her desk. Arthur has his uncomfortable questions. The...

Goethe was probably the greatest universal genius who ever lived. Although known primarily as a poet, playright, and novelist, he was also known for his work in anatomy, botany, color, art criticism, and jurisprudence. Many people are deterred from attempting to read anything by Goethe because of his extremely penetrating intelligence and dense prose. But his travel diary, Italian Journey, is by far easier to digest than anything else by him.