Return to Town Beneath the Christmas Tree by J.R. Wirth

Have you ever believed that some objects in your life can bring good or bad luck? I have. Always!
And this story wants to remark this aspect of Christmas.

Published by Books to Go Now, the book, Return to Town Beneath the Christmas Tree is a book written by J.R. Wirth and it's the story of Harper and when Harper helped his grand-dad to decorating with ornaments his magical Christmas-Tree.
Am apparently innocuous common Christmas-Tree, common ornaments, you mustn't imagine anything exceptional.
But something disappeared and later-reappeared.
And, plus, since grand-dad bought that Christmas-Tree, magical things happened all the time.

When they're positive and magical episodes, you want to search for them, you want to discover more isn't it true?

With the help of Isaiah and Raji, this good gang decides to start an exploration in...

"Where did he buy this Christmas Tree?"
"Walmart."
"Right, let's go!"

One of them with driving-license, they will visit the warehouse with determination decided to discover why there was all that magic in granddad Christmas Tree and...Oh! What a surprise to discovering a parallel world; what an immersion in a world hidden at the totality of people, because magical and kept secret for not ruining the magic of Christmas.

A beauty adventure! with a good Christmas Spirit, and an important message; we need each other for function and thrive writes the author.

I thank Books to go Now for this eBook!



Anna Maria Polidori

The Snow Globe by Judith Kinghorn

This book, The Snow Globe  by Judith Kinghorn wants to be a romantic novel about relationship, broken relationship, friendship, love during the Christmas Time, dreams, represented by a Christmas Snow Globe, in general the syntheses of perfection and of an imagine unchangeable although time goes by, and changes.

What could represent a Christmas Snow Globe metaphorically?

A Christmas Snow Globe could represents our most beautiful moments, instants of pure and great happiness. A protective, little space where there is warm and love and joy and everyone is safe because in that tiny little space nothing can goes wrong.
A protective magical place although in miniature.

I picked up The Snow Globe because it is a historical romantic novel and it starts in 1926 the year my dad was born.

I loved the dreaming characterization of Eden Hall the big house where family Forbes lives in.
Everything started when Agatha  Christie the famous writers of so many crime books, the most important one Murder on the Orient Express (new movie with Johnny Depp, don't forget it!), disappear without leaving any trace.

The protagonists have all their own expectations and dreams for the arrival of Christmas just few days distant, that 1926. It was common a saying in family Forbes: ask for a lot of wishes so that some of them would come true.

But...Something during that Christmas won't go well, but completely wrong and the existence of the Forbes will change forever.

Daisy is the littlest daughter of Howard and she loves her dad so badly. She is just 18 years old and she doesn't know what to do.
Her family means a lot to her, she is sad, but everyone seem to have the best recipe for trying to go on and re-start the existence from the beginning.
Her mom, her dad, her sisters.
She meets Stephen during the search for the disappearance of Agatha Christie.

She was just 11 years when she firstly knew Stephen, the son of one of their helpers, and they immediately established a great friendship. The kind of friendship you won't never forget for all your life because it will mark your existence.
Now Daisy is in crisis and she finds in this old friend, with which she feels a great connection, some help and love.

All her past is turned upside down; people she trusted a lot "deluded" her putting her in confusion let's use this euphemism.

Daisy understands that Stephen is the right person for her, although there are in this case other serious problems because of their different social classes and background. We are in the 1920s when these thematic still felt a lot.

In this confusion other facts, Stephen for example will go away from her, will convince later Daisy of being realistic, accepting to marry someone else without love, but the girl is not convinced because her heart is still pulsing for Stephen.
Can a girl marry someone without regretting the person she loved the most?

Adorable romantic novel, perfect for these cold days and plenty of optimistic solutions, reconciliations and happy ends in the best tradition of the Christmas Season!


I thank NetGalley and Caneto for this wonderful eBook!

Anna Maria Polidori

Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan

Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan is a book about work, love, friendship, baking good bread, changes and new re-starts.

Polly was happy and her relationship with Chris, at first wonderful.
But then difficulties emerged with strength when their beautiful life destroyed by the advent of crisis.
The arrival of the net brought them a lot of problems and Chris' society collapsed.
Their life was stunning. Beautiful, rich, surrounded by trendy friends, they couldn't complain at all.

When this system collapsed and their life changed Polly decided to move on.

From Chris, from her past and mundane life, for re-discovering her real self, for trying to re-define her person and what she wanted in her life. Including her relationship with Chris.
Where?

Solutions not simple when you lose your job, your love, you don't want to accept the help of your bubbling girlfriend and you don't want to return to the house of your parents but you want to experience something else for a sense of personal pride.

Mount Polbearne, close to Plymouth but also a very different reality the most appropriate place for someone like Polly although the most unthinkable one, but...Life isn't an adventure?

Her new home plenty of humidity, not a castle but the girl doesn't lose  hope.
Finding good people close to her, making new friends more than possible. One day she also finds a puffin in...needs. That puffin with that broken wing...Like her, its in sufferance.
She will help Neil the Puffin to sorting out its problems successfully. Neil will become her best mate.

Polly's arrival is not unnoticed and the girl starts to be known and appreciated.

Polly's main passion if baking. Baking good bread, baking everything good. Also when she lived with Chris she baked when possible.
And she starts. To bake and to experiment some good and different kind of breads.

The local bakery store of the town is a complete mess and the bread uneatable  because when a person cook and bake should do that with love. Just in that way it's possible to eat great food.
The lady, owner of the bakery store and also of the house where Polly lives in can't do that anymore, because she has lost a lot in her life and she is still searching for that lost happiness every night.

Being a friendly girl Polly makes friendship with some fishermen...

Polly surfs the web in search for a new job when she discovers that after all maybe she doesn't want to find anything through the net, but she wants to bake.
She starts to sell her bread to the people of the village.
In incognito because if the lady of the bakery store discovers that can be a problem and after all no one want to upset her but just eating good bread.

Later a compromised will be reached. At the same time Polly knows Huckle a man from the South of the USA. A passionate of bees and good honey.

I can't tell you everything, because the story is much more elaborated.
I will leave alone the millionaire friend of Huckle, Polly's friend and a lot of other stories in the middle truly amazing.

The beautiful treat of the books by Jenny Colgan is that she is in grade to create a true love-story with real characters, real life and real feelings. She is warm in the representation of reality, and although you read a romantic story, this story won't never be banal, but feelings and lives of protagonists centered with great passion and devotion, I would want to use this word.
This book is also positive because when a love is ending, like the one of Chris and Polly is, protagonists don't live great stress, or complicated straining, tragic situations. It's a natural process, where love and good relationship wins always.

I don't want to forget to tell you that at the end of the book you will find some delicious recipes ready to be tried!

Highly recommended!

I loved so badly to read this book. I bought it through Edizioni Mondolibri.


Anna Maria Polidori

All Hearts Come Home for Christmas by Annalisa Russo

I don't know but I have the impression that all Christmas' books I read this year are focusing on an important thematic: home and the importance of coming home for Christmas.
Home is extremely important, because it means love, friendship, tenderness, good values, the place where we belong and also the one where we can find certainties.
Christmas is a special moment in which we can feel much more these feelings being all reunited.
But home can also means coming to a town for trying to re-encounter someone loved and then lost in and with the time.

Very beauty and relaxing cover, in the perfect Christmas' style, All Hearts Come Home for Christmas - A Christmas miracle just waiting to be unwrapped - by Annalisa Russo is a beautiful romantic novel, very well written, plenty of characters, life, dialogues, and I guess that it is a bit the representation of Russo's Italian's family for what I read in her biography, pretty numerous.

Jillian is a teacher and she lives in Minnesota, not exactly one of the warmest States of the USA, but although Christmas is coming to town there is not yet snow in her little corner of the world called Green Earth. Little village, she has various good friends, the most impressive one Mel with her husband in his fourth mission in Iraq. Strong story, you will see.
Jillian loves this period of the year, Christmas, cookies, gifts, the general atmosphere of excitement and happiness.

This Christmas brings with it various and unexpected "gifts:" the most important one the re-arrival of Jillian's biggest love, Tristan.

Jillian feels real panic when she hears that his ex boyfriend, Tristan, a very famous band musician from that same town is returning home after that he decided to leave the band.

Tristan doesn't have anyone too close in term of relatives for deciding to stopping by in Green Earth for some days but surely he could be there for Jillian.
Jillian understands it and she also understand the "peril" of it, because Tristan has been his only real love.
What to do? And what will happen?
Tristan's life of course has had more than an evolution and so he won't be alone in this trip. With him also his little daughter, and to him it's more important the acceptance of his daughter first of all than not of his return for trying to re-conquer Jillian's heart.

Enjoy this beautiful book! plenty of surprises, love, friendship and happy ends :-) perfect for the approaching Christmas' Time.

Highly recommended!

I thank NetGalley for this eBook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Mornings with God Prayers and Devotions for Women by Emily Bigger

Are you a woman and do you feel you are lost, alone, you don't have hope for tomorrow?
Are you living a stressing moment and you search for some answers?
Do you just want a book for keeping God always close to you although your life is going on well but you feel the desire of living it with more conscience and religious touch?
In this book Mornings with God Prayers and Devotions for Women by Barbour, Emily Bigger will let us discover God in His magnificence and helpful side thanks to dozens prayers and reflections.
It will be simple to establish a connection with Him thanks to the devotionals contained in this book.
They're for all occasions.
When you think you have been too hard, when you are in doubt, when you search for a precise answer, or you want to "auto-confirm" a certainty you feel right, you will find the proper devotional in this book obtaining the answer you are searching for.
You can keep the book on your bedside table for starting a good and refreshing day with the devotional more proper during that moment for you, or once to bed closing the day reflecting on a devotional or more if you think that you can't sleep without to hearing from God's word or advice or just because you want to be reassured by His words.
The end of a day is plenty of experiences, people we met, encounters.
We are here for living and experiencing isn't it true? and sometimes we can be wrong, or right or in doubt. You will find a lot of let's call them "guidelines" for living a wonderful and plenty life, with Lord, Jesus Christ, God, always close to you.


Highly recommended for sure.

I thank NetGalley and Barbour for this beautiful ebook!

Anna Maria Polidori

The Flower-Powered Garden by Andy Vernon

The  Flower-Powered Garden is  another  wonderful  book by Timber  Press. It will be published on February 12 2018.
Written by a real passionate of the topic Mr. Andy Vernon, this  time this book will  let us  discover the  world of  flowers  thanks to a  passion firstly developed and inherited by the author thanks to his  grand-dad.
 
Starting  from bed  flowers,  we will  learn how to  embellish  our little  or big  corners of  our house using a mixture of various, diversified flowers for creating a wonderful and stunning mix of colors in grade to bring harmony and joy in our existence and in the one of our dear ones in every season of the year.
Because  flowers are first of all color! and they donate a  poetic  vision in  grade to  give to  everyone peace. We  will also  learn how to  be more  creative  with our  seeds,  flowers,  how to choose the best soil, avoiding possible illness of flowers, how to grow a plant from seed or bulb to adult age. We will also understand that after all the problem of space with flowers is not so important. Yes, we will discover that we can plant flowers wherever we  want,  because  there is no  need to have  a precise  space for  flowers just the fantasy of planting them.

At the end a section including a selection of flowers you can think of planting in your garden!

Your garden won't be anymore the same one if you will follow the instructions of Vernon!

Highly recommended!

I thank NetGalley and Timber Press for the eBook!


Anna Maria Polidori

The New York Nobody Knows Walking 6000 Miles in the city by William B.Helmreich

When you afford to New York again or maybe for the first time, please read The New York Nobody Knows Walking 6000 Miles in the city by William B.Helmreich because it's plenty of informations and you will be prepared to visit the Big Apple with different eyes and a different conscience. Plus, the author is plenty of humanity and I find the narration captivating, felt.

While I was reading the book I could imagine the author  walking along the crowded streets of New York searching for an interesting story, something to report.

It's a city-story and it's a common saying this one: you can't know a big city very well if you don't start to walk discovering its inner sides.

It's a saying known for every big city of this world. Walking is a natural activity and walking in a big city can permit us to discover hidden spots, faces, something peculiar that differently couldn't never be seen.

The author took the story pretty seriously. This book is the result of his main activity during that period: he walked. Yes:  also in the most dangerous places, neighborhoods of New York Per miles and miles everyday and then once returned home he wrote down what he thought without any interruption for not losing the fresh perceptions, the fresh intuitions he perceived while he was "on the road." His feelings, people he met, little interviews with strangers, with important people, feelings, sensations, mixing all of it with the cultural history of this city, and its important and main resource: immigration, the pulsing heart of New York City.

William B.Helmreich hasn't never been injured while he was walking, but he previously read a book about the correct behavior to keep when a person walks in difficult places and it helped a lot, like also it helped to wearing the perfect outfit for every occasion and place.

New York is a city populated by the entire world! Italians, Irish, Jewish, Muslims, people from the most distant places try to reach a better future in this city.

New York City doesn't have a lot of clandestine immigrants but according to Ed Koch in an interview of 2012 the city shouldn't cultivate illegality talking about illegal immigrants.
Mayor Bloomberg said to the author that they did all their best for helping the change. More beautiful schools, parks, places, safe streets and cultural opportunities.

Immigrants: they love to keep some contact with their distant land and Mr Helmreich discovered it happens with....flowers as well! A man created a garden with exotic flowers: the flowers of his land, Guyana. That man told him that planting these flowers important for not losing a contact with his distant country.

Each ethnic group keep its own traditions. Italians, Irish, Jewish, Muslins, for example love to bring their children in their own schools, maintaining also the "heart" of their own culture: language, traditions, food, music, movies and each community in the most diversified corners of NYC lives united like a little big village but they are also known because of their professions.

Parks, sports, beautiful spots of New York: William B.Helmreich photographed an interesting city, less violent, more friendly than not the New York City of 30 years ago. Substantially 9/11 changed in better paradoxically the face of this city.
New Yorkers understood that unity is better than division.



I thank so much for the physical copy of this beautiful book Princeton University Press.

Anna Maria Polidori

Italian Millionaire, Runaway Principessa by Sun Chara

Are you romantic and you love sexy, romantic books? You can't miss to read in this case one of the latest books written by Sun Chara: Italian Millionaire, Runaway Principessa.
The sexy beast this time is Peter Medeci, italian origins he grew up in Little Italy baby, New York City. He became a very successful and rich doctor and fell in love for Ellie.
Ellie has always been his reason of life but, Ellie, less acculturated than him, less opportunities, a shadow of this important man, decides to move on.
Peter is devastated because he still loves this wonderful girl and he doesn't know how to re-conquer her.
The big opportunity appears to the horizon when thanks to a domestic incident Ellie injures her head with a prognosys of three weeks and a request from Peter: to return to live with him for  three weeks as wife and husband and then if she truly wants this, they can divorce.

Ellie is skeptical because she still loves Peter and at the same time she dreams her own independence...

Such a romantic, nice, sexy story this one written by Sun Chara, with a lot of italian words! as well inserted in the dialogues between the two protagonists.

Highly recommended for sure!

I thank Sun Chara for the advanced copy of this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

Greek Millionarie Unruly Wife by Sun Chara

Greek Millionaire Unruly Wife is a romantic, sexy book written by Sun Chara and published by Harper Impulse.
Intense love-story, in this book we see a sexy, fascinating millionaire, Michalis, who falls terribly in love for Julia. Julia reciprocates his interest, and she is pretty absorbed by this charismatic man. Although this love-story sounds endless after three months and a marriage it miserably collapses. But there is a gift, the gift of life in Julia's belly and who knows if the entrance in scene of their beloved daughter won't help them to re-discover the sunny and lost happiness?

Writing-style of Sun is never boring, pretty quick, many dialogues and interactions between the various characters, this book confirms the bubbling personality of the author, positive and optimistic. If you want to spend some time dreaming of wonderful men and romantic sexy stories go for this book! :-)

Sun Chara a HarperImpulse/HarperCollins author has been one of the first authors I interviewed on my blog.

I thank Sun Chara for the advanced copy of this eBook :-)

Anna Maria Polidori

Earline's Pink Party The Social Rituals and Domestic Relics of a Southerner Woman by Elizabeth Findley Shores

Earline's Pink Party The Social Rituals and Domestic Relics of a Southerner Woman by Elizabeth Findley Shores is an immersion in the most authentic profound South of the USA starting from the beginning of 1900s seen through the eyes of the protagonist of this story: Earline Moore Findley. Describing her life will mean to being catapulted in the old southerner atmosphere.

The author has never known Earline, her grand-mother, but thanks to a profound and detailed reconstruction of customs, familiar habits and traditions of the South,  Earline will be more than alive through the pages of this book, with a lot of pictures as well! and will guide us in this fascinating trip in the past of Alabama and Tuscaloosa in particular.

We will discover that a great novelty, and reason for celebrate at the beginning of 1900 was the arrival of photography. Adults and youngsters wore for the big event, their best clothes, because they knew that they would have lived a magical adventure: they would have been immortalized in a picture, precious and unusual for that time. A picture precious because a rarity.

Did you know for example that a sign of distinction in a wealthy family was painting the house?
An unpainted house meant that the family was not economically good. Earline received a first declaration of love at 16, and she wore for the occasion a beautiful opal ring in a picture, but then the story for a reason or another interrupted. Earline would have passed at her daughter the "saved ring" and her daughter passed it at the author of the book, always at the age of 16.
Earline studied for becoming a teacher but at the end she was a mom mainly and wife. In fact later she would have met a good man, Herbert, a lawyer with which she built her existence with.
Earline although a lady we can think without too many worries was devastated during all her life by many departures and sad ideas: that she was unattractive, unsave and unlovable.
These three sad ideas, like also the the ones of remaining alone and suffering of some contagions kept her life constantly vigil under many aspects. 
Earline was a passionate of good food, but she left at servants the preparation of firsts and seconds, thinking that these ones were not noble dishes, and leaving for her the joy of baking. She was a passionate of baking and she asked for recipes to all her friends and relatives trying to better each time their recipes.

Earline was scared by the social condition of his time but she hasn't never taken a real position about it. She remained at the window looking at the events that were going on and at that time situation in Alabama, racism, tensions between black and white pretty complicated.
This, maybe because of the education received.
Earline kept a journal but she hasn't never written more than what it was necessary to write.

Earline's Pink Party is plenty of great anecdotes and life-stories, don't forget the pink party one! and you love history, customs, I am more than sure that this one is the book for you!

Highly recommended to everyone!

I thank University of Alabama Press for the physical copy of this romantic book.


Anna Maria Polidori

Beautiful in God’s Eyes The Treasures of the Proverbs 31 Woman by Elizabeth George

Beautiful in God’s Eyes The Treasures of the Proverbs 31 Woman  by Elizabeth George is a book published by Harvest House plenty of grace and wisdom.
I picked up this book because fascinated by its wonderful cover and I admit that reading it has been a great pleasure.

Who is a good and first of all beautiful woman for God? Someone wise, wealth, someone responsible of the good administration of money in a family and someone who pay attention to her life and the one of her dear ones.
She won't speak a lot but she will act more; she will be a so-called good woman giving with her actions good example to her community, friends and family.  This book wants to encourage you of living a good life following Christian principles and adding religion at your existence and at your daily life.

I highly suggest this book to all women!

I thank NetGalley and Harvest House for this ebook!

Anna Maria Polidori

The Card Catalog Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures - The Library of Congress - by Carla Hyden and foreword by Carla Hyden

The Card Catalog Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures - The Library of Congress - by Carla Hyden and foreword by Carla Hyden Librarian of Congress is a superlative book by Chronicle Books.

A celebration this one of the historical Cards of Catalog Books associated with the most celebrated and beloved books and items at the Library of Congress.


The Library of Congress is the biggest American reality with more than 165 million items, 38 million cataloged books, and for not forgetting  anyone and any country the Library contains print material in 470 different languages! The story of this Library, the oldest federal institution of the USA is fascinating.

In the remote past the most remarkable library created by Alexander the Great.
Library of Alexandria of Egypt the biggest reality of the past.
The cataloger was Callimachus.
Unfortunately a big fire deleted that temple of culture and just tales of what it meant that library can report us its lost magnificence.

Libraries became with centuries impressive considering that more books were in the while published.

1774: in the USA it was revolutionary time, but although people were breathing an atmosphere pretty warm, the idea of a Library of Congress started to take shape considering also that politicians had chosen the city that would have been the capital of all the USA in Washington D.C. That first library has been destroyed in 1814 by the english during a war and then it was completely re-built.

Now: time passed by and new systems, more moderns replaced the old ways of cataloging books and other items. Question was: what to do of all that amount of cards accumulated?
Because History is not just a first edition of a book entered in the Library, but also that old card, witness of the physical presence of it, written by a librarian in a certain day, month and year.
If  a card was written in 1880 or before shouldn't be considered a historical piece? Of course it should and it must.
For this reason this book wants to celebrate that little, oldest cards that made possible the existence of Library Of Congress and it's immense catalog.

Old handwriting, I tried to imagine the faces of the librarians who wrote that cards. Someone who did care the moment, someone in love for books and someone who provided a great service for the community.

You will see more than 200 full-color images of original catalogue cards and many first editions of beloved books in this book.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, The Cat in the Hat by Dr.Seuss, William Tell Told Again by P.G.Wodehouse one of the funniest authors of this world, Francis Scott Fitzgerald with The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner, E.B. White with Charlotte's Web and many, many others starting with the oldest books you can imagine.

The purpose of this book wants, in a crucial moment in which digitization  doesn't pass anymore through paper, to remember and never forget what the old Library of Congress' system has been.
No one knows what the future will bring, time will tell, but it's necessary to remember a romantic age when men and women in libraries cataloged millions of books manually.

I thank so much Abrams&Chronicle Books for the physical copy of this dreaming book.



Anna Maria Polidori

Amish Cooking Class Cookbook Over 200 practical Recipes for Use in any Kitchen by Wanda E. Brunstetter

Amish Cooking Class Cookbook Over 200 practical Recipes for Use in any Kitchen by Wanda E. Brunstetter, an authority and one of the founder of Amish novels and literature, will be published on February 1 2018.

This book wants to be the sum of The Amish Cooking Class series of novels written by ms Brunstetter.
There is a lot to learn about Amish baking and cooking.
Personally I focused my attention on some recipes discovering for example an interesting novelty: for what I can see Amish people love to bake and cook differently from traditional American recipes  adding oil and not butter in most recipes I know where butter is used the most.

The Amish don't live with our commodities and they decided to continue to breath the atmosphere we lived before the arrival of newest tools for simplifying our life, but not only: they refuse the use of cars, tractors, of every kind of novelty and their clock is interrupted in a timeless moment.

These women work hardly and a lot of chores wait them outside and inside the house because these families of Amish have all a farm.
They love to cook and bake with joy and dedication. Robust breakfasts, good cakes, delicious treats, at the beginning of the book some tips and advice for every cook.

Each section will be a great discovery I can tell you that.
I found delicious in the Bread section  the famous Amish Friendship Bread and the Amish Cinnamon Rolls. The first recipe can be the base for more dishes.
In the cake section a great Strawberry Shortcake, but if you want to make happy your children why not to try the candy caramel?
Bars and Cookies will reveal a wonderful recipe for sweet chocolate cookies, a bit different from the most common one we know.
I noticed that Amish recipes are more "abundant" in terms of quantity of ingredients for a richest result and more available food.
A lot of pies for all tastes, Puddings section starts introducing us banana pudding. Latest sections are about Icing, Creams, and Sweet Sauces and Amish Canning.


I highly suggest you this yummy cookbook!

I thank NetGalley and Barbour for this eBook!

Anna Maria Polidori

Alabama Afternoons Profiles and Conversations by Roy Hoffmann

An empty chair in a characteristic Alabama's wooden house where a man or a woman can sit calmly at some point with a glass of lemonade or sweet tea in the hand for telling you an interesting story, captured immediately my attention.
Fascinating cover I requested without any doubt the book: Alabama Afternoons Profiles and Conversations by Roy Hoffmann  published by University of Alabama Press and I can tell you that it is more than what I would have waited.
If you search for a human real experience, if you want to understand the South and its racial story passing through Selma and Ole Miss go for this book: you'll meet extraordinary people thanks at that fascination so typical and unique of the people of the South.

To me Alabama is synonymy of Forrest Gump, so open spaces, big trees, rural lands and mail boxes, big houses. I discovered, reading this book that there was also an interview with the author of Forrest Gump: Winston Groom. Thanks!!!

Alabama Afternoons is a series of interviews with the Alabama People who for a reasons and another have been important. For some seconds, from decades, for some stamps published nationally because of their books.
Alabama Afternoon is divided for chapters: The Makers, The Tellers, The Journeyers, Witnesses to the Movement, Down Back Roads, Different Windows on Dixie, Personal Sojourns.

Alabama lived a big problem of racism and the black people during the 1960s fought a lot for obtaining more rights helped by many conscious white people. The fusion of black and white people all united for trying to report that amazing years can be found thanks to interviews with painters, journalists, very famous writers, or people who made the difference just for a pic, like it happened to Artelia Bendolph portrayed when she was little in 1937 in the house of her grand-parents. Artelia was black and the purpose of the photographer to trying to represent the poverty of the South in comparison to the North of the country.
Mary Ward Brown is an important storyteller.
There is the story of a very colored rural mailbox and her owner, Bernice Sims. Her paintings, the ones dedicated to Selma became part of the ten stamps commemorative at national level "To Form a More Perfect Union." For remembering the 1960s.
Told the story of Mel Allen. He left Alabama for New York City and this great man found there a great career at the Yankee Stadium reporting baseball matches. Another interview is realized with Gay Talese italian origins born in Alabama but emigrated in New York City. His most famous book: A Writer's Life.
Howell Raines's story is more bitter-sweet. He followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks and was an important man at the New York Times, although he was fired two years later. The reporter and writer prefers now the South atmosphere.
Johnnie Carr fought with all herself for the rights of black people.
Mr Forman is trying to preserve his old school called Oak Grave, little community the one of mr Forman, schools like churches were places where you could find life.
That school was built more or less at the beginning of last century. William O.Bolton is the guardian of a cemetery for dogs passed away.  Interviews with Native Americans and one with Yolande "Bebe" Betbeze, a lady who lived thanks to the title of Miss America 1951 an exceptional existence. A husband she lost while she was in her 30s she is a fan of Hillary Clinton.
Talking of food the story of Abby Fisher the first black lady who published a cookbook "What Mrs. Fishers Knows about Old Southern Cooking, soups, pickles, preserves etc"  thanks to an interview realized with Karen Hess and other researches for trying to discover much more about Mrs. Fisher.
Portraits ends with the profile of Mr. Hoffman's dad, Mr. Charles.

I thank the University of Alabama Press for the physical copy of this beautiful book!


Anna Maria Polidori

This Book is a Planetarium And Other Extraordinary Pop-Up Contraptions by Kelli Anderson

It's like to enter in a magical world and the secret passages are its pages.

This Book is a Planetarium And Other Extraordinary Pop-Up Contraptions by Kelli Anderson is this and much more.

Genial for beauty, elegance and originality, it's the perfect gift for your children or someone in grade to appreciate a lot of instruments and tools put all together in a few pages for stimulating creativity.  A mixture of Astronomy, Time, with a perennial calendar and some reflections about the meaning of a year and time; Music because while we exist it is remarkable the importance of creating a great, funny, nice, sweet, melodic soundtrack of and for our life because music is the sound of Universe and because it's the most powerful way for reaching other souls and people.
There is a Speaker for speaking loudly so that you will be listened by everyone!  without forgetting the spiral graph for using all your imagination and for describing the world into all its perfection and geometric imagination.
The most stunning pages the two dedicated at the Planetarium.
Put these pages in a dark room with a small LED light and like for a magic that room will start to be "disconnected" by your reality and you will splash in the immensity of our Sky, with the main Constellations of the Northern Hemisphere ready for you, for being admired, visited, studied, in a wonderful, beauty adventure plenty of curiosity to live all together.

It's a philosophic book this one where music is played meeting words, dreams, expectations, a perpetuity that can't end with mortality, in an inter-connection with our "geometric rationality" and mystery represented under the shape of writing secret messages to other people trying to keep hidden mysteries of this world.
There is not another book in grade to sum with such shocking precision and beauty this world and our life like This Book is a Planetarium.

Creative, intense, I highly suggest this book to adults and children. It could be great to keep some copies of it in schools as well. I guess that teachers and children can start very good and profound conversations around these big thematic, while at the same time living a lot of funny and creative time!
Not bad, true?

I thank Chronicle Books for the physical copy of this stunning and so creative book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Typewriter Paper by Chronicle Books

Are you a typewriter lover? Do you think that PCS are nice but there is nothing more romantic, beauty and old-fashioned than a typewriter, where your brain can rest, where your thoughts are condensed just in one direction, where lack of organization is banned and where rapidity is healthy and good?
Would you want to return at that old times where the comfort of a typewriter was immense?
Chronicle Books for celebrating these stunning wonderful objects still the favorite instruments of work of many writers, creates a note-takers called Typewriter Paper with the shape of a red typewriter.
You can use this fashionable object for your desktop and for not forgetting anymore anything.
It's a wonderful product.  It seems that you have close to you a real typewriter in miniature with real paper pulling out from the box top. On the paper there is written: From the Desk Of...The paper is resistant, very good, so theoretically it could be used from writing something to someone sending the message via normal mail, or you can use this paper for your to-do list, notes for not forgetting anything anymore, or for writing down your most inspiring thoughts if you are a creative.
Typewriter Paper is trendy, original, strong and it  is waiting for you. It will make the difference on your desktop! Trust me!

I thank Chronicle Books for Typewriter Paper! Wonderful!

Anna Maria Polidori

Every Person in New York by Jason Polan foreword by Kristen Wiig

Beautiful drawings of people while they are sleeping,  while they are reading, while they are watching an art exhibit, while they are drinking or eating, while they are in motion, while they are resting, while they are working, while they are contemplative, while they are drinking a cup of coffee. In a few words: while they are living.
Every Person in New York by Jason Polan foreword by Kristen Wiig is an extraordinary drawing trip from 2008 to 2014 in "The city that never Sleeps" would sing Liza Minnelli: New York.
Plenty of life, plenty of people, Polan couldn't have chosen more perfect place for his purpose.
He captures page after page people, details, expressions of a peculiar instant that won't return anymore in the life of that certain person and for doing it he uses pencil and paper for the joy of our eyes.
It's an amazing visual trip you'll love so badly!

New York is New York and this first book of drawings of people is also a cultural trip in a stunning city.
Grand Central Station, trains, the Museum of Modern Art,  the Rockefeller Center, the Whitney Biennial, Staten Island, various parks,  streets of New York are the interest of the artist.

One of the most beautiful and original books I have ever seen.

I highly suggest this book to you and to everyone in love for art, drawing, painting and old-fashioned communication.

I thank so much Chronicle Books for the physical copy of this amazing book!



Anna Maria Polidori

Feed the Resistance Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved by Julia Turshen

Are you angry and hungry?
Are you a motivated activist thinking that food is part of the process of protest creating good and convivial moments with other people of your same ideas while eating something delicious?
Great: so I think that Feed the Resistance Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved by Julia Turshen , a book published by Chronicle Books it's for you.
Little, practical, like the author is, it will be the best instrument you can bring with you not just for cooking, but also for organizing a good movement of protest :-) if you want of course and if you have the capacity of a leader.

Julia says that in this world we must fight, and Americans know very well the word "fight" more than any other one, and fighting is in their DNA.
They do that everyday for a lot of rights and in this historical moments more than during any other one adds the author, maybe because there will be the necessity of fighting for rights that people thought conquered and that a new political wind would want to reduce.

With practical advice while you will fight with strength for your ideas, thematic and problematic you treasure a lot  and you do care the most, you can share with your friends and activists some of Julia's recipes, including the ones of her friends. They're for all tastes, with simple ingredients that will make happy everyone!

Proceeds will be donated at the American Civil Liberties Union.

I thank so much Abrams&Chronicle Books for the physical copy of this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

The Formative Years of Relativity by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jurgen Renn

The Theory of Relativity has been a real revolution for the scientific world because it "fixed",  what said before by giants of science like Galileo and later Newton, revolutionizing most of the ideas commonly known by scientists from centuries with new concepts about space, time, cosmic waves and much more.

If you search for a book that wants to analyze also what the theory of relativity meant for the scientific community after few years from the publication I strongly suggest you: The Formative Years of Relativity by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jurgen Renn by Princeton University Press.

Fresh of press the book takes inspitation (they're included in the book) from the lectures by Einstein on May 1921 at Princeton University. The Meaning of Relativity as a book was firstly published in 1922, a year after the participation of Einstein at the lectures but this book wants to make the difference in the approach, giving a best and freshest perspective of the theory of relativity.

The arrival of Einstein in 1921 at Princeton cemented by a lot of publicity. His lectures followed and covered by the New York Times and other newsmagazines as well, that trip of Einstein meant for the scientific community a new attention at this revolutionary vision of physics, cosmology, world and a fertile discussion about the thematic discussed by Einstein. It was not anymore just Einstein stimulated to guess if this theory completely correct and the possibility, like the existence of cosmic waves real, but also a "curiosity" for the rest of academic and scientific world. "Will he be right?" maybe they asked to themselves.

This book not just presents the five lectures by Einstein, but wants also to trying to analyze what it meant for that first decades the theory of relativity historically, scientifically, philosophically.
The recent discovery of Cosmic waves and the certainty that also that portion of theory correct - the last cosmic wave thanks to two dying stars united and melted together in a mortal "hug" - continue to proves the geniality of Einstein.

Highly suggested to all the people interested in physics and surely a great Christmas gift!


I thank so much Princeton University Press for the physical copy of this wonderful book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Teaching the Trees Lessons from the Forest by Joan Maloof

A book that will present you a lot of enchantment with its poetry, with its wonderful vision of trees and nature is: Teaching the Trees Lessons from the Forest  by Joan Maloof published by The University of Georgia Press. Trust me when I tell you that this book will change your relationship with nature and environment making the difference in your existence.
Our life sometimes is disconnected and we can't feel nature in particular if we live in cities because maybe it's not too close to us. This book will help you to firstly re-connect yourself with nature and maybe to decide of spending some more time outdoor. 

This inspiring book is a discovery. First of all, I can assure you that it is extremely poetic. The author inserts in every chapter some poems of her beloved poets.
The main purpose of Maloff is this one: enter into the essence of trees and our relationship with them.
The purpose of the book is this one mainly. Illustrations are old-fashioned: they were created by John Abbott a naturalist who lived more than 200 years ago for giving to the book a precious touch. The cover is precious.

What is it a tree to us?

If you don't know the importance of trees, if you think that a tree is "just there" but you don't give to it all that importance remember that without trees we wouldn't have oxygen; remember that a tree is important for an entire little and big eco-system, starting from birds, and passing through all that little animals that you can't see immediately but that love to spend time in its branches or other part of it; remember that a tree is  like a person. It has a beginning but also an end and like a person needs to be treated with extreme dignity.

Have you ever hugged a tree? Personally I did it several times, but...Did you remember when did it happen? Was it for a special occasion?
For thanking your tree of being there, for being grateful, for relaxing your mind embracing another living creature?
Hugging a tree is a great lesson, as also will explain the author, who loves to bring all her students to the forest for hugging trees and discovering the joy of being outside.

This book is written with enchanted eyes: and once you will finish to read it you will want to rush in a forest for staying there forever, trust me because forests are plenty of good oxygen for our health and our lungs! created thanks to the mixture of many elements, creatures and substances, leaves, fungi, etc of the forest. I don't know you, but when I enter in a forest when I return in the normal world I am more oxygenated and alive!

We will also discover the beauty of various trees. I know some for reputation like the Sycamore where you could also think of living in, because it's very big!

You'll understand that close to oak trees, blessed by Druids like lime, walnut, holly ones as well, maybe will live owls and squirrels although squirrels tend to choose oak trees with their favorite acorns. We will learn that trees sometimes have a specific genre, they can be female or males, that in general a tree would live 200-300 years if not killed before by the hands of man.

Joan Maloof created also a September 11th Memorial Forest, for remembering all the people deceased during that horrible terrorist attack. A way this one for honoring the people disappeared picking up a tree for each person. New life metaphorically for all that people not anymore physically existing through these protected trees. They will grow up every year and this time one no one will kill them.

Plus: did you know that eagles sometimes can nest in a big and very tall pine and if they love the experience return the next year in that same place?

This book is a wonderful naturalistic experience for everyone!




I thank so much The University of Georgia Press for the physical copy of this beautiful book!



Anna Maria Polidori

Assassins' America: Four Killers, Four Murdered Presidents, and the Country They Left Behind by Jessica Gunderson and Joe Tougas

Assassins' America: Four Killers, Four Murdered Presidents, and the Country They Left Behind by Capstone Paperback is a wonderful new book on stores this March 1, 2018. Written by Jessica Gunderson and Joe Tougas, the book tells with great lucidity, precision, and intriguing tales what happened to the Presidents of the USA killed during the times and the effects their departures meant for the USA.

The History starts of course with Abraham Lincoln the most beloved President of the USA.
As I guess you will know the story.
John Wilkes Booth, a very famous theater's star, shot the President on April 14, 1865 while the President was attending Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington D.C.

That day Lincoln's wife wasn't fine. Why not giving up she asked him?
But President Lincoln insisted and they went to theater with some friends.
John Wilkes disliked profoundly the ideas of President Lincoln and he hated him but there is to say that he wasn't mentally ill, his life was successful, he was very rich, the most famous actor of the USA at that time.
The comparison of our times? Your favorite movie-star. We are at that levels.
His family a family of great actors.
All the possible luck and talent of the life, sent to hell for an absurdity like this one!
Wilkes was wrong thinking that after the death of Lincoln people would have thanked him for his insane gesture.
It was the opposite.
Lincoln was very loved also when alive and in particular black people kept in their houses the picture of the President as if he would have been a Saint. We were at these levels of love! An assassin can physically kill a person but won't never be in grade of killing love.
Wilkes was hanged up with the rest of his gang once captured and in the moment of Lincoln's death started the beautiful legend and myth of this President.
President Lincoln died the next morning for the injury at the brain.

The second President "killed" for malpractice by doctors more than by the absurd gesture of his assassin according to the authors of the book was James Garfield, freshly elected.
In his case the assassin was an extravagant man and lawyer Charles J.Guiteau. He tried to kill the President during a public appearance on July 2,1881.
Problem in the case of President Garfield? Doctors tried to search for one of the bullet using their fingers and other instruments without any kind of attention for germs, and for this reason the President passed away after more than two painful months on September 1881 because of infections contracted including a pneumonia.

Mr Garfield's life was remarkable. Like in the case of Lincoln he was born very poor.
His first pair of shoes at the age of 4 years. Later he became a teacher and then during the Secession War he did military career. Later, policy. The Republican Party at that time divided in two factions.
The killer was an exasperated God's believer but a pretty eccentric man as well. Once the President elected he tried all his best, being a lawyer to follow the President to Washington for obtaining a job thanks to him. The President answered to his requests with a no. After that the idea of killing him.
A magazine in a caricature of the assassin let us see Guiteau with a gun on the right hand and on the left a short letter where there is written: An Office or Your Life!

Guiteau's life was complicated, plenty of failures, populated by a distorted vision of religion, weird groups he joined in and tentative to trying to define his existence.

The third President murdered was William McKinley. It was the beginning of the XX century, new expectations, people were leaving farms for cities starting to work in factories. Minor labor was consented because children and teenagers inexpensive if compared at an adult.

In this sort of turmoil including the fact that President McKinley supported wealthy families and groups we can find the "humus and air" breathed by Leon Czolgosz,  the future assassin of the President.
He was an anarchic, with mental illness, "inspired" by Gaetano Bresci the murderer of the Italian King Umberto, assassinated in 1900.
The murderer of President McKinley bought  the same gun used by Gaetano Bresci for killing the President in Buffalo on Sept 6 1901.

It was touching the behavior of President McKinley when he understood what happened: his first thought for his wife, frequently sick.
She fell depressed when they lost their two children and later she started to suffering of epilepsy.
He said to one of his collaborators of explaining her this assassination with calm and attention. Wow!

President McKinley didn't die immediately, all the opposite! He recovered very well but one of the bullet still inside him poisoned his body.
Doctors didn't want to use the R-X for seeing where the bullet was located for a good extraction of it. A gangrene grew around the bullet and on Sept 14 1901 the President died.

Desperate, Leon was killed with the electric chair. He said while they were carrying him to his final destination, he did it "For the good of the laboring people, the good people."

Vice-president Theodore Roosevelt understood that his moment was arrived.
Roosevelt was a fantastic President. He didn't go for big corporations, he was a lover of nature and its beauty, his family very numerous, chaotic and cheerful, he loved to spend a lot of time outside, in the forests. He passed at the story as the President of National Parks, of outdoors life, the creator of Teddy Bear. Do you know the story of Teddy Bear?

Once the President refused to kill an old sick bear. What kind of gusto can have a man in killing a sick animal close to the end? He decided of leaving the bear alone. Roosevelt was a hunter and when news spread it appeared more than natural to let know to everyone this act of kindness and love creating this cute, romantic, tender gift, in particular presented during Valentine's Day or other special occasions.

The final chapters involves of course President John Fitzgerald Kennedy killed in Dallas on Nov 22 1963.
Yes: of course there is a great reconstruction of the President, the historical moment and also the biography of Lee Harvey Oswald the so-called official assassin of President Kennedy is superb.
Sure Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't in Dallas for giving a hug  to the President. I don't doubt for a second of the bad intention of that man but in this final case, I would add to children and teenagers that the story can't be considered complete and closed without the inclusion of other people. I think that there was a conspiration behind this assassination.

There are other chapters to write about this story, where and if it will be possible.
In opposite case, the John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination will remain forever "A case still open."

I highly suggest this book to everyone. It is in particular a book for teenagers but I can tell you that also an adult can learn a lot reading this book. Very informative and formative :-)

I thank NetGalley and Capstone for this beautiful and as always very good ebook!




Anna Maria Polidori

The complete Journals of L.M.Montgomery The PEI Years, 1889-1900 by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston

The complete Journals of L.M.Montgomery The PEI Years, 1889-1900 by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston is a real beautiful jewel if you love and appreciate the writer of Anne of Green Gables.

Mrs.Montgomery was 15 years old when she started to write this journal. The version is unabridged.
Mrs. Montgomery confessed she burned other journals written before. Why? Just in case they would have been important one day, she didn't want to leave at the posterity anything weird, or strange or too sad.

Montgomery was a very special soul. Fresh, cleaned, radiant as I say often and a dreaming, sincere girl. She loved to write in this journal what she thought without any kind of special filter and sometimes reporting dialogues between people as well.
Mrs Montgomery loves to tell everything about her reality.
Her friendship, her school, Bible Study, people she likes and friends she wouldn't want to be friends with, school, feelings.

An example? Her joy to be reunited with her dad and the conflictual relationship with her step-mother analyzed with sufferance and simplicity, with sincerity and without any kind of mask. Mrs. Maud reported exactly her feelings. She didn't like certain people and she said it.
She was a candid soul.
Once Mrs Maud told that she was published in a poetry journal and happily she let see to her parents when she spent her time with them the letter she received from the magazine, but her step-mother said nothing to her and she suffered a lot. She also confessed that her step-mother read all the stuff she wrote and she was worried for this journal.

In this journal, you will discover a fresh like also a conflictual girl. In an entry she said sometimes she would have been different from the person she was.

Mrs Montgomery loved to put in her journals imagines of people she loved the most, of her reality, of nature and countryside she was so affectionate at so badly.
It will be like to enter to me in the parallel world of Anne of Green Gables, and you will feel when you will finish to read this journal that you know all the protagonists of this journal and all Mrs.Montgomery's world, like also her essence.

Mrs.Montgomery lived a life of conflicts, but the most beautiful aspect of this girl and later lady was this one: the ability thanks also to her rich interior world of create a beautiful world projected outside for keeping all the people she knew happy around her, because Mrs Montgomery donated happiness to the other ones thanks to her vision of life, dreaming and beauty.

Maybe she hasn't never found a complete peace, but this girl was joyous, plenty of life, and happy to be alive, true, and a true future-believer.

Plus: thanks to her books of Anne of Green Gables plenty of great and healthy values it was possible to see a stunning world, intimate and profound, joyous, plenty of poetry in grade to change in better the souls of people.

You can think of presenting this book to your daughter, or someone in grade to appreciate sincerity, a frank life, good sentiments and a vision of life connected with simple things and at the same time the biggest ones of this life.

For estimators of Anne of Green Gables another reason for understand much better the author. These kind of books should be promoted also because they contain great messages to everyone.
First of all the one of being true people.


I surely thank so much Oxford University Press for the stunning physical copy of this book!



Anna Maria Polidori 

Charlie & Mouse & Grumpy written by Laurel Snider Illustrated by Emily Hughes

They're all alone. Their parents are away for a certain time but...Look: who is knocking at the door?
No possible! It's him again, hooray! Their grand-dad baptized by the two children, Charlie & Mouse, Grumpy is back for some funny time and memories to create all together! They're all alone. Their parents are away for a certain time but...Look: who is knocking at the door?
No possible! It's him again, hooray! Their grand-dad baptized by the two children, Charlie & Mouse, Grumpy is back for some funny time and memories to create all together!

These children adore their Grumpy and they love to spend time with him although he is much more old than them.
With him they can talk, and live some adventures.
It can be an adventure also seeing their Grumpy snoring. I mean: you know, funny time like also to watching a movie or eating a pizza all together.

It's an important little children's book because it put in connection various, different generations and it is visible the help asked by modern parents once children, who, when too busy with their own work can't abandon their children at home alone and they need extra-help, asking this at their own parents.
It starts to be more common than what we can think, more economical and we know our children are in the best hands. Priceless.


Charlie & Mouse & Grumpy, this one the second book of adventures is written by Laurel Snider and illustrated by Emily Hughes.

I thank Chronicle Books for the physical copy of this cute book!

Anna Maria Polidori 

2018 Daily Planner: Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden by Erin Benzakein pictures by Michele M. Waite

If you love flowers and at the same time you search for a romantic, colored daily planner for the next year where to annotate everything (including your gardener's life, why not?), I strongly suggest you 2018 Daily Planner: Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden written by Erin Benzakein and published by Chronicle Books.
It's not important if you are a starter or a real gardener from various years or decades; if you decided just some months ago of not seeing just cement in your city but also colors in your little or big spot of the world, this planner will be here, close to you, following you day-by-day for telling to you what to do in your garden, according to the climate of your area, in a monthly base. But of course the purpose of this daily planner is not just this only one. It wants to present you beauty, it wants to present you relaxation and it wants to follow you during  your most precious moments with  vivid colors and images of the most beloved flowers, a picture per month taken by Michele M. Waite for refreshing your spirit and inspiration, for presenting to you the real beauty of this world: nature and flowers, for not let you forget the delicacy of life.
I imagine you will put this planner in the best and most visible place of your bookshelf for being taken and consulted often or on your desk.
This daily planner slowly slowly will help you to take notes of your blooming life, your most important dates, birthdays to remember, your gardener's life! we mustn't forget it! and you will discover at the end how precious and beauty life is when we are surrounded by beautiful and sunny instruments like this planner is.

I thank Chronicle Books for this wonderful daily planner!

Anna Maria Polidori

Christmas Romance The Christmas Love List Collection The Best Christmas Romance of 2016 by Natalie-Nicole Bates, Sharon Kleve, Jennifer Conner, Angela Ford

Christmas Romance The Christmas Love List Collection by Natalie-Nicole Bates, Sharon Kleve, Jennifer Conner, Angela Ford The Best Christmas Romance of 2016 is another wonderful set of powerful romantic stories that will let you smile and will let you cry for the joy of a good happy end. Published by Books to Go Now, all these stories are perfect for Christmas' time because they let us reflect about the real Christmas Spirit and the importance of being good people, and also being surrounded by good people.

All moving, romantic Christmas stories I focused my attention on Country Christmas Wishes by Angela Ford.
Dakota has always felt that something in her life was wrong. Her mom doesn't love her as she should have done; her sister Sabrina treats her very bad. The only one to be nice, polite and very good in her family is her dad. One day after another bad discussion with her littlest sister the reality told by Sabrina to her, brutally: Dakota is not the biological daughter of their dad. Dakota can't believe it, but unfortunately later everything is confirmed by her beloved dad.
Ten years later, after a lot of investigation, Dakota understands that maybe it's better to search for her real dad and she affords to Vinegrove, where not only she will find a great serenity but opened arms and friendly people in grade to appreciate her. She is in grade, thanks to the positive vibes she meets to remember all the names of that friendly people as if she would have known them from an age.
She doesn't feel anymore as a lost soul but someone appreciated for being Dakota.
She hated Christmas shopping in the past, but just because her mom and her sister put hates in that activity. When she shopped for something new for her, she returned home extremely happy and cheerful. But presents to Dakota are not yet finished and they're not just objects, but feelings because with Christmas will also arrive love and a great entrance in the life of her biological dad, who happy and enthusiastic for the news shared it with all his family, his wife and the other Dakota's siblings. And for once, Dakota, will discover how beauty and immense is to be at home.
In the best Christmas Spirit, a moving story you can't stop to love!

The other Christmas Stories are: Surprise, you are a Christmas Bride by Natalie-Nicole Bates, A Home for Christmas by Jennifer Conner, Christmas Kisses&Wishes by Sharon Kleve.

I thank so much Books TO Go Now for this eBook.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Artful Baker Extraordinary Desserts From an Obsessive Home Baker by Cenk Sonmezsoy

The Artful Baker:   Extraordinary Desserts From an Obsessive Home Baker by Cenk Sonmezsoy is for sure a cook book that deserves to become one of your most read and used cookbook for your baking days.

The author divides the book in these sections:
Cookies, Brownies, Cakes, Muffins, Cheesecakes and Meringues, Tarts, Galettes, Pie, Quiche, Cobbler and Crumble, Breads and Pastries, Ice Creams, Frozen Yogurt and Sorbets, Confections and Drinks, Jams,  Jellies and at the end base recipes.

The story of this author is great, because in his life he didn't want to become a baker, he tells, but for a reason or another, he set up once a blog Cafe Fernando sharing with people his recipes. That blog became so successful that his recipes ended up also in the Washington Post and in the San Francisco Chronicle. A great launch for other contacts, the proposal of a book and here we are.

His recipes are original. For example in the recipe of sweet chocolate cookies the author adds real pieces of chocolates to the cookies.

Delicious the section dedicated to Macarons and succulent the one at brownies. I found very elegant the three-bean vanilla bundt cake, while if you want also a spicy apple cake try the Deeply Appley Apple Cake.

The Devil Wears Chocolate Swirls will be noticed because of the chocolate "waves" in comparison to a common chocolate cake for a visual, yummy success!

There is also a recipe called Monte Bianco.

In the section bread I signal Sourdough Simit, the most common Istanbul bread and of course for a delicious and succulent breakfast croissants and pains au chocolat. It will take a lot of time I can tell you because I do them sometime, but the work will be compensated by a great and loving delicious product and taste!

Another delicious dessert in particular when you have some guests can be profiteroles.

The author is a great ice-cream lover and so you' ll find wagons of different kind of ice-cream recipes for all tastes!

If you love caramel you will want to try the Salted Butter Caramels or the million-dollar raspberry caramel.

Do you want a splash in the chocolate, absorbing at the same time many other ingredients mixed with it? Fernando Rocher will be the best answer for you.

Suggested a Hot Chocolate during the cold winter-time.

Beautiful! cookbook for sure.

Highly suggested!

I thank NetGalley, ABRAMS and Chronicle&Abrams for the ebook.


Anna Maria Polidori

Home for Christmas A Yorktide Maine Novel by Holly Chamberlin

Home for Christmas A Yorktide Maine Novel is an enchanting book written by Holly Chamberlin and published by Kensington Books.
It's a story about errors and forgiving, new identity passing through a story maybe of empty nest and a divorce, and "finding" a home for Christmas for someone else, that after all, it's one of the profound meaning of this feast.

One of the strongest thematic of the book is love: to be loved and being in grade to recognize real love.

Nell decides to return to Yorktide, Maine after his divorce with Joel. It was a sufferance although honestly she hasn't never loved him so much, but you know: two daughters, an existence spent together...

Joel was picked up by Nell's family. Her biggest love was Eric but her family ddn't think that the boy was a good choice for their daughter. But Eric with the time became a successful writer and most of his novels became great Hollywood's movies.

She has two daughters, Nell, Felicity and Molly, both big enough for starting to be independent and for leaving the home soon or late.

Nell has a friend in Jill a 70s adorable lady and confident.

Molly lives a long story with Mick the son of a farmer, but she thinks she would want to break up considering she wants to go to Boston for discovering life much more.

At the same time Eric, old Nell's flame afford to Yorktide in a moment of the year considered by everyone a real failure because there are just few people, it's winter-time, for the promotion of his latest book and he is there for staying for some weeks.

Nell during her existence with Joel was a good wife. She abandoned the church because Joel didn't love she enjoyed to go to the church; she abandoned to write poetry and she loved to write poetry.
She found one night in her attic the old journals of poems she wrote with an old biography about William Blake.

Great analysis of all characters, problematic of family lived very well, speaking a lot, talking a lot, thinking a lot and sorting out all together the problems. What I loved the most was this "being there for helping" for all the little or big problems although the final decision reserved to the single character.

Molly the most adorable, chaotic character of the book,

Enjoy this adorable Christmas Novel.
Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Kensington Books for this eBook.



Anna Maria Polidori

Murder Made in Italy Homicide, Media and Contemporary Italian Culture by Ellen Nerenberg

Murder Made in Italy Homicide, Media and Contemporary Italian Culture by Ellen Nerenberg  intrigued me a lot and I can tell you this: if you want to explore sad italian homicides, very peculiar, important, in some cases still unresolved go for this book because it will be a fascinating trip in the heart of italian crime without to miss anything. The book will create an atmosphere of interconnection between cinema, books, TV programs, with the let's call it "Life of Crime" that you will find fascinating.
It is a simply spectacular and stunning book! this one.

I love true crime when it is very well treated and I can tell you that I couldn't wait for anything more serious than this book where I found also more than what I was waiting for. It was like to being home, because I lived all these crimes reading and watching TV programs mentioned by the author and at the same time receiving a lucid reportage of what it was in the various phases of these cases. I was surprised by the knowledge and profundity of the research of the various cases.

I confess I was also intrigued by this book because I wanted to see how we are read by Americans but I haven't found any big surprise, and there are not judges but a shockingly beauty reconstruction of the various murders.

Ms. Ellen Nerenberg starts to analyzes using  Roberto Benigni and his movie The Monster, the case of the so-called Monster of Florence. These homicides of this serial killer started in 1975 and ended up in 1984. Horrible homicides in the beautiful and romantic countrysides of Florence of couples in general spending some intimate moments together.
Now: press, medias not yet mature enough for understanding very well what was going, says the author and a the same time these homicides not immediately connected together. (Mentioned also Bilancia another serial killer.)
It will happen just later.
At the end of the story Pietro Pacciani a peasant will pay with his friends for these murders.
Other hypothesis taken in consideration: the Satanist one with Narducci a doctor from Perugia dead in 1985 in mysterious circumstances, once the corpse exhumed.

The second case the horrible murder at Novi Ligure of Susy Cassini and Gianluca De Nardo killed by Erika, the eldest daughter of mrs Cassini and her beloved friend Omar.
It was a shocking homicide because the two have been stabbed more than 90 times and the scenario of the murder horrible. At first the still very young couple said that some foreign people did it.
Later the terrible discovery that the problem was inside the house.
Paolo Crepet one of the most important italian psychiatrists often participated at Porta a Porta a TV show conducted by Bruno Vespa reporting the problematic of these children and teen-agers and trying to understand why this horror possible. Society was changing it was 2001 when this murder in the little, tranquil and productive Novi Ligure took place. 

The third homicide taken in consideration the one of Cogne beautiful sunny locality in the Alps where lived mrs Franzoni with her husband and their beautiful children. One morning Samuele, the littlest one found agonizing in the bedroom. Later the mother will be accused by the homicide.

Treated very quickly Meredith Kercher's homicide.

What it was more than sure is that these homicides later influenced a lot of medium: TV, cinema, books.
We will see the various movies generated by these horrible experience thanks to a profound analys created by Dario Argento and his movies and many more. Every case in fact influenced massively cinema, TV.

Highly suggested for sure, if you are curious to discover some italian big crimes of these last 20 years.

I thank so much Indiana  University Press for this stunning book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Preserving Family Recipes How to Save and Celebrate your Food Traditions by Valerie J. Frey

Do you want to write a cookbook of old-fashioned recipes? Are you interested to collect recipes of your ancestors, family or your community so that they will remain for the posterity continuing to tantalizing the palate of people of your generation?
If the answers at these questions are yes Preserving Family Recipes How to Save and Celebrate your Food Traditions by Valerie J. Frey published by University of Georgia Press is the book for you!

It's a wonderful trip in the world of recipes and communities this one, a meticulous, sweet and yummy trip in the heart of a land. What it is for sure is that food is another important part of a community, an "aggregant" and convivial ways for reaching other people while we build memories together. At the same time in most cases a family, is plenty of food memories and particular, peculiar dishes just common in that little society that a family is.
It is  part of its history.
How many times have we said speaking with someone: "I haven't tasted anymore a pear juice like the one created by aunt Anne?" (It can be also a different dish and the aunt a different name of course.)
There was a certain touch, and love must be the main ingredient in a kitchen for the good realization of every dish.

Said this, this book is so precious and stunning because very clearly it will guide you in a wonderful trip, if your purpose will be the one of collecting recipes for a cookbook or just for your own pleasure, with determination and success.

You will learn how to organize a good collection of recipes, passing through interviews with your dear ones, neighbors, realized via various medias, the use of technology and PCS or old-fashioned systems. It's all up to you and your purpose of course.

But not only: we also will learn that sometimes old recipes must be adjusted because maybe people in the past used different ingredients. Sometimes the author suggests is better to be followed by a cook or anyway a friend in grade to give us some good feedback if we can be lost with recipes.

The author doesn't forget anything: from the use of family artifacts but be careful because with the time they can develop problems, sometimes it's better just to put them somewhere in the kitchen as old "souvenirs" telling to people that they were used by our ancestors because food requires a good and cleaned environment, to international world recipes and how to adjust them for the American standard and ingredients.

Maybe one of the most precious chapters the one of the handwritten recipes. People tend to write down recipes they love the most but imagine a little pretty old notebook of recipes... It will be an adventure by itself to trying to decipher calligraphy trying to establish also when that recipes were written.

Every recipe in a family or in a community means a customs or a tradition.

If your idea is the one of writing a cookbook you can't miss to add anecdotes regarding the recipe you introduces to the reader.

First of all it will be more appealing! Let's consider a recipe loved by everyone: the one of sweet chocolate cookies. Telling to everyone your granny loved to baking them when you were little accompanying it with a good cup of milk and you enjoyed eating them so badly remembering the passion and tenderness of your granny, and the good moments shared together will be a winning strategy.
Why?
Just this anecdote will help the readers to appreciate and feel that recipe "special." Special for some events, special when children are around and you want to give them the best, special because you will want to be remembered because a sweet aunt, granny, friend for all your dear ones.

Food is love and sharing love will be remembered from people forever.

I found very interesting the story of Southern Biscuits.The story very engaging.

You will also find various recipes in the book that you can try.

Highly recommended for sure!

I thank so much The University of Georgia Press for the physical copy of this wonderful book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Southern Cooking by Mrs.S.R.Dull Foreword by Damon Lee Fowler

It's an emotion: I have close to me the Bible in terms of Southern food: Southern Cooking by Mrs.S.R.Dull Foreword by Damon Lee Fowler.

At first looking at the beautiful, warm and colored cover, what you notice the most is Mrs.Dull and her wonderful, beauty smile while she was baking some cookies.

This book, with more than 1300 traditional recipes is not just taken in great consideration by every person in love for great food, but it's the basis for every other cookbook in the USA and in particular in the South.

The story of this wonderful, sweet lady, Mrs. Dull is incredible for the final results. She became a great cook for case and necessity as very often happens.

She married a widow with a lot of children six in total and when her husband fell sick she was the one who took care of everyone. Cooking and baking she started to understand the tricks of this field and full-time job. At first it was just a story of selling some cakes for some money but when people discovered that, well, Mrs Dull's food was so delicious and she was so talented they thought: why not let her work seriously? And so she became a caterer. Not only: she was hired by the Atlanta Gas Light Company starting to speak about food in public events. It was another launch in another Olymp because the Atlanta Journal offered her to become editor of the Home economics page for their Sunday magazine edition. Unbelievable? All true!
It was a great success and Mrs.Dull continued to work, writing about new recipes, kitchen tips, advice and food for a long time, "going in pension" at 82 years old from the Atlanta Journal.

Why is it so important Southern Cooking?
Personally I can tell you that: via the net I downloaded in the past wagons of old American cookbooks and the reason is just one: recipes are better, less caloric, more genuine and ingredient the old fashioned-ones, more naturals.

Substantially Southern Cooking is important also because we can see a real picture of the food consumed in the South during the beginning of the XX century.

Mrs.Dull lived in a  period of great changes, but what it remained true was that people trusted her because she was absolutely perfect and sure of what she was doing or what she was telling, she experienced it in first person and it helped of course, plus she was exigent and she pretended just the best from herself and from...food!

Go for this book without any kind of hesitation, because all these recipes are more than accurate, because Mrs. Dull is synonymy of excellence and quality and every chapter you will see will be a delicious discovery!

You will also find menus for feasts and special occasions suggested by Mrs.Dull like also in Table Service chapter important tips, most of them I didn't know at all.

Mrs. Dull won't leave out anything from this book, and there are also included new recipes published in the edition of 1941.

Soups, cocktails, meat, cakes, vegetables, salad, bread, and much much more you will find all the answers to your little or big exigencies and the one of your family.

Personally I want to try as soon as possible her recipes with sweet potatoes and apples! I am a passionate of sweet potatoes and apples :-)

I thank so much! Georgia University Press for the physical copy of this beautiful and sunny cookbook!


Anna Maria Polidori