19 Best 「adriana trigiani」 Books of 2024| Books Explorer
- Viola in Reel Life (Viola, 1)
- The Supreme Macaroni Company: A Novel
- American Girls About Town
- Rococo: A Novel
- VIOLA SPOTLIGHT (Viola, 2)
- Tony's Wife: A Novel
- Kiss Carlo: A Novel
- Big Stone Gap: A Novel
- Very Valentine: A Novel
- Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers
I'm marooned.Abandoned.Left to rot in boarding school . . .There are four reasons why Viola Chesterton knows she'll never survive her first year at Prefect Academy: Her parents have heartlessly dropped her there against her will She has to leave behind her Best Friend Forever And Always, Andrew . . . and replace him with three new roommates who, disturbingly, actually seem to like it there "There" is South Bend, Indiana—Sherbet-Colored Sweater Capital of the World and about as far away from her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, as you can getAt least she has her video camera and her dreams of being a filmmaker to keep her busy. But boarding school, and her roommates, and even the Midwest are nothing like she thought they would be, and soon Viola realizes she may be in for the most incredible year of her life. But first she has to put the camera down and let the world in.
New York Times Bestseller• Publishers Weekly BestsellerIn The Supreme Macaroni Company, bestselling author Adriana Trigiani weaves a heartbreaking story that begins on the eve of a wedding in New York's Greenwich Village and culminates in beautiful Tuscany. Family, work, romance, and the unexpected twists of life and fate all come together in an unforgettable narrative that Trigiani fans will adore.For over a hundred years, the Angelini Shoe Company in Greenwich Village has relied on the leather produced by Vechiarelli & Son in Tuscany. This ancient business partnership provides the twist of fate for Valentine Roncalli, the schoolteacher turned shoemaker, to fall in love with Gianluca Vechiarelli, a tanner with a complex past . . . and a secret.But after the wedding celebrations are over, Valentine wakes up to the hard reality of juggling the demands of a new business and the needs of her new family. Confronted with painful choices, Valentine remembers the wise words that inspired her in the early days of her beloved Angelini Shoe Company: "A person who can build a pair of shoes can do just about anything." Now the proud, passionate Valentine is going to fight for everything she wants and savor all she deserves—the bitter and the sweet of life itself.
Born in the U.S.A....American gals are taking liberties -- and pursuing happiness on their own terms -- in this star-studded story collection featuring the nation's red-hot women writers.They've declared their independence!Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes) learns "The Truth About Nigel" -- and the trouble with falling for an incognito Hollywood actor. Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada) sends a single New Yorker on a backpacking trip halfway around the world -- where she sees her love life back home with new eyes -- in "The Bamboo Confessions." A harried mom with a hit novel crosses the pond in "My Great Brit Book Tour" by Adriana Trigiani (Lucia, Lucia), and turns a crumbling talk show appearance into a sweet success. Also uniting their talents in this free-spirited anthology areJULIANNA BAGGOTT CINDY CHUPACK LYNDA CURNYN QUINN DALTON LAUREN HENDERSON JUDI HENDRICKS GRETCHEN LASKAS CLAIRE LaZEBNIK CHRIS MANBY SARAH MLYNOWSKI MELISSA SENATE JILL SMOLINSKI NANCY SPARLING LAURA WOLF
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • One small Italian American town in America gets the makeover it never expected in this “eccentric, unpredictable, entertaining” (The Boston Globe) novel from the author of the beloved Big Stone Gap series“An artfully designed tale [with] characters so lively they bounce off the page [and] wit so subtle that even the best jokes seem effortless.”—PeopleBartolomeo di Crespi is the acclaimed interior decorator—not to mention the most eligible bachelor—in Our Lady of Fatima, New Jersey. From the dazzling shores of the Garden State to the legendary fabric houses of New York City, from the prickly purveyors of fine art in London to the Mediterranean coast of Italy, Bartolomeo is on a mission to bring talent, sophistication, and his aesthetic vision to his hometown. So when the renovation of the local church is scheduled, he assumes there is only one man to oversee the job.Recruiting an artist and a stained-glass artisan to help with the project—two handsome men who create romantic mayhem among Bartolomeo’s sister, his erstwhile fiancée, and all the other lovelorn ladies of OLOF—Bartolomeo struggles to create art while remaining the steadfast linchpin of the volatile di Crespi clan. Together, Bartolomeo and his team will do more than blow the dust off the old Fatima frescoes—they will turn the town upside down, challenge the faithful, and restore hope where there once was none.
I am in the midst of a conundrum.Viola is finally where she belongs—back home in Brooklyn, where there are no khakis or sherbet-colored sweaters and people actually think her yellow flats are cool. But her best friend, Andrew, has started acting weird around her, and a new boyfriend has her friend Caitlin ditching her every chance she gets. Although Viola gets an internship on a Broadway show, nothing else is going as planned. When her roommates from Prefect Academy show up for a visit, Viola starts to wonder—is Brooklyn where she wants to stay? And when a tragic event shakes everyone's world, Viola realizes it's not where she belongs that matters—it's who she's with that really counts.In this heartwarming follow-up to bestselling author Adriana Trigiani's teen debut, Viola in Reel Life, Viola just may be ready to get out from behind her trusty video camera and take the starring role in her own life.
National BestsellerA People Magazine Book of the Week and New York Post Best Book of the WeekLove, ambition, and the consequences of both lie at the heart of this spellbinding epic of two working-class kids who become a successful singing act during the big band era of the 1940s.Chi Chi Donatelli and Saverio Armandonada meet one summer on the Jersey shore before World War II. Chi Chi is a talented and ambitious singer-songwriter working in a local blouse factory looking for her big break, while Saverio, a singer already on the rise, is fronting a touring band and has the good looks and smooth vocals that make success seem assured. It isn’t long before Saverio becomes Tony Arma and he and Chi Chi form a duo; together they navigate the glamorous worlds of nightclubs, radio, and television. Soon they’re married and all goes well until it becomes clear that they must make a choice: Which of them will put ambition aside to build a family and which will pursue a career? What compromises will they make to achieve their dreams? And on the road to fame and fortune, how will they cope with the impact these compromises have on their marriage, family, and themselves?From the Jersey shore to Hollywood, New York City to Las Vegas, the hills of northern Italy and the exuberant hayride of the big band circuit in between: Tony’s Wife tells the story of the twentieth century in song, as Tony & Chi Chi make studio recordings and promote them with appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. As they juggle the demands of their public lives, secrets are revealed, promises are broken, and loyalty is tested as the Armas attempt to keep the music playing and their family together.Tony’s Wife is a richly layered novel that explores how a traditional Italian-American family grapples with the seismic shifts they face in a rapidly changing world. Replete with a pageant of vivid, complex characters, this deeply human saga of love and sacrifice showcases Adriana Trigiani’s gifts as a captivating storyteller and reveals her understanding that there are many different kinds of families: that over time love can evolve in ways that nobody can predict, especially when the hearts involved are open to forgiveness, the sweet reprise of redemption.
Instant New York Times Bestseller • People’s Book of the WeekFrom Adriana Trigiani, the beloved New York Times-bestselling author of The Shoemaker’s Wife, comes an exhilarating epic novel of love, loyalty, and creativity—the story of an Italian-American family on the cusp of change.It’s 1949 and South Philadelphia bursts with opportunity during the post-war boom. The Palazzini Cab Company & Western Union Telegraph Office, owned and operated by Dominic Palazzini and his three sons, is flourishing: business is good, they’re surrounded by sympathetic wives and daughters-in-law, with grandchildren on the way. But a decades-long feud that split Dominic and his brother Mike and their once-close families sets the stage for a re-match.Amidst the hoopla, the arrival of an urgent telegram from Italy upends the life of Nicky Castone (Dominic and his wife’s orphaned nephew) who lives and works with his Uncle Dom and his family. Nicky decides, at 30, that he wants more—more than just a job driving Car #4 and more than his longtime fiancée Peachy DePino, a bookkeeper, can offer. When he admits to his fiancée that he’s been secretly moonlighting at the local Shakespeare theater company, Nicky finds himself drawn to the stage, its colorful players and to the determined Calla Borelli, who inherited the enterprise from her father, Nicky must choose between the conventional life his family expects of him or chart a new course and risk losing everything he cherishes.From the dreamy mountaintop village of Roseto Valfortore in Italy, to the vibrant streets of South Philly, to the close-knit enclave of Roseto, Pennsylvania, to New York City during the birth of the golden age of television, Kiss Carlo is a powerful, inter-generational story that celebrates the ties that bind, while staying true to oneself when all hope seems lost.Told against the backdrop of some of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies, this novel brims with romance as long buried secrets are revealed, mistaken identities are unmasked, scores are settled, broken hearts are mended and true love reigns. Trigiani’s consummate storytelling skill and her trademark wit, along with a dazzling cast of characters will enthrall readers. Once again, the author has returned to her own family garden to create an unforgettable feast. Kiss Carlo is a jubilee, resplendent with hope, love, and the abiding power of la famiglia.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first novel in the beloved Big Stone Gap series, now a major motion picture written and directed by Adriana Trigiani, starring Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, Whoopi Goldberg, John Benjamin Hickey, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia, and Jenna Elfman“Delightfully quirky . . . chock-full of engaging, oddball characters and unexpected plot twists.”—People (Book of the Week)It's 1978, and Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She’s also the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the Rescue Squad, and the director of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the town’s long-running Outdoor Drama. Ave Maria is content with her life—until, one fateful day, her past opens wide with the revelation of a long-buried secret that will alter the course of her life. Before she knows it, Ave Maria is fielding marriage proposals, trying to claim her rightful inheritance, and planning the trip of a lifetime to Italy—one that will change her view of the world and her own place in it forever.Millions of readers around the world have fallen in love with the small town of Big Stone Gap, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and its self-proclaimed spinster. Full of wit and wonder, hilarity and heart, Big Stone Gap is a gem of a book, and one that you will share with friends and family for years to come.WINNER OF THE LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA ANNUAL LITERARY AWARDDon’t miss any of Adriana Trigiani’s beloved Big Stone Gap seriesBIG STONE GAP • BIG CHERRY HOLLER • MILK GLASS MOON • HOME TO BIG STONE GAP
New York Times BestsellerReading List Selection by American Library AssociationLifetime original movie, starring Jacqueline Bissett and Kelen Coleman“Sex and the City meets Moonstruck…this first in a new trilogy from Trigiani is sly, sensual and dripping in style.” — PeoplePoignant, funny, warm, and red hot, Very Valentine is a wonderful treat for Adriana Trigiani fans—a “delightful” (Boston Globe), “romance-soaked novel” (Marie Claire) from much adored playwright, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, and New York Times bestselling author of The Shoemaker's Wife, All the Stars in the Heavens and The Supreme Macaroni Company. The adventures of an extraordinary and unforgettable woman as she attempts to rescue her family’s struggling shoe business and find love at the same time, Very Valentine sweeps the reader from the streets of Manhattan to the picturesque hills of Italy. Here is yet another novel from the incomparable Trigiani that will steal your heart.
"No one ever reads just one of Trigiani’s wonderfully quirky tales. Once you pick up the first, you are hooked.” —BookPageNew York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani shares a treasure trove of insight and guidance from her two grandmothers: time-tested, common sense advice on the most important aspects of a woman’s life, from childhood to the golden years. Seamlessly blending anecdote with life lesson, Don’t Sing at the Table tells the two vibrant women’s real-life stories—how they fell in love, nurtured their marriages, balanced raising children with being savvy businesswomen, and reinvented themselves with each new decade. For readers of Big Stone Gap, Very Valentine, Lucia, Lucia, and Rococo, this loving memoir is the Trigiani family recipe for chicken soup for the soul
Adriana Trigiani's two remarkable grandmothers, Lucia and Viola, lived through the 20th century from beginning to end as working women who juggled careers and motherhood. Trigiani visits the past to seek answers to the essential questions that define the challenges women face today.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTELLER • Ave Maria starts a new chapter in this wise, powerful, and humorous novel, the fourth book in the beloved Big Stone Gap series“[Adriana Trigiani is] one of the reigning queens of women’s fiction.”—USA TodayNestled in the lush Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the town of Big Stone Gap has been home for Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney and her beloved family and friends for generations. But with her daughter, Etta, having flown the nest to enchanting Italy, Ave Maria has reached a turning point, and she realizes that it’s time to go in search of brand-new dreams. Yet before she can put her foot on the path, her life is turned upside down.Ave Maria agrees to helm the town musical, a hilarious reunion of local talent past and present. A lifelong friendship collapses when a mysterious stranger comes to town and reveals a long-buried secret. An unexpected health crisis threatens her family. An old heartthrob reappears, challenging her marriage. An opportunistic coal company threatens to undermine the town’s way of life and the mountain landscape Ave Maria has treasured since she was a girl. Now she has no choice but to reinvent her world, her life, and herself, whether she wants to or not.Millions of readers around the world have fallen in love with the novels of the New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani, and she’s at her best in this exquisite page-turner. Home to Big Stone Gap is an emotional and unforgettable journey that reminds us that you can go home again and again.Don’t miss any of Adriana Trigiani’s beloved Big Stone Gap seriesBIG STONE GAP • BIG CHERRY HOLLER • MILK GLASS MOON • HOME TO BIG STONE GAP
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Ave Maria must decide between old love and new adventures in this enthralling second novel in the beloved Big Stone Gap series“Heartwarming . . . Everything that really matters is here: humor, romance, wisdom, and drama.”—The Dallas Morning NewsEight years have passed since Ave Maria Mulligan married Jack Mac, moved up into the hills, and dug in her roots even deeper. But Ave Maria soon discovers that the mountains cannot shelter her from the painful lessons of the heart. As her life reaches a crossroads, almost everybody in town has advice to offer—including the Bookmobile’s self-appointed sexpert Iva Lou Wade, savvy pharmacy owner Pearl Grimes, crusty chain-smoking cashier Fleeta, and of course, the always-wise band director Theodore Tipton. But when Ave Maria takes her daughter to Italy for the summer, her passion for a seductive stranger will test her marriage—and push her to choose the man who is truly her destiny.At once funny and deeply poignant, resonant with the power of love and forgiveness and the unexpected events that force us to stake a claim in our own lives, Big Cherry Holler is a wise, wonderful story to treasure.Don’t miss any of Adriana Trigiani’s beloved Big Stone Gap seriesBIG STONE GAP • BIG CHERRY HOLLER • MILK GLASS MOON • HOME TO BIG STONE GAP
For the Trigianis, cooking has always been a family affair–and the kitchen was the bustling center of their home, where folks gathered around the table for good food, good conversation, and the occasional eruption. Example: Being thrown out of the kitchen because one’s Easter bread kneading technique isn’t up to par. As Adriana says: “When the Trigianis reach out and touch someone, we do it with food.” Like the recipes that have been handed down for generations from mother to daughter and grandmother to granddaughter, the family’s celebrations are also anchored to the life and laughter around the table. We learn how Grandmom Yolanda Trigiani sometimes wrote her recipes in code, or worked from memory, guarding her recipes carefully. And we meet Grandma Lucia Bonicelli, who never raised her voice and believed that when people fight at the dinner table, the food turns to poison in the body.Adriana Trigiani’s voice springs to life from the first page of Cooking with My Sisters, a collection of beloved family recipes that the Trigianis have been enjoying for generations. But there’s much more here than just the food. Peppered with hilarious family anecdotes, poignant letters, and exquisite color photographs, Cooking with My Sisters draws us into the warm and witty world of the Trigiani clan. Each recipe has a story behind it, and each chapter has tips from different sisters, reflecting the unique personalities of the latest generation of Trigiani women.Here are mainstay meals, featured in sections such as “The Big Life” and “The Big Wow,” which include the chapters “Pasta, or as We Called It, Maccheroni” and “Food We Hated as Kids but Love to Serve Now.” Accessible to any cook, the recipes range from Chicken and Polenta, Zizi Mary’s Rice Soup, and Gnocchi to favorite desserts like Grandmom’s Buttermilk Cake–and all the delectable dishes are geared toward bringing your family together.Written with Adriana Trigiani’s trademark humor and verve, this wonderful book will appeal to anyone who values the bonds that food, community, and cultural tradition can provide.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This heartwarming tale is full of lessons about taking risks in life and love.”—Cosmopolitan“Funny, visual, and moving . . . A vibrant, loving, wistful portrait of a lost time and place.”—Richmond Times-DispatchIt is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City, and Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is rife with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages.Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris’ honor is tested.
New York Times Bestseller“Delightful, energetic. . . . Trigiani is a seemingly effortless storyteller.” — Boston GlobeAward-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker Adriana Trigiani returns with Brava, Valentine, continuing the heartwarming and hilarious story of Valentine Roncalli, her family, her love life, and the Angelini Shoe Company. Following on the heels of the New York Times bestseller Very Valentine (hailed by People magazine as “Sex and the City meets Moonstruck”), Brava, Valentine is another tour-de-force from the beloved author of bestselling novels Lucia, Lucia, The Queen of the Big Time, and the Big Stone Gap series.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A heartfelt novel of the power of love across three generations of an Italian-American family, from the author of the Big Stone Gap series“[An] epic of small-town life . . . A personal saga of American history and a romance woven together with warmth and good humor.”—The OregonianIn the late 1800s, the residents of a small village in coastal Italy migrated to the promised land of America. They eventually settled in Roseto, Pennsylvania, where they re-created every detail of their former lives, including the centerpiece of Roseto’s colorful old-world tradition: the annual pageant for Our Lady of Mount Caramel—or “the Big Time,” as it’s called by the young women competing to be its Queen.The industrious Castellucas farm the land outside Roseto. Nella, the middle daughter of five, aspires to a genteel life “in town,” far from the rigors of life on the farm. But her dreams of making her own fortune shift when she meets and falls in love with Renato Lanzaro, a worldly, handsome, devil-may-care poet. When Renato disappears without explanation, Nella is shattered.Four years later, Renato’s sudden return just before Nella’s wedding to the steadfast Franco Zollerano leaves her shaken. For although Renato has chosen a path very different from Nella’s, they are fated to live and work side by side for the rest of their lives in Roseto, where the past hangs over them like a brewing storm.Etched in glorious detail in Adriana Trigiani’s trademark style, The Queen of the Big Time is the story of a determined, passionate woman who can never forget her first love.
Milk Glass Moon, the third book in Adriana Trigiani's bestselling Big Stone Gap series, continues the life story of Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney as she faces the challenges and changes of motherhood with her trademark humor and honesty. With twists as plentiful as those found on the holler roads of southwest Virginia, this story takes turns that will surprise and enthrall the reader.Transporting us from Ave Maria's home in the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Italian Alps, from New York City to the Tuscan countryside, Milk Glass Moon is the story of a shifting mother-daughter relationship, of a daughter's first love and a mother's heartbreak, of an enduring marriage that contains its own ongoing challenges, and of a community faced with seismic change.All of Trigiani's beloved characters are Jack Mac, Ave Maria's true love, who is willing to gamble security for the unknown; her best friend and confidant, bandleader Theodore Tip-ton, who begins a new life in New York City; librarian and sexpert Iva Lou Wade Makin, who faces a life-or-death crisis. Meanwhile, surprises emerge in the blossoming of crusty cashier Fleeta Mullins, the maturing of mountain girl turned savvy businesswoman Pearl Grimes, and the return of Pete Rutledge, the handsome stranger who turned Ave Maria's world upside down in Big Cherry Holler.In this rollicking hayride of upheaval and change, Ave Maria is led to places she never dreamed she would go, and to people who enter her life and rock its foundation. As Ave Maria reaches into the past to find answers to the present, readers will stay with her every step of the way, rooting for the onetime town spinster who embraced love and made a family. MilkGlass Moon is about the power of love and its abiding truth, and captures Trigiani at her most lyrical and heartfelt.
Trigiani’s biggest novel to date--a breathtaking multi-generational love story that spans two continents, two World Wars, and two oceans, replete with the all the drama, sumptuous detail and heart-stopping romance that have made her “One of the reigning queen’s of women’s fiction” (USA Today).Beloved New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani returns with the most epic and ambitious novel of her career—a breathtaking multigenerational love story that spans two continents, two World Wars, and the quest of two star-crossed lovers to find each other again. Fans of Trigiani’s sweeping family dramas like Big Stone Gap and Lucia, Lucia will love her latest masterpiece, a book Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, calls “totally new and completely wonderful: a rich, sweeping epic which tells the story of the women and men who built America dream by dream.”