Wanting to discover the ingredients of a well-lived life, American chef Marlena de Blasi and her husband left Venice to live among the villagers, ancient olive groves, and hot Etruscan springs on the patch of land where Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio collide. Filled with the daily rituals of village life, this is a story of shared meals and tender passions set in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

A Thousand Days In Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure

Marlena De Blasi

Literature & Fiction

Thorndike Press

(11 CDs, 12.5 hours, Unabridged) Marlena de Blasi is an acclaimed food writer and the author of the best-selling memoir A Thousand Days in Venice. In  Amandine, de Blasi rafts a poignant fiction debut about one girl's search for identity amidst the chaos of WWII.Amandine was born out of wedlock and then hidden in a French convent by her royal Polish grandmother - who lied to Amandine's mother and said the infant has died. As a child, Amandine is fondly looked after by her governess Solange, yet struggles to accept her orphaned state and longs to put together the missing pieces of her identity. But as war engulfs Europe, Amandine's time to find answers is running out.

Amandine

RECORDED BOOKS^

A Thousand Days In Venice: An Unexpected Romance

Travel

Europe

Virago Press Ltd.

Dolce e Salta - A Bittersweet Adventure In Tuscany

Allen& Unwin

From the author of the bestselling A Thousand Days in Venice, these are the further adventures of Marlena and Fernando and their experiences as they move to a small village in Tuscany. Another delicious combination of authentic Italian life, food, recipes, love and memoir. ; ; In San Casciano dei Bagni, a small Tuscan village of 200 people, Marlena and her Italian husband, Fernando, rent a barely renovated former stable with no telephone, no heating and something resembling a toy kitchen. They live among ancient olive groves and hot Etruscan springs in this patch of earth where Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio rub shoulders. Fascinated by the rural tradition, Marlena finds her muse in Barlozzo, a gruff but charming Tuscan who has lived in San Casciano all of his life. He guides Marlena and Fernando in exploring the old rhythms of country life that are linked to the growing seasons. Barlozzo's fascinating stories lead Marlena and Fernando to the regional sacred festivals, to taste just-pressed olive oil drizzled over roasted country bread, and zucchini blossoms, battered and deep fried and sprayed with sea-salted water. They braise beans in red wine in a cauldron set over a wood fire and a stew of wild boar simmers overnight in the ashes of their hearth. Barlozzo shares his knowledge of farming traditions, ancient health potions and artisan food makers but he has secrets he doesn't share, and one of them concerns the beautiful Floriana, whose illness teaches Marlena that happiness is truly a choice. Beautifully combining Marlena's passions for food and love, Dolce e Salata weaves Marlena's own enticing recipes into this very satisfying story.

Dolce e Salata

Tuscan Secrets

The Umbrian Supper Club

A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance

He saw her across the Piazza San Marco and fell in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; and she, a divorced American chef, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thinks she is incapable of intimacy, that her heart has lost its capacity for romantic love. But within months of their first meeting, she has packed up her house in St. Louis to marry Fernando-"the stranger," as she calls him-and live in that achingly lovely city in which they met.

Continuing from A Thousand Days in Venice, this is the story of Marlena and her Venetian husband, Fernando, as they make a life for themselves in rural Tuscany. Amongst the many people they befriend is Barluzzo, an old sage who takes the couple under his wing and initiates them in the age-old traditions of Tuscan life: since their house lacks electricity, he helps them build a traditional brick oven in the garden; in autumn he wakes them at dawn to gather chestnuts and porcini mushrooms, and at the onset of winter he takes them to pull grapes from the vines and beat olives from the trees. Beautifully written and richly seasoned with mouth-watering recipes of the region, this book is filled with the carpe diem attitude that so captivated readers of A Thousand Days in Venice.

A Thousand Days in Tuscany : A Bittersweet Romance

Virago

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Books by Marlena De Blasi