Book of the Day Roundup: April 21-25, 2025
20 Amici, 40 Ricette
Friends and Food from the Heart of Chianti
John Bersani
The Collective Book Studio
Hardcover $35.00 (272pp)
978-1-68555-668-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
20 Amici, 40 Ricette is American entrepreneur John Bersani’s inviting culinary guide to Italy’s Chianti region.
On his first visit to Tuscany, Bersani was seduced by its landscape, art, people, and food. He later bought a home in the village of Gaiole-in-Chianti, tucked into the mountainous center of the region. He fell further in love with the “beautiful, crazy, and, at times frustrating place.” Here, he makes a personal introduction to the traditional foodways of the Chianti Classico wine appellation.
The book begins by outlining pantry essentials, like the best quality tomatoes, olive oil, cheeses, and the dried borlotti and cannellini beans that feature in many robust and budget-conscious traditional dishes. Twenty Chiantigiani friends, many involved in the restaurant and wine trade, present their food philosophies and toothsome recipes, seasoned with Bersanti’s wine recommendations, menus, travel advice, and asides about proper kitchen techniques. It’s a satisfying melange of storytelling, travel writing, and culinary history, with the effect of being immersed in a curated tour of Bersani’s adopted village. Dreamy color photographs throughout evoke even more of the unique sense of place and its residents.
The lively contributors include fungi fanatic Luciano, who, while not divulging his favorite foraging spots, imparts his expert mushroom cooking advice and favorite pasta recipe. Actor and waiter Saverio offers up a hearty ribolitta soup recipe laden with black kale and beans, while other friends dole out stories and treasured family recipes from Chianti and more far-flung hometowns, ranging from Sardinia to Argentina and Texas. A finale of Bersani’s own well-honed recipes, including Grilled Chicken Wings, Sauteed Swiss Chard and Broccoli Rabe, and Pork Chops with Vinegar Peppers demonstrates his passion for “drawing flavors out of simple ingredients.”
Seductive and illuminating, 20 Amici, 40 Ricette is a culinary introduction to the delicious life at the heart of the Chianti region.
RACHEL JAGARESKI (February 17, 2025)
Charlotte
Martina Devlin
The Lilliput Press
Softcover $21.99 (340pp)
978-1-84351-904-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Love is the focus of Martina Devlin’s elegant historical novel Charlotte, about Charlotte Brontë, her husband Arthur, and Arthur’s cousin Mary, who became Charlotte’s friend and, later, Arthur’s second wife.
The story is set in Ireland during the brief but happy time around Charlotte and Arthur’s honeymoon. Mary narrates, and her observations are astute and entertaining. After observing a brief interplay between the newlyweds, she makes the delicate observation that while Arthur adores his bride, Charlotte “loved his love for her.” And the couple’s happiness was not to last: Nine months later, the writer was dead.
Later, bonded by their mutual love for Charlotte, Mary and Arthur wed. Mary takes a stand for her reclusive friend’s privacy against claims that her possessions and even memories of her now belong to “history” and is firm against those who seek to profit from all that’s related to the writer. In secret, she even burns Charlotte’s wedding dress rather than have it become public property.
With themes of friendship, love, loyalty, and loss, the book touches on sensitive topics well. It covers the economic and political affairs of the time, the friction between rich and poor people and Irish and English people, the absurdity of government and social rules, the treatment of women, and the public’s obsession with fame. Mysteries and hints of forbidden love (Charlotte and Mary hug “bone against bone”) prompt the imagination, as do graceful descriptions like “a shadow ghosted across her face.”
The insightful historical novel Charlotte focuses on Charlotte Brontë’s brief marriage and pivotal stay in Ireland.
KRISTINE MORRIS (February 17, 2025)
Marabella’s Moment
Maryann Cocca-Leffler
Albert Whitman & Company
Hardcover $18.99 (32pp)
978-0-8075-4975-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
This warm-hearted picture book encourages children to appreciate the small moments and hidden friends around them. Though often overlooked by her classmates, Marabella notices everything. When she spies some flowers sprouting in the schoolyard, she is determined to make sure they aren’t ignored too; she draws the flowers big and bright on the playground wall. When her classmates notice, Marabella sparks a class art project—and new appreciation for the world around them.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (February 17, 2025)
The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile
Errick Nunnally
CLASH Books
Softcover $17.95 (170pp)
978-1-960988-62-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Familiar yet otherworldly, Errick Nunnally’s novel The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile follows a Black boy growing up in 1970s Boston.
Approaching his teenage years, Sean listens to his mother Sojourner’s stories about being sent, as the queen of her people, from Saturn to Earth. Sean also learns more about both his parents’ involvements in the FBI-opposed Black liberation programs of the 1960s. This violent legacy becomes pressing amid typical coming-of-age scenes: spending time with friends, heckling rivals and bullies, and experiencing the amorous attractions of puberty.
The scenes of Sean’s upbringing are laden with sympathetic mischief. Sean and his friends, first expressing contagious mirth while trespassing in an ice-encrusted basement, engage in shenanigans at the basketball court, the roller-skating rink, and the movie theater. His family’s dynamics are endearing too. An eccentric, race-conscious sculptural artist, Sojourner lavishes Sean with the tender nickname “my prince”; Sean’s father, David, is protective, responsible, and affectionate. And popular culture references to the 1970s are delightful: Sean seeks out comic book heroes including Thor, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four, as well as LPs.
Revealed in piecemeal fragments or from overheard adult conversations, the ambiguous fictionality of Sojourner’s past as a “de facto Queen” in her “gilded cage” dips boyhood realism into a mysterious and evasive secondary layer of fantasy. Tied to this are the psychedelic sensations that overwhelm Sean when he interacts with girls—revealing, graphic depictions of sexual awakening, at times discomforting for their objectifying descriptions of beauty. Harrowing, disturbing, urgent, and unavoidable discourses about state-sanctioned violence against Black Americans amplifies as David suspects that renewed, illegitimate surveillance threatens his family.
An eclectic science fiction novel, The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile addresses adolescence and racial history in the US.
ISABELLA ZHOU (February 17, 2025)
The World So Wide
Zilla Jones
Cormorant Books
Softcover $24.95 (440pp)
978-1-77086-775-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A woman returns to her roots in Zilla Jones’s entrancing historical novel The World So Wide, about lost love amid a revolution.
In 1983, Felicity—half Black, half white—is a renowned Canadian opera singer. Her success doesn’t change her desire to join Claude, her former lover, who became deputy prime minister in Grenada’s new regime after the Black Pearls of Freedom staged a coup. When she’s invited to a showcase of Grenadian artists, she ends up under house arrest on the eve of yet another political takeover.
The fascinating, rearward-gazing exploration of how Felicity grew involved with the island nation’s revolutionary movement focuses on her disappointments and musical ambitions. There are childhood memories in Winnipeg and reconciliations about her discovering her singing talent. She met Claude and his friends in London as an activist student. Throughout, her pain over never feeling like she belongs is sharpened by racism, colorism, and people underestimating her. Her barbs mask her self-doubts.
As she waits, Felicity excavates her regrets, as over betraying a lover. These give context to her later impulsivity and need to prove herself. Family strains further highlight Felicity’s ambivalence as a second-generation daughter whose ties to Grenada differ from her mother’s, but who nonetheless yearns to claim a place of her own—and carves one out in the realm of international opera. Felicity’s powerful stage roles mirror her own ill-fated romances, allowing her to express through singing what she’s unable to otherwise. As Grenada’s political rifts meld with her broken relationships, she becomes resolved to infuse her art with her indelible experiences.
A celebrated singer contends with grief and homecoming in the candid historical novel The World So Wide.
KAREN RIGBY (February 17, 2025)
Kathy Young
