Travel

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy.

Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed her to return to Cortona--and her beloved house, Bramasole--just as the first green appeared on the rocky hillsides.

Bella Tuscany, a companion volume to Under the Tuscan Sun, is her passionate and lyrical account of her continuing love affair with Italy. Now truly at home there, Mayes writes of her deepening connection to the land, her flourishing friendships with local people, the joys of art, food, and wine, and the rewards and occasional heartbreaks of her villa's ongoing restoration. It is also a memoir of a season of change, and of renewed possibility. As spring becomes summer she revives Bramasole's lush gardens, meets the challenges of learning a new language, tours regions from Sicily to the Veneto, and faces transitions in her family life.

Filled with recipes from her Tuscan kitchen and written in the sensuous and evocative prose that has become her hallmark, Bella Tuscany is a celebration of the sweet life in Italy.

A visual feast celebrating the alluring power of bookstores--68 paintings by illustrator Gibbs M. Smith.

The local bookstore, a place of wonder, refuge, and rejuvenation for book lovers the world over. Books & Mortar is a celebration of these literary strongholds. Sixty-eight oil paintings capture these storefronts at a moment in time, and pair the artwork with anecdotes about the shops and reflections on bookselling by many of the owners themselves.

A delightful gift for an avid reader, an inspiration for any bookstore owner, Books & Mortar is the perfect keepsake for anyone's personal library.

Gibbs M. Smith, founder of his eponymous book publishing company, started the business in 1969 with his wife, Catherine, in Santa Barbara, California. After three years, they moved the company to Layton, Utah. Gibbs served as president, committed to the daily operations of the business for forty-eight years, until his death in 2017. This book is a celebration of Gibbs' legacy, the local bookstores that he loved, and fifty years of Gibbs Smith as an independent publisher.