Search:

The seven or eight deaths of Stella Fortuna : a novel / by Grames, Juliet,author.;
Over a hundred years ago, in a mountainside village in Calabria, Italy, from a union between two young people with little to their names, a baby was born. Beautiful and adored by her mother, baby Mariastella Fortuna-- known as Stella-- seemed promised a happy destiny. But if Stella Fortuna means 'lucky star,' then life must have a funny sense of humour. Everybody in the Fortuna family knows the story of how Stella, once the most beautiful girl in the village of Ievoli, the unconventional, fiercely independent young woman who refused to learn to cook and who swore she would never marry, has escaped death time and time again. From her childhood in Italy, to her adulthood in America, death has seemed to pursue Stella. She has been burned, eviscerated and bludgeoned; she has choked, nearly fallen out of a window, and on one occasion, her life was only saved by a typo. However, even the best-known stories still have secrets to reveal ... and even after a century, Stella's is no exception. No woman survives seven or eight deaths without a reason. So, how did she? In a tale which spans nine decades, two continents, and one family's darkest, deepest-buried truths, the answer awaits ...
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Domestic fiction.; Families; Italian Americans; Immigrants; Sisters; Family secrets;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The lost boy of Santa Chionia / by Grames, Juliet,author.;
"Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there's no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don't the police come and investigate? When an old woman begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival. Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight-and one of the world's most ruthless criminal syndicates-The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Cold cases (Criminal investigation); Missing persons; Nineteen sixties; Secrecy; Young women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI